Ekalavya Story

Avinash Jha

Ekalavya’s story occurs in Mahabharata Adi Parva. This story plays no specific role in the development of the larger story that Mahabharata is telling, except perhaps in revealing the character and consciousness of Drona, the teacher, and his favourite student, Arjuna. The story is recounted in some detail and with candour, without any effort at masking anything. The story is told and then forgotten. No thread from this story is picked up again in the Mahabharata unlike many other side-stories there. Mahabharata never returns to this story even as the great story of princes and their struggles and fights and wars eventually winds down in a desert of disappointments and unhappiness. No lesson is learnt from the story. Perhaps one can read the Mahabharata as the great story of lessons not being learnt.

While Ekalavya is surely the hero of the story, the story begins with Drona. Drona accepted to teach the art of weaponry to Kauravas and Pandavas. Bhisma hands over the pupils to Drona after he agrees to be their teacher. After Bhisma departs, the first thing Drona does is to make a strange demand on his pupils. He tells them that “There is a certain task buried in my heart that I wish to see done.” He keeps the task secret but wants his pupils to promise to do it for him once they have finished the course of learning. Kauravas are reluctant and stay silent. Arjuna enthusiastically gives him the promise thus endearing himself to Drona. Arjuna becomes his favourite student. At some point later, Drona in turn makes a promise out of his own will to make Arjuna the best archer in the world.

Drona has introduced an ulterior motive – ‘a certain task buried in my heart’ – into the teaching situation and he succeeds in making Arjuna complicit. This is plainly told in the tale and Drona’s motives and actions are a part of the Mahabharata story. Just as they are when Drona would ask Ekalavya for this thumb. While Drona’s motives and actions are part of the Mahabharata, Ekalavya’s motivations and actions are outside of the main story, but they are essential to revealing the motivations and strategies that populate the princely space of socialisation and education. This is a space marked by a contrast between the professed values and the actual behaviour.

This princely space is an imperial space. Princes from other territories are also welcome. Arjuna has become very skilled and his fame attracts many. “Seeing his skill …, kings and princes came by the thousands to master the science of weaponry”. Now Ekalavya enters the story. “A certain Ekalavya came, the son of Hiranyadhanus, the chief of the Nişādas”. He is a prince in his own right, after all. “But Drona, who knew the Law (Dharma), declined to accept him for archery, out of consideration for the others, reflecting that he was a son of a Nişāda.” This is how Drona’s non-acceptance of Ekalavya as a student of archery is explained.

Being the son of a Niṣāda, Ekalavya cannot be accepted for archery and out of consideration for others he cannot be accepted as a student. This is the two-pronged dharma that Drona knows. A son of a Niṣāda cannot be accepted for archery even though he is a prince and a warrior because he is outside the imperium. An epithet used for Ekalavya as ‘enemy burner’ (परंतपः) recognises him as a warrior. He is also not accepted as student because it would offend ‘others’, meaning other learners. Learning together with a Niṣāda will be offensive, because he is outside the varna. Imperial and social space of the Pandavas and Kauravas is blocked for Ekalavya.

Ekalavya does not protest because he also knows the dharma that Drona knows. He knew it all along and still came to Drona because Drona is an excellent teacher and Ekalavya is intent on learning archery. He does not have an impending war to fight or a fight for succession confronting him. He is secure in his existing position. Still, he wants to achieve a level of mastery in the art of archery that has not been achieved. He is after the art and excellence in the art. So, after Drona’s refusal, “Ekalavya, enemy-burner, touched Drona’s feet with his head and went into the forest”.

In the forest, Ekalavya fashions a likeness of Drona in clay. He endows the image with the gravity and sanctity of a true teacher through his observances. He constructs this teacher-figure and he begins to practice archery. The teacher refused to teach, so he made a teacher of this own and achieved a mastery of the art which was unparalleled.

One day Drona allowed his students a holiday and they all climb up a chariot and go hunting in the forest with one man carrying their gear and a dog following the chariot. The dog wandered off and got lost in the forest and came upon Ekalavya. “When the dog smelled that black Nisāda in the woods, wrapped in black deerskin, his body caked with dirt, it kept about him, barking away.” To shut up his barking Ekalavya shot seven arrows into his mouth in such quick succession that it was almost simultaneous. Dog ran away and eventually found its way back to the princes. They are amazed to see the arrows in dog’s mouth which had stopped the barking without otherwise injuring the dog. They realise this is a master’s work and go looking for him out of curiosity. They find him ceaselessly shooting arrows with great skill and ask him – who are you? Ekalavya tells them: “Know me for the son of Hiranyadhanus, chieftain of the Nisadas, and also for a pupil of Drona, who toils on mastering archery”. They realise that he is the same one who had come to Drona to learn archery and had been sent back.

After their return, they tell Drona about Ekalavya and their amazement at his skill. But Arjuna has been sulking the whole time and eventually expresses his discontent to his dear teacher when he finds him alone. “”Didn’t you once embrace me when I was alone and tell me fondly that no pupil of yours would ever excel me? Then how is it that you have another powerful pupil who excels me, who excels all the world – the son of the Nisada chief?” Arjuna knows that Drona had refused to teach Ekalavya but finds it convenient to accept Ekalavya’s assertion of being a pupil of Drona. Because it is unbearable to him that Ekalavya is better than him and there is no chance he can ever match Ekalavya. He wants to persuade Drona to do something about this impossible situation, and Ekalavya’s declaration of his discipleship is the leverage he chooses to exercise.

