8 Broadcaster Press November 6, 2018 www.broadcasteronline.com Larry Pressler: An India Feeling Trapped And Insecure By Larry Pressler This week I write from Chennai, India, where I am visiting leper-related colonies as a volunteer with the Rising Star Outreach Foundation. I have also given a speech to an Indian legal professional group. Our American-based group is under the leadership of Becky Douglas, the president and co-founder of the Rising Star Outreach Foundation, which helps lepers throughout India. Our group of about 20 visited several leper-related colonies near Singaperumalkoil, India, just south of Chennai. Chennai has a population center of about 15 million people — and that’s not anywhere near India’s biggest city. Leprosy has been a subject of controversy since Jesus Christ’s several mentions of it in his parables. I thought leprosy had been eradicated due to a new drug in the 1980s. There are pockets of poverty in southern India and in the northern poor state of Bihar along the Nepalese border. What happens is that one person in a village contracts leprosy. Then the disease spreads to one or two others. Once this happens, the leper’s whole village is isolated and quarantined. No one will marry or hire someone from such a leprosy-related village. Leprosyrelated children are kept out of schools. Once a person is diagnosed with leprosy, their whole family is isolated just as they were in Christ’s time. And just as they were in the 19th century in Molokai, Hawaii, under Father Damien. What did we see in these leprosyrelated villages? Rising Star volunteers were bathing some lepers, helping others to cut down their leprosy sores and giving some compassion. The foundation has a school to get young people training so they can get out of the villages into mainstream vocational schools and even into colleges. Mostly, as Christ said, we must pay attention to lepers and try to help them and to bring them to the front of our banquet table. Once leprosy really gets started in a person and that person has leper sores, it becomes very serious and is irreversible. Lepers make up the lowest caste in India, even under the traditional “untouchables.” They are even more likely in northern India, in the state of Bihar, which is one of the poorest areas in the world. But leprosy-related people are being politicized and are demanding attention from the Indian government and from society. Being over here in India is about as far away from the wonderful USA as one can get. It makes me appreciate my home country even more and to be grateful that I am an American. How lucky we are to live in such a wonderful country as the USA. We should thank God every day just for that. America is well-regarded in India today. They so much want to be our friend. Of course, nearly everyone in India would like to emigrate from India to the United States, even though that is virtually impossible. They feel the Mexicans have an unfair advantage to just cross the border to become an American. But even though they cannot come, they want to be our friends. I have read several newspapers and seen the local Indian news on television. There is no news of our current Supreme Court scuffle. The news has featured Russian President Vladimir Putin’s upcoming visit to India and a mega-arms deal with Russia. This almost duplicates the mega-arms deal that President Barack Obama signed during his visit with India a few years ago. India is an impoverished nation that seems to have spent so much money on modernizing its armed forces while not addressing such poverty subjects as leprosy — for which there is a cure if treated early enough. Also while here, I had the opportunity to address about 100 lawyers in the Cobra legal company. I enjoy being a professor so much that I love talking to these bright young Indian citizens. They were interested in President Trump’s trade relations with various countries. President Trump is very well-regarded here, which may come as a surprise to some of our critical newspapers. These wonderful young lawyers peppered me with questions about what is going on in America. They are more interested in public affairs than some of our own citizens are. These young lawyers agree that it is a human tragedy that India has to spend so much on defense. But with enemies such as China to the east and Pakistan to the north, India feels trapped and insecure. Somehow a loving God has created human beings who would rather fight each other than take care of our fellow humans. We have all sorts of problems in Washington, D.C., and throughout our nation. However, visiting these leper-related colonies has shocked me into a deep gratitude that I grew up and live in America. 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