Sunil Sahasrabudhey

Sunil Sahasrabudhey is a political-social activist and philosopher with over thirty years of experience of people’s movements in India. He has successfully combined his theoretical interests in the philosophy of science and knowledge, Gandhian philosophy and the theoretical basis of emancipatory movements with an active engagement in political movements such as the Students’ Movement of the 1970s and the Farmers’ Movement of the 1980s and 90s. He has written books and articles, in Hindi and English, on topics such as the peasant movement in India and Gandhi’s philosophy of Science. His articles have appeared in journals such as Seminar and Gandhi Marg.

Sunilji received his Master’s degree in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur in 1971. Thereafter he switched fields to do a Ph.D. in Philosophy. At this time he got involved in the larger world of students’ and workers’ organizations and struggles. IIT Kanpur refused to award him the PhD in Philosophy because he chose to write his thesis in Hindi instead of in English. This thesis entitled  Aupaniveshik Manushya ki Awadharana (The Concept of the Colonized Man) deriving mainly from the ideas of Marx and Gandhi and attempting to transcend them,  formulated the idea of the bahishkrit samaj (ostracized society).This started a movement of ideas that eventually culminated in the concept of lokavidya (people’s knowledge-wisdom) in 1995. All the work thereafter was aimed at building a campaign for the dignity of lokavidya and for recognition of lokavidya as genuine knowledge. Since lokavidya is mainly the knowledge of the bahishkrit samaj it is seen as the chief epistemic basis of a possible politics of emancipation from poverty, marginalization and social indignity.

Knowledge Movement
The campaign for the dignity of lokavidya led to building of Vidya Ashram (www.vidyaashram.org) in 2004. Sunilji is the Founder-President of Vidya Ashram. The Ashram can be seen as a semi-institutional culmination of a knowledge movement in India that started around 1979-80. This movement was shaped by the activities of organizations such as the Patriotic and Peoples-Oriented Science and Technology (PPST) Foundation, Chennai, Mazdoor Kisan Niti (Workers and Farmers Policy) Group, Kanpur and Nari Hastakala Udyog Samiti (Association of Women’s Handicraft Industry), Varanasi. The movement was further concretized in the activities of three all-India Congresses of Traditional Sciences and Technologies of India (held at IIT-Bombay in 1993, at Anna University, Chennai in 1995 and at Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi in 1998). These were organized by the PPST Foundation and Sunilji was the Secretary of the Eastern Region for the first two and the Secretary of the third. The Third Congress was specially named Lokavidya Mahadhiveshan.

New Farmers’ Movement
Sunilji’s involvement at IIT Kanpur in the democratic movement of students and workers grew into a major involvement in the 1980s with the New Farmers’ Movement which he saw as the beginning of a new movement of the bahishkrit samaj. He spent years studying the movement, coordinating it in different parts of the country and spreading the idea and the message of the movement among the educated classes through Mazdoor Kisan Niti (a periodical of this movement) and by organization of conferences. He was also a member of the Inter-state Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Organizations during 1987-89. The all-India character of the movement shrunk in the 1990s and only the farmers in Uttar Pradesh continued their struggles. Even today Sunilji and his group are connected with the farmers’ organization and work very closely with them.

Research
Sunil Sahasrabudhey’s chief concern has been development of a people centered conceptual apparatus for emancipatory engagement with life and change. His research interests are broadly in the areas of  (i) logic of science, society and politics, (ii) lokavidya (people’s knowledge-wisdom) and ordinary life and (iii) emancipatory  political imagination in this new Age of Information. These interests were pursued from the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, where he was on the faculty since 1982. Vidya Ashram now provides the basis for pursuing these interests. He has published books both in Hindi and English relating to the farmers’ movement and the critique of science and politics from a Gandhian perspective.

E-mail: budhey@gmail.com

Writings by Sunil Sahasrabudhey

1. Agaria-vidya: A Link in the Philosophy of Emancipation (Word      PDF)

2.  Local Market: A Fundamental Basis to Challenge Globalisation (Word      PDF)

3. Gandhi's Challenge to Modern Science
(The Other India Press, Goa)
Excerpt from the book: "Since the ascent to power of modern science and capitalism, 'the world has been divided between those who work on the machine and those who don't, or between those who gain by the existence of the machine, and those who stand to lose everything because of it.' The book argues that lokavidya must be the starting point of all movements against the machine and its manifestations. Gandhian philosophy can be a good guide to action in this regard."

Download the entire book here in PDF format. You can also download the book from the Multiversity Library, which also has a lot of other useful books from Asia, Africa, and South America. A must-see site for those interested in radical perspectives. Or you can buy it from The Other India Bookstore [Price: $5.0 or Rs. 90.0]. Please consider supporting this extraordinary alternative publishing house.

4. Transcending Modernity
(A chapter from the book "Peasant Movement in Modern India", 1989)

The following books by Sunil Sahasrabudhey can be bought from DK Publishers Distributors (1 ansari road, daryaganj, -, NEW DELHI 110002, Tel: 91-011-3278368 / 3261465, Fax: 91-011-3261465

Books In Hindi

1. Aupniveshik Manushya ki Awadharana, 1987
2. Kisan Andolan ki Samiksha (1985-87)
3. Lokavidya Vichar (Ed.), 2001
4. Gyan Mukti Avahan, (2008)