BRAZIL CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENT

"The three centuries which followed the European discovery of the Americas in AD 1492 were a prolonged world-wide extension of this European discovery accompanied as it was by the conquest and subjugation of the conquered. After it, i.e. during the 19h century AD, the conquering west felt the need to salvage the soul of the discovered, and to lead them to enlightenment through world-wide Christianization. The world-wide program of Christianization was soon followed by the 1848 Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx, and at the realization of the Marxist-Leninist vision. Now that missionary Christianization has become somewhat downgraded, and the Marxist-Leninist vision seems to have collapsed altogether - the West, or the Westernized, seemed to have been in dire need of a new emotive phrase. The aggressive nature of Western man and his belief in his problem-solving capacities and in building powerful images about himself and his doings would have, in time, ordinarily provided the necessary emotive phrase. But as the Gods also seem to side with the West it did not have much difficulty in-finding the new emotive word. The word is Environment and it is going to be enthroned as the undisputed monarch of the world at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on the continent of South America.

To an extent the words Environment, Ecology, Biosphere have been with us, and have been heard more and more loudly as each year passed, since the 1970s. Concern about the damage to the Biosphere, about the pollution of the environment, about the prolonged ill effects of modern methods of agriculture, of cattle breeding, of forestry had however begun to be expressed by perceptive individuals as early as the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Mahatma Gandhi perhaps perceived such ill consequences as early as 1909. Many in Britain and Europe were opposed to power driven machine industrial production from the beginning of the 19th century itself when such production actually began on any appreciable scale.

While the crowning of the 'Environment' is yet to key place various countries of the world and their leaders of state as well as of their non-governmental organizations have been busy collectively as well as nationally in making preparation for this great crowning. One major mobilization of it was in Paris from Dec.16-20, 1991, at the personal invitation of the President of the French Republic. Some 600-800 participants from various corners of the world, about 60 from India itself, gathered in Paris for this august occasion. As many of the non-Western participants did not seem to agree with the statement, previously prepared by France, as emanating from this gathering they issued another statement of their own on the subject. Incidentally, one of the prominent Indian environmentalists is also said to have been publicly "rebuked by the UN representative at the Paris conference and told that as it was on the resources and occasions provided by them that he did his unending world travel he had no business to be talking against the international system from which he drew his sustenance. The rebuke was so sharp and unexpected that it made him feel as if he was part of a lower humanity, and he expressed his feelings bluntly in a formal session of the Conference next morning.

The magic of the world Environment seems to be so powerful that even the Indo-German eight month long Festival in Germany is also devoting some of its time and resources to the theme of Environment. The adventurous Dutch (i.e. the "people of Holland or the Netherlands as it is formally called) however have found an additional inventive approach to Environment. While them - must has also held national and international conferences on the French and similar models they further decided to invite some scholars and social workers from the non-Western world to give the Dutch their view of how they as non-Westerners looked at this subject. The result is a recently published book of 128 pages published from Holland and tided 'A Vision from the South: How. Wealth degrades Environment: sustainability m the Netherlands'.' Its authors are Mercia Gomes (cultural anthropologist, and government administrator in the very city of Rio de Janeiro where the 1992 Environment conference is to be held), Chandra Karana (involved in environmental studies in Indonesia), Sami Songanbele (agronomist from Tanzania), and Rajiv Vera (sociologist and Gaitflhian from India).

While 'A Visio from the South' has a fascination of its own, some of the facts about Holland it presents are frightening indeed. According to it while 'recycled water from sewage' is safe for drinking in the Netherlands, 'the water that drops from the clouds' (p.58-59) is not. If we in India are only a decade or two away before we ourselves undergo the Dutch experience it is time that we forget our ancient boil where rain water collected and was used for drinking even for years, and similar Indian mechanisms of harvesting rain water. According to the book the acid content of the atmosphere is so high (pH level of 4.5) that rain actually does not precipitate but is a dry fall. 'So it does not help if you hurry from the rain to avoid your hair become acidic; it will get that anyway. But you can always use tap water and a nice bio degradable shampoo to clean if. Further, 'the acid water that precipitates on trees is not easily washed off but rather oozes into them in a way that ends up killing them, or in a strange sense, making them suffer'. It may be well to remember that the 1970's European and German interest in Environment started after noticing the vast damage which had been done by acid rain to the forests and individual trees.

Another dimension of the Western environmental concern is with regard to the vast amount of domestic garbage produced by each household. In Holland it amounts to 3,000 kg. Per household per year (p.109). The far more astounding quantity, it may be very specific to Holland which seems to thrive on meat and dairy industry, is of d u n g produced by the vast numbers of domestic animals which Holland has. Holland has a human population of 15,000,000 and ll0 million domestic animals (p.124). So there are eight animals to each human being, and each group of these eight animals, on the v. average, is sad to produce 60,000 kg. of dung per year (p.109). Two-thirds of this dung seems to result from cattle feed provided to Holland by countries like Brazil and Thailand out of sheer international economic compulsions. While Holland is thus .enmeshed in the stench of dung countries like Brazil, Thailand, etc., not only have less area producing food for their people but also-are deprived of essential organic nutrients for their soils. While only 2,400,000 hectares of land is cultivated in Holland (p,62) the Dutch farming industry commands the produce of some 15,000,000 hectares (p.72)-in other countries to supply it agricultural products for its food, meat and dairy industry.

The book goes on producing similar details and data about Dutch life and industry, and here and there sees signs of hope and a new beginning in which the European world and the rest of mankind may achieve a reasonable equity. One such sign is of the European world taking to organic agriculture. But while the number of agricultural farmers in Holland in 1986 was 108,000 (p.71) the number engaged in organic farming was just about 500 (p.81). That the productivity of organic agriculture amounts to less than 6% of the modern (p.61) is said to be one of the causes of the small number taking to organic farming. The other is that these organic farms do not receive any governmental funding or support, or even loans at normal farm interest rates, as the farms engaged in modern agriculture do. Consequently, food produced on these organic farms 'costs twice or three times as much as from other farms'. So much therefore for hope.

Perhaps, the greater value of 'A Vision from the South' is in its indirectly presenting the increasingly dependent and servile status of most of the non-European world in today's context. Even if the European world were to revert, say in the next fifty years, to organic agriculture and to a newly designed industrial structure which is much less injurious to the environment it would not solve any of the multiplying problems which the non-European world faces here and now. Hope is useful but determination, assertion and action is what would actually tell. The determination and assertion of a non-European way or of multiple ways, and its example and strength alone can make an effective intervention in bringing some equivalence in the relationship between the European world and the non-European world.

Yet there seem to be some signs, though halting, of such determination and assertion. For instance some of the participants who gathered in December at Paris reacting to the 'Draft Citizen Action Plan for the 1990s' placed before the conference came with a draft of their own and titled it 'Agenda South'. Its preamble stated:

1. The roots of our future should not grow out of the roots of the past of the last five centuries.
   
   
2. Over this period a few powerful political and economic actors based in the North (and now including Japan) have carried out a sustained and monstrous assault on nature everywhere, in the name of progress and development, throwing the lives of millions of ordinary people out of joint.
   
   
3. That assault continues today and shows no signs of abating, despite protests and Pleadings from citizens and earth groups based in the North. On the contrary the very same economic and Political actors get fatter, more prosperous and more powerful. They enhance their legitimacy and increase the reach of the so-called world-system to areas and peoples of the earth till now safely out of their reach or attention.
   
   
4. These activities of the dehumanized actors of the North during the last five hundred years have followed from a way of life and a perception of man and nature that seems inherent in Western culture, and defines Western man. This Western perception of man and nature is wholly alien to ideas of living in organic harmony with nature and earth, which have formed the basis of all major non-Western cultures.
   
   
5. These powerful actors now seek to colonies the environment movement and the forces that have made this movement the most vibrant and unsettling phenomenon of the present time. Through UNCED these actors which include Western governments, including that of Japan, international financial institutions and multinational corporations, now seek to gain a fresh level of legitimacy without having to discontinue any of their current activities. We do not wish to be part of this new wave of environmental colonization.
   
   
6. The best that can therefore be achieved in the circumstances of today, when the economic and political elite of the North has began to claim an environmental consciousness and sensitivity, is to bring the environments of the South completely out of the control of the North, and thus from the injurious effects of Western ways of thought and living. The North at the same time should utilize its newly discovered environmental sensitivities to learn to live a lifestyle that reduces and reverses damage to the environment of the earth.
   
   
7. The Knowledge and wisdom of the indigenous people of the South ensured survival and health of the environment over centuries. It is these sources that the world must return to for solution to the present crisis, for which the North has little to offer.

Moving from the preamble the 'Agenda South' asked its signatories to resolve:

1. The idea of establishing a global environmental regime with powers to enforce its decisions and direction is for these reasons rejected. Any such global authority shall necessarily be dominated by the physical and fiscal power of the North and thus shall be polluted by the environmentally destructive Western ways of thought and living.
   
   
2. The international financial institutions like the World Bank, which continue to finance disruptive projects across the planet, shall not be vested with any environmental jurisdiction.
   
   
3. In place of the global environmental regime, possibilities of establishing regional environmental conventions between countries of similar geographical and cultural endowments should be seriously explored. The countries of Europe thus should have an environmental convention among them and take concerted actions to preserve their own environments. This European convention may also include in its other countries like the U.S.A., Canada and Australia which are predominantly populated by people of Western stock. The need of an environmental discipline is in fact the most urgent amongst these countries alone. These countries of the South, like those of South Asia, South-East Asia and various .regions of Africa and also Latin America may also work towards establishing compact regional conventions, as and when the need arises. At a later stage these various regional conventions can interact among themselves to evolve some global conventions.
   
   The people of the South however reject any global authority or conventions that may be imposed by the forces upholding the present world system. The people of the South are already choked with the various international regimes that control and inhibit their actions and make it impossible for them to live out their own life-styles. They do not need another international authority exercising control over them in the name of environmental protection.
   
