Spirit in Action
On the Ground in Afghanistan - Santwana Dasgupta
Santwana Dasgupta is Director of the Partnership for the Education of Children in Afghanistan (P.E.C.A) for the past 2 years, working from Kabul. The path to Afghanistan grew from her youth in India, the events of 9-11 and from her work with Friends for a Non-violent World (FNVW).
Music Featured:
Come to School Afghani girls - Atai Sheery
- Broadcast on:
- 29 Aug 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear that this one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeak. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be speaking with Santuana Dasgupta, home in Minneapolis for a visit after two years in Afghanistan, working there to rebuild the nation through its schools. She's an inspiration, leaving her work in top management on a mission of compassion in a war-torn nation. She currently serves as the Director of Partnership for the Education of Children in Afghanistan. Santuana spent her first 20 years in India, inheriting her family's deep wounds identified with Muslims from when Bangladesh split from India. After 30 years in the Twin Cities, the events of 9/11/2001, her work with friends for a non-violent world, and experiences connected with her mother's death from cancer, opened up her heart to healing within herself and directed toward the people of Afghanistan. Santuana Dasgupta joins us today from the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Santuana, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Hi, Mark. It's good to be here. Thank you for having me. How long are you in the U.S. before you head back to Afghanistan? I'm going back on the first of August, so I'll be here for just a few more days. So why did you come back here? Is it too hot down there, too cold down there? What's it like in Afghanistan right now? I actually live in Kabul, which is fairly high up in the mountains. It's about 6 or 7,000 feet up, so the temperature is very nice, and the summer is temperate. My family here, I have a partner here, I have a house here, I have my kept here, my friends here. I've been living in Minneapolis for 30 years, so it's like coming home to visit before I go back. I understand that you started doing your visits, you're volunteering in Afghanistan back in 2006. What led you to do that? What motivated you to get involved that way? It's a long story, and I'll keep it very short. I was actually in a hospital in Delhi taking care of my mother, who was there for the terminal cancer. In India, you don't have hospice, so you couldn't manage her anymore at home, so she was brought to the hospital, and I stayed there 24 hours. One night I was walking up by a guard, and he asked me to manage this very young, maybe 13 or 14-year-old child who was crying. I thought, "Well, maybe the child could not speak an Indian language." I said, "Is he from Bangladesh?" The guard said, "No, he's from Afghanistan." I said, "I don't speak the language." He said, "Well, you are from Afghanistan, aren't you?" I said, "I'm not." He said, "Well, everybody thinks you are, so please get up." To make a long story short, I actually found other Afghans who helped me, but this young boy, his father, unfortunately, had died because of an operation that was not successful. I've gone community kind of adopted me there. I was there in the hospital for three months, and then after my mom passed away, they said, "You know, you should come and visit us." I said, "No, it's dangerous." I said, "No, we'll look after you, you should come and see what's going on." In July of 2006 was the first time that I went there, and it was just to see some friends, and it was so horrific and so devastating that it sort of started me on my journey of figuring out how I can help. And when I came back, I started volunteering for this organization and have just kept going back. Well, tell us about the organization, P-E-C-A, right? What do they do, and what do you do? The acronym P-E-C-A stands for Partnership for the Education of Children in Afghanistan. And what we focus on is educating both girls and boys, specifically in one region called Host, which is in the southeast. It's a very volatile region, sort of bordering Pakistan, volunteer executive director, and I manage and oversee all of the staff in Kabul and the staff in coasts to move our projects forward. And what does it mean to be there? You say volatile. What does that mean? Volatile basically means that your life is not secure. They go by different names, some call them Taliban, some call them insurgents, and it doesn't matter. You could be driving along, and you can get blown up. You can get assassinated. You can get caught in the crossfire. It's insecure. There's a lot of violence going on right now in that region. So someone must have asked you this. Many of your friends must have asked you this. Why are you going to an area where you may get blown up at any moment? Actually, let me make sure that I'm very clear. I am in Kabul because of my work. I do travel across Afghanistan, but coals actually is so volatile that I am not allowed to go. My own staff will not take me to coasts, so we actually are able to operate in coasts without us as Americans going into that region. Say a little bit more about P-E-C-A. Who founded them? How are they funded? How big of an organization is this? P-E-C-A was founded in 1993 by Dr. Kafar Lacanwal, and he's an Afghan-American. He comes from the Coast Province, and it's got founded after the 2001-1911 incident. We focus on education