Catégorie : 1000 women Peace Nobel 2005

Krishnammal Jagannaathan – India

Linked with Land to the tillers, and with Land for Tillers Freedom LAFTI.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

… Early lives (1930-1950): Krishnammal Jagannathan was born to a landless Dalit family in 1926. Despite her family’s poverty, she obtained university level education and was soon committed to the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement, through which she met her husband, Sankaralingam Jagannathan (born in 1912), also a noted Gandhian. Sankaralingam Jagannathan came from a rich family but gave up his college studies in 1930 in response to Gandhi’s call for non-cooperation and disobedience. He joined the Quit India Movement in 1942 and spent three and a half years in jail before India gained its independence in 1947. During this time he already had considerable impact as campaigner on behalf of the poor. Sankaralingam and Krishnammal married in 1950, having decided only to marry in independent India … // … Further achievements and honours: In their lives, Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan, either independently or together, have established a total of seven non-governmental institutions for the poor. Besides this, Krishnammal Jagannathan has also played an active role in wider public life: she has been a Senate member of the Gandhigram Trust and University and of Madurai University; a member of a number of local and state social welfare committees; and a member of the National Committee on Education, the Land Reform Committee and the Planning Committee. These activities have gained for the Jagannathans a high profile in India and they have won many prestigious Awards: the Swami Pranavananda Peace Award (1987); the Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1988) and Padma Shri in 1989. In 1996 the couple received the Bhagavan Mahaveer Award « for propagating non-violence. » In 1999 Krishnammal was awarded a Summit Foundation Award (Switzerland), and in 2008 an ‘Opus Prize’ given by the University of Seattle … (full text right livelihood).

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Krishnammal Jagannaathan – India

She works for Land for Tillers Freedom LAFTI.

Listen her video: Krishnammal Jagannaathan, Founder of LAFTI, 9.21 min.

She says: « I realized then that being a peasant woman was hard enough, but to be a Harijan woman was harder still » … and: « Father disciplined us with corporal punishment, » she remembers. « We simply weren’t allowed to mingle with village children. Mostly, we were taken outside the village during the day and brought back home only at night » … and: « Those were three memorable days, » says Krishnammal. « Gandhi and many of us went around collecting money for the cause of the Untouchables » … and: Of her mother, she recalls, « Mother had no knowledge of the outside world. During the day, she used to work very hard under the hot sun in the paddy fields, and at night she used to pound and husk the paddy with her own hands to sell in the market » … (1000peacewomen).

… As a young student, Jagannathan worked with Mohandas Gahndhi and later with Vinobha Bhave to help untouchable bonded laborers. Krishnammal will receive an Opus Prize Award in a ceremony at Seattle University on November 18. She will travel to Sweden in December to receive the Right Livelihood Award at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament … (full text).

Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan believed that one of the key requirements for achieving a Gandhian society is by empowering the rural poor through redistribution of land to the landless. For two years between 1950 and 1952 Sankaralingam Jagannathan was with Vinoba Bhave in Northern India on his Bhoodan (land-gift) Padayatra (pilgrimage on foot), the march appealing to landlords to give one sixth of their land to the landless. Mean while Krishnammal completed her teacher-training course in Madras (now renamed Chennai). When Sankaralingam returned to Tamil Nadu to start the Bhoodhan movement the couple, until 1968, worked for land redistribution through Vinoba Bhave’s Gramdan movement (Village Gift, the next phase of the land-gift movement), and through Satyagraha (non-violent resistance). Sankaralingam Jagannathan was imprisoned many times for this work. Between 1953 and 1967, the couple played an active role in the Bhoodhan movement spearheaded by Vinoba Bhave, through which about 4 million acres of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states … (full long text).

Find her and her publications on Google Book-search; on Google Scholar-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search.

(1000peacewomen): Freedom-fighter and Dalit activist Krishnammal Jagannaathan (born on 16 June 1926) is often referred to as India’s Joan of Arc. Krishnammal believes in a participatory approach, motivating people to change their own lives. In 1981, she cofounded Land for Tillers Freedom (LAFTI) to facilitate the distribution of land to landless peasants. LAFTI takes bank loans to buy land; the peasants pay the organization back over time. She has also mobilized women on many issues, including wages, land, housing, and sexual harassment, and encouraged many of them to better their own lives.

Born into a Dalit family in a village near Batlagundu, Tamil Nadu, her earliest memories are of segregation.

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