Community

I see the village community as a functional structure which strengthens the possibility for families to be prosperous in a self-reliant way. In that sense, the community is for the family. The family is a functional structure which strengthens the possibility for each person to discover what is right living, in the warmth of relationship. In that sense, the family is for the person.

In this way, the functional order is in favour of each person being free and finding fulfilment. This is the purpose of society; the combined expression of a people is to serve the person so he can understand life and be complete. With this functional purpose, a village community unfolds a structure which strengthens the possibility for each person to grow and flower in a fertile social soil.

Whether such a dispensation, in its completeness, has been achieved, I do not know. But it is certainly true that in India, traditionally, we have had largely self-sufficient village communities which together constituted society. They had come up organically and had been maintained with some diligence. And now, for the last two hundred years or so, the force of modern society has been breaking them apart, first slowly, but now with great speed.

Living in rural Garhwal for the last four years, I see that the village community being dismantled today are only the structural remains; it appears that the functional purpose has been long lost, if at all it was ever fully realised. The structure has continued a while longer as a momentum of habit - so what we see crumbling today may not be tradition per se, but the inertia of tradition. Even so, I am of the view that a good thing is being pulled down, and I would say we ought to question why we are doing this.

Modern Civilization

What is modernity, or modern civilization? It is not a thing or substance. It is a way of believing, thinking, and acting which is now consuming the whole modern world.

Modernity is based upon western civilizational thought and behaviour. Its main characteristics are:

1. An economic system based on the thoughts and theories of Adam Smith who said that a greedy pursuit of making money by everybody is needed in society.

2. A social system based on the thoughts and theories of Charles Darwin, who said 'only the fittest shall survive', and therefore, life is a constant struggle; each one has to fight others for superiority.

3. A science system based on measurement and quantification; i.e. what can be measured by man exists, what cannot be measured by man does not exist.

Such a way of believing, thinking, and acting is modernity, or modern civilization. We may not be aware of it, but if one looks at one's own environment, we can see that this is evident in all our endeavours. Look at our schools. We send our children to school so that they can be made ready 'for the market', to get money, to fight for success. Values and ethics are not measurable, and therefore ignored - this builds their 'scientific temperament'. The same is true of our office jobs, of our bureaucracy, of business and of the political system itself - all these we have directly copied from English civilization. In each of these, the system is designed to increase insecurity, not lessen it. Greed for reward is used for survival and growth. One fights others so as to get ahead. And the only measurement is of things material - sales, profits and personal gain.

The Indian civilizational way of thinking is different. We hold that:

Open Letter to Team Anna

Respected Shri Anna Hazare, Shri Arvind Kejriwal and members of Team Anna,

A large section of the nation is supporting your criticism of the present state of affairs in the country and share your concern about the rot in our political system. Corruption in the form of scams is one thing, there is also the serious issue of a corrupted and unethical mind-set among the entire elite, whom the rest of the nation imitate and aspire to be.

You have said that the present democratic system is flawed and needs to be set right. May I ask, sir, most respectfully, if we can do this without also looking at the very basis of the democratic system, which is modern, western civilization? It has economic, social and political objectives based upon its own history and thinking - these are completely at odds with Indian civilizational worldview, and the nation has suffered due to this experiment.

Is it possible, sir, to see and recognise this foundational fault and then re-shape the democratic system - after all, even the modern, western democratic system is its own, it is not at all the way Greek democracy was defined, as the 'power of the people'.

More than a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi wrote 'Hind Swaraj', where he foresaw and addressed this issue. May I quote a brief section from it which is uncanny in its resemblance to today's state of affairs (it is in the form of a dialogue betweeen Gandhiji and a reader):