because it's simple. Education really is the key in a country that is devastated. That's the only way, one of the main ways you're going to build capacity of people to reclaim their country. One of the reasons we chose Coals because Dr. Lacanwal was from Coals, and also we really wanted to be in a region that absolutely no one was going to and wanted to see if it could be done. So that's how we went there. The strategy, I could go on and on about it. I'll keep it short, the strategy that we very intentionally used was to say, "We're going to use the local community, and we're going to use the local resources." So we went to the community and we said, "We want to build a girls' school. You have to give us the land." They said, "Okay, we will give you the land, but you also have to help the boys' school." We said, "Absolutely. We will help the boys' school." However, all the girls in this village need to come to the school. We went back, the community went back and said, "Well, some of the girls can come, but not all the girls can come because the security is so bad here. The parents are not willing to risk it." We said, "That's fine. We will start a home school for the girls who are not willing to come, but all the girls need to be willing to come to school." So then they came back and said, "All the families are willing. However, it's only up to fourth grade." And we said, "That's fine. Let's start with that." So we built our building and we started with grades one through four. And then to make a long story short, we are now up to ninth grade. And what we do is everything from buying the supplies to paying the local women to make uniforms, to building the buildings, to making the bricks, the windows, the furniture. We have deliberately used local resources, local labors, local contractors to do the work. So what we are trying to do is make the school not just an education center, but also a center that is bringing economic benefits to the village. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? Well, certainly it makes sense. I am curious, though, how this really works. I understand part of the issue with Taliban is that girls are not supposed to be educated, hence all that discussion back and forth about if girls, some girls, up to what level. Are those attitudes changing or how widespread is that to the girls shouldn't be educated? The attitude is really changing. And I also want to correct, I think, what is a misconception. They are not completely against the girls being educated. It's a conservative country. What they want to make sure is that the traditions are respected while the girls are being educated. And so let me talk a little bit more about that. So, for example, in our school, we have a very high wall that surrounds the girls' school. We don't have a wall that surrounds the boys' school. So that when the girls come to school, nobody can peep at them. Nobody can look at them, and their privacy is protected. We offer transportation for the girls who are sixth grade and older. Again, so that they are not seen walking along the streets, et cetera. And then the other thing that we are doing is we actually have a very small clinic inside the school, and we have a nurse midwife that comes for 20 hours a week to do basic health care checkup for the girls. And she also goes out to the community to do training on pre and postnatal care and hygiene. Parents everywhere are the same. They love their daughters and they love their sons. And so with these kinds of services being provided, we've actually had very good luck in not only having a girls' school, but a girls' school that is growing to the point where we actually might have to add on rooms to accommodate the growth in admissions. And I just want to say one more thing. There are schools being built for girls around our village. But because they're not respecting the traditions that we are respecting, they're finding that communities from these villages, there are other schools that are actually close or proximity to are sending their daughters to our school. So you are being effective in multiple ways. So the attitudes are very conservative, you said. Yet I imagine that your values are probably on the liberal scale. I'm not positive. You tell me what they are. But how do you end up interfacing dealing with that? Does it feel like you have to give away really important things in order to be workable there? You know, I don't. I think it's very, very important to have change come to Afghanistan at its own speed. There is no shock and awe in cultural change. Just like there is no shock and awe regardless of what anybody tells us in winning a war through armies. So change is coming. In 2003, the percentage of girls in higher education was less than 1%. You fast forward 7 years, it's now at 24%, which is really phenomenal. What we just need to do is not go in there with this attitude of, you know, we know it all. We have the standard benchmark on what freedom for women or girls mean and let it evolve in Afghanistan in its own way. Women there have to fight for their own freedoms just as they're fought in India, just as they're fought in America. We can help them, but it really needs to be at their own pace. Are there ways in which you have to present yourself differently because you're a woman in Muslim country? I understand you grew up in India, you could be Muslim, you could be Hindu, you could be anything else. Are there things that you have to do, cover or, I guess, be more differential? I do follow the dress