After hearing Arjuna, Drona thinks for a moment, only for a moment, and reaches a decision. He heads out to the forest taking Arjuna with him. He finds Ekalavya “his body caked with dirt, hair braided, dressed in tatters, bow in hand, ceaselessly shooting arrows”. Seeing Drona, Ekalavya stands up with folded hands and declares himself to be his pupil and waits. “If you are my pupil, then give me my fee at once!” Drona of course knows that he had rejected Ekalavya, but just like Arjuna, finds it convenient to accept Ekalavya’s declaration of being his pupil, to use it as a leverage, to disable Ekalavya, and calm down Arjuna.

Ekalavya enquires what he should give. He says for a great scholar of Brahman like him he will withhold nothing from his teacher.

“Drona replied, “Give me your right thumb!”

And hearing Drona’s harsh command, Ekalavya kept his promise; forever devoted to the truth, with a happy face and unburdened mind, he cut off his thumb without a moment’s hesitation and gave it to Drona. When thereafter the Nişāda shot with his fingers, he was no longer as fast as he hadbeen before. Arjuna’s fever was gone and his heart was happy; and Drona’s word was proved true: no one bested Arjuna.”

The story ends here. The text of the Mahabharata moves to other matters. We have stuck to the text till now. Everything we have said is literal and factual as presented in the text. There is no interpretation. Now we are left with a question which forces us to move towards interpretation. How do we understand Ekalavya’s last action: cutting off his thumb in response to the atrocious demand of Drona who is obviously acting out of ulterior motives which must have been plain to Ekalavya himself? There is no coercion here and Ekalavya is on his own territory. Ekalavya could have walked away without any repercussions. Anyway, there is no moral compulsion to accede to any random demands of a teacher. When Drona tried to extract a promise from his new pupils that they commit to do a task ‘buried deep in his heart’ upon completion of their training, Kauravas ignored it. Ekalavya chose to respond the way he did. What is the meaning of his last action in the story? Is he merely affirming the traditional value of devotion to the teacher for whom any sacrifice is warranted?

Mahabharata itself offers a very weak answer. “Ekalavya kept his promise: forever devoted to truth”. The promise which was made just a minute ago in response to a stern ‘teacherly’ demand! Mahabharata does not say ‘devotion to teacher’ it only says, ‘kept his promise’. How could it say, ‘devotion to teacher’, when the lines that follow say. “When thereafter the Nişāda shot with his fingers, he was no longer as fast as he had been before, Arjuna’s fever was gone and his heart was happy; and Drona’s word was proved true: no one bested Arjuna”. Evidently, Drona and Arjuna’s devotion is to another kind of truth. “Drona’s word was proved true. Arjuna’s fever was gone and his heart was happy”. Arjuna’s fever is real and Drona’s promise to Arjuna is real. The rest is fiction to be used to serve what is real: Arjuna’s fever and Drona’s promise. Dharma is also real, insofar as it is the imperial dharma and the varna dharma.

During a conversation in 2011, Navjyoti mentioned that modern people would think Ekalavya was deluded to allow himself to be taken advantage of. Ekalavya is the oppressed who is unaware of his own oppression. Problem with this is that it destroys the whole tradition for which Eklavya is the hero of the tale. He is an exemplary figure in the tradition stretching up to our own times. Is he the wrong kind of exemplar? This conversation had set me thinking about Ekalavya. In 2016, I was part of a reading group organised by Parekh Institute of Indian Thought, which is a group in CSDS. We read the original text of the story, and I was struck by the telling of Ekalavya’s tale which reveals Drona’s treachery and Arjuna’s obsession with being the best. In 2026, Sunil ji was speaking about the need for Bahujan narratives and spoke of a possible Mahabharata narrative in which Pandavas do not win, but the Kauravas win. This has prompted me to take up Ekalavya’s story. Of course, Kauravas don’t win here. They figure as mere spectators in this story even though they are a part of the same imperial space. In the telling of the story the narrator often speaks of Pandavas as the main movers. Kauravas are present but they kind of ‘abstain’, they do not ‘veto’ anything.

Drona’s demand is indeed absurd in any possible moral framework. You are demanding the sacrifice of the very ability to practice an art as a fee for having taught that very art. The demand is absurd. This must be obvious to Ekalavya. It would be obvious to anybody. It is obvious to every reader. Is it obvious to Drona? It must be. But Arjuna’s fever and fulfilling his promise to Arjuna is more important. And it is consistent with the imperial interest. The princely education space of the Pandavas (and Kauravas) is an amoral space. Does this shape the story of war between Pandavas and Kauravas? I can’t say.

Ekalavya represents a non-imperial education space where you can construct a teacher out of clay and achieve excellence that is unmatched. This space chooses peace over war. It is a space where a sincere student is willing to make sacrifices for a sincere teacher and where teacher does not make absurd demands. I think it may be interesting to delve into other Mahabharata stories where the narrative moves into non-imperial spaces. In our own time, in the conflict between Iran and the US Empire we can witness the dynamics of non-imperial and imperial educational spaces.

