"Love Your Neighbor Interfaith Sunday: Celebrating Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday and I Am Staten Island"

Call to Community: My favorite Indian movie is Swades, which is titled in English, “We, the people” but “Homeland” in India. In one song, the main character Mohan is singing to the entire village that has been watching a movie when the electricity goes out. The villagers are separated by a screen that divides one group from another. Near the end of his song, they remove the dividing screen and children from both sides play, sing and dance together. This song speaks to us here in Staten Island after a season of divisions:
"Yeh Taara Woh Tara"
(adapted slightly from a translation by Palacerani from http://www.bollywhat.com/lyrics/swad_lyr.html)
“This star, the one yonder and every little star,
Whichever one you see looks lovely.
This star, that star, every star, when all these gather together in the night,
The whole sky shimmers.
Twinkling stars, a couple of stars, a handful, a hundred stars
Shimmering. Every star is a fiery spark.

If you have seen the rainbow,
Then tell me how many colors there are in it?
There are seven colors …but they’re so close;
Just think, if these colors all dwelt separately,
How would a rainbow ever form?
Likewise, if we couldn’t join hands and unite
To fight injustice,
Then our people would not be a nation…

Individual drops, by joining together, Make a river.
Every drop makes the sea; otherwise what is a sea?
Understand this riddle; a drop existing on its own,
Just as a drop, isn’t anything.
Were we to desert one and all,
Then we would end up feeling incredibly lonely.
Why not unite then in a single current?

This star, the one yonder and every little star, twinkling stars,
A couple of stars, a handful, a hundred stars shimmering.
Every star is a fiery spark.”

"Love Your Neighbor Interfaith Sunday: Celebrating Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthday and
I Am Staten Island"
© Rev. Susan Karlson
September 26, 2010

In five weeks, I’ll be traveling to India for the wedding of my daughter’s high school friend. We’ll be visiting the Gandhi Memorial in Delhi and meeting women from the Unitarian Universalist Holdeen India program, SEWA Bharat, the Indian Self Employed Women’s Association. SEWA is inspired by Gandhian thinking and the principles of satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), sarvadharma (all peoples and faiths working together) and khadi (promoting local employment). When I return, I hope to bring greetings from SEWA Bharat and share with you how their families’ lives are different since finding SEWA and how SEWA has spread to other countries throughout the world.
On my way back from a silent meditation retreat in Massachusetts, I met a young man on the bus named Shrinivas who sat beside me. We began talking about his homeland of India. Because Shrinivas feels honored to serve as an ambassador for Indian film we began an e-mail correspondence about Indian films that he recommended. I feel immense gratitude for the ways he widens my understanding and appreciation of his country and his careful responses to my questions and reflections after seeing those films.
Every year on Indian Independence Day, Shrinivas watches the film, Swades, meaning “Homeland”, one of the most beautiful films about communities joining together. In telling a little of the story behind Swades on this “Love your Neighbor Interfaith Sunday” and the Sunday immediately before Gandhi’s birthday I want to bring us into a greater appreciation for Staten Island, this place that is home to people from many different countries, ethnicities, identities and faiths. The English title of Swades is “We, the people” and it reminds me of the new slogan, “I am Staten Island—we are Staten Island”.
Swades tells the story of Mohan, educated in the United States and working as a manager on the National Air and Space Administration’s (NASA) Global Precipitation Measurement Project which is capable of tracking sources of clean water. Mohan returns to India because of a growing sense of responsibility for the woman who cared for him as a child growing up in India. He wants to bring her back to the United States, but finds her caring for an old childhood friend, Gita, who teaches school in an impoverished village.
Upon arriving, he begins to understand more about his native India—those aspects he wants to forget and was glad to leave behind and other parts that he values and that feel like a part of his soul.
Mohan is inspired to help Gita enroll more students but discovers that traditional caste divisions between the villagers thwart unity and what he deems as progress. Ultimately, Mohan understands that his country and the people he loves are held back by poverty, illiteracy, sexism, and the classism that the villagers consider the traditional and unchangeable nature of their culture.
In the most rousing part of the film Mohan uses his engineering skills and leadership talents to inspire the villagers, from council elders to untouchables or dalits, to work together to harness a natural spring’s water to generate reliable electricity for everyone. He realizes that his heart belongs to the family he loves, the people in that small village and his native land, India. Of course his romance with Gita has a happy ending, too.
Over its history Staten Island has become the home of Dutch, English, Irish and Italians of diverse religious faiths. Now Latinos, Russians, Chinese, Liberians, Sri Lankans, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs grace these shores. Neighborhoods have shifted from one ethnic group to another, sometimes causing tensions between newcomers and those who settled here before.
The I Am Staten Island campaign’s basic premise parallels Gandhi’s principles echoed in SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association: practicing non-violence or ahimsa while understanding sarvadharma, that each one of us living or working here, no matter what faith we practice, what work we do, how we identify or where we come from, is a part of Staten Island. We all can play a part in khadi, promoting local employment and making this Island not only dynamic and vibrant, but safer and more welcoming. And we need to know the truth, satya, about the tensions between us and what economic and social currents keep us stuck and separated in the shallow shoals.
“I am Staten Island” looks at what is underneath the violence that erupted last spring and summer. There are no simple answers. We must listen to one another’s experiences as we share our stories. Like Swades song about the stars sparkling in the sky together that make the night shimmer, and the many drops that are like currents to the sea, “we, the people”—all the people, are Staten Island.
I Am Staten Island has formed a number of working groups to address community problems through education, youth engagement, policing communities and law enforcement, partnering with businesses to provide more jobs and recreation, and public relations. A ten-point plan includes this Interfaith Weekend preaching out against Hate; a religious roundtable that explores ways to build bridges between the different religions, midnight basketball, and dinners in the Port Richmond area for African Americans and Latinos to dialogue while sharing a meal.
To be successful, just like SEWA Bharat and the depiction of the villagers coming together to generate electricity, I Am Staten Island needs everyone’s energy to creatively curtail the unemployment crisis, the economic disparities, substance abuse and addiction, and widespread stereotypes about ethnic, racial and religious groups that fray the common bonds between us.
Staten Island’s problems didn’t begin last spring—they are rooted in economic and social problems that keep us from feeling that this Island is home and workplace to all of us.
Gandhi’s words ring out: “Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress.” The song, Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera speaks to this call whatever our native country, which is, ultimately, our common homeland of Earth: “You are the one who should choose the path, You should choose which direction to take. This country, this soil, this land is yours.” And so it will also be the home of us all—for all of us are neighbors on Staten Island.