New Alliances - New Paths To Development
We are meeting today to forge new alliances between non-governmental and voluntary agencies of poor and ravaged countries. Despite the boasts made by the politicians about the spread of democracy and the establishment of independent nation states, we find that human communities are locked in dreadful competitive struggles, that vast masses of humanity suffer gross exploitation, oppression and violence. Far from independence for people we find that the new arbiters of human destiny are creating new shackles to hold people in dependence. In many places, democracy is reduced to a charade, with people being forced to choose between different sets of exploiters; people's participation becomes a mockery, with people reduced to docile spectators of distanced elite decision-making; and powerlessness is the fate of the majority of humanity, masked by facile calls for empowerment. The actions of governments betray the fact that they work not in the interests of their people, but in the interests of small manipulative elites.
The threat to community survival and cultural integrity has thrown many of the powerless people into the arms of fanatics and fundamentalists who are equally out of tune with the needs and aspirations of people. As the women's movement has shown there was no traditional golden age to which threatened communities could return. If modernity threatens community survival and promises only continued poverty and oppression for the great majority, rigid interpretations of tradition merely highlight untold instances of oppression faced by women, ethnic minorities, and the defenseless.
It is in such an atmosphere of supreme confusion that non-governmental organizations, NGOs, and voluntary associations are being formed around the world to give power to the invisible, the voiceless, and the exploited. If such voluntary action is to play the role of witness or catalyst to community awakening and self-development, the leaders of the movement must assess what are their strengths and weaknesses, how to confront powerful elites and how to strengthen the poor.
Within the South, the non-governmental organizations in India perhaps have garnered much experience worthy of sharing with their fellow activists elsewhere in the world. In the long Indian struggle for independence, Mahatma Gandhi emphasized the role of voluntary constructive work among communities as part of the greater political movement, and as integral to one's own spiritual development. He emphasized over and over again to his colleagues that India would never be able to over-throw the shackles of colonialism, unless the leaders of the freedom movement worked towards removing the social causes of oppression from within Indian society.
At this point it is worth mentioning that a radical difference does exist, in my opinion, between an Asian philosophical view of human society, and the knowledge that must be sought for its proper governance, and the modern Western view, which of course is also the accepted view-point of Asian elites as well, trained in universities founded on 19th-century Western imperial social experience. A refusal to accept the existence of such difference, and the insistence that Western modes of governance, such as the adversarial two-party system of England, for example, is the only route to effective democracy, has led to much mal-development. The unleashing of market forces on poor, deprived communities, or the introduction of capital-intensive high-technology into them has precipitated sometimes the tragedy of ethnic violence. With your permission, I shall illustrate the difference of vision between Gandhi and the Western trained economist, whether he follows a State Plan or asks for multinational corporate inflows.
As seen and experienced by the colonized bourgeoisie of India, of which I am a member, the intellectual tradition of the West seems to have see-sawed between two polarities since the Age of Enlightenment. An admiration for Reasoning, for Logic and Science, has given place at regular intervals to Romanticism; to extolling the virtues of the "Noble Savage" during the days of Rousseau; to idealizing images of bucolic simplicity, as by 19th Century English Poets like Blake, and Pre-Raphaelite painters, and writers, such as Ruskin; down to 20th Century versions of the same in mass culture, such as the Tarzan cult in books, comics and films.
This hidden but persistent schism between an" organic", but also undecipherable intuition, and a "logical", but many times too simplistic, understanding of the human condition has endured in popular and learned imaginations, and driven people now towards the religious Wilberforces and now towards the scientific Huxleys. The times of C.P. Snow saw a tired acceptance of the duality between the literary, or religious mode on the one hand, and the scientific mode of interpretation on the other. Unamuno philosophized on this tragic sense of the human condition.
But the longing has remained somehow to integrate these opposite visions. Asian philosophical thought has never fully appreciated this problem, with its spiritual, aesthetic, and temporal modes of understanding the world being mixed up inextricably with the routines of day-to-day living. Such messiness of beliefs is not only accepted, but, in fact, appreciated as a truer picture of samsara. The search for realism is also seen as leading to its very opposite, to delusion, if pursued with mere rationality. For example, Vedantic Hindu philosophical tradition has accepted that "true" or relevant knowledge, including the scientific, is to be found only through the pathways of spiritual enquiry, and self-introspection. It is only when the turmoil of the spirit is stilled that the seeker can see into nature. Simultaneously, the validation of the spiritual or religious mode is to be found in its ethical applicability to everyday situations. Such statements are not seen as circular, or mystical arguments, but as clarifications of human experience which are understandable to everybody. It was the traditional acceptance of such perceptions that enabled Mahatma Gandhi to launch a massive political freedom struggle, in which the boundaries of the personal and the public, the political and the spiritual, were blurred, and the movement was seen as both emancipatory and traditional, as modern and native. Gandhian economics similarly tries to blur the distinctions between economic fact and community will, and attempts to make the processes of development not so much an issue of technology, capital, and training, as Western prescriptions do, but as a way of life to be regained by the community. The voluntary agencies in India, of the Gandhian lineage, are exploring this path, albeit with a mixture of handed-down Gandhian philosophy and modern, scientific tools.