I will state my own conclusion that Ekalavya chooses to sacrifice his thumb because he wants to impart a lesson about learning and teaching. The story is remembered in tradition. Everybody knows the story as the story of Ekalavya, the ardent learner, the ideal student. The student who fashioned a teacher out of clay and became the best archer in the world. He was so good that Arjuna despaired of ever matching him despite having Drona as his teacher, the same Drona who was the live model for the image in clay that Ekalavya had made. Drona knew too that he can never teach Arjuna to be better than Ekalavya. The live ‘model’ of the teacher was inferior to the clay model that Ekalavya fashioned with his own hands. What does Drona do?  The live model of teacher makes a demand which if met will abort the learning project inspired by the clay model that Ekalavya had embarked upon. The lesson is that you can fashion your own teachers and that some teachers are treacherous.

Ekalavya could have walked away. Drona could not have coerced him, could not have forced him to cut his own thumb. It was an amoral demand. Ekalavya could have refused. He could have told Drona and Arjuna to get lost. He was on his own territory. He would have become the Niṣāda king in due course and would have been known as the greatest archer in the world. There would be no Ekalavya story then. Ekalavya chose to meet Drona’s demand. He gave up the opportunity of being the greatest archer in the world. He chose to be a story. He chose to be a teacher. Eklavya told Drona: you can have your pound of flesh, I don’t care. I am all right being a Niṣāda, I am all right without being a great archer. But I don’t compromise my values. He showed them his thumb.

There are some stories which are more real than reality. Ekalavya is not merely an exemplary student but also a great teacher. Ekalavya taught a lesson to Pandavas and their counsellors about knowledge and how to earn it. They ignored it. Drona and Arjuna returned to their camp and went on with mastering their weapons and fight their wars and the Mahabharata story rolled on. They refused to learn the lesson, to their own detriment. But the lesson is there for all of us.

On Thought and Practice of Vidya Ashram

Chitra Sahasrabudhey

1. The situation currently observed in our country, and across several parts of the world, reveals that the possibility of dialogue between state power and the common people (bahujan) is rapidly disappearing. Conditions of injustice, falsehood, oppression, hatred, violence, and war are intensifying. It has become essential to find ways to confront and resist these forces.
2. While there may be many reasons for this breakdown of dialogue, one clear cause is that those in power — the elite (visheshjan) — view the common people as foolish or ignorant; they consider it beneath their dignity to engage in a dialogue of equals. Conversely, those who have historically crafted philosophies to restore truth and justice, or those who have led such movements, have always determined the direction of change based on the strength of the common people and their life values (knowledge and worldview). In our country, examples of this range from ancient times to Mahatma Gandhi. Even today, it is vital to correctly identify the sources of power residing within the common people.
3. The Lokavidya Movement regards the knowledge of the common people as a crucial source of their power. It insists on the necessity of an “intervention” in the field of knowledge for any effort, struggle, or movement aimed at social change. Various knowledge streams exist within society. The hierarchy among these streams sustains social inequality and maintains the divide between the “Commoner” and the “Elite.” Intervening in the field of knowledge demands an open debate regarding the various types of knowledge present in society—their pace, value, scope, methodology, logic, control, and conflicts—as well as the relationships between them. This can be understood as an imperative to bring the relationship and dynamics between “settled/indigenous knowledge” (Lokavidya) and “organized knowledge” (which is centralized in religious institutions, universities, and as Artificial Intelligence in computers) into public debate from the perspective of the “Lok” and “Bahujan.”
4. “Lokavidya Darshan” (the philosophy of people’s knowledge) considers every human being knowledgeable. It advocates for equal respect and participation for everyone’s knowledge in building a society based on truth, justice, and brotherhood (see: www.vidyaashram.org). The common people of this country—including farmers, artisans, women, tribals, small business owners, street vendors, service providers, and artists—sustain their lives through Lokavidya and provide the means of survival for society. Crucially, they do not merely perform labor; they also craft the theories, philosophies, sensibilities, and life values of their work. They achieve this through deep dialogue, shared opinions, and reflection within their communities. In this way, Lokavidya continues to nurture the idea of “Distributed Power” (Vitarit Satta). Nevertheless, institutions of organized knowledge refuse to grant their wisdom the status of “Knowledge.”
5. Modern state power gains its momentum through organized systems, and the “Elites” (referred to as “Professionals” in today’s language) have consolidated into a distinct class. This class was shaped by the mutual cooperation of the “Trio” of modern state power, science, and capital—an alliance that has launched campaigns to displace the Bahujan from every sphere of human activity and has led to the destruction of nature. Today, we identify this trio as “State Power, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Financial Capital.” To harness the strengths of the Bahujan, there is a need to construct a “Bahujan Narrative.” The story of this country, written and propagated through the lens of the “Elites,” hides the strengths of the masses and presents them incorrectly. Dialogue regarding the knowledge of the Bahujan is essential to building this narrative.
6. Today, several powerful nations are advocating for a “Multipolar World Order” to expand their respective state powers. The knowledge-base of this state power is to be rooted in a new form of knowledge created by the convergence of science and AI—a type of knowledge where concepts of truth and justice will be independent of the existence of the common person. This would be a profound blow. However, the processes of shifting toward a multipolar world also create space to open debates on social organization and governance within Bahujan knowledge—much like how, during the World Wars, the truth, Swadeshi, non-cooperation, and Satyagraha of the masses were turned into a public force against the unjust plunder and violence of imperialist nations. Today, there is a need to recognize the public potential of concepts inherent in Bahujan knowledge, such as autonomy, brotherhood, distributed power, empathetic logic, the necessity of dialogue, and the Panchayat.
7. Vidya Ashram has been striving toward this through the Lokavidya Jan Andolan, participating in Bahujan struggles and movements—particularly the farmers’ movement—and maintaining a constant dialogue. Furthermore, it has expanded this dialogue among artisans, tribal societies, women’s organizations, and small traders. During this period, creative initiatives such as Knowledge Satyagraha (Baudhik Satyagraha), Knowledge Assembly (Gyan Panchayat), Lokavidya Satsang, Brotherhood School (Bhaichara Vidyalaya), and Bahujan Swaraj Panchayat were shaped to highlight the power and nature of Lokavidya.
8. We intend to accelerate this process through various other means. To facilitate this Bahujan knowledge dialogue among people of diverse backgrounds and ideologies, Vidya Ashram is initiating the formation of a Vichar Samiti.