   The organizing principles of the South are in fact based upon local communities coming together to look after their own affairs. Regional and larger authorities can evolve only out of the mutual interaction between the autonomous and sovereign local communities. This-Southern process of starting from local level organizations to larger ones alone can be acceptable to the South in the matter of environmental regime also. Any regime imposed from above therefore must be firmly rejected.
   
   
4. Any fund established for the purpose of environmental protection and up gradation shall be in the form of reparations paid by the North for the damage it has caused to the environment of the earth through its actions during the last five hundred years. Since these funds are in the nature of reparations paid for injuries caused, those who are responsible for the injuries shall have no control on such funds. The environmental reparations funds shall be put in the control of a body constituted exclusively of the governments and non-governmental organizations of the South. This body shall be empowered to decide on the ways of distribution and utilization of these reparations funds. The principles of distribution shall however take into consideration the extent of damage caused to the natural environment in a particular region or country through the actions of the North'.

The participants who signed the Agenda South not only came from the non-European world but were also joined in their declaration by some of the participants from Italy, Great Britain, Romania, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil and Japan. Signatories from the non-European world came from Malaysia/ Fiji, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Sir Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.


Author: Dharampal

EUROPE AND THE NON-EUROPEAN WORLD SINCE 1492-1991

To achieve any serious comprehension of the concepts of Environment and Development, their varying meanings from different standpoints and seemingly unending clash, one has to go back several centuries. An attempt is made in this paper to provide a backdrop to our present dilemma by briefly looking into the major events of the past five centuries, especially as represented by the experience of India. An effort is also being made to reflect on how the world has been affected by what has happened, on the surface of the Earth, in terms of thought processes as well as events since about 1942. This attempt may in some little way help us to better comprehend, and perhaps suggest steps to resolve, the dilemma we face.

1492: The Beginnings

The modem discovery of the non-European world by Europe began five hundred years ago when Christopher Columbus and his sailors reached the islands of the Americas in 1492. The search of Columbus, and of several other contemporary European navigators, was in fact for a sea passage to India and to the lands of South-East Asia. The new theory, which some European scientists had propounded, some years [earlier, that the] Earth was like a sphere, is said to have persuaded Columbus to sail Westward to ultimately reach the Eastern lands like India and others in the Indian region! Western Europe, till then had no idea that a vast continent, later named America from around 1550 A.D., stretching more or less from the North Pole to the South Pole, lay in between Europe and Africa on the one hand and China and India on the other.

Such however, was the drive of late fifteenth century Europe, perhaps in some way linked to the events of the Black Death which had swept Europe for about a century till around 1450, that merely six years later in 1498 a sea passage to India was found by going eastward around Africa. The finding of this passage may have been helped by Asian navigators, who are said to have assisted Vasco da Gama in reaching Calicut on the Kerala coast of India in 1498. In another forty to fifty years Europe had more or less encircled the Earth. One of the dramatic representations of such encircling was the presence of the members of the newly established Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, in a place as distant and civilization as distinct from Europe as Japan, by around 1540. A further demonstration of the European drive and vigor is provided by the fact that in another sixty years, by the early 17th century, around 4,00,000 Japanese had been converted to Christianity through the labors of the Jesuits.

Early European Conquests

It is not as if the people who inhabited the lands, which from the late sixteenth century came to be known as Europe, had no contact with the rest of the world before 1492. Europe had interactions with the lands of West Asia, of Persia, even with certain border areas of India and with North America, since the days of European antiquity. It is believed that Rome had a mutual trade with coastal Tamilnadu, in South India, around the beginning of the Christian era. Similarly, parts of China seem to have been known to Europe from around the 7th century A.D.

The phenomena of discovery, conquest, expansion, etc., do not begin with 1492. These may be as old as the beginning of man on earth. The young adventurer Alexander is said to have entered north-western India as early as 326 B.C. It is true that he did not succeed in bringing -any significant part of India under Greek dominance. Around a thousand years later, in the 7th century A.D., the Arabs under the banner of Islam reached and conquered parts of Southern Europe as well as Sindh in Western India. Later at the end of the 11th century, during the time of the Crusaders, Europe conquered, occupied and ruled large parts of Byzantium, West Asia and the older lands of Turkey supported by the Roman Christian church and led by the sons of West European landed aristocracy.

India it seems did not engage in such widespread conquest, perhaps because it had every material thing it wanted within its own vast and fertile land, or, it may be that India did not have such ambitions and inclinations, or it lacked the crusading zeal necessary for such adventures. Yet, its scholars, Pandits and Buddhist Bhikshus seem to have travelled to and settled in various parts of Asia as early as the beginning of the Indian Vikrami era, over 2,000 years ago.

A New Theory of Conquest

The discoveries, conquests and expansions of Europe since 1492 evidently belong to a different genre. It is possible that the methodology of these conquests was not very different from that which the states of ancient Greece or Rome had pursued in the days of European antiquity. The methodology of conquest which the British adopted from about the 16th century seems in many ways quite akin to what William the conqueror and his successors had adopted from the mid-llth century onwards in the conquest and subordination of England. The major vehicles of the post mid-15th century European worldwide conquest however were called the merchant and trading companies, while for the 11th to 14th century crusades, once they had got going, it were the religious and military orders of medieval European Christianity that served as vehicles of extending conquest and subsequent consolidation. One pre-1492 instance of the new methodology of conquest is provided by a charter of Henry VII of England issued in 1482. It granted to one John Cabot and his sons the license to occupy and set up the King's banners and ensigns, 'in any town, city, castle, island or mainland whatsoever, newly found by them' anywhere in the 'eastern, western and northern sea, belonging to 'heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of the world placed, which before this time were unknown to all Christians'. The King empowered them to 'conquer, occupy and possess' all such places, the main condition being, that they will give in turn to the King 'the fifth part of the whole capital gained' in every voyage by their enterprises (1). There were innumerable such charters issued by the various rulers of Europe perhaps from about 1450 and extending to more or less our own times.

Another instance of the new methodology as practiced by England is provided in relation to its neighbor, Ireland. Writing in early 17th century, Sir John Davies, English attorney general for Ireland, Suggested the following as a more effective policy for Ireland: The defects which hindered the Perfection of the Conquest of Ireland were of two kinds, and consisted: first, in the faint prosecution of the Ware, and next, in the looseness of the civil Government. For, the husbandman must first break the Land, before it be made capable of good seed (2) and when it is thoroughly broken and manure, if he do not forthwith cast food seed into it, it will grow wiled again and bear nothing but weeds. So a barbarous country must be first broken by a ware, before it will be capable of good Government; and when it is fully subdued and conquered, it be not well-planted and governed after the conquest, it will oft-soonest return to the former Barbarisms'.

European Conquest of the Americas

From about 1500 Europe was expanding not only in the west but towards the east as well. In the west its targets were the vast lands of the Americans, and their mineral and forest wealth. This led to the increasing settlement of the people of Europe on the islands near the Americas as well as on the eastern mainland of north, central and south America. The indigenous people who inhabited the Americas at the time of European discovery in 1492 are estimated to have numbered around 9 to 11.2 corers (90-112 millions) (3). The population of Europe then was around 6 to 7 corers (60-70 millions). Innumerable wars were waged on the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, and these continued for some 400 years, till practically all of them were physically annihilated. Attempts were made to enslave them and to use them as labor in mining, on the newly started plantations, and in similar other occupations. But this did not work out. Practically all of them seem to have preferred annihilation to slavery.

Even more than the wars with the newcomers of Europe; it was the diseases of Europe, carried to the Americas by European men and their accompaniments that were fatal to the people of America. The populations of whole regions got wiped out after they were visited by the newcomers. For instance, there was a major plague in New England in North America around 1618. Before the contact with Europe the people of the Americas were not exposed to, and therefore had no immunity against, many of the malignant diseases which had ravaged the European world: small pox and measles, and very likely, tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, typhus and various venereal infections. (4). ‘To one Englishman who arrived in New England in 1625,' the large scale elimination of the original inhabitants appeared to be the work of providence'. He thought that such elimination made the region,' ‘so much more fit for the English nation to inhabit it, and erect in it temples to the Glory of God'. Around the same time another Englishman reported, 'God had laid open this country for us, and slain the most parts of the inhabitants by cruel wars and a mortal disease. (5)'. Fifty years later a description of New York stated,’ It hath been generally observed that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians either by wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal Disease'. And the writer added that,' it is to be admired, how strangely they have decrease by the Hand of God, since the English first settling of those parts; for since my time, where there were six towns, they are reduced to two small villages. (6)'. By the mid 18th century, periapts from a much earlier date, some of the European diseases, like smallpox and a variety of plagues, seem to have been consciously and deliberately introduced by the newcomers amongst the indigenous American people. In 1763, at any rate, small-pox wes consciously and deliberately introduced in North America by the British military commander when he gave orders that he 'wished to hear of no prisoners should any of the villains be met with in arms', and added that 'he had heard that small pox had broken out at Fort Pitt and wondered whether the disease could not be spread to good advantage'. To this one of his military colonels replied that, .T will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself. (7)'. The 20th century practice of introducing fatal human, animal and plant diseases amongst the enemy' seems to have fairly old European precedents.

Slave Labor and Indenture

The discovery and occupation of the Americas created an urgent need for labor. As the indigenous people of the Americas Could not be made to undertake such labor, and as European man on his own could not manage the mines, cut the forests, or run the plantations, Europe began to capture the youths and adults of western and central Black Africa, and those who survived the battles of capturing were forced into slavery. They were then shipped to the Americas. The number of those who actually reached the shores of America, or the Atlantic islands from about 1500 to 1870 is placed, on the basis of shipping records, at around one corer (10 million) (8). Taking into account the casualties in the varied processes of capturing, in transporting from inland to the African coast, in loading into ships, and of those who perished on the ships during the long voyages, the total black African population actually involved in the whole process might have been, a at moderate estimate, around 5 corers (50 millions). It could possibly have been even as high as 10 cores (100 millions). This estimate however does not take account of the disruption in the social structure of the affected areas of Africa, of the large scale deprivation of adult males in these societies, and of the new diseases which European instruction would have introduced into Africa.