The Depression of the thirties followed by World War II led that generation of Westerners to think of the war and its aftermath as a "crusade," to use Eisenhower's words; a crusade that must lead to times of plenty, through social engineering, scientific development, and the interplay of "free market" forces. Here at last was a historical possibility for a grand synthesis of scientific determinism, to which the Right and the Left were equally wedded in the West, and the hidden urge towards gothic romanticism. The inchoate belief that such opposites as perceived economic advantages and moral imperatives could be melded together, indeed, that they exist in unity to promote human progress, was classically articulated by Galbraith recently: "Idealism was in close step with economic advantage; the combination is always a strong force for social change." Unlike the Gandhian vision, which implies hard moral choices, and a deliberate shedding of present ways of being and living to regain a sense of community; the Western or American dream projects the welfare of humanity as automatically developing out of the present set of political and economic relationships. No hard choices need be made; indeed, it might even be immoral to suggest the need for such choices.
The Galbraithian bit of comfort is only the latest of a long line of apologies for imperialism, colonialism, and exploitation, which has included such choice pieces as the Kiplingese belief in the White Man's Burden; Big Corporations' justifications, such as: "What's good for General Motors is good for America;" and Big Brother solicitude for the poor of the third world, from Churchill to Clinton. It finds its origins in Adam Smith's notion of the Unseen Hand in free-market economics, itself a product of triumphal Protestantism, which considered it profitless to agonize over spiritual matters, and that the Grace of God could be acquired through good works. The commercial elite of successful Protestant countries took only a short, logical step by measuring good works through their profitability.
Epistemological thought in the West, shaped and circumscribed by the military successes of imperialism, further consolidated by capitalism, perfected by modern industry and the science it owed its origins to, defined the economic basis of power as a science, and further justified the practice of this so-called science as the only possible way of reaching maximum benefits to the greatest number. A determined ideology to protect the power and wealth of the West could never produce a true synthesis between virtuous, moral action and the logical science needed to achieve it in reality. The economic "science" the West had available, its logic and its rationality, was strictly isolated from all human will to achieve a moral community, and not permitted to understand the real world, and certainly not to change it. It was conveniently assumed to work blind, like justice, to achieve hoped-for destinies. The masking of the ideological nature of economics was partly a result of the influence of modern natural sciences, which set a pattern of excluding the concerns of human communities from studies of nature, and partly such mystification was the result of simple greed. Though educated by Victorian England, Mahatma Gandhi could see through such partial understanding dressed up as universal knowledge. He reached for a synthesis in which the moral will of the people could shape a science for the achievement of their aims. While he succeeded in his political mission, and could gather the masses behind him, his economic beliefs seemed too arcane to the Indian nationalist leadership. In the event, his voice was stilled on the morn of Independence.
Since Independence, voluntary work in India has gone through many phases. From an early period of concentration on charitable and relief work, the voluntary movement moved into confronting the government on several people-based issues. It demanded that we should work towards the Gandhian ideal of "Gram Swaraj," or true independence at the village level. It is in such decentralized rural development, which gives employment, land, and the right of self-management to the rural masses, and enlists their own skills, that lies the hope and salvation of the people of India.
Gandhian economics, which locates the centre of development in the conscious will of the people, and is expressed in a language understood by them, could be a better guide for India than conventional economic doctrines, which could be said to form a Catch 22 trap for weaker economies.
The voluntary movement in India over the course of several decades has fought for the human rights of the weak and dispossessed; on environmental issues; and for economic independence under the threat of globalization and a new colonization. One immediately thinks of the work of the Self-Employed Women's Association, of the Chipko movement, of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, among others, as exemplifying the scope and depth of the movement.
