Welcome Ceremony Speech Jiana Kambo ‘22 (India

Jiana Kambo

Namaste. I am Jiana, she/her/hers from India, and yes I have an amazing spice tolerance. I assure you, I specifically drink hot sauce for the priceless expression on my friend’s faces. As you can see I am a terrible comedian, but hey what’s the harm in trying. Ok, so I covered the spicy joke, how about beef. Religiously in Hinduism, Hindus worship the cow and don’t eat beef, India despite being a secular nation has gone as far as to ban beef. If you come to India you will see 1000 people stop in the traffic and wait for a cow to pass by. But interestingly India is actually the third-largest exporter of beef in the world. My source is, “United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation” because IB is important.

The Indian flag consists of three main colors. Saffron, which is basically orange but my 2nd-grade teacher scared me enough to say it’s saffron, it stands for courage and sacrifice. If you flip through the pages of history in India, what stands out is the admiration of courage and the sacrifice of those who helped my nation stand on its feet. From Rani Lakhsmi Bai, Queen of Jhansi who aided in the uprising of independence and sacrificed herself in 1857 to Captain Vikram Batra, who was shot as he tried to save his comrade, in the Kargil war.

The white in the Indian flag represents peace and Justice. Rather interesting as the concept of Justice in the eyes of my government does conflict with the fact that it is easier to put a comedian behind bars for making religious jokes, or jokes against the government than it is to get a rapist behind bars. It is easy to be able to influence the law if you come from a higher cast, it is easy for you to get out of jail if you are a higher cast. It is easy to use a twisted concept of using one last name to put others in a hierarchy, which technically is illegal, but culturally is still ingrained in some parts of society and thus in the law of those societies. But in 2012 the ground shook as millions and millions of people, young or old took to the streets. Every single street from Delhi to Mumbai was filled with humans, as people came out to protest against the government and their handling of sexual violence in India. That day is still seen as the day that the police and the politicians were afraid, of how millions of people were united for justice. There is justice in the hearts of people, people call out for justice, we fight for justice in our country, but our government makes it hard.

We are the largest democracy in the world and India ranks highest among internet shutdowns. It is the easiest way for the government to swoop in and force protestors/activists to keep quiet and not let anyone in the media or outside know what is happening. Currently, if I speak these words in India, I could be facing two years in jail. But does that stop Indians or me, no?

The white and the green in a way relate to the flag. When the subcontinent was split into India and Pakistan, right near the border with Pakistan in India, there is a shrine where Muslims would conduct their burial practices on the graves, however, after partition the Muslim community had to leave to Pakistan. The Sikhs coming into India from Pakistan came to this place. These Sikhs who live here now have taken it upon themselves to continue to maintain the graves, the practices, and the symbols, and to care for the shrine.

The green in the Indian flag stands for faith. India is a nation of diversity, we have 15 major languages and 844 different dialects. India holds a vast number of people from 8 different religions. With the new government in power, since 2016, their advocation of Hindutva, the belief that India is a Hindu nation and should adhere to the Hindu religion and its teaching. It has fueled a lot of the underlying organizations in India such as the RSS to come out again and spread their message of hate, to accelerate a shift in India from a secular nation to a nation being a Hindu Hegemony with religious hate.

New laws discriminating against religions, privileging Hinduism, have been on the rise and religious hate is currently fueling in India with frequent rather violent clashes in communities. After the government passed a religiously biased bill, for 3 months people were again united in protest. The government handled the protestors with violence, there were 65 deaths in these protests but to date, people from all religions, whether hampered by this law or privileged by this law, protest against it. It is courage and unity that brings by country together for justice for each other, despite the government actively bringing in their message of hatred, Indians try to hold on to our founding values of secularity I guess this is where I mention Kashmir, a disputed territory where politicians in the region have used religion as a way to spark hatred in the Hindu and Islam communities, to gain their own popularity at the expense of the people’s welfare. Those politicians bathe in joy as certain few, very loud, and very violent groups come together with this message of hatred and irrationally spar, and news of deaths and violence flow out of the valley.

Yet living in Kashmir the first three things you notice is the starking beauty of the place, the kindness of the people, and despite the violence the smiles people are trying to uphold. The people of Kashmir are the kindest people I have met, they have a rather funny sense of humor as well, and they are the most hopeful people I know. While Kashmir may be divided cause of the politics and the separatist groups in the region, the citizens of Kashmir, the core of Kashmir smile, they hope for their land and try to bring some laughter in their lives.

Ironically again the Ashoka Chakra, the circle in the midst of the flag, with 24 spokes to represent the wheel of time. It signifies that there is life in the movement forward and death in stagnation. Interestingly my government seems to be trying to push that wheel backward, and Indians trying to push it forward, away from the hands of the government and the groups that the government has influenced. I guess in a nutshell I could say that even as the government may not upload our flag and its values, Indians try their very best to do so. We hold hope for a better day, with courage, sacrifice, peace, justice, and unity.

I don’t share this story today to be able to say how bad my government is, or how India is struggling right now. I share this small glimpse into India to show the values of my flag and the fight to hold those values, and to hold the identity of India. To share a part of a conflict story about my nation, to observe how the world around us is and maybe find patterns, so maybe we can together find ways in ways to combat these issues, in a UWC way. ²

Jiana Kambo is a current student at UWC-USA. Being the daughter of an army officer, she was born and raised moving all around India. She has created a documentary aimed to alleviate the gender stereotypes in STEM fields, co-founding an Ex-Ed for the same at UWC called Lista! She is passionate about helping her community by being part of organizations such as IDEA (inclusivity, diversity, equity, access) at UWC-USA, as well as through her passion of engineering involving herself in projects such as designing and creating a robotic composting bin to mitigate methane gas emissions during compost. She is still waiting for her letter from Hogwarts and deeply enjoys basketball, swimming and spending time with her friends and family.

Photos were taken by Victor Kazanjian except Valarie Kaur – artwork by Shepherd Fairey and Amplifier Art and Maria Crespo – photo and artwork by URI – United Religions Initiative