Current International Situation and the Way Forward

Krishna Gandhi

The last decade has seen many extraordinary international developments totally out of character to those of the preceding 60 years . The preceding period of relative stability, peace and hope has given way to a sense of doom, chaos and violence. The post-second world war national liberation movements of third world countries had sown seeds of hope. Development was seen as attainable and within grasp of the peoples of the Third World. The UN and later the WTO promised a multilateral rule-based system of political and economic cooperation. But after nearly 60-70 years, that rule-based multilateral system of international cooperation is collapsing. The tell-tale signs of this collapse are:

1. The very countries, primarily the USA, that championed the rule based multilateral system are abandoning it. Instances are the USA withdrawing support of NATO, the UN, the WTO, and UNFCCC and refusing to abide by collective decisions taken by such bodies.
2. From being champions of free trade, the USA and European countries are moving towards protectionism. WTO and its fora for dispute settlement are being abandoned.
3. China has emerged as a new superpower championing multilateralism and globalisation.  It is threatening the US hegemony over the world.
4. The US, Russia, China, Israel are resorting to direct military action and wars on other nations blatantly violating  their sovereignty guaranteed under UN charter.
5. There is a move away from the narrative of sovereign and secular nation states to religionised supra national, supremacist civilisational states in the rhetoric of the leadership of large countries. Along with it, is the increasing tendency to paint the past as a glorious one, returning to which is the foremost ideological goal. MAGA is only one of the many examples.
6. Wars are becoming more and more technology driven (AI), dehumanised, and genocidal. Bombing of civilian populations is being carried out in the name of eliminating terrorists.
7. Everyday life of ordinary people has become highly insecure. Unemployment has become the foremost concern of the educated youth. The technological advancements of automation, robotics and AI are disrupting human social relationships as well as community life like never before.
8. Jobless growth, centralisation, inequality, and concentration of power in the hands of a few MNCs has become the most alarming feature of the current phase of development of the world.
9. A crop of authoritarian populist leaders have arisen in most countries of the world who are exploiting these conditions to promote identity-based hate politics. They are creating public paranoia targeting foreign workers, often painted as disruptors of the well-being of natives, their jobs, culture, religion, and race.
10. Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people has caused widespread revulsion among the people of the world but surprisingly the leaderships of majority of the countries of the world have not indicted Israel for its crimes. This points to the extent to which the Israeli deep state has been able to manipulate the global capitalist system. The current Iran-Israel-US war is a clear expression of Israel’s manipulation of the US government.
11. The inability of the Israel-US combine to bring to its knees the Iranian regime has once again shown that pure military power alone cannot subjugate a sovereign nation which is prepared to fight a long drawn defensive war.

The key lessons that emerge from the current international situation as it is developing are the following:

