SOCIOLOGY
Emerging perspectives
THOMAS PANTHAM
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Many of its chapters make valuable contributions to our knowledge, both about some important theoretical perspectives on social transformation and about some present-day transformative movements. THOMAS PANTHAM
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Rethinking Social Transformation: Criticism and Creativity at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by Ananta Kumar Giri, Rawat Publications, p.407, Rs.725.
ANANTA KUMAR GIRI and his fellow seminarists spent four days in 1996 at the Madras Institute of Development Studies discussing some of the emerging forms of cultural criticism and social transformation. The papers discussed in that seminar make up the book under review. Many of its chapters make valuable contributions to our knowledge, both about some important, emerging theoretical perspectives on social transformation, e.g., the Buddhist, Islamic and eco-socialist perspectives, and about some present-day transformative movements or struggles.
The lead-chapter of the book is "Rethinking Social Transformation: An Eco-Socialist Perspective" by Baas Weilinga of the Tamilnadu Theological Seminary at Madurai. He sees the collapse of soviet communism and the liberalisation of the economy in India and other countries as signifying the so-called global triumph of capitalism. In his view, this is a triumph only for the forces of capital accumulation, including all those who have considerable purchasing power in the commodity market. The condition of the poor and the marginalised groups and communities has worsened in the wake of the retreat of the welfare State. This is combined with eco-disasters and the frightening level of depletion of the irreplaceable natural resources of our planet.
An alternative approach
In this situation, Weilinga sees only two options, namely: i ) the creation of barricaded enclaves of wealth and affluence, which will remain targets of the envy and anger of the poor; and ii ) a broad-based socio-cultural and political movement for an alternative way of life aimed at "overcoming mass poverty and eco-destructive economics and consumerist civilisation". This latter option is, in other words, a movement towards "sustainable ways of ecological-economic and socio-cultural reproduction and regeneration". Weilinga sees some beginnings of a forward movement in the protests and struggles of the marginalised, indigenous peoples, women, small peasants, forest-based adivasis, workers in the informal sector, fishing communities, etc. In them, he finds intimations of an alternative approach to development, in which the people are trying to fight poverty by organising local resources and economic activity in accordance with adaptations of traditional cultural values. He also finds a potential convergence between these local, anti-poverty movements of the people and the ecological requirement of bio-diversity. "Ecologically," he writes, "we need an economy without accumulation through interest on capital".
A new politics
Speaking of the eco-politics of fresh air, river waters, and ground-water tables, he argues that they require co-operation across social and political boundaries. Eco-problems, he says, do not have exclusivistic or chauvinistic solutions. He also makes out a persuasive case for combining forms of direct, participatory democracy at local levels (as in gram sabhas, cooperatives and water-user associations) with indirect, representative democracy at higher levels. More importantly, he writes, major efforts are required both in "aesthetic education and cultural action" for a re-orientation of our desires and in a "new politics" that links up people's movements in the civil society with radical political parties. In the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha, Weilinga sees a promising example of a working-class movement adopting a very broad, transformative agenda which addresses issues of socio-cultural identity and other problems that are not specific to any particular class of people.
Weilinga's essay serves to anchor the arguments of some of the other chapters of the book, e.g., Chitta Ranjan Das's inspiring paper on the integral education movement in Orissa and Ramashray Roy's analysis of the the swadhyaya movement, which has been pioneered by Sri Panduranga Vaijanath Athavale Shastri. The swadhyaya movement, which is concentrated among the tribals, the fisherfolk and other depressed peoples, tries to create apurusheya lakshmi (trans-individual wealth) through collective farming, upavanas (village orchards) and community-managed mechanised fishing boats. One-third of the income from these enterprises is distributed among the swadhyaya members, while the rest goes into a non-interest-earning fund to be used for buying agricultural implements and other such requirements of the village community.
Against anthropocentrism
Weilinga's eco-socialist perspective also calls for inter-religious co-operation, which receives a powerful defense in Fred Dallmayr's chapter on "Liberation Beyond Liberalism". He urges us to listen to the voices of the Buddhist thinkers, Masao Abe and Ajarn Buddhadasa, and the Islamic thinkers, Mohammed Arkoun and Ali Shari'ati. From the Buddhist idea of liberation from dukkha arising primarily from avidya and self-centred desire, and from the attendant notions of anatman (self-deflation) and universal Buddhahood, Dallmayr derives inspiration for a corrective to modernist anthropocentrism and systems of discriminatory hierarchy. With reference to Islam, he notes that suras 1 and 90 of the Qur'an advocate the path of justice and righteousness and of kindness and service to the needy and the oppressed. In sufism and in some present-day liberal-critical voices within Islam, Dallmayr finds some openings for liberation from religious fundamentalism and agnostic secularism. He writes: "Rekindled as a partner in the conversation of humankind, Islam re-emerges here as a `liberal' or liberating faith — provided that (western) liberalism itself sheds its imperial or triumphalist aura".
Violence as a weapon
The double face of violence as a method of social transformation is movingly brought out in Chitra Sivakumar's chapter on the Sri Lankan Tamil Militant Struggle. Responding to the systematic discriminations and oppression by the Sinhalese-dominated Government of Sri Lanka, the Tamils, Sivakumar notes, chose "violence against violence" as "an instrument for the recovery of the Tamil ontic self in its `hiddeness'." However, the method of violence, which they perceived to be appropriate to their struggle against their oppressors, had no inner resources to prevent it from being turned into a weapon in the conflict for supremacy both within and among the militant organisations. The method of violence has, according to Sivakumar, transformed the very being of the militant leader, whose very survival has come to depend on the elimination of not only his opponents or oppressors but also his rivals. Many a militant leader, she notes, have become tragic figures deriving sadistic delight in seeing his opponents or rivals perish in pain. Does then the method of violence serve to recover the "ontic self" of the oppressed?
That there is an alternative method of emancipatory struggle that seeks to avoid any ontic damage to the oppressed as well as to the oppressors is suggested in K. Raghavendra Rao's contribution to this volume. According to him, Gandhi's non-violent method of emancipatory struggle assumes that one's oppressors are temporary foes but potential friends. Gandhi does not draw any "black-and-white blanket picture of a foe or a friend". There is a mixture of both in every one of us. Gandhi showed that by activating the forces of good in their opponents, the non-violent resisters can reduce or eliminate basic conflicts without causing any damage to the Truth or ontic relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor.
True liberation
From Gandhi's ontological perspective, a true liberator is not one who simply tries to implement any de-contextualised theory or "execute" any ideologically sanctioned method of struggle. Rather, a Gandhian satyagrahi perceives himself or herself as situated within a given conflictual relationship and then tries to activate, through a demanding process of self-disciplined resistance and interaction, the "hidden", ontic-level forces of Truth and love in that relationship. In Gandhi's ontology, there is no unanchored, de-contextualised, self-constituting author of any text or life that is dissociated from the idea of self-rule and self-control. Relatedly, while Gandhi remained a firm believer in God, he maintained that "Truth as God" was a better statement of that ontological belief than "God as Truth". So stated, his ontological belief, he felt, could be shared by even his agnostic and atheistic opponents.
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