Dohar for Nandigram

Refinement

Craftsman doing refinement work on a rosewood chair.

Out of our altruistic self come our beliefs and wishes, our public interest. Things that we want, as much as, or even more than our personal interest. And they need consummation too. Hence the urge to join with others, make common cause, and seek to realise one’s wishes. This is an example of life outside the marketplace. In this life, I can be one with a person who I am distanced from by market relations.

The public interest will also necessarily go against our perceived personal or private interest. For instance, if I wish to enjoy proper civic amenities then as a property owner I should be willing to pay the rates and taxes that will enable the civic authority to provide the services to me. The test of one’s public domain consciousness is the extent to which one can accept the public interest above one’s personal interest; and see in this one’s own long-term and enduring gain.

Refinement – consists primarily in caring for others above oneself. I should never cause inconvenience to others. If we observed what’s happening on any street in urban India – we would see that callous disregard of the other is the pre-eminent feature of everyone’s conduct. And everyone would belligerently assert their right to go ahead, unrestrained, looking out for their perceived immediate interest.

How does this refinement come? Where from? Who has it? And who doesn’t? Why? How is refinement cultivated? And can there be regression from refinement?

Parents and schools – can ensure that their children grow up as refined citizens. They can nurture the fullness of the child. But unfortunately that is not really happening. Young people are unconcerned about the public domain. They are willing and excellent adherents of globalised market-life, of disparity and exclusion.

Will there be time for a critical mass of people to come to awareness and act to bring fundamental change – before the violence and genocide implicit in obscene socio-economic disparity and mass poverty unstoppably explodes, bringing destruction, bloodshed and anarchy?

What is to be done?

For almost 25 years now, I have been seized of this question. What is to be done, to end the indignity and ignominy of poverty in my land? More to the point, what must I do?

Now its clear to me that no one is going to be able to eliminate poverty from the lives of the hundreds of millions who dwell in poverty today. But every child, of every person, whether poor or otherwise, could have equal opportunity to be equipped to be able to live a richer life than those poor today.

The most crucial arena for action therefore is education. The right of every child to education has to be realised. Neither the state left to itself, nor the market / private sector is committed to this. It is therefore only through mass social action, by those who want this, that the state has to be pushed to do all that needs doing. But its not just a question of resources. Its also a question of institutions, of accountability, and of an ethos and values. And all this is of course something the people of the country have to attend to.

The other thing that's clear to me now is that the overwhelming dominance of life by profit motive, market transactions, valuation and relations - has to be eliminated. Market transactions can be a part of life. But life is not a part of the market. We need to reinvigorate non-market concerns, activities, engagements and relationships, and in the public domain. The "social market" i.e. means of fulfilling important life requirements through social and community networks, has to be built.

Ultimately all this is rooted in individuals' personal urges and inclinations. While consumption, gratification, profit and exclusion predominate today - the human needs of communion, altrusim, compassion, self-development etc have to flourish. As I see it, we need not leadership, but self-leadership. We don't have to be followers. We need to become self-enforcers.

A good part of our life must be lived, and lived well, entirely outside the realm of the marketplace. Then there can be humanity and harmony. And richness, in place of poverty.

It is vital that there are alternatives, even as we live in this frightening, insane, inhuman society. And the alternative - is a continuity running from the individual's inner urges through to the open, public arena where masses of citizens come together and work together.

Public culture.

Painting: Thy Will be Done, by Danny Hahlbohm.

In the wake of Nandigram

A call by concerned citizens

The valiant struggle of the peasantry in Nandigram against the acquisition of their land and homesteads for the proposed chemical hub SEZ has drawn nationwide attention. Despite the massacre of March 14 and the continuing reign of terror unleashed by the police and the hired killers of the ruling party in the state, Nandigram has remained defiant and refused to surrender. On the contrary, it has sparked unprecedented mass protests across West Bengal and elsewhere. People’s movements in various parts of the country against the forcible acquisition of farmlands, forests and other natural resource base of the poor in the name of SEZ and for the so-called industrial projects have also drawn inspiration and sustenance from Nandigram.

The time is now ripe to bring all the people’s resistance movements across the country under one coordinating network. Towards this end, we are proposing an All India People’s Convention, followed by a huge Rally, in Kolkata on 2-3 June, 2007 (before the onset of monsoon). We call upon all our friends in the people’s movements and people’s organisations, irrespective of political or ideological moorings, to come forward and actively participate in this programme. May the Convention/Rally become the launching pad for a united nationwide resistance struggle against government’s land acquisition policy for SEZs and other industrial projects.

The convention/rally, and the countrywide movement to be launched from there, will be raising the following demands:

1. Scrap the SEZ Act, 2005 that aims to set up ‘extra-territorial’ authorities within the country and acquire huge tracts of farm and forestlands for the corporate capitalists while endangering the lives and livelihoods of millions.

2. Abolish or reformulate (in consultation with the people) the colonial and draconian Land Acquisition Act of 1894 that serves as the chief instrument of land acquisition by the government.

3. The Chief Minister of West Bengal, who has owned up to the responsibility for the mass murders in Nandigram, must resign. Everyone who has had a hand in the Nandigram massacre, directly or indirectly, must be punished.

4. People’s institutions at the grassroots must be allowed the autonomy to act so that a life of peace and dignity returns to Nandigram and wherever conflict has erupted over land acquisition.

Send your endorsement ("I ENDORSE") with your name, phone, e-mail contacts and how you would like to describe yourself, e.g. professor, filmmaker, activist, etc. or your organisational/ institutional identity) to the following e-mail addresses:

chowdhuryaditi@yahoo.com, sumit_chowdhury@yahoo.com

Read more about the People's Convention here.

Buddha Purnima

Today is Buddha Purnima, or Vesak, the full-moon associated with the birth, enlightenment and passing away of the Buddha, some 2550 years ago. It is a very auspicious day for Buddhists all over the world.

In an early post, I had written about the Buddha's exclamation on realising enlightenment.

Here are the lines from Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia, which describe Buddha's enlightenment:

... Thus Life's thirst quenches itself
With draughts which double thirst, but who is wise
Tears from his soul this Trishna, feeds his sense
No longer on false shows, files his firm mind
To seek not, strive not, wrong not; bearing meek
All ills which flow from foregone wrongfulness,
And so constraining passions that they die
Famished; till all the sum of ended life -
The Karma - all that total of a soul
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The 'Self' it wove - with woof of viewless time,
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts -
The outcome of him on the Universe,
Grows pure and sinless; either never more
Needing to find a body and a place,
Or so informing what fresh frame it takes
In new existence that the new toils prove
Lighter and lighter not to be at all,
Thus "finishing the Path;" free from Earth's cheats;
Broken from ties - from Upâdânas - saved
From whirling on the wheel; aroused and sane
As is a man wakened from hateful dreams.
Until - greater than Kings, than Gods more glad! -
The aching craze to live ends, and life glides -
Lifeless - to nameless quiet, nameless joy,
Blessed NIRVANA - sinless, stirless rest -
That change which never changes!

May peace prevail on earth, may all beings be well.

Image: Enlightenment Scene, Temple painting in Bodhgaya, India, by Marianna Rydvald.