Founding Principles
- The BMA represents the Bhopal survivors and the medical work in Bhopal. It arises from and is part of the survivors’ struggle. Its inspiration and ideals come from the survivors.
- Healing and hope in Bhopal is won through suffering and struggle. There is a great deal of joy and laughter in Bhopal, but they are not the gift of foreign donors, they are the joy and laughter of people whose courage helped them to rise above their suffering, who established the clinic as an act of defiant self-help and as part of their struggle for justice and a life of dignity, and who want the medical knowledge gained from their horrific illnesses to serve other people throughout the world – hope and healing out of suffering.
- The clinic is not ‘your’ or ‘our’ gift to the suffering in Bhopal, it is the survivors’ gift to all of us. But you and I help to make it happen. By donating, volunteering, becoming involved, we shoulder part of the workload, we join them in the wonderful work that they began, that they are doing. Out of the living laboratories of their bodies have come non-drug therapies for diabetes, childhood asthma and menstrual problems which we can now share with others across the world. This is the gift of the Bhopal survivors to the world. Charity for us is an exchange of gifts.
- This understanding expresses itself in our communications, where many charities talk of ‘us’, ‘you’ and ‘them’: you (in the west) help ‘us’ (in the office) help ‘them’ (in the bush). In our communications ‘we’ means all of us together, survivors, staff in the clinic and in the UK, consultants, donors and supporters. We are a family together, all together, all equal. All in direct communication, and although our roles and responsibilities differ, no one is more important than anyone else.