1. The benign phase of capitalist growth has come to an end. Competition (if there ever was any) has given way to monopoly. A handful of players, monopoly capitalists as well as state capitalists are controlling the world.
2. It is futile to think that monopoly capitalists, the state and the market are independent entities. All three are so integrated with each other that they form one single system. Any narrative that seeks to portray them as contending independent entities is faulty from the beginning.
3. Concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few is leading to the total side-lining of the ordinary people from all decision making. This sidelining has reached such an extent that the few who control power seem to think that ordinary people are dispensable – both in decision making and economic growth. Physical elimination of large populations of ordinary people all over the world is thus on the agenda of the super rich. Wars, genocides, pandemics, and starvation are now being seen by them as legitimate tools of physical elimination of ordinary peoples.
4. Time has come to dislodge capital from its central position in the current narratives of political economy and development. Ideas that grant capital an independent autonomous existence beyond human/societal control must be abandoned. Only then can the uncontrolled and ever accelerating processes of capital accumulation, inequality, and concentration of wealth and power can be put an end to.
5. There is a false narrative that entrepreneurship is what pushes growth and development. The fact however is that monopoly capital is destroying entrepreneurship. Any enterprise that manages to come up inspite of monopolies is ultimately gobbled up by them. So today, in the era of monopoly capitalism, it is capital that begets capital, not entrepreneurship. How to break this vicious cycle is the moot question.
6. What this implies is that we need to rethink and restructure the world on totally different ideas than are current today. No amount of tinkering with the received ideas of capitalism, communism, statism or marketism will take us anywhere.
7. The world has to be re-built from scratch based on a totally different set of ideas than those prevail today. An open inquiry (involving ordinary people) of a new set of foundational ideas concerning collective human existence and its nature is the most important task before us today.
8. Some among these new foundational ideas worth considering are Swaraj, Swadeshi, Village (geographical unit of face to face community), Panchayats and Consensual decision-making, Oceanic circles, Autonomy of autonomies, Diversity, Distributed Power, Lokavidya, Open Knowledge, Non-violence, Non-Hierarchy, Non-accumulation (Limits on personal property), and Reimagining Constitution as Dharma (moral code of conduct). This is not an exhaustive set.
9. An understanding or agreement on the possible basic minimum set of foundational ideas needs to be reached before any organisational shape can be given to these foundational ideas. We shall therefore confine our efforts to ensure the widest possible public participation in the debate on the choice of the new set of foundational ideas.

