A Global Perspective to Local Communities

By Raj Jayadev

Two years ago I was given the opportunity to go to India for three months through the LaFetra Fellowship Program, an unbelievable project that awarded seven diverse local organizers fully funded trips to the country of their choice as well as a paid internship in their home community. The idea was based on a belief that international exposure has vital and tangible value in local U.S. grassroots movements. I stepped on the plane from the San Francisco airport hoping the concept was true and eager to test the hypothesis if it took me to the country that raised both of my parents.

In the summer of 1998, I became clearly aware that my convoluted life was blessed with sangam. Sangam is a beautiful Sanskrit term that means a coming together for a greater purpose, originally used in reference to describe how the Yamana River merges into the Ganga, to form the great Ganges River of Northern India. I stepped on the plane from the San Francisco airport hoping the concept was true and eager to test the hypothesis if it took me to the country that raised both of my parents. In the summer of 1998, I became clearly aware that my convoluted life was blessed with sangam. Sangam is a beautiful Sanskrit term that means a coming together for a greater purpose, originally used in reference to describe how the Yamana River merges into the Ganga, to form the great Ganges River of Northern India. I found sangam on a crowded and unbearably hot bus in New Delhi. I came to Delhi fueled with two distinct passions: one to explore my own personal history as an Indian who was born and raised in the U.S., and the other to learn about community organizing in a different setting than my home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The early days of my stay in India were marked by a noticeable anxiety. It made me run to buses, leave visits early, and hurry through conversations as if I were in a race. I was one man looking for two India’s, one personal, the other work related, and I had to be fair to both and give each its due respect and time.

As these moments usually come, realization was delivered to me at a point of mental exhaustion. The ridiculousness of my schizophrenic adventure was becoming self apparent as I stepped onto the bus to go to yet another organization on my infinite list of “People I Must See Before I Leave.” As I looked up from my looming list I saw a peculiarity that I had not noticed before. Everyone on the bus was Indian, all the guys more or less looked kind of like me or my father, all the women more or less looked something like my sister or mother. Such would be expected I suppose, but it was extremely weird to see.

Being Indian in the U.S. can be a fairly isolating experience, as it was for me growing up. I am used to being the only Indian in a class, at a party, or on a bus. I was filled with something I didn’t even know I was missing before. It was sense of belonging, of communion with strangers, of unintentionally fitting in. I left the bus being able to place myself among the billion of this country, even if I talked funny, and met the community organizers on my list as a reconciled person.

Sangam was understanding that my two interests were streaming into one another here in Delhi, and together were developing my total personhood in a way no other time and place could. As my stay continued, my confidence as a community organizer became emboldened as I learned tools from the brothers and sisters working for social change in India. Through experiences and interaction it was also made apparent to me that my cultural existence, one that I was finding commonplace all around me for the first time in my life, has extremely significant political value, no matter where I may be.

RAJ JAYADEV works as a community organizer with JustAct: Youth ACTion for Global JUSTice and YUCA (Youth United for Community Action, www.youthunited.net) in the San Francisco Bay area.