By 1770 the proportion of these enslaved persons in the total population of the British and French Caribbean was 91 percent, in North America 22 percent and in the southern United States 40 percent. In the U.S.A., as it was then, it was 19.3 percent of the total non-indigenous inhabitants in 1970, the people of European stock being around 80 percent. The proportion of the African people in the United States of America went down to 11.8 percent by 1900 (10). The original inhabitants evidently were not counted at all either in 1790 or 1900.

In addition, European men and later women too, belonging to what were termed as the lower orders, (in Britain the term was used till around 1900) were forced into a state of indenture for a number of years and shipped to the Americas. Being fellow Europeans their condition and future was less harsh and held more promise as after the period of indenture they were made free, given some land and allowed to work on their own. The annual emigration of such indentured servants from the English port of Bristol to North America was around 400 annually from 1655 to 1678, from London in 1684 it was 764, and from 1745 to 1775 the number of indentured servants who reached Annapolis in North America from Britain was 19,920. These latter included 9,360 who were termed convicts (11). The large scale indenturing of people from India in the 19th century and their being shipped to British possessions in South East Asia, South Africa, and the Atlantic islands was only a replication and extension of this earlier European practice.

The institution of slavery had existed in Europe from the days of European antiquity. Slavery in the states of ancient Greece and in pre-Christian Rome seems to have been practiced on a massive scale. In Athens of circa 432 B.C., around the time of Socrates, the number of slaves is estimated at 1,15,000 out of a total population of 3,17,000. Besides there were 38,000 Metals and their families. In Sparta the proportion of slaves is estimated to be far larger. In 371 B.C. Sparta, in the age of Plato, the number of Helots (slaves) ranged from 1,40,000 to 2,00,000 and of periodic (sort of slaves) from 40,000 to 60,000 in a total population of 1,90,000 to 2,70,000. The number of Spartiates (full citizens) was a mere 2,500 to 3,000, their families numbered from 7,000 to 9,000 and Spartiates with inferior rights numbered 1,500 to 2,000 (12).

Eastward Expansion: The Early Phase

Simultaneously with Europe's expansion in the Americas, and its interventions in Africa, Europe was also expanding eastwards into the lands of Asia. Within 10 to 12 years ‘of the discovery of the sea passage to India Europe had occupied Goa and the territory around it. The early impact of Europe in India may be gauged from the fact that by mid-sixteenth century the rulers of the great Vijayanagara had begun to rely on the Portuguese for arms, and by the early 17th century, Jahangir, the Mugharuer of the Delhi empire, was seeking English help in clearing the sea routes, of those who were termed as pirates, between western India on the one hand and the Persian Gulf and Arabia on the other. By 1550 Europe's presence was being felt in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, the Indonesian islands and other neighboring areas.

During the 17th century, Europe seems to have established its supremacy on the coasts of south and east Africa, Arabia, India and many other lands up to China. All this was done through the medium of the various East India companies which had been sponsored, or given charters by the various states of Europe, and had the protection of their naval as well as land forces.

According to a contemporary writer, the English Tied places of trust conferred upon them, both in civil and military branches' of the government of Siam (Thailand) much before 1687. One Englishman was Shawbandar or custom-master at Mirju and TanacarinV, and another Englishman was as high as 'admiral of the King’s fleeing (13). The Dutch and the Portuguese who had greater influence in South-East Asia in the 17th century might have held many more such situations in the areas where they were dominant.

While the large scale division of Africa amongst the European nations dates to the latter half of the 19th century, European penetration and domination in Black Africa goes back to the early 16th century. Staging posts were established at various points on the African coast - west, south and east - soon after the discovery of the passage to India and to South-East and East Asia. Enslavement of the Africans for transportation, firstly from about 1450 to the islands around the Mediterranean and then to the Americas, led to European penetration into the heart of Africa. The discovery of areas suitable for European colonization and of mineral wealth, initially in South Africa, made the dominance complete. For many areas this had happened by about 1700. During the latter part of the eighteenth century, Europe penetrated into Australasia, and the islands around it, a replication of what had happened in the Americas happened here also.

Till about 1700 there were no major European incursions into the mainland of India. India perhaps was too vast and too complex, a n d China even more so. So t h e attempt seems to have been aimed at encircling India first, to cut its links with other lands, and then, when the opportunity offered, to directly conquer it. While the incursions began by the early eighteenth century, the major offensive to conquer areas of India started only about 1750, initially in the Madras area, and ten years later in Bengal. From then onwards the process of conquest continued for nearly a century till about 1850. China was even vaster; and more inaccessible than India and European incursions into China consequently began later, after 1800. By 1850 Europe had gained mastery over the whole world.

Pre-British Indian Society: Political Formation

In comparison to the near total annihilation of the indigenous inhabitants of trie Americas, and later of those of Australasia, and a very violent disruption of political, social and cultural life in western and central Africa by treating its young and adult males as merchandise, the treatment of Asia by Europe looks fairly mild. The natural descendants of the people who inhabited the lands of Asia before 1498, when Europe discovered the sea passage to them, continue to inhabit these lands even 500 years later. The impact of Europe on the Asian lands however was accompanied with continual violence, and as their people physically survived the European onslaught, their social and mental disruption over time went much deeper.

The nature of the non-European societies and the distinctive impact upon them can perhaps be well illustrated by a reference to India. One of the major characteristics of India has been its emphasis ‘on communities based on shared localities as well as relations of kinship termed as jatis, in contrast to the preference for individuation in 'non-Slav Europe. The number of localities in the India of 1947 was around 7,00,000. 'Their number a thousand or two thousand years earlier might not have been very different. The number of the main jatis, sometimes with different names in differing regions of India, is not more than one hundred. One of the characteristics of a jatis is the sharing of one or more specific occupations amongst those who are bam into a jatis or those who at some earlier period would have got admitted to it. A sort of inter-relatedness or complementarily of the jatis and also of localities makes up Indian society. This not only applies to the Hindus, who even today form some 85 I percent of the Indian people. Those who have been converted to Islam and Christianity in the past 800 and 200 years respectively are organized and interlinked more or less similarly.

Given this characteristic of the jatis, India has been basically a society of consensus amongst the groups living in any particular region or locality. It was complementarily and relatedness amongst groups within localities, and more so within regions, which has shaped India's polity for the past two thousand years and more. This interrelatedness and the consensus, which grew out of it, seem to be the major elements that define the Indian concept of dharma. Indian civilization is based on this sense of dharma and a shared view of the past. It is not as if there were no tensions or differences between locality and locality, region and adjoining regions, or between the various interpretations of dharma. The Indian mind, however, seems to have been mounded by a common basic approach to life and phenomena, and this has ordinarily overridden the local tensions and differences.

Given such characteristics India has been a slow moving society and as a society not easily disturbed by events. Consensus, equivalence and balance have been more important to India than the most alluring images of a new future. It is not as if no -movement or change occurs at all. But the change or rather the movement socially acceptable in India has been such that it does not destroy the consensus and the balance. Hence the role of the polity in India was not that of a guide, or that of a superman as preferred by Plato, or of a controller but merely of performing the task of an administrator functioning in accordance with the customs and preferences of the locality or the region. This naturally led to a civilization confederal polity in which - while its parts shared common basic ideas and features, one with the other, yet the linkages amongst them were considered loose the flexible. The ancient concept of Chakravartin seems to have been evolved to serve as a symbol of the confederal nature of India as well as of its shared civilization expressions. The symbol of the Chakravartin also probably provided a sense of strength and invincibility to this confederal polity.

Such-a polity seems to have served India well for a long time. Despite European theories about the non-Indian origin of the people of India, it is perhaps correct to say that India, the ancient region of Bharatavarsha, has been one of the least conquered areas on earth. It is not as if the people inhabiting it are necessarily of one ethnic stock. Some immigrants did enter India, largely through India's western land borders, from time to time. But till about the end of the 12th century A.D. India was ruled by its own people and polities. Even the Islamic conquests and domination of part of India from the 13th century onwards to the early 18th century, while creating occasional havoc and political and economic disruption in the conquered regions, did not in any basic way disturb the tenor of Indian society and its arrangements. The Islamic intervention however did make, as time passed, much of Indian society weaker and fearful, and uncertain of its own inner strength. Such weakness and sense of uncertainty also possibly has roots in some of India's ancient concepts.

The sense of courage in India however was not wholly lost even till the early 19th century. During the period of early British dominance there was widespread resistance to what by Indian norms was considered unrighteousness. The major resistance was in the form of persuading the unrighteous, or the wrongdoer, of the unrighteousness of his conduct and makes him return to the shared norm. The techniques adopted in current idiom were of non-cooperation, boycott, civil-disobedience, and what Mahatma Gandhi implied by the term Satyagraha: Such resistance was expressed by the peasantry, the artisan classes, as well as by those who lived in towns and cities. A major instance of it was in 1810-11 in the ancient city of Varanasi, and in several other towns of the present Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where a tax on houses had been imposed by the British. Contemporary evidence suggests that various inhabitants of the Varanasi region, including the peasantry and the artisans, especially the, metal workers and other technologists, were party to, this unarmed resistance. Some 20,000 persons were reported to have sat on dharma in Varanasi for many days, and around 2,00,000 persons were reported to have gathered in the grounds adjoining the city. Even those who assisted in the cremation of the dead had struck work and the dead were placed in the flowing Ganga without cremation rites (14). Innumerable cases of such resistance are recorded during the early years of British A mode of compelling compliance with a righteous demand flowing from shared norms, by sitting at the door of the person perceived to have violated the norm, and there remaining without tasting food till the demand shall be complied with rule and these occurred practically in all regions of India, There was major resistance against the British enhancement of the tax on salt in the city of Surat even as late as 1843(15).

Early British and other European observations of 17th and 18th century India seem to suggest that till then it were not the people who were in awe of their rulers but instead it were the rulers who stood in awe of the people under their rule (16). If the ruler was considered unrighteous or unjust, the norm was to replace him. Such a norm also implied an inbuilt courtesy between the ruler and the ruled, and when one visited the other it was customary that each gave some gift to the other. The one who came to visit came with some gift, often nominal, and on departure was offered a gift, often a substantial one, from the host. Even persons appearing before judicial authority seems to have expected and received pan-super (betel and betel nut) at the time of their departure (17).

