JCSA

For many years I have ministered to the landless poor in India, the Dalits and tribals whose lands have been taken from them in a country where 10% of its population control 80% of the wealth. A grassroots social movement have been working tirelessly to restore the dignity and the land that was stolen from the poor.

This is one of the most significant events in my life in which I learnt that if we fight together with definite purpose and proper plan, we can overcome any difficulty. It is because of God’s grace that we came to know of SHGs in 2014 and with support from the Purvanchal Pragati Samaj we emerged victorious in 2017 after three months of continuous struggle for the justice.

I realize more and more that my life is a gift. In and through this gift, the Lord is revealing himself to me and he is toiling and labouring...

From my childhood, I used to go to the tea plantation estates along with the religious sisters for training the workers children in catechism and choir.

‘Working with the excluded’ necessitates a vision of all encompassing inclusion, confronting excluding attitudes and structures as a contemplative, being ready for collaborative action with all, especially the youth, cherishing our Common Home, the whole world, both the land and the sea, with its infinite possibilities for sharing resources equitably and sustainably, celebrating life and celebrating suffering itself like in the Last Supper of Jesus.

Working against Discrimination on the basis of work and decent has been the one thing I have been grappling with during the 37 years of my life as a Jesuit.

My grandparents had great hopes of seeing brighter days, when the British brought them to Assam, to work in the tea gardens. They did not really see a better life but they worked hard and did not starve. I did not see them. My father was born in Assam and never saw the birthplace of his parents in Jharkhand.

My first experience with migrant workers was when I was a 23 year old scholastic. I was travelling by train, in an emergency from Calcutta to Kerala, my home State in an unreserved coach.

Shantha Ram is accused of rape and murder of Kanchan Kumari, a 8 year old girl, his neighbor in the jhopari-patti (cluster of huts) along the railway track near the Bihar State Secretariat, Patna. The incident took place on 16.12.2007. Ram went absconding, but was arrested on 07.08.2011 and is in Patna central jail since then.

I was inspired by those who spoke up against injustice, “who spoke truth to power” and were willing to pay the price, even as I began to reflect seriously on the causes and consequences of injustice.