Thought and Programs of Vidya Ashram

Girish Sahasrabudhe

1. Vidya Ashram is a group of activists and thinkers interested in building a Knowledge Movement – a dialogue based on rejection of any hierarchy among different knowledge traditions in the world of knowledge. Details regarding our thoughts and activities may be found on our website: vidyaashram.org. Some background of the people in Vidya Ashram can be found here. The following paragraphs describe these briefly.
2. We believe that every human being is knowledgeable. We also believe that today a knowledge intervention in the world of knowledge by Bahujan Samaj – ordinary men and women as bearers of lokavidya (लोकविद्या) – is necessary for a social transformation to a just and equal society. All of our efforts in thought and action over past 3-4 decades have been directed toward seeking ways for that intervention.
3. The idea of lokavidya was born out of the aspirations and movements of the Bahujan communities of the country, especially the new farmers’ movements. From the 1980s we started to look at social, political aspects of life keeping knowledge at the center. We held a meeting in Varanasi in the summer of 1995 in the name of Lokavidya Pratishtha Prayas (लोकविद्या प्रतिष्ठा प्रयास). Lokavidya thought was enriched by thought and activities of the Mazdoor Kisan Niti group, the PPST Foundation and Nari Hastkala Udyog Samiti. In the 1990s, three major conferences on traditional Indian science and technology were held in Mumbai (1993), Chennai (1995) and Varanasi (1998). The Mahadhiveshan of Varanasi was called Lokavidya Mahadhiveshan and brought the idea of Lokavidya to the national stage. Various aspects of lokavidya – its power, dynamism, relevance and nature – were debated. In January 2004, at the International Conference of the World Social Forum in Mumbai, Indigen Research Foundation (Pune) and Lokavidya Samvad (Varanasi) jointly organized a workshop named ‘Dialogue on Knowledge in Society’ and introduced the idea of lokavidya on the world stage. In August 2004 Vidya Ashram was built in Sarnath, Varanasi.
4. Growth of computer science, information and communication technologies (ICT), and the internet created a shockwave in the world of knowledge. With break-up of the Soviet Union, the Iraq War, a unipolar world order spawned by globalization emerged. Politics over the globe underwent a drastic transformation. As new narratives emerged and old targets shifted established radical politics of the masses struggled for relevance and in search of effective action. On the other hand, changes in the ways knowledge was thought about considerably widened the space available for questioning of philosophical bases of modern knowledge. ICTs enabled a more mobile, dynamic and easily manageable global finance to be deployed to reap profits from products created anywhere and sold on the global market. Diverse traditions of living knowledge residing in the vast social formations outside the capitalist societies the world over, gained a fresh recognition as providers of these products. That space also created an opportunity to think afresh about these diverse knowledge traditions in radical philosophical terms. The initiative mentioned in the preceding paragraph consciously used this opportunity. Vidya Ashram built upon this foundation to give shape to knowledge activism in the public domain.
5. Vidya Ashram created several new ideas and practices under the banner of Lokavidya Jan Andolan. Some of these are: knowledge assemblies (ज्ञान पंचायत), where dialogue presumes equality and autonomy of all the diverse knowledge traditions; Kala Sadhana (कला साधना), where social formations are viewed in terms of empathy, love, cooperation, and balance, and  social transformations are regarded as expression of autonomous creative actions to establish synergy, and syntrophy; Lokavidya Satsang (लोकविद्या सत्संग), where the knowledge movement seeks continuity with the Sant Parampara; Knowledge Satyagraha (बौद्धिक सत्याग्रह) to claim ordinary life as the location of Lokavidya, to interpret new events in the world of knowledge from a Bahujan viewpoint, and to challenge all attempts at continuing hegemony of modern knowledge systems;  and campaigns for local markets, campaigns against displacement and campaign for equal incomes for lokavidya-based work. A detailed description of all the activities can be found here.
6. Over these years in our efforts to enrich lokavidya thought and contribute to building a contemporary political imagination, we have debated, and continue to debate several ideas like power, convergence of philosophy, politics and economics (knowledge, state, and capital), localism, face-to-face society, local market, cooperation vs competition, uniformity vis-a-vis diversity, autonomy, distributed power, indigenous knowledge, Buen-vivir, many-worlds universe, etc. along with concepts of lokavidya, ordinary life, lokakala, lokavidyadhar samaj, Swaraj, Bahujan and panchayat. These debates can be found here.
7. Last year we started work on a Bahujan Research Program. We take the word Bahujan mainly in the sense of ‘non-elite’, which we think is the sense in which Buddha used it. The program aims at facilitating emergence of a Bahujan narrative and an exploration of Bahujan Darshan – a philosophical position that captures the broad tradition of tenets, beliefs, memories, and narratives that sustain justice, sacrifice, and brotherhood (न्याय, त्याग, भाईचारा) in the Bahujan Samaj, and that inspires an imagination of Bahujan Swaraj. Details of these activities can be found here.
8. We launched the program Bahujan Swaraj Panchayat, in October 2025. It is conceived as a series of Panchayats to debate and construct a political imagination of Swaraj at Bahujan initiative. The program aims at building such an initiative to intervene in the global and national debate, generated in the wake of the decline of the unipolar world order, on reorganization of the Westphalian Nation State in civilizational terms. The claim of the Panchayat is that it is only the civilizational strength of the Bahujan Samaj that can rise to the task. Details of these activities can be found here, and in this Hindi publication.
9. The World today continues to be in a state of massive flux in the sphere of politics as well as in the sphere of knowledge. The emergence of AI has prolonged and intensified the destabilization of the world of knowledge. AI companies have scraped public domains like the internet for diverse pieces of knowledge work, and have used the scraped digital data to train, test, and deploy AI systems. The manner of this is not entirely dissimilar to the way colonial marauders scraped lands and the produce of local knowledge in the colonies to feed capital for industry. The focus has definitively shifted away from ICT and internet-based knowledge management to AI based knowledge production, including also new ways of “doing science”. Once again world politics are transforming too. The relation of evolving AI science and technology to this transformation today is yet to fully play out. But what is certain and relevant is that dominant politics have enabled and speeded up the burning of new AI technologies into the infrastructure of modern wars. As such, whether it be to save the unipolar order, or to usher a multipolar one, its use has a sanction by default. Also, structurally it all but eliminates critical-point human intervention. In this sense perhaps it is already a step ahead of the nuclear bomb. Further, it makes use of the same AI technologies for mass surveillance, anti-terrorism and terrorism, security of the cities, the public and the nation, and for manipulation of mass-psychology already appear almost benign in comparison. What we do not know yet is how far, and for how long disruption of more and more classes of work will continue to be regarded as benign.
10. The Iran War is seen as the final act of a failing unipolar world order, and more generally also as the end of post-Renaissance system of values and its narrative of moral superiority. A multipolar world of ‘civilizational states’ is closer to the reality of today’s world politics. What is perhaps the most important is the sustained challenge that IRGC with its largely autonomous regional units has posed to the might of a military equipped with an armoury with no match in the world.
11. The various questions we have been asking ourselves and debating relate to a large canvas of concerns ranging from laying down formulations of Bahujan Darshan to exploring contemporary meanings Bahujan Swaraj, from exploring relations between spaces of knowledge and politics to understanding organization of lokavidya, from understanding new meanings and forms of political power to seeking meaning and possibility of refusing to cooperate with it …

Bahujan Swaraj Program

Towards a more relevant role for panchayats and local governance bodies in the solution of certain vexing issues facing the country

[Part of a broader program to re-establish the primacy of Lokavidya and Bahujan Swaraj in politics]

B Krishnarajulu, Krishna Gandhi, K K Surendran

1-Determination of citizenship of an individual in India

These days large sections of Bahujan of our country are in the grip of acute anxiety regarding their citizenship and right to vote. The SIR exercise initiated by the ECI has created panic and fear that their voting rights and citizenship will be snatched away from them through this process. The Supreme Court has singularly failed to rein in the arbitrary actions of the ECI despite pleadings by top lawyers and popular agitations.

One significant opinion that has emerged during the controversy surrounding SIR is that the local community be consulted regarding whether a voter is a genuine citizen and  is normally resident in that particular locality and therefore has the inalienable constitutional Right to be enrolled as a voter. Taking forward this idea, the local government (the gram panchayat or the ward/municipality) could be entrusted with the task of determining the genuineness of the  citizenship claim of the local resident.

2-Determining the MSP of a locally grown crop or locally manufactured product

The problem of ensuring fair returns to local producers like farmers and artisans within the areas of jurisdiction of the local Panchayat/Municipality, through the fixation of MSP, may be resolved through these local government bodies. The tasks of determination of MSPs for crops and their procurement and storage for the purpose of the food security of the local residents may be entrusted to the Panchayat/Municipality.