Pre-British Indian Society: Material Culture

Coming to India's material culture , its manifestations a r e v e r y visibly commemorated in India's still standing great temples, some of which go back at least to the 6th century A.D. in the innumerable inscriptions India still possesses, like the early 10th century A.D. inscription at Uttiramerur near Madras relating to the organization of the area's polity in India's ancient small, medium and large water works; and in the large number of ancient iron pillars, like the well known iron pillar at Delhi. Though most of the hitherto published material, both Indian and western, does not make much reference to it/such a material culture was still very manifest in most regions and localities of India around A.D. 1800. It is possible that it had declined in its excellence and sweep relative to the heights it had reached before the 12th century A.D. But even if it had lost its heights, it was still very extensive on the ground till about'1800.

India seems to have been divided from long back into some 400 smaller regions, now called districts, and into some 15-20 main linguistic and cultural regions. Most regions and districts of India continued to have spinning, dyeing, weaving and printing of cotton cloth and of some silk and wool too, on a vast scale. Cloth was manufactured in practically all the 400 districts. Many districts of south India had 10,000 to 20,000 looms in each district even around 1810 (18). Similarly it seems that at a moderate estimate India had some 10,000 furnaces for the manufacture of iron and steel. Indian steel was considered of very high quality and in the early decades of the 19th century it was being used by the British for the making of surgical instruments. Each of these small portable furnaces had the capacity to produce about 20 tons of good iron in 40 weeks of operation in a year.

There were large numbers of silversmiths and goldsmiths, bronze and brass workers and people who worked in various other metals. Similarly there were those who did the mining of the ores, the-manufacture of various metals, and engaged in stone-quarrying. There were carvers of stones, painters, builders, and many others. Besides, there were manufacturers of sugar, of salt, of oil (perhaps up to 1 percent of the people), and manufacturers of many other commodities. Crafts and industry seem to have employed some 15 to 25 percent of the Indian people, the proportion varying from region to region, before and around 1800. In addition there was part time spinning of cotton yarn. Eight hours of weaving on a loom would have ordinarily needed about 25 hours of spinning on the spinning wheel. As the number of weaver households was around 5 percent of the total households, it seems that most households of India would have engaged in some spinning throughout the year. Regarding the health of human beings, as also of domestic animals, Indians had a well established ancient system of medicine and surgery. Basic plastic surgery, and surgical operation of cataract etc., was being performed in various parts of India till around 1800. Incidentally, modern plastic surgery in Britain is stated by its inventor to have been derived from and developed after the observation and study of the Indian practice from 1790 onwards. The widespread Indian practice of inoculation against smallpox was also observed and described in detail by British visitors or residents in India around mid-18th century for the benefit of British medical men. It may be added that practically all detailed descriptions of each and every Indian practice communicated by British observers and specialists to Britain was with a view to the improvement of such practice in Britain, or suggesting that the adoption of a specific practice would be beneficial. A detailed communication to the British Royal Society by a British commander-in-chief in Bengal, around 1770, was of the latter type. It related to the process of the artificial manufacture of ice in the relatively warm climate of the Allahabad region. The instances of the former are many. Some seed drills were sent from south India to the Board of Agriculture in London around 1795 so as to help improve the newly introduced British seed drill. Details of the process and ingredients of Indian mortar and dyes, and of the manufacture of steel communicated to Britain seem to have aimed at improvement in the then existing British practices (19). When Britain started the education of its ordinary children around 1800 it had to initially depend on the monitorial method of imparting school education as it was practiced in India and noticed by Europeans during the 17th and 18th centuries (20). The major occupation of the Indian people was agriculture, and along with it animal husbandry. However, in most regions no more than half of India's people were engaged in agriculture directly. As mentioned above, the tools of agriculture were of high sophistication. But so also seem to have, been the various agricultural practices, including the selection of the seeds used, their preservation, the maturing of land, the cropping patterns and the methods of irrigation. Through their sophisticated practices and implements the peasants of India were able to obtain rather high yields. According to a 1803 British review comparing agricultural production in the Allahabad-Varanasi region with that of lands in Britain, it was found that the Indian production of wheat was about 2-1/2 to J times that in Britain. Recent ongoing research pertaining to the district of Chengalpattu in Tamilnadu seems to suggest that the average production of paddy in this district around 1770 was around 3-4 tons per hectare, and the best lands in the district produced six tons and more per hectare. It may be mentioned that the high yields of paddy production in the world today are around six tons per hectare.

A certain balance and equivalence may also be deduced from the consumption pattern around 1800 A.D. A detailed description of it is available from the 1806 districts of Bellary and Cuddapah. The whole population was divided into three classes the high, the families of medium means and those of low means. In the Bellary district the population in the high category totaled 2,59,568 of the medium means 3,72,887 and of those of low means 2,18,684. Their annual consumption expenditure per family in money value was in the proportion of 69:37:30. Every facility consumed the same amount of food-grains, but of differing quality and variety according to the class. The consumption list included 24 items. The consumption of ghee and oil was in the proportion of 3:1:1 approximately, and of pulses in the proportion of 8:4:3 (21).

The Chengalpattu District Data

The society and political economy of mid-18th century India is perhaps well represented and illustrated by the information recorded in a detailed survey of the district of Chengalpattu, in Tamil Nadu, during 1767-1774 (22). While very detailed, the survey was the first of its kind, and was done by the British, who till then were not too familiar with the intricacies of Indian society, and its production methods and industrial infrastructure. The data from this survey may therefore be treated as an approximation the ground reality, and it is possible that it missed certain things which existed on the ground, or understated many others. An obvious understatement, for instance, pertains to the number of salt-manufacturers, which are given as 39, while the district of Chengalpattu had a coast-line of over 100 kilometers, and salt-pans covering an area of over 2,000 hectares. It is possible that in this case the survey recorded only those who were engaged in the supervision of salt-manufacture and not the number of actual manufacturers. The following tables taken from this data may be helpful in comprehending the circa 1770 society of Chengalpattu, and thus the society of India as it was till the latter part of the 18th century.

I. Total Land Area:

(For 1910 localities, in kani; one kani is a little more than 0.50 hectares)

Total Land	7,79,132
Under hills and rivers	36,099
Waste	84,973
Salt-pans	4,190
Irrigation sources (lakes, tanks, etc.)	1,00,806
Wood	1,30,790
Tope (groves/plantations)	14,055
Habitat	24,088
Uncultivated irrigated land	58,667
Uncultivated unirrigated land	50,622
Cultivated irrigated	1,82,172
Cultivated unirrigated	88,069

Out of the total cultivated land a substantial proportion was known as manyam, (in Bengal as chakeran, and bazee zameen), that is the cultivated land the land-tax of which had been assigned, usually in perpetuity, to the sustenance and support of various administrative, economic, cultural and religious functions, institutions and persons. The amount of such cultivated manyams in 1770 Chengalpattu was 44,057 tarns of irrigated and 22,684 tarn's of unirrigated lands. In many-other areas, both in north and south India, about half of the cultivated land had, in the course of time, but perhaps most of it by the 10-12th century A.D. been assigned as manyams. The number of institutions and persons having such rights in any district ran into tens of thousands, and in one district in Bengal, there were over 70,000 claimants of such assignments around 1770 A.D.

II. Total Number of Cattle, Goats and Sheep (for 1544 localities):

Cows	94,685
Buffaloes	5,417
Goats	14,931
Sheep	14,970
Bullocks	59,550

The period from 1748 to 1770 is a period of war, plunder and butchering of men as well as cattle in large parts of South India, and much more in areas around Madras. It is therefore possible that the number of cattle recorded in this survey was much less at the time of enumeration than what it might have been twenty years earlier.

III. Total Number of Households (for 1544 localities)

Total Households			62,529
Peasantry and Cattle-keeping			33,963
	Vellalas	7,411
	Pollys	9,693
	Pariars	11,052
	Reddys	1,417
	Kammawars	1,005
	Cow-keepers	2,573
	Shanars	812
	Crafts and Industry
	Weavers	4,011
		85
	Cotton-Refiners	536
	Carpenters	394
	Ironsmiths	45
		209
	Artificers	637
	Braziers and Gold and Silver Smiths	389
	Vegetable oil manufacturers
	Pot-makers
	Wood-cutters	596
	Salt manufacturers	39
	Fishermen	590
	Shoemakers	78
	Stone-cutters	89
	Others (approx.)	500
Merchants, Traders and Banking			4,312
	Chettis	2,051
	Other Traders	1,839
	Shroffs (Banking)	422
Essential Services			1,685
	Barbers	664
	Washermen	862
	Medicalmen	159
Scholarship, higher learning ritual performances, and culture			8,684
	Brahmins	6,646
	Pandarams	1,054
	Devadasis	622
	Valluvans	137
	Wochuns	173
	Musicians	27
	Kootadi (stage performers)	25
Administration and Police			2,681
	Kanakkappillai(Registry/Record-keeping/Accountancy)	1,660
	Panisevans	314
	Taliars	707
	Militia System	1,479
	Muslims	733
	Moormen	671
	Fakirs	62
	Remaining Other Households	748

IV. Allocation of Produce Besides the assignments of the tax from manyam lands (or from the Chakeran and Bazee zameen in north India) to various institutions and persons, many of the same institutions and persons, and many others, also received a share of the gross agricultural produce, and quite possibly similar shares from the incomes of those engaged in non-agricultural activities, like commerce, finance and industry. It seems that a quarter of the total gross agricultural production was so allocated, and these allocations, starting from the allocation to the main local temple or shrine, were the first charge on the production. In Chengalpattu these allocations were around 27 percent of the total gross agriculture production of the district. The following table indicates the major allocations worked out on the basis of production data of 1458 localities in kalams, for a variety of institutions and persons. One kalam is roughly equal to 125 kilograms.