code, most internationals do. Our arms are all covered, our legs are covered, we do wear a scarf over our head. I'm not even sure if a differential is disrespectful. If you go to India, you will be respectful of the way people dress there. It's no different in Afghanistan. It's also a moderate Islamic country. When women talk to men, believe it or not, they actually look at the men in the eyes and talk, which is often not even found in some of the Asian countries. If I can just use an analogy, in my mother's generation in India, they did not have the choice of going out of the house to work. Some of them did, but most of them did not. They had a lot of power at home, they managed the money, they managed the household. They did not have the choice, and that is really sad, but that cannot be immediately translated into, they were abused, they were disrespected. It was just a different time phase in the continuum of women's movement, and my mother did not feel disrespected, she did not feel abused. That's the way her life was. Then we came along, changed, started happening, and we were offered more choices, and now my nieces and nephews have even more choices. I don't want to come across it somehow that we are better than them, and I have to be condescending or behaving a certain way to say, "Let me come down to your level so that you know that I am a good friend." It's just a culture. I think maybe this is somewhat easier for you because you did grow up in India. At what age were you when you left India, and how were you raised there, religiously, spiritually, what kind of values were you raised with? I was raised as a Hindu, and I left India when I was 20 years old to come to America, and I will agree with you that I think it is easier for me coming from a culture that is also steeped in tradition, and also coming from a culture where I have seen change happen and once it starts, it happens very, very quickly. Definitely, I agree with you, it's easier for me, and I come from the Hindu spiritual tradition. If I can just take a minute to say a very interesting story, is that okay? Of course, we love interesting stories. All right, you know, India, as everybody knows, was partitioned in 1947, and my parents were from formerly what was Bangladesh, or East Pakistan, and now it's called Bangladesh, and so in 1947, as a result of partition, they literally had to run for the lives across the border and start over again in the Indian side of West Bengal, which is the state was partitioned into two different regions, one in the Bangladesh side and one in the India side. And so I actually grew up hating Muslims. That I was genetically programmed to hate Muslims. I did not know Muslims. If I ran into them in my school or in my college, I would not reach out to them. And then when I came over here, nine years ago, my partner said, "You know, I have a really good friend and I'd like to invite him over for dinner. Would you be willing?" And I said, "Sure, what's his name?" And I don't remember the gentleman's name, but as soon as I heard the name, I knew he was a Muslim. And I said, "Well, he's a Muslim." And Scott said, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, no, I'm not going to cook for him." And he said, "You're one of the kindest people I know. What is this weird attitude that you have towards Muslims?" And I said, "Well, they're not good people. You cannot trust them." And he said, "That's not true. How can you say that?" I said, "Well, it's the truth." And that's all there is, and if you want to take him out for dinner, you're welcome, but he's not welcome to my house. And so that's how I grew up. And then the Iraq war happened and something stirred in me saying, "You know, this doesn't feel right." And I got more and more involved. And I started, you know, reaching out to people of the Islamic faith and realized we are really the same. We all want the same things. We all care for our families. I think if my faith in Hinduism has helped, it's helped because we are very comfortable with the concept of multiple gods. And once I sort of started on the journey of inviting another faith into my psyche, it's just, I'm very comfortable with it. Now, I'm very, very comfortable in Afghanistan and they're comfortable with me. I am amazed myself, actually, that I've actually reached this point where I don't see Muslims in one broad paint stroke as I used to. That's an incredible journey. The story you gave of the person being invited over and your attitude now, most people would call that it an impossible jump. What happened in terms of the real nuts and bolts going from one to the other? The feeling that came over me was really one of deep shame. I was very ashamed of myself. I got involved with friends for a nonviolent world. I started to find people who were so much more open than I was. It was just like layers and layers of hostility was being peeled away. And I just felt freer and a better human being. And I started reaching out. I started exploring. And then I became very intentional about it. One of the things that I did was when I was looking after my mother and I was in the waiting area, I would reach out to Muslims. They're very easy to recognize in some ways in India, especially the women because they don't wear that dot on the forehead. And I would reach out to them and make friends. Then I made friends with Afghans. I visited Afghanistan. And then they had an exchange program where high school students would come to the U.S. for a year and they were looking for host