Daleep Mukarji
'When one sees that every three seconds someone dies, that today in sub-Saharan Africa 13,000 kids will be orphaned because of HIV and AIDS, and there are 125 million kids who will never get to school, it is a shock and it hurts'

As Christian Aid celebrates its 60th anniversary, Andy Jackson interviews Daleep Mukarji, the Director of the organisation since 1998.

Daleep Mukarji was born in Lahore, now a city of Pakistan, before India was partitioned in 1947, which might give you an idea about his age.

His family moved to Hyderabad where he grew up. His father was a businessman and his mother was a teacher, and he describes being raised in a ‘liberal’ home, because he and his two sisters could talk freely and received extra education. While he’s ethnically North Indian, he went to university in South India, was born in Lahore, and has a Bengali name: 'It makes me truly Indian!' His surname is pronounced Mu-car-jee.

He says that he was taught about choices, something that is reflected by his marriage to a Muslim, his sister’s marriage to a Hindu and his other sister’s marriage to an Irish Catholic American. 'In India your family choose your wife. We were allowed to choose and debate and discuss, but very proud of the fact that we were both Christian and Indian.' His wife became a Christian some years after their marriage.

Hospital

Qualifying as a doctor after training at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, South India, he worked in a small mission hospital in rural Andrah Pradesh where he saw at first hand the problems facing people there. He soon realised that the health services alone could not cope with the needs of these communities.

Suddenly aware of the wider issues, he put his career on a new path. In 1977, he started a health and development programme outside Vellore that needed funds. He applied to Christian Aid for money, got it and became one of its partners.

After eight years, he moved to the National Council of Churches in India in their medical work, another organisation helped by funding for health and development work from Christian Aid. Nine years later, in 1994, he moved to the World Council of Churches. In 1997 he was invited to become Christian Aid’s Director, a job that he started in 1998.

Mukarji stresses that he has always worked with church and ecumenical organisations, that he’s always been interested in issues of health, justice and development, and that he’s always wanted to see how he can help people help themselves. He says that Christian Aid gives him the chance to use his training, and experience as well as his Christian convictions.

So how has the organisation changed during the last seven years and how is it going to change over the next few years (Christian Aid has just finalised a five year strategic framework)?

'The organisation has changed because it’s grown. It now has greater impact and generates more income for our work. We are more professional, look after our staff better and have a better infrastructure and office space.

'But for me the greatest challenge for charitable organisations such as Christian Aid is how you keep your identity and purpose clear. Our name says it; our heritage is Christian, so how do you keep that dimension of Christian Aid, and so we’re not just another development agency that has a prayer or a hymn – that’s a challenge for us. Equipping, enabling and encouraging Christians and the church to put their faith into action.

'Also, how do we serve the churches and equip them to get involved with the issues of justice, poverty eradication and building a better world? How do we help build a world of inclusion and justice, which is the perspective of the Kingdom of God? That is a challenge for us as Christian Aid.

'There will always be organisational challenges – I’ve read the history of Christian Aid and there is always difficulty finding staff, always difficulty in paying them, difficulties in how we work and where we work, and whether we make an impact. That’s part of the business of Christian Aid. But the business must not lose sight of its purpose. Christian Aid is here to expose the scandal of poverty, to contribute to its eradication and challenge the structures and systems that keep people poor, excluded and marginalised.'

How does your faith strengthen you with your work? You were in India when the Boxing Day Tsunami struck and when you saw the devastation it caused, and that must have tested your faith?

'I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t have a faith and a sense of calling. This is what God wants me to do, and I get paid for it, which is lovely! But more importantly, because I’ve been a doctor, and worked in rural India, I’ve seen poverty, and malnutrition and kids dying because of preventable infections. I’ve had to deal with telling parents about a person having cancer, and helped people with the grieving process.

'When one sees that every three seconds someone dies, that today in sub-Saharan Africa 13,000 kids will be orphaned because of HIV and AIDS, and there are 125 million kids who will never get to school, it is a shock and it hurts. But we as Christians have to provide hope because we have a God that identified with human beings, that identified with suffering.

'A God who for me as an Indian who grew up in a post-Colonial country, was in Christ a very revolutionary, a very challenging and radical person because here you see God identifies with the excluded born in a country that is colonised, in a manger, in a stable, of a carpenter, a working class family, a poor and excluded and marginalized as you can get human beings, and you can see the Holy family in the early years of their lives being refugees in Egypt, and you can understand what it must have been to have lived in that time.

'All His friends were people who were excluded, and that understanding of God identifying with human beings in their times of problems helped me, not only in the work I do, but when I was in the state of Tamil Nadu after the Tsunami, I could talk to people. I heard a story from a man who lost his family and lost his boat, a very healthy young man, and he said ‘give me a boat and I’ll get back out there’. That was his life, to see how people had suffered and how people had helped each other across caste and across community.

Generosity

'The enormous generosity of the British people also gives me hope. That gives me a sense that we can do something about it. I cannot believe in a God who is sitting up there and is making decisions about who lives and who dies. We’re all going to die. Even the Pope passed away.

'The question is how do we cope with death, why should people die unnecessarily, why should people die when we can prevent it, why should people die just because they are poor, because they are from an outcast community, or because they didn’t have a warning system? That makes me angry, that makes me disturbed, that’s why we in Christian Aid and we as Christians must do something about it.

'There was a lot of inappropriate goodwill and good intentions as well, second hand clothes, for example. Totally inappropriate! I was in India when I saw blankets and second clothes coming in – these people have dignity – who wants to wear used clothes?

'And nobody wants blankets anyway because it’s a hot country! People were sending tinned foods but local villagers don’t even have tin openers! We have to use situations like the Tsunami to educate people and say you have to help people locally to help themselves.

'We could have bought much of the rice, much of the water, though our partners locally so we shouldn’t send things from here unless it’s necessary. Where it’s possible, and this is why Christian Aid is wonderful, our local partners in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, within 24 hours, were responding.

'And I was privileged to go and see what they were doing and to be assisting them, learning from them and giving them assurances that when I got back to Christian Aid that we would stand by them. At that time, two days after the Tsunami, I hadn’t realised that we had raised so much money. Within days we sent money, staff and camera teams out, and that’s great because it was our holiday season.'

• Click here for part two of the interview