Total Agricultural Produce			14,79,646
Total Allocations			3,94,950
For Institutions and Occupations within each locality			2,64,824
	Local Kovils (temples, shrines)	13,882
	Pandarams/ Devadasis /Astrologers	18,503
	Cultivator/servants	87,504
(possibly majority of them were from amongst the Pariars)
	Irrigation Fund	19,806
	Artificers (Carpenters/Irorisrhiths)	19,470
	Potters	2,749
	Barbers	6,169
	Washer men	6,058
	Corn measurers	11,561
	Shroffs	9,332
	Kanakkappilhis	31,624
	Panisevans	3,110
	Tottys	1371
	Chief Inhabitants	31,197
	Various Others	2,488
For outside Institutions and Persons			130,126
	Great Kovib/Mathams (places of higher learning)
	Scholars	25321
	Administration	53,572
	Palayakkarans (Militia)	45,936
	Fakirs/Mosques/Dargahs	2,518
Various Others			2,779

Degradation of Physical Resources

Along with the degradation of the dignity- of the. Indian people and the disorganization of their agriculture, education, industry, and technology, etc., there also took place an extensive destruction of the physical resources, and degradation of the natural environment. To an extent the degradation of the forests and the water sources in large parts of India was the result of deprivation of resources from and of attention to them following the establishment of an alien order. But it is also known that British-Indian forest policy, as European policy elsewhere, saw forests of India as reservoirs of accumulated wealth which needed to be mined and transport orated to Europe. As early as 1750 to 1800 timber syndicates by private Europeans were formed in many parts of India," especially in Malabar, whose forests were said to be inexhaustible. From around 1805 London started insisting on direct government control of all forests. When parts of Burma were annexed by the British in 1826, after the defeat of Burma in the first Anglo-Burmese war, the forests there were declared to be government property straight away. And, from the port of Moulmein alone one million ton of teak was exported during 1840 to 1848 (23). From the 1850's the development of railways and other industrial needs of Britain put far larger demands on Indian forests. Thus arose the forest policy and the forest legislations which in a period of 25 years between 1855 to 1880 made the entire forest wealth of India into British state property.

But this exploitation of forests as reservoirs of accumulated wealth and their consequent destruction was perhaps not peculiar to British policy in India, and the policy the British introduced in India was merely a replication of what was being done in Europe and the Americas, but perhaps executed much more ruthlessly in India. Europe looked upon nature as merely a material resource provided by the creator for human exploitation. This assumption led to intense destruction of forests in Europe. But the end of the 17th century only 14.2% England was wooded, and by 1823 this proportion had come down to 4.3%. In France around 1800 only l/12th of the land was under wood.

By the early 1840s decay was spreading in the political economy of India at a much faster pace. Around the same time information had reached London from North America that the wholesale destruction of forests there had an adverse effect on rainfall. This made London anxious and the British governments in Bengal, Bombay and Madras were asked to make proper enquiries about the matter. The matter was enquired into in the Madras Presidency and most of the British officers in the districts agreed with the widely held Indian opinion that more rain falls in mountains and forests than in the areas bereft of forests. In 1849 the Madras Board of Revenue and the government of Madras however came to somewhat different conclusions. Their conclusions were:

1. That extensive tracts of ground covered with trees in the level countries of India have not the power of producing rain.
   
   
2. That while their effect on the climate and productiveness of the country is problematical all large tracts of jungle in tropical climates are known to produce most fatal malaria and fever.
   
   
3. That if the country was planted to such an extent as might be supposed likely to be productive of rain, the result in a sanitary point of view might be more pernicious on the climate of India in which there are already so many noxious effluvia' (24).
   

With such rationality as the environmental principle, deforestation gained a new legitimacy.

The wars waged by the British, French, and earlier by the Portuguese in different parts of India led to frequent widespread plunder and chaos. During 1750-1800 many of India's rulers saved their people and territories by offering such amounts of money to the British and the French which the invaders claimed they would have had from the plunder of the particular territory. Others who got subordinated to the conquerors, but not yet formally dispossessed of their territories, were made to pay for the conqueror's armed forces, and further were expected to keep the commanders, other officers and influential British and French persons in good humor. As and when such rulers had no cash resources left they were made to borrow cash from the commanders and other men who had amassed large wealth or wielded political power for defraying such imposed expenses. The borrowed sum was repaid with interest of around 50 percent per annum. For repayment of these sums such subordinated rulers had either to greatly enhance the rates of taxes, especially the tax on land, in their territory, or made to surrender particular areas to the respective lenders, so that the latter could extract the maximum from the area towards the amount which he claimed was owed to him.

Backed by the organizational skills of Europe, and helped by the breakdown of the morale and institutions of the conquered, the society of India tumbled down in time in most parts of India. Most of the sources which had maintained the institutional structures of India through manyams, large allocations from the gross agricultural produce, and in other ways were in time taken over by the conquerors. The principle was that only that much must be left with the producer which would allow mere subsistence and that the complex Indian infrastructure must get disbanded. It was decided that not more than five percent of the cultivated land should be treated as manyam, and no more than five percent of the gross produce should be left with communities to be disposed of as allocations to institutions and persons. As institutions appeared to be a greater threat to British dominance, these were treated far more harshly and attempts were made either to dismantle them through neglect and coercion, or to convert them into personal estates. Such a message from the highest British authority of India got conveyed even to the new Maharaja of Mysore, soon after the restoration of the ancient Mysore kingship in 1799. Such approach was further accompanied with the enhancement in the rates of tax on land, and taxes on trades, occupations, and commodities. During the initial 100 years of British rule in most parts of India, the tax on land was enhanced to 50 percent of the gross agricultural produce. Till then those who had received the tax from manyam l a n d s (or chakeram a n d bazee zameen) had been receiving no more t h a n 12 to 16 percent of the gross produce as their share. Matters however did not stop at the fixing of 50 percent as tax on the gross agricultural produce. The decay of the political economy produced a long depression and the tax on some of the most fertile lands in time was much more than the value of their agricultural produce. Similar changes happened in industry and trade. In the meanwhile as the resources for maintenance were terminated or greatly reduced public works, temples, mathams, chatrams, well, tanks, in fact the whole irrigation system of India, collapsed by about 1840. Only when such a collapse began to substantially affect the receipts of the land tax, some repairs were started, largely through forced local labor, and some new irrigation works also began to be constructed. At this stage it was decided to reduce the land tax from the theoretical 50 percent to 33 percent of the total gross produce. Such a step began to be implemented in most regions of India only sometime after 1860 A.D.

Indian Responses: Gandhi and Nehru

With the collapse of the political economy and the social infrastructure, learning, sophistication, frequent public celebrations and festivals also went under. Literacy also declined. Even in the relatively decayed 1820s the number of school-age boys going to school in southern India was at least 25 percent and many more were educated in their homes. This proportion was no more than one-eighth sixty years later in the 1880s. Scholarship and higher learning decayed even more. The process of alienation which by stages began to take hold of the literati of India, from about 1820, well nigh eliminated most such scholarship and learning by about 1890 or 1900. By then it seemed that the soul of India had been fully entrapped. Such a situation of physical emaciation and economic deprivation on the one hand, and the breakdown of institutions and the alienation of the literati and the relatively prosperous on the other, led to a major split in Indian society. Prolonged subjugation produced a deep sense of inferiority amongst the conquered. Its consequence was the romanticisation of certain aspects of their own past and a misreading of what made Europe dominate them and their neighbors.

Initially the romanticisation of the past was a sheer necessity for the survival of Indian civilization and the concepts which most Indians still held to. Further, amongst the ordinary people economic and cultural depression led to widespread mental confusion and rigidities, whilst amongst the literati and the prosperous it led to the acquiring of such images of themselves and their civilization as European scholarship on India endowed to them. It is possible that given a historically widespread literate intelligentsia such an impact has been much more pronounced in India than elsewhere in the non European world. However amongst the well known persons in the l9-20th century public life of India one person, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, seems to have remained unaffected by such an impact. In contrast the post-1947 India's first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, seems to represent this impact at its highest. The following is an illustration of the contrast.

From 1930 to 1947 Indian nationalists observed January 26 as the day dedicated to the achievement of complete freedom of India. Since 1950 this day has been observed as the Republic Day. During the pre-Independence period a long pledge was taken on this day by all those who observed it. The pledge said that. The British Government in India has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually'. Further it added,' we hold it to be a crime against man and God to submit any-longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to our country'. Regarding India's cultural ruination it stated that, ' the system of education (established by the British) has torn us from our moorings and our training has made us hug the very chains that bind us'. Like most other resolutions of the Indian freedom movement this pledge also had been drafted by Mahatma Gandhi (25). Earlier, in January 1928, Mahatma Gandhi had also suggested that India's freedom would lead to the freedom of the other colonized and enslaved people of the world and had stated that, India's coming to her own will mean every nation doing likewise' (26). As we all know, most other subjugated areas of the world in South-East Asia, Africa, etc., also in one way or another had regained their political freedom within fifteen years of the withdrawal of British power from India.

Though most Indians subscribed to the statement that British rule had ruined India culturally and spiritually as well, many disagreed with it and continued to disagree with it even more so after India had achieved its freedom in. 1947. Amongst these latter was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. While publicly he did not wish to challenge such a categorical statement, privately he expressed a strong dissent from such an approach as early as January 1928. In a letter to Mahatma Gandhi he wrote,' you have stated it somewhere that India has nothing to lean from the West and that she had reached a pinnacle of wisdom in the past. I certainly disagree with this viewpoint. I think that western or rather industrial civilization is bound to conquer India, may be with many changes and adaptations, but none the less, in the main, based on industrialism. You have criticized strongly the many obvious defects of industrialism and hardly paid any attention to its merits. Everybody knows these defects and the Utopias and social theories are meant to remove them. It is the opinion of most thinkers in the West that these defects are not due to industrialism as such but to the capitalist system which is based on exploitation of others. I believe you have stated that in your opinion there is no necessary conflict between capital and labor. I think that under the capitalist system this conflict is unavoidable' (27). A similar view on western modernism was expressed by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in reply to a letter of Mahatma Gandhi on the same theme some fifteen years later (28). In his reply, Jawaharlal Nehru had also remarked, 1 do not understand why a village should necessarily embody truth and non-violence. A village, normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally and no progress can be made from a backward environment. Narrow-minded people are much more likely to be untruthful and violent (29).

