With this post we are starting an online dialog which, it is hoped, will prepare the ground for the first international conference of the Lokavidya Jan Andolan to be held in Varanasi from 12-14 November, 2011. During the course of the dialog we look forward to hearing from many different people and perspectives. This is not a discussion that is intended to come to a conclusion. Rather, it aims to broaden the voices within the movement and create new avenues for a politics based on lokavidya. It is undertaken in the spirit that at this stage of movement-building, breadth of views is to be preferred to cut-and-dry formulations.
In this first post, I address the following questions in brief. What
does it mean to stake a claim for lokavidya in the public discourse?
What could be the content of this claim and why is it a contemporary
political statement? The tone of my remarks is assertive but this is
only a strategy adopted to make the focus clear. The points made below
should be taken as points of debate and departure.
The majority of the people in India and across the world have been told
that they are ignorant and in need of education before they can
participate fully in society. Politically, even when they constituted
the mass-base, they have been sidelined in intellectual terms. And often
they ended up fighting someone else's battle. But the people know that
they are knowledgeable and that they can construct a new world based on
their knowledge. Peasants, adivasis, artisans, shopkeepers, students,
women, ordinary people are on the move everywhere in struggles and
movements across the world. They form not just the mass base of these
movements, but also the intellectual base, they supply not only the
bodies but also the brains. Gandhiji claimed that before we begin a
struggle, we must examine our own sources of strength, which form our
starting position. We cannot begin a struggle that moves in our favor if
we base it on a foundation which is not ours and that we do not
understand. This is Marx's claim also. The lokavidya position is that
the people's own knowledge is the source of their strength. The
Lokavidya Jan Andolan (LJA) consists of people rising up to say so.
The
various people's struggles against displacement from lands, forest, and
livelihoods, struggles for environmental justice and food sovereignty,
and many more, are all fraternal struggles which are unified in the yet
unspoken claim that across class, caste, tribal, religious and gender
divisions, the majority society is coming together to shed the stigma of
being "uneducated." LJA is the realization that only if politics is
based on the people's own knowledge can it be on their initiative, can
it serve their interests. This does not mean that gender, caste or class
struggles are unimportant. But it does mean that these struggles must
also be based on lokavidya, that is they must be driven by peoples’
perspectives on what oppresses them and what the solutions of that
oppression are. No longer can “educated” women claim to speak for all
women or “educated” workers for all workers.
The time is ripe to put forth such a knowledge claim because the
hegemony of Science and the University are being challenged everywhere,
creating new opportunities. Disillusionment with capitalism and with the
Science-society which have together brought unprecedented suffering to
the majority world is strong today. So is disillusionment with the old
politics of change. We make no grand claims for a new politics, but we
do strive to bring such a politics into existence. No longer is it
possible to have the faith in Science and the University that
characterized 20th century political thought across the
political spectrum. This loss of faith has tangible political
manifestations today. Across Europe students have risen to liberate
knowledge from the University. Declarations such as the Right of Mother
Earth (Bolivia) openly state that the solutions to ecological problems
lie not with Science, but with the indigenous peoples of the world.
But the politics of lokavidya is not a repetition of the 20th
Century battle of tradition versus modernity. That battle was lost by
tradition and resulted in a pyrrhic victory for modernity. Lokavidya is
ever-contemporary knowledge of contemporary communities who create and
sustain life today. Until the political position is staked that peasants
and artisans lay claim to knowledge traditions in no way inferior to
any other, struggles against displacement will appear to be resistance
to “development.” A Lokavidya Jan Andolan is born when a peoples’
movement declares that the peoples’ knowledge and way of life is not
inferior to those in the cities or in the corporate world. That it does
not only fight to save livelihoods, it fights to build a new society.
Finally, does speaking of lokavidya mean being “against education” or
conspiring to keep the majority out of colleges and universities? No.
The lokavidya claim is that as long as education is synonymous with the
system currently in place, this education can only grant a small number
of people a government or corporate job. The others, the vast majority,
will forever be kept "in the waiting room of history." But if the claim
is staked that knowledge exists with the people too, they too can design
education systems, run schools and universities, and absorb any
knowledge that benefits them, on their own terms, then the basis of the
present system will collapse as will its monopoly on the good life.
The foregoing is intended to stake a few claims, perhaps in provocative
and controversial terms, to get a dialog going. The lokavidya
perspective eschews political blueprints or general prescriptions. A
lokavidya-based struggle in Bolivia can and should take shape very
differently from one in India. There is no insistence on a single party,
movement or institution.
In the next ten weeks or so, we hope to discuss:
- what is understood by the terms lokavidya and lokavidya jan andolan,
- what is the significance of taking a knowledge perspective on the struggles presently going on,
- have there been such things as people's knowledge movements in the past,
- can movements over issues of language, identity, caste, be thought of as knowledge movements,
- how do the international struggles over production of knowledge relate to the people’s struggles against displacement, etc.
- what should be the strategies of the LJA
And
this is by no means an exhaustive list. We invite you to participate in
the dialog either my commenting on the scheduled posts or contributing
your own post.