Milarepa Journal |
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The
way to accomplish a great endeavor
An Interview with Kiran Bedi • Voices from the Inside • Dear Abhi • News _________________________________________________ An Interview with Kiran Bedi, Co-Commissioner of Police, Delhi, IndiaConducted by Bill Karelis on behalf of the Shambhala Prison Community, Delhi Police Headquarters, 31 October 2002 Bill Karelis: Madame Bedi, you are very famous internationally for your humanitarian work and also for working with meditation, both with prison inmates and with police. Could you give us any advice about how to apply these principles, or the importance of such principles, in our work in the United States?
Whichever police officer comes to a police training college encounters an environment enabling him to self-audit, to personally look within himself, [to see] whether he is implementing or fulfilling the cause of policing. He examines the mission statement with which he came, the mission statement to which he swore, to serve the community and his department, and he examines whether or not he's gone astray, changed track, or changed his working or professional life in the negative sense. He may still be wearing a uniform, but his priorities, objectives, or personal mission statements may have changed. He may be only looking to get his promotion. He may be doing anything to oblige his seniors or curry favors with the politicians. He may even be cutting corners to oblige some people in the higher ranks in the community. So, is he doing that – or is he fulfilling the original mission statement to be fair to all, to be just to all, to be humane to all, to be kind to all, to be firm equally to all, and to be impartial? It is from this consideration that we brought self-audit programs called "reflective programs" into police training. I found that the training instantly makes a difference. The evaluative feedback forms we have used for the last four years have always confirmed that any education which is without the concept of self-reflection is cut and dry. It makes robots of people, but it never makes human beings of people. That is why vipassana meditation and many other programs became so integral to my police training. Over the last four years, no fewer than six thousand police officers in the Delhi Police have gone through vipassana meditation programs. Six thousand! We did one course with twelve hundred police officers in one shot, all trainees and new recruits, out of which we made a documentary film, called Self-Policing. Doing Time, Doing Vipassana [a well-known documentary on Madame Bedi's work with meditation as a warden of the largest prison in Delhi] depicts the program in the Indian prison, and Self-Policing also shows and depicts the program for police officers – how important it is for education to integrate reflective education, self-audit. There are different methodologies, wonderful programs by which one can get inspired to self-audit, to self-reflect, to look within. That's what vipassana stands for, looking within, in a special way. This is [the nature of] the programs we're talking about. Now it's a settled program, and it's become in-house. Many states in the government of India have issued circulars to say that if police officers want to opt for a program like vipassana meditation, they can get duty leave to go to it. For Delhi Police training, we have an in-house training center, a vipassana meditation center, where one course for fifty-five officers is held every month. Volunteers from all units of the Delhi Police come and sit and do the [course]; in fact one course is on even now. We have a massive library of feedback from these six thousand people who have been trained. Everybody documents in the beginning: Who did he hear about it from? Why did he volunteer? Is there any compulsion to do it? What is he hoping to learn? And at the end of the course, he documents what he learned. Taking those responses one by one, almost ninety-nine percent say that they're glad that they did the course. Some say they regret that they didn't do it earlier. Many want to come back to it, to repeat the course at regular intervals. And the great majority say how amazingly they've learned lessons of life which they had so badly forgotten. BK: So it seems to be very, very effective. KB: Absolutely. In fact, I couldn’t have found a better way. It's basically returning human beings to humanity. Through this course they realize the humanity in themselves, and their thick skins became sensitive once again, and they can vibrate and they can feel. The thick skins melted through these courses and the people became humane again. In human beings, to be humane is so important. I think that over the years such work hardens you up. You take certain things for granted; you say, "Well, pain has to be suffered and policing is tough, you've got to suffer it out," or [to the criminals], "If you've committed a crime, you've got to go through it." Well, yes, everyone has to go through it, but it can be less painful. A police officer can be kinder while implementing the law. This doesn't mean that you let people go free, but when you're arresting people you realize you don't have to hurt them, and you don't have to use language which people never forgive you for. That's the return of humanity. BK: Did you find this approach also to be effective with prison inmates in your previous work? KB: I found this program to be effective for all. And the more stressful the situation, the more beneficial it is. In prisons, of course, it's a highly stressed situation. The inmates don't want to be where they are. They are deprived of their liberty, they are being punished, they are personally