Who are the KARMAYUGA HEROES?

We are not speaking of Wonder Woman, Spiderman, Batman, Lara Croft, Indian Jones, Bahadur, Krishhh or Drona, nor are we speaking of all our Bollywood and cricket heroes. We are speaking of people who are willing to RIGHT a WRONG and take that extra step to stand up, speak out and make a difference. Goethe once said “One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a human”. We are speaking of all the citizens who are the real heroes in a real world in reality. We are talking of people who exercise the power of ONE to try and RIGHT a WRONG and thus create a responsible citizenship by coming together as ONE. The 100 best examples shall be chosen for the KARMAVEER CHAKRA every year. That’s the MAIN SIMPLE IDEA - Showcase real heroes to inspire more real world heroes.

Following are a few Karmaveer Heroes who are doing their bit to RIGHT every WRONG. Some ideal
examples of citizens inspired to experience and spread the REAL Joy of Giving by being the change
and coming together as ONE to RIGHT every WRONG.

Meitin Connelly from Hyderabad who was involved with our joy of giving movement from 2003 was so inspired that she now sacrifices her weekly Sunday Brunch and with the money saved feeds hungry children and stray dogs.

Sushma Veer an actress from Kannada Cinema was inspired by the RIGHT every WRONG movement and at regular intervals mobilises students from Bangalore and plants trees across Bangalore. She also uses most of her earnings to help the underserved children and communities across India.

Gautam Ghosh a musician par excellence was inspired by the RIGHT every WRONG and the white ribbon movement and founded the GLOBAL ONENESS DAY- GOD initiative where he has held a concert on 9/11 for the past 2 years and spread the message of peace and ONENESS by getting various people to wear the ribbon and express their solidarity.

Mike Ghouse has founded the unity day in the US to bring people from all faiths together and celebrate oneness and secular values.

AD Singh was inspired by the RIGHT every WRONG movement to found RESTAURANTS AGAINST HUNGER to mobilise support and create awareness for hunger related issues.

Akhil Akkineni a young boy from Hyderabad was inspired by RIGHT every WRONG to educate and sensitise all his school students (peers, juniors and seniors) and though them their parents to understand more about the drinking water pollution issues due to which children around places in Andhra were being diagnosed by Fluorosis.

Aradhana Chachhi a 9 year old was so affected by the plight of the Tsunami victims that she would make lemonade and sell it in her colony and school to sensitise people about the issue.

Diwakar our blind lil champ sings to empower other children like him get their education.

Baby Benzy a ten year old autistic girl, who has a god gifted talent to sing, with support from her mother.

Kavita Kumar has been organising concerts to raise awareness about the talent of the special children.

Deevya Arora, a paraplegic has been inspired to showcase to the world how people like her can create, direct and act in plays from a wheelchair to make people aware about INCLUSION and that we as disabled don’t need your pity but that we need your understanding.

Shrenik Rao cycled across India to create awareness about climate change.

Steven McCutcheon rode a horse from India to China trying to create awareness about children who have no access to education and health.

6 Young professionals and executives working with MNC and national firms would volunteer time on the weekends to go and share love and friendship with the Gujarat carnage victims.

Xavier Luis filed a case against the Maharashtra Government to address the issue of education becoming more and more expensive for the middle class.

Armando Gonsalves organised a peace concert in Goa without any sponsors or funding after 26/11 to spread ONENESS and PEACE.

2 young citizens, at the behest of iCONGO founders, rode across India for over 3 months on Bullet motorcycles to sensitise people to the issues of communalism in Gujarat.

Sanjeev Dutta filed a case against Mercedes Benz for duping consumers by selling faulty cars as limited editions and won the case to create awareness about consumer rights.

Pamela Gale Malhotra makes the time to involve herself for making presentations to student groups and citizen forums across India at her own cost, trying to explain to them how we need to come together to preserve our ecology and environment.

Harsh Mander resigned from the Indian Bureaucracy (IAS) in the wake of the Gujarat Pogrom as he said his conscience was above his call to duty as a bureaucrat and wrote an article Cry, my beloved country to sensitise people to what really happened in Gujarat.

Malathi Holla fought the system to ensure equal rights for sportspeople living with disability.

Tara Sinha, Anant Trivedi, Promod Chawla, Gen. Vinod Saighal, along with other concerned citizens, relentlessly work to sensitise citizens at large about electoral reforms and how we need to ensure that our democracy works for all citizens and truly becomes of the people, by the people and for the people.

Vincent Nazareth in his fight against tobacco dresses up as Gandhiji and sensitises the youth to give up smoking and has taken it as a challenge to make 10,000 young people give up smoking this year.

Anjalee and Sanjeev have consistently campaigned and lobbied to make India and public places barrier free and accessible.

Kayzad Namdarian started the movement feed a child with just a click to sensitise people about children dying of hunger across the globe.

Gopichand Pullela, the badminton champ and coach, refused big money to endorse a cola brand as he felt that Cola’s are not healthy for the youth and by his endorsing the brand he would mislead the youth.

Remo spoke against the bad governance in Goa to get a stay on the regional plan 2011 and the SEZs.

Rahul Bose studied and understood issues and took a stand and spoke out against the demolition of slums and the issues surrounding the Narmada based community.

Lynn D’souza does her thing to help support animal rights and gets all her colleagues involved with development work, while having her hands full as Chairperson of Lintas.

Mamoon Akthar, a librarian with a 3000 Rs. Salary, gave up his house to create an education centre for children living in his community.

Shailendra and Emmanuel have started a movement called Let Gandhi speak where they are trying to make citizens uphold the values of democracy by following Gandhian principles and they create awareness by using innovative methods.

Onir , a filmmaker, producer, writer and editor, has constantly used his filmmaking skills effectively to create awareness about various causes. Be it the controversial issues like Homosexuality or the less spoken about issues like sodomy, his movies have certainly been a reflection of truth.

Altaf Ahmad,  a freelance journalist and a social activist with a special interest in human rights, has been working for the last 25 years on communal and linguistic harmony, and peace and human rights.

Gregory David Roberts has been closely involved in providing free, open and universal education to the poor. His Shantaram initiative works towards educating poorest of the poor, in order to help break the poverty cycle that keeps families without access to education.

Various homemakers in Gurgaon & Mumbai run schools for their local slum and house help’s children and try to create an aspiration value to learn and be empowered in these children.

One of the iCONGO founders who used to adopt strays dogs/ puppies from the street, nurture them and get them adopted, wrote an appeal as a Diwali Greeting citing the story of his rescued dog. He sent this appeal almost 15 years ago to around 50 people asking people to adopt an orphan , adopt a stray dog and called the mailer. Just for the Animals, Just for them All and WHOA various people wrote back (including the animal activist Maneka Gandhi who shared the mailer with a few more people by making copies) appreciating the gesture and were inspired to adopt. Another founder would work with kids from urban schools to sensitize them through camps with underserved children and communities.