Day 54 - Rajagopal P.V.

Dear Monica:

I still remember visiting your Grade Six classroom and interacting with the students. I was very impressed by their role play when they acted out a marketplace based on nonviolent  economy which then was followed by a Peace March. 

What was more interesting was to see how each one of the students was interested to  sell the items that they made but were also interested to give free items as gifts to the visitors. I remember that by the end of the visit, I was gifted 8 items that I took all the way to India to show the children of our school in Madurai. 

Giving is something that’s very natural to your students and I want to thank them for teaching me the pleasure of giving. 

In my own work with Ekta Parishad, we have developed the practice  of giving as well.  Each family in the organisation in the family gives 1 rupee and 1 handful of rice to strengthen the organisation. Imagine 100,000 people giving 1 rupees and 1 handful of rice everyday for their struggle and their future. Each one of them do it with great devotion for a cause. 
Our teacher Vinobha Bhave, a follower of Gandhi, developed a concept about giving. He was the leader of a land gift movement. He inspired landed families to gift land to the landless families. You will be surprised to know that he was able to generate 4.2 million acres of land for redistribution to the landless. During the course of this movement he propagated the idea of Samyadan (gift of time), Shramdan (gift of Labour), Bhudhidan (gift of intellectual capacity), Sampathi Dan (Gift of property) and finally Jeevandan (Gift of your life for a cause.)

Imagine there is so much that people can do to solve much of their problems around them by giving what they have. 

I hope your students will carry the value of giving all through their lives as they are learning it in the classroom under your kind guidance.  
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Let us hope that through a training in compassion, we can address many of the problems that we are facing today. 

Warm regards,

Rajagopal P.V.
(Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India)