On the Nature of Western Knowledge and Theorization

All modern western knowledge and theorization about phenomena may be assumed to be derived from the same roots. This could be said not only about the disciplines included in the humanities and the social sciences, but also those included in the physical sciences. Of these anthropology or ethnography is the science which is exclusively concerned with the non-European conquered people. It is anthropology, and its allied disciplines, which grade non-European man and make him into a mere object. Professor Claude Levi-Strauss explains the nature of anthropology in the following words: 'Anthropology is not a dispassionate science like astronomy, which springs from the contemplation of things at a distance. It is the outcome of a historical process which has made the larger part of mankind subservient to the other, and during which millions of innocent human beings have had their resources plundered and their institutions and beliefs destroyed, whilst they themselves were ruthlessly killed, thrown into bondage, and contaminated by diseases they were unable to resist. Anthropology is daughter to this era of violence: its capacity to assess more objectively the facts pertaining to the human condition reflects, on the epistemological level a state of affairs in which one part of mankind treated the other as an object. A situation of this kind cannot be soon forgotten, much less erased. It is not because of its mental endowments that only the Western world has given birth to Anthropology, but rather because exotic cultures, treated by us as mere things, could be studied accordingly as things. We did not feel concerned by them whereas we cannot help their feeling concerned by us. Between our attitude toward them and their attitude toward us, there is and can be no parity' (30).

What Professor Claude Levi Strauss said was not wholly new about the science of anthropology or ethnography. Some eighty years earlier Sir Edward Burnett Tyler, acclaimed by some as father of anthropology, had in fact defined the role of anthropology as that of destruction of the old cultures. Concluding his Primitive Culture he had said, 'It is a harsher, and at times even painful, office of ethnography to expose the remains of crude old cultures which have passed into harmful superstition, and to mark these out for destruction. Yet this work, if less genial, is not less urgently needful for the good of mankind' (31).

The above definitions of anthropology and thus of European approach to matter and men naturally had an impact on the alienated in the non-European world.

Towards a Return to Sanity

The non-European societies which came under the dominance of Europe seem to have shared a marked characteristic. All these societies may be said to have maintained a balance with the Gods or spirits they prayed to, as well as with the flora and fauna and human groups and individuals which constituted them. This seems to be as much true of the pre-1492 societies of the Americas, as of the societies of Africa, South East Asia, or India. In the case of India this characteristic is perhaps even more pronounced given the complex nature and vastness of India and the variety of climate and landscape India had. Such balance is any of these societies need not have been a static phenomenon. It could have had, especially in the case of India, a flowing and dynamic quality of its own. It is not only the accounts of Indian society at different times which seem to suggest it but also India's vast literature and India's concepts of kala and chitta. Over a long, period a society like that of India seemed to have moved from one balanced state to another balanced state but much more slowly. In contrast Europeans societies from early times till the present seem to have lacked such balance and appear to have within them as in-built tension and a pronounced hierarchical structure. In addition the aim of European civilization seems to be to emphasize the partial at the cost of totality, with the result that European society seldom seems to acquire balance at any particular point of time. If so this possibly could explain the aggression and the killer instinct of Europe.

It is possible that the world is now emerging perhaps haltingly with a newer vision and with greater feeling about the world-wide fraternity of human beings and has begun to realize the autonomy as well as unity of all creation. If so, such vision has to become more manifest and compelling. It will also require a sense of introspection in individuals, societies and states in the world of Europe as well as in the world of the non-European. Introspection and self-reflection may also help achieve the necessary state of repentance for the havoc of the past five centuries as well as lead to appropriate steps in putting an end to and setting right the accumulated damage.

Finally, while the worldwide havoc was started and fuelled by the skills of Europe, the non-European world by aping Europe made its own situation much worse. Till the European impact the non-European man believing in the autonomy of all reation, and thus not treating himself, as the master or controller of others had developed a relation of co-existence with the other constituents of creation. This attitude possibly did get converted at some stage into a state of indifference. The aping of Europe however made him into a mindless plunderer and torturer. The
return to sanity therefore requires not only the introspection and repentance of Europe, but also of the non-European world.

References

1. In, David B. Quinn, New American World: A documentary history of North America to 1612, five volumes, 1979.
   
   
2. Sir John Davies, A discovery of the true causes, why Ireland was never entirely subdued, and brought under obedience of the crowned of England, until the beginning of His Majesty's happy reign, 1630, (Reprint 1860).
   
   
3. H. F. Dobyns, Estimating aboriginal American population, Current Anthropology, VoL7, No.4, October 1966, pp. 395-449.
   
   
4. Bernard W-Sheehan. Seeds of extinction: Jeffersonian philanthropy and the American Indian, 1973, pp.227-228.
   
   
5. H. C. Porter, The inconstant savage: England and the North American Indian 1500-1660, 1979, p.428.
   
   
6. Denton's New York: A brief description of New York, formerly called New Netherlands, 1670 (Reprint 1902), p.45.
   
   
7. J.C.. Long, Lord Jeffery Amherst: A soldier of the King, 1933, pp.186-187.
   
   
8. Amongst others, R-W. Fogel and S.L.Engerman, Time on the Cross, The economics of American Negro slavery, 1989, pp.21-22. Fogel and Engerman's figures of 95lakhs relate only to the import of slaves in the Americas.
   
   
9. Wd, p.l4.
   
   
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1911, Vol.27, p.636.
    
    
11. Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in bondage: White servitude and convict labor in America, 1617-1776,1947, pp.308-325.
    
    
12. Victor Ehrenberg, The Greek State, 1969 (1974), p.31.
    
    
13. Quoted in D. G. E. Hall, Early English intercourse with Burma, 1928, p.250.
    
    
14. There is vast archival material on such resistance and protest during the latter part of the 18th and in the 19th centuries, in the various British created archives in India and also amongst private papers relating to India in Britain. The details of the 1810-1811 resistance against the imposition of the house tax are given in Dharampal, Civil disobedience and Indian tradition, Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, Varanasi, 1971.
    
    
15. The details of the 1843 Surat resistance against the enhancement of the tax on salt are given in the Bombay Presidency Records of that year.
    
    
16. There is much British material on the pre-British ruler-ruled relationships in the records of the Political Departments of the Governments during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Such material is also to be found amongst published British state papers on India pertaining to this period. One such particular statement is by the historian James Mill in his evidence to a select Committee of the British House of Commons.
    
    
17. There is a large amount of material on the relationship between the ruled and the rulers and on gift giving and receiving in the archival material relating to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Much of it is also to be found in the records pertaining to the Madras Presidency.
    
    
18. The Madras Presidency archival records pertaining to the collection of the Moturpha and Veesabuddy taxes include district-wise details of the number of people employed in non-agricultural professions and trades. It also includes the data on looms in various districts. Similar data is also available in the records relating to various other areas of India in the archival records and the early census reports for 1871, 1881, 1891.
    
    
19. The late 18th and early 19th century archives on India as well as European private papers contain much material on the circa 1800 Science and Technology of India. Some of this information is also included in Dharampal, Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century: Some contemporary European accounts, Biblia Impex, New Delhi, 1971, and Dharampal, Indigenous Indian technological talent and the need for its mobilization (text of a talk delivered in Calcutta in 1986), published in the PPST Bulletin, No.9, December 1986, pp.5-20.
    
    
20. Some data on the extent and methodology of indigenous Indian education around 1800 is given in Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree Indigenous Indian Education in the 18th Century, Biblia Impex, New Delhi, 1983.
    
    
21. Tamil Nadu State Archives (TNSA), Madras Board of Revenue Proceedings (BRP), Volume 2025, proceedings 8/6/1846, p.7457, for consumption data for Cuddapah District Volume 2030, proceedings 13/7/1846, pp.9031-9247, for consumption data for Bellary District.
    
    
22. The information in this section, and the information on agricultural yields given above, is based on material written in English pertaining to a survey of around 2,200 localities in the District of Chengalpattu during the period 1767-1774. This material is held in the Tamil Nadu State Archives in Madras. Many more details relating to a number of these localities are still available on palm leaf manuscripts now kept at the Tamil University at Tanjore in Tamil Nadu. A detailed analysis of this data is presently being carried on under the auspices of the PPST Foundation and the Centre for Policy Studies, Madras.
    
    
23. E. P. Stebbing, the Forests of India, Volume 1, 1922.
    
    
24. TNSA BRP, Volume 2212, proceeding 1/10/1849, pp.14224-14260, especially para 54.
    
    
25. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), Volume 42, pp.384-385,10th January 1930.
    
    
26. CWMG, Volume 35, p.457,12/1/1928.
    
    
27. CWMG, Volume 25, p.544, J. Nehru to Mahatma Gandhi, 11 /l /1928.
    
    
28. CWMG, Volume 81, p.319-321,5/10/1945, Mahatma Gandhi to J. Nehru.
    
    
29. J. Nehru, Selected Works, Volume 14, pp.554-557, J.Nehru to Mahatma Gandhi, October 4, 1945.
    
    
30. Remarks of Prof. CIaude Levi Strauss at the bicentennial celebrations of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA, November 17, 1965, published in Current Anthropology, Volume 7, No.2, April 1966, p.126.
    
    
31. Quoted in S. J. Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality, 1990, p.44.
    
    

Author: Dharampal

Acknowledgement: The origin of this paper is in a short note which I had prepared on the subject in 1988.

Note: The note was seen by several friends including Dr.Claude Alvares and Sri Sundarial Bahuguna. The preparation of: the present paper has greatly been helped by the discussions I have had with Dr.M.D.Srinivas, Dr.J.KBajaj and Sri T.M.Mukundan. I am grateful to them all for their advice, help and interest.