parents. And I hosted a student for a whole year. I guess that's the journey. It's just you're afraid of what you don't know. And then once you get to know, it seems ridiculous right now that I ever felt that way. My understanding is that there are an awful lot of Muslims in India. I'm told that it's the nation with the highest number of Muslims anywhere in the world. Not highest percentage, but the highest number of Muslims. So in your regular day-to-day life, they're growing up until you were 20 or whatever it is when you left. Did you meet? Did you come face-to-face with Muslims? For sure. They were in my school. They were in my college. I just did not reach out to them. Never became friends with them. Never went up to them. I cannot explain to you what it is to be born into a family that hates another group so much. You don't question your parents. You grew up, especially in a culture like India, where you really don't question your parents. You just, whatever they say is the truth. And you grew up in that kind of a household. And that's your reality because that's your parents' reality. So now you're in Kabul and everybody has Muslim around you. How is the food? I think the food's good. There's a restaurant in the Twin Cities called Kiber Pass that I've been at with Afghani food. My favorite food is from India. And so I'm just wondering if it feels real normal there for you. It does. I am a vegetarian. So food in the hotels is very, a restaurant is very heavy on the meat. So it's little difficult for me to go outside and eat where I have a lot of Afghan friends. And they actually have a very highly developed vegetarian cuisine which they make for me when I go there. So yes, I love the food. It's not a spicy of Indian, but it's great. It's a strange mixture of European and Indian and also the Middle East. So they have a lot of pasta. They have a lot of rice-dored dishes. They have a lot of spaghetti-like dishes, so it's a real cross-cultural cuisine. So you're in Kabul and that's where you're spending your time. And I guess it's relatively safe there. The war is kind of distant. Is there a day-to-day mentality of war going on when you're at home? Kabul is for the most part safe. There's occasionally a bombing. I also travel and I do go to other provinces and we have a lot of information on the status of the security. So depending on the security, we are allowed to go out or stay indoors or we stay under lockdown. And then depending upon the security of the province, I'm allowed to, on the extreme side, go out to the market and shop for anything I want to basically stay hunkered down in a UN sanctioned guest house with armored cars going to the University and back. You know, it's interesting for me that it's a good question and I appreciate you asking it. Because when you are in Afghanistan, unless you're in one or two provinces like Helmand or Kandahar, it does not feel like war. And while every life is important, I just want to draw parallel here because I keep hearing it that this is the new Vietnam. You know, the Vietnam War went on for 10 or 11 or 12 years and at the end of it, there were almost 60,000 dead. This has been going on for about 10 years and there's a little over 1,000 dead. So the scale is very, very different. And so when we are in Afghanistan, it does not feel like there's a war going on. What it does feel is that there is a huge struggle to develop the country. And we don't get as much attention as it needs to have. And I'll just draw out a few statistics to kind of put it in perspective. We also, there's 30 years of war, right? Yes, Afghanistan has been under 30 years of war. But what does that mean? You know, it's not just the infrastructure being destroyed and the schools being destroyed and the hospitals and the, you know, and the electrical grid and the agricultural sector. You know, you go down sector by sector and the hospitals. It's not just that, though that's visually very stunning to see the destruction at a physical level. What is really much, much more scary is the destruction of the human body in Afghanistan. So we have a country where 70% of the people are below 30 years old. And all through their life, all they have seen is conflict. So you have a mental health situation that the latest conservative studies are showing anywhere from 40 to 60% of Afghans are suffering mentally. And that does not mean they're ready to take the Reiki 47 and have a shootout. But what that does translate into is a very high level of PTSD and that translates into huge numbers of guns not being able to do the if then kind of analysis that you and I take for granted. All they want to do is survive today and tomorrow. So that self-starting initiative, the hope that, okay, if I do this in a three years from now, it's going to pay dividends is completely shattered and that has to be rebuilt. And it cannot be rebuilt in five years or six years. That's what we struggle with. We had a woman who was shot down 20 yards from our house, young American women. And we are aware of the fact that our lives are at risk, but that really does not bother us as much as the struggle we have with developing a country that is so incredibly broken. A lot of work there, and we'll talk more about it shortly. But right now, I want to remind our listeners that you're listening to Spirit in action. