Dr. Abraham George
speaker
275 appearances
5 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Dr. Abraham George’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And you will find absolute poverty for many people, and then you will find poverty. People try to survive on $5 a day. And then you have another dimension to it, that is the caste system. And people are discriminated based on, you know, how they are classified. Many villagers don't let you come and take water from the well where the upper caste come, and a lot of issues.
Without getting into it, what I have, I always think of, what I've learned Social discrimination is one of the reasons why poverty exists. When people don't have the opportunity to go to a good school or poorly, they don't have the status to travel in a bus along with children of upper caste or sit in a classroom separately and so on. And they can't get jobs very easily.
They don't have the training. So the social discrimination is one, if not the main factor for poverty. And the other thing I learned is that in order to break social discrimination, any amount of preaching in church or temple, it's not going to do the job. empowering them economically is the way. And I felt there's no better way to empower the social underclass than a good education.
So I have chosen to create one of the best schools anyway for people of disadvantaged people. And I don't know whether you are aware, some of our children are studying in Ivy League today. Children who came from one room hut ended up in Princeton and Stanford and so on. And of course, in India too, a number of colleges.
And that tells you that even the poorest, if you provide a very good education and upbringing, they too can succeed, just children from the affluent society.
Well, in the United States, you don't have a caste system. You have a class system. And the class system and the racial prejudices people have, racial prejudice of people of darker skin, you identify them by the color. But in India, you don't identify by the color because the rich guy from an upper caste can have a dark color too.
You identify by hundreds and hundreds of years of family status and where they live. In fact, the caste system in India, it traces back to 1,500 years. It's in the Rig Vedas or the ancient scriptures where the various classes or castes were created. The people who owned the land and so on, and they wanted somebody to work for you.
And then you needed somebody else to clean your fecal matter and so on, and latrines and things like that. So they created the cash system for people to be employed in various things. And then they said, okay, if you belong to these lower cash, you can come anywhere near me. And so they created a system, and a little bit of it is in the religion itself.
But when India became independent, the government said you cannot discriminate on the basis of caste. the government did not, by constitution, did not eliminate caste. So even today, the caste system exists. And if you discriminate, of course, you can bring someone to court. But if you're born into a certain caste, you stay there. Unless...
You are very, you break out of it with your education and your job and you go to another city and you live well and nobody knows. And then you are out of the gas. But if you live in the village in the same place, you belong to the low gas.
I... chose a place, a remote village away from the cities, where poverty was rampant. That was one of my criteria for establishing this place. And where more than 60% belonged to the so-called, 60 or 70% belonged to the so-called lower caste. And so that is where I established my school.
Now, the villages around, there are landlords and people who had more money than all these people, and they have been enjoying cheap labor of these lower caste. They have to work in the fields for them, and a lot of them, We became bonded laborers because they wanted some money for something, the child's medical care or fixing up a hut or something.
And they would lend the money and then they can't pay back. And then you become a bonded laborer. That is, you have to work with no salary. They feed you a little bit. And until an equal amount is created by your labor, then you are out of the bonded status quo. By then, you have borrowed more, and it goes on.
So my criteria was to find a place where poverty really exists and do the transformation there. And as you pointed out, rightly pointed out, my children studying in the school come from different religions, different communities, different parts of southern India. I frankly, I don't know which kid is what religion. I never bother to ask them. I never ask them what caste they are.
I know that 95% of them belong to the lower caste. I know that by the records they have, but I never go and check it. They are all beautiful children, and my goal is to give them self-confidence, self-esteem, and tell them that caste doesn't exist, that's a man-made creation to oppress others.
And very soon the children believe that, and then they say, okay, I am just as beautiful, I am just as good as anyone else, and they work hard and try to have a good future.
To this day, these last 30 years, I had never addressed them as anything other than children or my children. I think of them as my two sons I have. And it has created a bond with me. I treat them with love. And they reciprocate with love. That doesn't mean that I'm not strict when I need to. That doesn't mean that I don't correct them and always pampering them. No, I guide them. But
Never do I address them anything other than children. They are my children. And when you do that, they realize how much you care for them. And that's the reason.
There are other considerations in the upbringing of the children. There are three pillars to our program here. One is excellence in education. The second is leadership qualities and personal ability to communicate and interpersonal skills and character and so on. But there is one more thing that is equally important, and that is
developing humane values, the kindness, generosity, humility, compassion. These are things that schools normally don't spend much time because that's not their mission. That's taught at home. And since we are the home for the children from four years of age to until they get jobs, we have to bring them up correctly. Yes, education, leadership, and humane values. All three are emphasized.
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