ON THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH: AN AMERICAN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE

In a speech given in South Dakota during the summer of 1979, Russell Means, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, spoke to several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering. Held for ten days in July on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the gathering was a protest against the rape of American Indian lands throughout the West. Means' speech has been fiercely praised, condemned and talked about since it was given. It is a searing cry of protest against the desecration of American Indian lands and an affirmation of the native cultures whose survival is threatened. It was also a strong attack on the leftists of the world, who, he says, are just as complicit in all this destruction as the capitalists. Certain statements that he has made about the theory and practice of Marxism may not be very relevant any more in view of the momentous changes that have taken place in the (erstwhile) Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. However, his description of the American Indian perspective on Human Beings and their relationship to the Earth is vivid and moving. We feel that this would be of great interest to our readers in view of the striking similarity of this view, with the Traditional Indian viewpoint.

A member of the Ogallala Lakota tribe, Russell Means has for long been a major figure in the American Indian Movement. He has been shot, injured and jailed during the state of near war that has long existed between militant American Indians on the one side and government forces on the other.

The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of legitimate' thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied to the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures' of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people. So what you read here is not what I've written. It's what I've said and someone else has written down. I will allow this because it seems that the only way to communicate with the white world is through the dead, dry leaves of a book. I don't really care whether my words reach whites or not. They have already demonstrated through their history that they cannot hear cannot see they can only read (of course, there are exceptions, but the exceptions only prove the rule). I'm more concerned with American Indian people, students and others, who have begun to be absorbed into the white world through universities and other institutions. But even then it's a marginal sort of concern. If s very possible to grow into a red face with a white mind; and if thefts a person's individual choice, so be it, but I have no use for them. This is part of the process of cultural genocide being waged by Europeans against American Indian peoples today. My concern is with those American Indians who choose to resist this genocide, but who may be confused as to how to proceed.

It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain. It must come from the hoop, the four directions, the relations; it cannot come from the pages of a book or a thousand books. No European can ever teach a Lakota to be Lakota, a Hopi to be Hopi. A master's degree in Indian Studies' or in 'Education' or in anything else cannot make a person into a human being or provide knowledge into the traditional ways. It can only make you into a mental European, an outsider.

I should be clear about something here, because there seems to be some confusion about it. When I speak of European or mental Europeans, I'm not allowing for false distinctions. I'm not saying that on the one hand there are the by-products of a few thousand years of genocidal, reactionary, European intellectual development which is bad; and on the other hand there is some new revolutionary intellectual development which is good. I'm referring here to the so-called theories of Marxism and anarchism and leftism' in general. I don't believe these theories can be separated from the rest of the European intellectual tradition. It's really just the same old song.

The process began much earlier, Newton, for example, 'revolutionized' physics and the so-called I natural sciences by reducing the physical universe to a linear mathematical equation. Descartes did the same thing with culture. John Locke did it with politics, and Adam Smith did it with economics. Each one of these 'thinkers' took a piece of the spirituality of human existence and converted it into a code, an abstraction. They picked up where Christianity ended; they 'secularized' Christian religion, as the 'scholars' like to say - and in doing so they made Europe more able and ready to act as an expansionist culture. Each of these intellectual revolutions served to abstract the European mentality even further, to remove the wonderful complexity and spirituality from the universe and replace it with a logical sequence one, two, and three - Answer This is what has come to be termed 'efficiency' in the European mind. Whatever is mechanical is perfect; whatever seems to work at the moment - that is, proves the mechanical model to be the right one - is considered correct, even when it is clearly untrue. This is why 'truth' changes so fast in the European mind; the answers which result from such a process are only stop-gaps only temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stop-gaps which support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive.

Hegel and Marx were heirs to the thinking of Newton, Descartes, Locke and Smith. Hegel finished the process of secularizing theology - and that is put in his own terms - he secularized the religious thinking through which Europe understood the universe. Then Marx put Hegel's philosophy in terms of 'materialism', which is to say that Marx despiritualised Hegel's work altogether. Again, this is in Marx' own terms. And this is now seen as the future revolutionary potential of Europe. Europeans may see this as revolutionary, but American Indians see it simply as still more of that same old European conflict between being and gaining. The intellectual roots of new Marxist form of European imperialism lie in Marx' - and his followers' -links to the tradition of Newton, Hegel and the others.

Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act Traditionally American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could. Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in order not to gain. Material gain is an indicator of false status among traditional people, while it is 'proof that the system works' to Europeans. Clearly, there are two completely opposing views at issue here, and Marxism is very far over to the other side from the American Indian view. But lefts look at major implication of this; it is not merely an intellectual debate.

The European materialist tradition of despiritualising the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person. And who seems most experts at dehumanizing other people? And why? Soldiers who have seen a lot of combat learn to do this to the enemy before going back into combat. Murderers do it before going out to commit murder. Nazi SS guards did it to the workers they send into uranium mines and steel mills. Politicians do it to everyone in sight. And what the process has in common for each group doing the dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill and otherwise destroy other people. One of the Christian commandments says, Thou shall not kill', at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert the victims into non-humans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own commandment a virtue.

In terms of the despiritualisation of the universe, the mental process works so that it becomes virtuous to destroy the planet. Terms like progress and development are used as cover words here, the way victory and freedom are used to justify butchery in the dehumanization process. For example, a real-estate speculator may refer to 'developing' a parcel of ground by opening a gravel quarry; development here means total, permanent destruction, with the earth itself removed. But European logic has gained a few tons of gravel with which more land can be 'developed' though the construction of road beds. Ultimately, the whole universe is open - in the European view to this sort of insanity. Most important here, perhaps, is the fact that Europeans feel no sense of loss in all this. After all, their philosophers have despiritualised reality, so there is no satisfaction (for them) to be gained in simply observing the wonder of a mountain or a lake or a people in being. No; satisfaction is measured in terms of gaining material. So the mountain becomes gravel, and the lake becomes coolant for a factory, and the, people are rounded up for processing through the indoctrination mills Europeans like to call schools.

But each new piece of that 'progress' ups the ante out in the real world. Take fuel for the industrial machine as an example. Little more than two centuries ago, nearly everyone used wood - a replenish able, natural item - as fuel for the very human needs of cooking and staying warm. Along came the industrial Revolution and coal became the dominant fuel, as production became the social imperative for Europe. Pollution began to become a problem in the cities, arid the earth was ripped open to provide coal, whereas wood had always simply been gathered or harvested at no great expense to the environment. Later, oil became the major fuel, as the technology of production was perfected through a series of scientific 'revolutions'. Pollution increased dramatically, and nobody yet knows what the environmental costs of pumping all that oil out of the ground will really be in the long run. Now there's an 'energy crisis'; and uranium is becoming the dominant fuel.

Capitalists, at least, can be relied upon to develop uranium as fuel only at the rate at which they can show a good profit. That’s their ethic, and may be that will buy some time. Marxists, on the other hand, can be relied upon to develop uranium fuel as rapidly as possible simply because if s the most 'efficient' production fuel available. That’s their ethic and I fail to see where it's preferable. Like I said, Marxism is right smack in the middle of the European tradition. It's the same old song. There's a rule of thumb which can be applied here. You cannot judge the real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis of the changes it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-European peoples. This is because every revolution in European history has served to reinforce Europe's tendencies and abilities to export destruction to other peoples, other cultures and the environment itself. I defy anyone to point out an example where this is not true. So now we, as American Indian people are asked to believe that a 'new' European revolutionary doctrine such as Marxism will reverse the negative effects of European history on us. European power relations are to be adjusted once again, and that’s supposed to make things better for all of us. But what does this really mean?

Right now, today, we who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation are living in what white society has designated a 'National Sacrifice Area'. What this means is that we have a lot of uranium deposits here, and white culture (not us) needs this uranium as energy production material. The cheapest, most efficient way for industry to extract and deal with the processing of this uranium is to dump the waste by-products right here at the digging sites. Right here where we live. This waste is radioactive and will make the entire region uninhabitable forever. This is considered by industry and by the white society that created this industry; to be ah 'acceptable' price to pay for energy resource development. Along with this they also plan to drain the water table under this part of South Dakota as part of the industrial process, so the region becomes doubly uninhabitable. The same sort of thing is happening down in the land of the Navajo and Hopi, up in the land of the Northern Cheyenne and Crow, and elsewhere. Thirty percent of the coal in the West and half of the uranium deposits in the U.S. have been found to lie under reservation land, so there is no way this can be called a minor issue. We are resisting being turned into a National Sacrifice Area. We are resisting being turned into national sacrifice people. The costs of this industrial process are not acceptable to us. It is genocide to dig uranium here and drain the water table - no more, no less.

Now let's suppose that in our resistance to extermination we begin to seek allies (we have). Let’s suppose further that we were to take revolutionary Marxism at its word: that is Intends nothing less than the complete overthrow of the European capitalist order which has presented this threat to our very existence. This would seem to be a natural alliance for American Indian people to enter into. After all, as the Marxists say, it is the capitalists who set us up to be a national sacrifice. This is true as far as it goes. But, as I've tried to point out, this 'truth' is very deceptive. Revolutionary Marxism is committed to even further perpetuation and perfection of the very industrial process which is destroying us all. It offers only to 'redistribute' the results - the money, may be of this industrialization to wider section of the population. It offers to take wealth from the capitalists and pass it around; but in order to do so; Marxism must maintain the industrial system. Once again, the power relations within European society will have to be altered, but once again the effects upon American Indian peoples here and non-Europeans elsewhere will remain the same. This is much the same as when power was redistributed from the church to private business during the so-called bourgeois revolution. European society changed a bit, at least superficially, but its conduct toward non-Europeans continued as before, you can see what the American Revolution of 1776 did for American Indians. If the same old song.

Revolutionary Marxism, like industrial society in other forms, seeks to 'rationalize' all people in relation to industry - maximum industry, maximum production. It is a materialist doctrine that despises the American Indian spiritual tradition, our cultures, our life ways. Marx himself called us 'pre-capitalists' and 'primitive'. Pre-capitalist [simply means that, in his view, we would eventually discover capitalism and become capitalists; we have always been economically retarded in Marxist terms. The only manner in which American Indian people could participate in a Marxist revolution would be to join the industrial system, to become factory workers, or 'proletarians' as Marx called them. The man was very clear about the fact that his revolution could occur only through the struggle of the proletariat, that the existence of a massive industrial system is a precondition of a successful Marxist society.