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and this is a Northern Spirit radio production. In addition to the stations where we're broadcast, you can always find us on our website, northernspiritradio.org and listen to any of the programs any time. Find links to the people and organizations that we're bringing you information about. Today, we're speaking with Santuana, Dasgupta, born in India, has been living in the Twin Cities since 1979 and has spent the last two years over in Afghanistan, Kabul, working for an organization called Partnership for the Education of Children in Afghanistan. She also has a paid job there so she can keep up her volunteer ship. Would you tell us a little bit about what you're doing there? How much of your time is dedicated with PECA? And how much of your time is putting food on your table? There is not much to do in Kabul in the evenings because of the security situation. You are not encouraged to really go out. So I have a full-time day job. I work Sunday through Thursday from 8 to 5. And then I have Friday and Saturday to sort of work on my volunteer job. I also work in the evenings so I work doing lots of little different things to maintain the organization. And then on Saturday I actually go over to our office in Kabul and I work with the staff there almost the whole day. My current job is called the Higher Education Project. It is funded by USAID. And what I do is I work with the leaders which translates into sort of the chancellors of the university, the heads of departments, the deans. And I work on developing their leadership skills. And then I also have a group of women that I specifically work with individually to develop their leadership skills. And they're also working as faculty at the university level. That's part of my job. And then the second part of my paid job also is I'm working to develop job placement centers for the final year students. So they have a better job prospect. So then we are teaching how to write resumes, how to write cover letters, how to give good interview skills, how do you look for a job internship program, et cetera. That's my paid job. It's a great job. I love working in the education sector. Did you do that in the U.S. before you headed over there? I didn't. I have a lot of leadership experience because I worked for decades in the corporate world. And I've also attended tons and tons of classes because I was at the senior management executive level in the corporate world. So it's a leadership style that is collaborative and cooperative. So we work a lot on that because in Afghanistan because of the history of monarchy and then the war, the current leadership style often tends to be very dictatorial and top-down. So I'm working with them to say, don't put so much pressure on yourself and reach out to help you solve your problems. One of the things I think is interesting is you're volunteering and you're employed by USAID, I guess, to help develop the education system, build up the country. And one of the things that I heard, I had severe misgivings about going into Afghanistan with our military. But one of the promises that I heard ahead of time from George W. Bush was that we were going to mobilize a kind of Marshall Plan for Afghanistan to help rebuild it. And so that we wouldn't just be going in destroying some more, they've been in war for so long, but that we were going to rebuild the nation so that it would be a stable community. I think you're doing that work. How much has the USA committed to doing that rebuilding? They are. I believe they're very committed and I think the commitment has increased in the last few years. I don't know how to quite put it. I do believe there's a lot of work needed to be done to have a cohesive development strategy. I guess it's the best way I can put it. Everybody talks about the Marshall Plan, but nobody in Afghanistan knows about it. So if you ask a local Afghan there, they're always confused about how exactly is their country being developed. Because the capacity, it's a buzzword in international development capacity, is basically the ability of a human being to perform a certain task. And because the capacity among a lot of Afghans is very low, there's an extraordinary amount of patience that is needed to bring up that capacity. But because we are so impatient here to see development and to see progress, what a lot of the international aid organizations do, whether they're funded by the USA or funded by any other organization, is they will bring in international consultants, international contractors, international road builders, pilots, et cetera, to get the job done. And you end up with a lot of empty buildings that are not maintainable because you did not build the local capacity. That is our frustration in Afghanistan is we would want the world to understand that when something is so broken, you can't say it has been 10 years, why can't they come and stand on their own feet? It takes six seconds to bomb a house out of oblivion. And if you do the math at the risk of founding dramatic, they've had 30 years of six seconds. The redevelopment of Afghanistan not to bring it up to the US level or Germany level or UK level, but to a level where you can seriously say this country is a developing country and we can really win them away from straight aid is going to take a lot of patience and compassion on our side. I guess I have some experience with this kind of development because from '77 to '79 I was in the Peace Corps in Africa and we go there as employees and it's the country. We're helping them, we're developing them, but we're using their resources. We're not importing the solution. So I saw there were USAID programs in our country, but it was much