Many of these experiences of voluntary action pointed out that its major strength lies in being able to catalyze activities to promote immediate community democracy at the grassroots. It was able to show that the best way to contain the confusion caused by imperial ambition and elite greed was to quietly assert human social values at the grassroots. These experiences are not unique to India. They are part of a broad human stream of awakening consciousness among dispossessed humanity, and its search for coming together in true human fellowship. Such work resonates throughout the world, in countries of the South, and among the South within the rich North. I would like to call to your memory the work of ORAP in Zimbabwe; of MOSOP in Nigeria; of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya; of the Finnish Village Action Movement; of the Rural Advancement Fund in North America; of the Seikatsu Club in Japan, of CEPAUR in Chile; and of AIDESEP in Peru, and many others.
The Green Movement with its environmental concerns is another statement of the human values emphasized by Mahatma Gandhi against international or nationalist elite greed. A well-known saying of his is that "the world has enough for everyone's needs, but not enough for everyone's greed". We are now recognizing even in the rich North the value of living lightly on the planet, and that saying no to more is not self-denial, but an enrichment of human life. And a great part of this real enrichment is to be found not in wealth but in the fellowship of cultures.
When we talk of saving the earth, we must simultaneously recognize that this cannot be done from command posts in London or Geneva. If the existence of the panda, the tiger, the rhino, are now numbered in days, even this genetic tragedy is the result of elite scientism, of dispossessing and subduing people. The environment is attempted to be saved by long-distance control, by control over local communities. The Northern scientistic conservationist is yet to involve indigenous communities as natural guardians of their environments. Saving the earth is too serious a matter to be left to scientists; and global alliances are needed.
Even more urgently we need global peoples' alliances to say no to one of the worst forms of fundamentalism, nuclear great-power fundamentalism as practiced by Northern nation states. We must take it as a goal not to let Papeete burn again.
Again, after many years of belief in international policies of aid and trade which specified that the removal of poverty depended on high capital inputs, on expert knowledge and high technology, the world is coming round to see that small is not only beautiful, but useful and workable. Women in the South have faced the triple oppression of economic poverty, social disadvantage, and gender injustice. As the recent conference in Beijing has pointed out most of the world's poor, and disadvantaged, are women, who suffer most through wars and violence, and form most of our refugees. We also know that most work is also done by women.
It is the "sangams," the groups and associations of women of the South who have shown that working together as communities, and cooperatives, they have helped their people to survive, and with their savings created employment for their men-folk, regenerated the environment, strengthened their traditional community health practices, and worked quietly in small ways towards self-governance. They have shown what is needed is not vast external aid, but catalytic action to strengthen the poor to look after their own communities, and their environment. The South is learning that empowering women means strengthening the poor, and strengthening the poor means helping their whole people come out of the still-persisting bondage of colonialism, and, worse, their own colonial mentality.
But as yet these glimpses of grassroots success, and empowerment, are only small shoots of self-assertion against the strong uprooting winds of global technological, imperialist policies. Many non-governmental organizations are themselves dependent on financial support from the rich North. With such support comes, styles and fashions of development which are ultimately derived from imperial ambition. The voluntary movement is yet to find its own independent ethical investment from among its own people. Charismatic leadership at the grassroots also has its own down side in the egotism of individuals. The lonely fear of being bought out; the natural desire to maintain the purity of a movement; many times isolates a people in struggle, and prevents a workable compromise from being struck. Only working alliances can dispel such loneliness. Governments are suspicious that strengthening the poor will erode from their political authority. Few national leaders realize that perhaps such grassroots action is the only hope of survival, not only for small communities, but even for national culture and independence. Grassroots groups by and large stand isolated, without the support of their fellows around the world. Constructive alliances again might help educate governments.
In my belief the major weakness of voluntary movements, which in turn gives rise to all other weaknesses, is that the movements are based purely on a rational understanding of the need to struggle, and the need to empower. Their leadership in many places have yet to recognize that manipulations of the powerful are best overcome by direct simple appeals to the spiritual core of human life which links us all in one humanity - one humanity, that is an organic expression of Mother Nature. Mahatma Gandhi was one of the few leaders of modern times who recognized that peace and an end to oppression would only come by appealing to what is most human in people, to their spirit rather than to their received knowledge.
If we can learn to appeal to the deepest part of ourselves, we would realize in our lives the reality of our common humanity, we would know without being taught that people, however poor or seemingly unskilled, can decide not only for themselves, but for their local communities; and that they are the best guardians of their own environment.