I think there's a problem with language here. Christians, Capitalists, Marxists. All of them have been revolutionary in their own minds, but none of them really mean revolution. What they really mean is a continuation. They do what they do in order that European culture can continue to exist and develop according to its needs. So, in order for us to really join forces with Marxism, we American Indians would have to accept the national sacrifice of our homeland; we would have to commit cultural suicide and become industrialized and Europeanized. At this point, I've got to stop and ask myself whether I'm being too harsh. Marxism has something of a history. Does this history bear out my observations? I look to the process of industrialization in the Soviet Union since 1920 and I see that these Marxists have done what it took the English industrial Revolution 300 years to do; and the Marxists did it in 60 years. I see that the territory of the USSR used to contain a number of tribal peoples and that they have been crushed to make way for the factories. The Soviets refer to this as The National Question', the question of whether the tribal peoples had the right to exist as peoples; and they decided the tribal peoples were an acceptable sacrifice to industrial needs. I look to China and I see the same thing. I look to Vietnam and I see Marxists imposing an industrial order and rooting out the indigenous tribal mountain people.

I hear a leading, Soviet scientist saying that when uranium is exhausted, then alternatives will be found. I see the Vietnamese taking over a nuclear power plant abandoned by the U.S. military. Have they dismantled and destroyed it? No, they are using it. I see China exploding nuclear bombs, developing uranium reactors and preparing a space program in order to colonies and exploit the planets the same as the Europeans colonized and exploited this hemisphere. Ifs the same old song, but may be with a faster tempo this time.

The statement of the Soviet scientist is very interesting. Does he know what this alternative energy source will be? No, he simply has faith. Science will find a way. I hear revolutionary Marxists saying that the destruction of the environment, pollution and radiation will all be controlled. Arid I see them act upon their words. Do they know how these things will be controlled? No, they simply have faith. Science will find a way. Industrialization is fine and necessary. How do they know this? Faith. Science will find a way. Faith of this: sort has always been known in Europe as religion. Science has become the new European religion for both capitalists and Marxists they are truly inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same culture. So, in both theory and practice, Marxism demands that non-European peoples give up their values, their traditions, their cultural existence altogether. We will all be industrialized science addicts in a Marxist society.

I do not believe that capitalism itself is really responsible for the situation in which merican Indians have been declared a national sacrifice. No, it is the European tradition; European culture itself is responsible. Marxism is just the latest continuation of this tradition, not a solution to it. To ally with Marxism is to ally with the very same forces that declare us an acceptable cost.

There is another way. There is the traditional Lakota way and the ways of the other American Indian peoples. It is the way that knows that humans do not have the right to degrade Mother Earth, that there are forces beyond anything the European mind has conceived, that humans must be in harmony with all relations or the relations will eventually eliminate the disharmony. A lopsided emphasis on humans by humans - the Europeans' arrogance of acting as though they were beyond the nature of all related things - can only result in a total disharmonious readjustment which cuts arrogant humans down to size, gives them a taste of that reality beyond their grasp or control and restores the harmony. There is no need for a revolutionary theory to bring this about; if s beyond human control. The nature peoples of this planet know this and so they do not theories about it. Theory is an abstract; our knowledge is real.

Distilled to its basic terms, European faith-including the new faith in science - equals a belief that man is God. Europe has always sought a Messiah, whether that be the man Jesus Christ or the man Karl Marx or the man Albert Einstein. American Indians know this to be totally absurd. Humans are the weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give up their flesh that we may live. Humans are able to survive only through the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures to gain food through the use of fang and claw. But rationality is a curse since it can cause humans to forget the natural order of things in ways other creatures do not. A wolf never forgets his or her place in the natural order. American Indians can. Europeans almost always do. We pray our thanks to the deer, our relations, for allowing us their flesh to eat; Europeans simply take the flesh for granted and consider the deer inferior. After all, Europeans consider themselves Godlike in their rationalism and science. God is the Supreme Being all else must be inferior.

All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things. Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That's revolution. And that's a prophecy of my people, of the Hopi people and of other correct peoples.

American Indians have been trying to explain this to Europeans for centuries. But, as I said earlier, Europeans have proven themselves unable to hear. The natural order will win out, and the offenders will die out the way deer die when they offend the harmony by over populating a given region. It's only a matter of time until what Europeans call 'a major catastrophe of global proportions' will occur. It is the role of American Indian peoples, the role of all natural beings, to survive. A part of our survival is to resist. We resist not to overthrow a government or to take political power, but because it is natural to resist extermination, to survive. We don't want power over white institutions: we want white institutions to disappear. That's revolution. American Indians are still in touch with these realities - the prophecies, the traditions of our ancestors. We learn from the elders, from nature, from the powers. And when the catastrophe is over, we American Indian peoples will still be here to inhabit the hemisphere. I don't care if s only a handful living high in the Andes. American Indian people will survive: harmony will be reestablished. That’s revolution.

At this point, perhaps I should be very clear about another matter, one which should already be clear as a result of what I've said. But confusion breeds easily these days, so I want to hammer home this point. When I use the term European, I'm not referring to a skin color or a particular genetic structure. What I'm referring to is a mind-set, a world view that is a product of the development of European culture. People are not genetically encoded to hold this outlook; they are acculturated to hold it. The same is true for American Indians or for the members of any other culture. It is possible for an American Indian to share European values, a European world view. -We have a term for these people; we call them 'apples' - red on the outside (genetics) and white on the inside (their values). Other groups have similar terms: Blacks have their 'Oreos' Hispanos have coconut and so on. And, as I said before, there are exceptions to the white norm people who are white on the outside, but not white inside. I'm not sure what term should be applied to them other than 'human beings'. What I'm putting out here is not a racial proposition but a cultural proposition. Those who ultimately advocate and defend the realities of European culture and its industrialism are my enemies. Those who resist it, who struggle against it, are my allies, the allies of American Indian people. And 1 don't give a damn what their skin color happens to be. Caucasian is the white term for the white race European is an outlook I oppose. The Vietnamese Communists are not exactly what you might consider genetic Caucasians, but they are now functioning as mental Europeans. The same holds true for Chinese Communists, for Japanese capitalists or Bantu Catholics. There is no racism involved in this, just an acknowledgement of the mind and spirit that make up culture. In Marxist terms I suppose I'm a 'cultural nationalist'. I work first with my people, the traditional Lakota people, because we hold a common world view and share an immediate struggle. Beyond this, I work with other traditional American Indian peoples, again because of a certain commonalty in world view and form of struggle. Beyond that will work with anyone who has experienced the colonial oppression of Europe and who resists its cultural and industrial totality. Obviously, this includes genetic Caucasians who struggle to resist the dominant norms of European culture. The Irish and the Basques come immediately to mind, but there are many others.

I work primarily with my own people, with my own community. Other people who hold non-European perspectives should do the same. I believe in the slogan, Trust your brother's vision', although I'd like to add sisters into the bargain. I trust the community and the culturally based vision of all the races that naturally resist industrialization and human extinction. Clearly, individual whites can share in this, given only that they have reached the awareness that continuation of the industrial imperatives of Europe is not a vision, but species suicide. White is one of the sacred colors of the Lakota people - red, "yellow, white and black. The four directions. The four seasons. The four periods of life and aging. The four races of humanity. Mix red, yellow, white and black together and you-get brown, the color of the fifth race. This is a natural ordering of things..It therefore seems natural to me to work with all races, each with its own special meaning, identity and message.

But there is a peculiar behavior among most Caucasians. As soon as I become critical of Europe and its impact on other cultures, they become defensive. They begin to defend themselves. But I'm not attacking them personally I'm attacking Europe. In personalizing my observations on Europe they are personalizing European culture, identifying them with it. By defending themselves in this context, they are ultimately defending the death culture. This is a confusion which must be overcome, and it must be overcome in a hurry. None of us have energy to waste in such false struggles. Caucasians have a more positive vision to offer humanity than Europe culture. I believe this. But in order to attain this vision it is necessary for Caucasians to step outside European culture - alongside the rest of humanity - to see Europe for what it is and what it does. To cling to capitalism and Marxism and all the other 'isms' is simply to remain within European culture. There is no avoiding this basic fact. As a fact, this constitutes a choice. Understand that the choice is based on culture, not race. Understand that to choose European culture and industrialism is to choose to be my enemy. And understand that the choice is yours, not mine.

This leads me back to address those American Indians who are drifting through the universities, the city slums and other European institutions. If you are there to learn to resist the oppressor in accordance with your traditional ways, so be it. I don't know how you manage to combine the two, but perhaps you will succeed. But retain your sense of reality. Beware of coming to believe the white world now offers solutions to the problems it confronts us with. Beware, too, of allowing the words of native people to be twisted to the advantage of our enemies. Europe invented the practice of turning words around on themselves. You need only look to the treaties between American Indian peoples and various European governments to know that this is true. Draw your strength from who you are. A culture which regularly confuses revolution with continuation, which confuses science and religion, which confuses revolt with resistance, has nothing helpful to teach you and nothing to offer you as a way of life. Europeans have long since lost all touch with reality, if every they were in touch with it. Feel sorry for them if you need to, but be comfortable with w h o you a r e as American Indians.

So, I suppose to conclude this, I should state clearly that leading anyone toward Marxism is the last thing on my mind. Marxism is as alien to my culture as capitalism and Christianity are. In fact, I can say I don't think I'm trying to lead anyone toward anything. To some extent I tried to be a leader, in the sense that the white media like to use that term, when the American Indian Movement was a young organization. This was a result of a confusion I no longer have. You cannot be everything to everyone. I do not propose to be used in such a fashion by my enemies I am not a leader. I am an Oglala Lakota patriot. That is all I want and all I need to be. And I am very comfortable with who I am.



Author: Russell Means