different when you had people like us just forming friendships, motivating people there, working arm in arm. Right, and I think it's a great example to bring up because I believe I am not exactly sure that in the '70s, USAID was actually an independent organization and not part of the State Department. And everybody who worked for USAID during that time just raves about it because it was an apolitical organization. You know, your appointees to USAID were not political appointees. They were people who were skilled in development who were managing the projects and managing the USAID program. Since then it has been merged into the State Department just as the PRT which stands for Provincial Reconstruction Teams have become part of the US military. Two very, very fundamental mistakes in my opinion and a lot of the people's opinion who work in development because it militarizes the aid in the development and it creates a very hostile environment. You're on the ground there, or actually at the moment you're in the Twin Cities, but normally you're on the ground there in Afghanistan. Have you formed opinions? Have your opinions changed about what we should do about the war in Afghanistan? Yes. To a certain extent, yes. I do believe and poll shows 80 to 85% of Afghans. I don't know even one of them and I have lots and lots of Afghan friends that an immediate withdrawal would be catastrophic. So I do believe at this point that there should be a date and we need to really transfer our ability to defend the country over to the Afghans. Under the Bush administration we did not train sincerely and seriously Afghanistan's own forces and they were so underpaid they had a lot of problems within that sector. So I do believe that an immediate withdrawal would be horrific for that country. In that sense I'm sad to say that my opinion has changed. At the same time I also believe that it really needs to be in a very defensive position where it should only engage if its back is against the wall otherwise it should just run. Because we are not able to defend ourselves without getting into civilian casualties and that causes huge amounts of problems and huge amounts of loss of goodwill. So in that sense I guess my attitude has changed and then my last one I would like to go back to it is it is very clear to me Mark, it's very clear to me that peace is not just the absence of war. That peace has a strategy, peace has a shape, it's very tangible and my wish and hope is that the people in the peace community could get together and form a huge loving block to push for a bill that would really be that alternative to the war bill that we have going on now. That you have to be able to work for peace. All the people who have experience in conflict management and nonviolent conflict resolution, they need to get over there and teach the people. The people who are engaged in organic farming, the people who are engaged in alternative energies, they need to get over there paid. I'm not asking them to volunteer, everybody needs to make a living and be able to provide that alternative and Afghanistan but that requires a very, very well thought out strategy. And the current strategy focuses way too much on the violent portion of it which is the war. Well that provides me with a good segue. You mentioned earlier that part of your transition from severe reaction against Muslims to your movement to go to Afghanistan, that part of it was your involvement with friends for a nonviolent world. Among other things what friends for nonviolent world do is to teach people nonviolent skills and alternatives, how to really build peace. Talk about your involvement with them. How did you get involved with them? What did you learn there? What did you do for them? Yeah, I started out by volunteering for peace in the precincts. And what I really, really like about friends for a nonviolent world is that it's not just theory based. They actually practice the theory of peace. And I'll give two examples. One is their alternatives to the violence program, which actually goes out to the prisons and works with violent offenders, not your nonviolent offenders, but very hardcore violent offenders to teach them when you get out of prison, how do you deal with conflict. And so their goal is to decrease the recidivism rate so that people when they come out don't go straight back into prison because they're simply unable to not have the skills of dealing with the reality of the world. They employ people who are offenders. They don't turn their back on them. They don't go, "Oh, this person has a criminal record, so they cannot be employed at FMVW." The Peace in the Prisons program, which I just absolutely love and I use a lot of their principles in PECA, works on that same principle saying, "For us to be a peaceful nation, I myself need to live a life that practices the strategy of peace." So in very simple level, without sounding completely out there, you make that effort to support your community farmer. You make that effort to buy locally. You make that effort to go to a barber that is local. You make that effort to reach out to your neighbors. You actually actively live a life that in your own small way, within your own community, you can foster peace. Because if you cannot do it, you cannot preach it and you cannot expect other people to practice it. And when you try to do that, you realize how difficult, really practicing a peaceful life can be, even in a relatively peaceful city like Minneapolis. They have other programs, those are two that