3-Exemption from GST on local produce (products of Bahujan labour and Knowledge)

The identification of local products (produced by farmers,artisans and other small producers belonging to the Panchayat/Municipal area, should be done by the local Panchayat/Municipality. Such produce should be exempted from GST(both CGST & SGST). Other taxes such as those levied on minor minerals (sand, soil and so on) other resources extracted like water, forest produce, etc… should accrue to the local Panchayat’s revenue.

Background Notes for initiating discussions within Panchayats/Municipalities for resolution of the above issues

The current phase of capitalist development has resulted in the extreme concentration of power in the hands of few throughout the world. Authoritarian regimes have popped up everywhere. Democracy (arriving at a consensus on issues through widespread consultation with ALL representative bodies), if any, is a mere sham. Nation states and their sovereignty are losing relevance. Imperialism masquerading as civilizational states is being re-established by the new authoritarian regimes. The voices of vast numbers of Bahujan are being suppressed. Their very existence is under threat as the current capitalist systems seem to have no use of their labour or knowledge.

In this context, Swaraj (self-rule) centred on localised communities offers an alternative. The Panchayati Raj institutions incorporated under the 73rd constitutional amendment could play a significant role in this.

We propose to initiate a public discussion on the program to grant autonomy (Swaraj) to local self-government bodies as an alternative to the highly centralised inequitous, violent, anti people capitalist systems. We propose that a start is made by taking up the following program:

1. Grant Panchayats and Municipalities the power to certify a resident of in their area an authentic voter and a citizen
2. Grant Panchayats and Municipalities the power to declare the Minimum Support Prices of crops produced by the farmers of the area and procure them at MSPs.
   Additionally, the local bodies may be granted the power to declare MSPs for other hand made products produced in their areas by artisans, craftsmen, and SMEs registered with and recognised by them and also to procure, store such products and facilitate their marketing.
3. Grant the local self-governments the power to ensure the food security of the population residing in their areas by storing and distributing the food crops produced by the farmers of the area. For this purpose these bodies may be allocated funds to construct warehouses and other necessary infrastructure.
4. Exemption from the purview of GST for the local products of farmers, artisans, craftsmen, SMEs in their area. Any and all taxes levied on local produce be added to the revenue of these local bodies.
5. Conduct training and workshops to explore the scope for expansion of Swaraj and autonomy at the lowest levels of localised communities.

Bahujan Samaj: Knowledge, Thought, and Philosophy

Lakshman Prasad

The word ‘Bahujan’ is a term of respect originating from the Buddhist tradition. Those whom the so-called religious Brahmanical texts placed in the fourth category and labeled as ‘Shudras’, and who in present times are deemed illiterate and rustic by university-aligned Western culture and deprived of their rights—this is the very same Bahujan Samaj (majority community) that possesses far more knowledge, thought, and philosophy than today’s highly educated class. It is this community that runs this country, the world, and society. The philosophy of simplicity, essence, and natural ease resides within this very community.

The society that establishes itself on the basis of its own knowledge and labor, and continuously provides essential goods and services to society through its creative power, is the Bahujan Samaj. Bahujan means the common people. Interacting and mingling with the Bahujan Samaj is natural and simple; the traits of the elite (exclusive class) do not exist within this community. The Bahujan is a society of roti (bread/labor), while the elite is a society of pothi (scriptures/textbooks). Discrimination has been systematically maintained between the people of the scriptures and the people of the bread. In the vast ocean of the Bahujan Samaj, priceless pearls who create in diverse ways are contained.

These priceless pearls are seen and recognized in the form of farmers, artisans, women, and tribals; as small shopkeepers, street vendors, sanitation workers, artists, and social activists; as diverse creators across water, land, forests, mountains, deserts, and seashores; and as various service providers in towns, cities, and metropolises. They are also seen and recognized in the form of various communities and castes.

The master of Lokavidya (knowledge in society), this society is proficient in modern and ultra-modern tasks alongside traditional ones. It is this community that repairs vehicles like motorcycles, cars, trucks, tractors, and buses in roadside garages, enabling all the aforementioned vehicles to run uninterrupted across the country. If these artisans stop providing their services by the roadsides, all vehicle manufacturing companies will come to a standstill because they do not possess such a large number of mechanics and engineers. Similarly, the artisans of the Bahujan Samaj effortlessly assemble and repair ultra-modern devices such as TVs, radios, mobiles, and computers.

The Bahujan Samaj is present everywhere creation, composition, and production take place. Wherever creation, composition, and production occur, knowledge exists right there. No creation is possible without knowledge. The Bahujan Samaj stands firm with this claim, but due to the gross injustice prevalent in society, the elite have occupied the claims to knowledge.

तू कहता कागज की लेखी।  (You talk of the written letter)

मैं कहता आंखन की देखी।।  (And I say the eye sees better.)

