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.
The reason is that
this structure is in harmony with its environment, it does not
dominate; it is not aggresive with nature, plant and animal life can
thrive with it; it is self-reliant, many essential things are
fulfilled within the community; it is not dirtied by market, exchange
and distribution of goods is regulated by distance; and it is not
destructive with its science. So I would say that such a structure
should be useful to us always. Not as a thing of the past, to be
preserved like an exhibit in a museum, of interest only to the
careers of academics. I am saying that if we have the intent to
understand the wheel of traditional community, then we need not
re-invent the structure, it is there. We can take it, build upon it,
and re-discover its functional purpose.
Such structures are
there in rural India even today. They are being broken apart by the
force of modernity, but it is our wisdom which will decide the
future. If we understand and if we want, we could maintain, and
strengthen, and improve the community structure by understanding its
real function, and enjoy the harmony that it makes possible. We can
live in it, enrich it, live from it, and be enriched. Peace and
harmony are not measurable by instruments, they are not quantified,
and so have been brushed aside by modern civilization. The village
community cannot be invented in a library, or a laboratory, or a
factory. It cannot be understood from these places. This structure
holds the breath of a civilization, it is borne (given birth to) by
tradition. It is an autonomous community structure which has evolved
through human communities which have accepted the need of the soul,
peace and happiness, as the basis for a design of society.
In the functional
structure of village communities, the person is at the centre, he has
to discover what is right living, and the community, society, exists
for him, so that the person can have the joy of this
discovery. Such structures have existed, maybe even partially, in
Indian and other civilizations. We may call this a human-centric
society; the objective at its core is spiritual growth and
development, for which plant and material resources may be used.
That is now being
dismantled systematically, globally, after the coming of modern
industry; here, the person is a servant of society, to be fit in
slots as needed by it, to be uprooted and migrated as needed, to be
paid wages for labour, and to be schooled to be obedient and follow
rules, no questions asked; especially foundational questions. This is
so in all the modern, materialistic models, capitalism, socialism,
communism, and exemplified in democracy. A set of man-made rules and
regulations is at the core - which is society - and the purpose of
the human being is to fit into and exist for this core. The
objective here is material growth and development, for which humans
will be used.
One has to question
why.