For the last 30 years the powerful have labeled the earth as a global village. For they saw increasing possibilities for increased exploitation. But perhaps we can give another definition. We can bring together the peasants, the indigenous people, the women, and the poor and marginalized from across all continents into a network of fellowship, for mutual support, for bringing peace to humanity, and for healing the ravaged earth. How are we to make a start?
Since the days of Hiroshima manipulative technology has become the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse to ravage and terrorize communities. The scientistic mafiosi has tried to portray their dogmas, their exclusive circles, as the only intellectual inheritance of humanity, rather than perceive modern science as a part of total human experiential wisdom. Now when we are faced with the critical question of how we are to meet the legitimate needs and aspirations of all of our communities and yet sustain planet earth without ravaging it, our pundits are left in fear and confusion.
At this critical juncture, the voluntary movements can network the various cultural and scientific experiences of all the world's communities who have worked out the calculus of how to survive as communities, and how to guard their environments. I anticipate that the first major scientific revolution in sustainability is going to come about through a deeper understanding of the ecological farming knowledge of all our communities. I see the Permaculture movement as a fore-runner in the cumulation of such ecological knowledge. It could be the great task of the poor to show that the gift of knowledge is neither meant to destroy nor to enslave. It is meant to harmonize our lives with the rest of nature.
I mentioned before that women cooperatives in the South had shown at the micro-level how women can achieve a measure of self-sufficiency and self-governance. It should be the task of the voluntary movement to form alliances to strengthen internationally all these cooperative movements with ethical investment, with shared experiences, and mutual institutional support.
The consumer movement in the North has shown the power that people can exert to stop exploitation by corporation and government alike, whether in the North or in the South. Our alliances should strengthen our ability to say no by votes, to say no in the market place, to corporations that pollute or blatantly exploit. We must learn to say no to media that brutalizes us and our children with violence, because it believes violence sells; which brings into our homes the obscenity of war as entertainment.
Can we create an alternative informational network? Today we must seriously ask ourselves what practical steps we can take to build workable international support systems and linkages for global alliances of the voluntary movements.
Above all, when the backward-looking powerful of the world are ritualistically trying to repeat the triumphs of the Berlin Conference of the 19th century and carve up the whole earth into spheres of power, trade, and influence, we must help the people to come together to say no to such atavism. In times when critical issues of culture and value, of development and environment, of peace and justice, are ignored or "honoured in the breach," who will lead the leaders, who will teach the learned, who will help the powerful, to reach a human understanding, but the poor and the many? We do not have to feel helpless that the people we work with are as yet very poor and scattered over the globe. All communities understand moral questions quite easily. It is only politicized questions that are manipulated by the powerful to appear complex.
It is a tragic irony that decades after the world's horrified rejection of Nazi eugenics, the question of genetic superiority should be repeatedly brought back by so-called scientific tests of intelligence. A recent American book attempts to justify the status of a hereditary cognitive white elite, or in other words a meritocratic caste. Such dangerously unsound arguments against affirmative action in America in support of the disadvantaged black communities mirror some Indian opinions of the need to safeguard scholastic merit among privileged castes. It is hence important, before such racially-biased tests are copied for application in the South, that we should affirm, as Mahatma Gandhi did, that development can have no meaning unless it changes for the better the life of the poorest person we know. And if that is to happen, it has to be the self-development of the poorest communities, using their skills to take charge of their resources.
Both the South and the East have been ravaged by the political processes that have built this modern world. These processes have left even its rich beneficiaries in the North as ill, unhappy, and alienated people. The governments of the South and the East now stand humbly outside the gates of those who have stripped their people of power, of resources, almost of their ability to survive. Only their humanity is left to them. It is time that the people of the South and the East turn away from these gates to seek each other and shape a new destiny for all of humanity. I should like to stress once again that it is only the active participation of local people all over the globe, and their involvement right from the start in the design of human-sized solutions, which can bring peace to embattled communities, enable communities to sustain themselves as vibrant human communities while regenerating the environment, and open the human vision to a spiritual appreciation of life itself. The powerful desperately need help to bring them out of a closed mind-set. A global peoples' alliance of NGOs is vitally needed at this moment. The people of the South and the East have much to give each other. A recognition that they are witnesses to the prophecy that the meek shall inherit the earth. A recognition that the most blessed peacemakers will be those who bring our many peoples into creative fellowship, into living lightly, in harmony with the rest of nature.
International Conference: "New Alliances - New Paths To Development, Exchange Of Experiences Between South And East" Cologne, 22nd September 1995.
DR. Vithal Rajan