I've been mainly involved with, and that helped me extraordinarily creating my own journey for what it takes to build peace. And at the same time, it has created my frustration that huge peace movements here, at least in my opinion, and I'll be happily proven wrong, don't seem to have that understanding of what it will take to create peace in any country, whether it's Afghanistan or Sudan or India or Pakistan, or even within your own neighborhood. Which is, I guess, Antwanawa. You got out into the world and you put your feet on the ground and you actually started doing the experiment yourself. Yeah, and F&VW has played a huge role in it. It's probably some of the best years of my life that I will always look back upon to say how it has molded me and has made me a happier person. I want to come back to the ideas of your upbringing. You mentioned being raised Hindu, where you've got Kali and you've got all these different gods or faces of God as I tend to think of them. Have you continued to practice as a Hindu? Is that possible in the Twin Cities? I don't even know if there's temples there or anything. What do you do spiritually, religiously, to continue to sustain yourself? Hinduism is a very, for lack of a better word, and add religion. And people practice it in many, many different ways. The way we were brought up to practice it is to believe that your life is basically divided up into four parts. So you have the early part which is the student and so then your worship takes on in the form of studying. So the more you study, the more you're showing your dedication to your religion. And it's patriarchal in its own way because then the next section comes to the worker. So you develop yourself as a worker and by working you are practicing your religion. And then the third section comes as a family person and by putting your energy into developing your children and taking care of your family, taking care of your parents, your wife, or anybody else who needs your attention within the family, that's how you show your devotion. And then the final is when you're older and then you start with drawing because then if you still want to be involved in the family, you'll just interrupt. And it's time for your children to take over. So there is a very, so semi-formal process to wean yourself away from the daily rut of living. And that's when you're encouraged to actually read the spiritual books, go to the temple and spend a lot of time. If you do any of those things as a student or when you're a housewife, people will look at you and say, "Don't you have work to do? Don't you have studying to do? Don't your children need help? What are you doing? Spending so much time in the temple." So my life right now is probably in that working phase plus family phase. And the two other things that we were always brought up in is to really focus on the two words karma and karma. And karma basically means do what needs to be done. That's sort of the most simple translation of it. And then karma means do it the right way. So if your karma is to study hard and do well in school, then karma means doing it the right way and not by cheating. Don't improve your grades by cheating. In that sense, it really helps me be in Afghanistan because people will often ask me, "Well, do you have hope? Aren't you afraid? Why do you think you're there?" For me, it's like, "Well, right now in my life, it feels like that needs to be done, and so I need to do what needs to be done, and I'm hoping that I'm doing it the right way." So spirituality plays a huge part in my life. However, not in the traditional way of going to a temple or praying for hours. That's not in the stage that my life is in. This is something of a detour, but one of the things that I know about Islam is that regularly in the writings in the Quran, they talk about the kinship, I guess, with people of the book, which basically is Christians and Jews. It doesn't include Hindus. How bad is the static or the antagonism while you're in Afghanistan between Hinduism and the Muslim faith? It's actually very interesting, and that's where the difference between culture and religion plays itself more than anything else. They absolutely love Indians. By default, they love Hindus. Their experience in India has been of a culture that is extremely welcoming and open to them. They will tell you that when we go to Pakistan or when we go to Dubai, we are not respected as much as you respect us. They will say, "Hindu-san Afghanistan does means "friend". It's very interesting. We have a history that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years between the two countries. Of all the countries that are developing Afghanistan, whether it's President Karzai or whether it's a ambassador to the Afghanistan from the United States, they will tell you that the model is India because India is not engaged in war. However, they are strongly helping the development in many, many different sectors. It's actually proven to be a huge advantage for me because the moment I stand from India and there's a Hindu and I say, "Yes, I'm a Hindu." They say, "Oh, very nice, very nice. We are friends." It's actually been a very interesting experience because I thought, like you, I would have to keep that in low profile. I'm glad you don't have to. It's good to bring your authentic self to it. Yeah, but at the same time, I will go out of my way to follow the traditions that are not, how shall I say it, that don't ask me to pray five times a day because I will not pray five times a