punishing themselves, and they are full of all kinds of negative emotions, like revenge and anger, and they are often partial to spitting out their anger, or expressing it by committing another crime. Being unforgiving, nursing all the kinds of unforgiveness, a person will be partial to expressing his feelings in a negative way. The more stressed a situation, the more helpful the meditation programs are. What the programs do, in the end of the day, is to relax you down, to break you down to your basic human feelings. They make you connect between your mind and the body; they make you reflect on what your mind was making your body do. You look at your mind, and say: What kind of human being were you? What kind of sensations were you nursing and nurturing? And what kind of devils were you creating within yourself? And you see you could be an angel as well, who could think the right things and want to do the right things. So the inmates tried to do the programs; they brought me their reflection, meditation. As the prisoners were heavily stressed in prison, so are the police very much under stress to deliver – to give results, to seek better assignments, to move up in the hierarchy. There is a shortage of time, and the pressure of families. That life is very demanding on mind and body. As I've said, the more stressed you are, the more difficult your circumstances, the greater the benefit of the meditation program. The stress is highest in the prisons, and high in the police. It is equally high in executive assignments [as it is among the rank-and-file] where the company revolves around your policies, and your accountability and responsibility is so high. BK: It sounds like a road to greater justice, no matter which side we're looking from. KB: Which is a road to a just society. It's a road to a peaceful society. It's a road towards a non-violent society. It's a road to a more compassionate society. It's a road to a value-based society. It's a road towards a composed society, and it's a road towards greater family relationships. BK: Thank you. Is there anything else that you would like to communicate to our audience, which is mostly in the United States? KB: You know, I find that we in the world are getting divided into two worlds. One is a world which promotes non-violence, and the other which promotes violence, through violent words, violent deeds, violent gestures, violent expressions. By non-violence one doesn't mean that we don't act – we do act. It's not that we don't look after our safety – we must look after our safety. But let us not do anything now which increases the world of violence. We must do everything to increase the population of non-violence. Therefore, while we take care of our security, while we do justice to people who've been on the wrong side of the law, before we use any word, gesture, action, we must do nothing deliberately, consciously, which increases the world of violence. We already have a very large share of people worldwide who believe in violence. Therefore, I think we need to work consciously together, while upholding the law, while treating the law properly, to do nothing which aggravates violence. Because anything which aggravates violence is going to come back to the aggravator – directly or indirectly, immediately or later on. That's the law of nature. We can't escape it. Therefore, that's the message I would like to give and share. I often take the opportunity to say this – that we belong to two worlds, one world which believes and practices non-violence, and the other, maybe wanting non-violence, but aggravating violence. We have to become very conscious, because we are suffering already, and terrorism is a byproduct of that "hate politics." So we must do nothing which now and hereafter encourages hate or revenge. But by saying this, I'm not implying that we become passive and give the message, "You can come and hit me, and you can kill me, and you can do what you want." No, we do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves but we do it in a manner which reduces violence, rather than increases violence. BK: Do you see an increasing role for international cooperation and communication in this area? KB: Yes. BK: Do you think it is possible? KB: It is absolutely possible, provided we genuinely believe and think like this. But we must genuinely do so. Because it's not the world conferences, it's not documents, it's not proposals, it's not resolutions, it is genuineness which will take us to a larger population of non-violence. We must judge nations' development by their belief in non-violence, rather than judging them on Gross Domestic Product and industrial growth. I would love to regard a family as a rich family, a nation as a rich nation, if it is rich in values of non-violence. We need to standardize this – we need to upgrade the value of standardization of how we judge a nation. We only judge a nation by its capital wealth. We do not [usually] judge a nation by its love for non-violence, spread of non-violence, spread of love and brotherhood. The more genuinely we believe in this view, the more it will be possible. There is absolutely a need for spreading the word and coming together globally – and not talking, but practicing non-violence. BK: Thank you very much for your words of wisdom. KB: Thank you.
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Kiran
Bedi: As administrators and organizers, or as trainers
and teachers, if education goes beyond professional skills
and entails a larger concept, enabling an environment of
personal skills, I think one would naturally look for options
like we did, which included meditation programs. And that's
what I have tried to do in my police training assignment
over the last four years.