day. However, during Ramadan, which requires them to fast from morning till sundown, I will fast with them because I don't want to eat in front of them. So little gestures like that really go a long way towards showing respect for their culture because they're sensitive. Even though they will say, "We've never attacked anybody. I hope the world realizes that. We have never attacked anybody. We've only fought among ourselves." They're very sensitive about how the world looks at them and their egos are very fragile. So to say, you have a great culture and I will respect your culture, the more open they are to you. I'm glad they've got you there to be the person who's accepting and respecting and listening to them. It's easy to do, believe me. It's very, very easy to do. If you ask anyone who has been to Afghanistan and say, "What is the first thing you notice?" they will say the hospitality. I'll give you another anecdotal story. I was with a friend. We were like six or seven of us who had gone out for breakfast. And after the breakfast, we were in a van. We stopped by at a house to pick up the daughter of one of the people who had a sleepover with a friend. And in front of the house, there was a car parked. So we had to park in front of that car, in front of another house. And this elderly gentleman came out and said, "Is there someone you're looking for?" And we said, "No, we are waiting for Sabrina. She's in the other house and we're waiting to pick her up." And then he said, "Well, as you're waiting, would you like some tea?" And we said, "No, no, no, that's okay." And so he went back inside and the man he was talking to his name is Wahid. We said, "Do you know him?" And Wahid's like, "No, I don't know him." And I'm giving you an example that routinely occurs. And I'll give you another one. A couple is very, very mountainous. And it's mountainous at a level that makes a rocky to look like anthales. I mean, the Hindukos range, they're huge mountains. And so when there is a traffic jam, you cross their roads over these mountains. So you go over these mountains to kind of escape the regular inner city routes. And I was alone in the car and my driver was driving. And we were stopped because there were some rocks in front of us and they were trying to remove the rocks. Then this woman in full burqa came up and knocked on the window and my driver unrolled on the window. And she said something and he said something and he rolled up the window and he was blushing, or flushing, a deep ride. And I said, "What happened?" And he said, "Well, she wanted a ride." And I said, "Do you know her?" And he said, "No, no, no. The mountain roads, they're always looking for rides when the cars are going." And I said, "Is it dangerous?" And he said, "No, it's not dangerous." I said, "Well, then let's give her a ride." And he said, "Well, you don't mind?" I said, "I don't mind. As long as you think I'm safe, I'll trust you." So I said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, you're safe." And so this woman got in next to me and didn't speak a word to me. We drove over the mountains. We came down to the plains and she got out and said, "Thank you." And she left. And then we started noticing and it's routine and huge traffic and when it's raining or it's snowing or it's very hot, these women will just knock on the door and these men will open their doors and they will get in. They're always two women, not just one. And it's not dangerous. We should all have that situation. Absolutely. We internationals will sit there sometimes and talk going. It's an unbelievable culture. If you're invited to an Afghan house and you take sweets with you or something like that, let's say you take 12 donuts with you or something, any house or joint family, so there are gaggles of people inside these houses and you go in and you offer them the sweets and they're looking and they'll see something that they normally don't get because we have access to special shops. They'll immediately tell a child, put six donuts in a plate and say, "Go give it to the neighbor. They will also like it." And then there will be like 16, 17 people sharing the remaining six donuts. The word for neighbor in the Afghan language is hamsaya when it's a person living in my shadow. So it's a selling Scott yesterday. They just don't know their neighbors. They know their neighbors. It's that close a relationship. So we have a lot to learn. It's very easy to actually be open to that culture because they make you a better person and I'm saying that from the bottom of my heart. Well, from the bottom of my heart, I want to say thank you for joining me. Thank you for the inspiration. You're really putting your life at service. So many people, I'm sure, in the U.S. are saying that would be uncomfortable. It might be dangerous. You so clearly are focused on the love and the helping. I think I want to grow up to be like you. Thanks so much Santlana for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it and thank you for really great questions. Our guest today for Spirit in Action has been Santlana Dasgupta, Director of the Partnership for Education of Children in Afghanistan. Their website is afghanmodelschool.org. Find a link from my northernspiritradio.org. I'll leave you with a song by Atai Shiri. It's a song calling the girls of Afghanistan to come to school, calling them back after the days of the Taliban when girls were not allowed to go to school. The video is on YouTube. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. [MUSIC PLAYING]