The knowledge of the Bahujan Samaj is channeled through its work. True knowledge is that by which something practical is done. The elite possess paper-based knowledge. A paper degree holds recognition, even if the individual is completely ignorant. For nearly every task the Bahujan Samaj performs, universities have corresponding departments. A professor or engineer in the agriculture department does not possess more knowledge than a farmer, and if given land to cultivate, they cannot match the farmer’s yield. The same goes for the textile department and all other departments. If the hefty salaries drawn from the government exchequer were removed, the knowledge of these professors and engineers would be of no use. A farmer manages to sustain his home and family on the strength of his practical knowledge, but professors and engineers cannot even run their households solely on the strength of their theoretical knowledge. This is the reality of a paper degree. The unemployed who wander from pillar to post carrying paper degrees share the same fate. If there were true power in the degree holder’s knowledge, they would be earning better than the Bahujan Samaj. The very tasks that the elite are unable to perform through their knowledge, the Bahujan Samaj performs with ease. As the popular sayings go:

“काम को काम सिखाता है!” (You learn work from work!)

and

“करता गुरु, न करता शागिर्द।” (The Master does, not the one who but praises him!)

Women remain engaged in work throughout the day. They do far more work than men, yet the notion remains strong that women are foolish. The tribal society lives in forests alongside nature and the environment, lives and dies by its support, and possesses profound knowledge of trees, plants, vegetation, and medicines; yet, the tribal society has been branded as utterly uncivilized and ignorant. This is the story of every section of the Bahujan Samaj.

The organized Western education of schools and colleges has attempted to imprison all forms of knowledge within an academic framework. Only that knowledge is recognized which fits into today’s educational structure. There are many forms of knowledge that lie outside this boundary and criteria, yet they are fully recognized within the community. There are countless vocal artists across the country, and none of these artists became performers by studying at an academic institution. They became singers by learning from the folk culture and based on the recognition of the people. Despite not having a paper degree, the government honors them from time to time with awards, certificates of appreciation, or medals.

In the field of singing, women outnumber men. They present songs and music during weddings, festivals, rituals, harvesting or sowing times, and various other occasions. These include different rhythms, melodies, values, thoughts, philosophy, affection, maternal love, longing, and sensitivities. This open university of the folk is one where no fees are taken or given; simply by being part of the collective, knowledge spreads among countless people. This university of knowledge is not one enclosed by walls. Here, there is entry for everyone, respect for everyone, and opportunity for everyone. This is true not just for singing, but across all folk arts of the Bahujan Samaj, including painting, sculpting, and woodwork. Farmers, artisans, and tribals do not charge fees from anyone; instead, they give something in return for labor. A core value is hidden in this act of the Bahujan Samaj providing education without fees. The university education patronized by the state is based on the market and commerce. The value of market and commerce is to earn profit. The value of the Bahujan Samaj is not to earn profit, but to sustain a livelihood. Many activities within the Bahujan Samaj are based on mutual cooperation so that the welfare of one another is ensured.

The affluent class continuously spends hundreds of thousands of rupees in courts, police stations, and hospitals, and is astonished by the mere thought of how a person from the Bahujan Samaj—who may lack a secure arrangement for food—manages to protect themselves from the massive expenses of courts, police posts, and hospitals. The forces capable of navigating through all these turmoils exist within the Bahujan Samaj. Elements such as the local community, brotherhood, panchayat, swaraj (self-governance), justice, sacrifice, fraternity, love, cooperation, and tolerance make every task easier for this society. In times of trouble or calamity, people do their work for free or at a very minimal cost.

When any woman or man from the Bahujan Samaj visits a government department for their work, the educated personnel of today’s government machinery behave rudely with them. In government sectors, the Bahujan Samaj has to face humiliation and insults. Their work is not done easily; rather, their self-respect is toyed with, as if they are not citizens of this country and society, or perhaps not even human. Just imagine, if an officer or employee visits a village or an artisans’ settlement, do the people of the Bahujan Samaj behave in the same manner? What is the definition of being civilized and thoughtful? Is the one who behaves poorly civilized, or is the one who behaves with manners of brotherhood civilized? These concepts of civilization are inherently embedded within the Bahujan Samaj.

The teachings, principles, and idioms of various saints and great personalities can frequently be heard within the Bahujan Samaj. India has been a land of saints. From the great humanist Gautama Buddha to Saint Kabir, Saint Ravidas, Guru Nanak, Saint Namdev, Tukaram, Basavanna, Phule, Gadge Baba, and Mahatma Gandhi, great saints have emerged here. Along with them, every region has had local saints of the Bahujan Samaj who delivered messages of humanity, justice, sacrifice, brotherhood, benevolence, truth, honesty, tolerance, and service. They warned people to stay away from prevalent social evils and false beliefs, thereby strengthening society philosophically.

The tradition of the Panchayat has been ongoing for a long time within the Bahujan Samaj, the living forms of which can still be witnessed today. In reality, the strength of the Bahujan Samaj lies in the Panchayat, where every side of the community is heard, deliberated upon, and decisions are made. The Panchayat consists of one’s own people. It is free from external pressure, accessible to the common people, and money plays no role in it. Even today, Chaudharis (community leaders) are found in many communities, whose job is to wisely resolve issues arising in society, settle disputes, help the weak and helpless, organize cultural activities, and lead their community. This is society’s own system. The people of the society run it themselves—the problem belongs to the society, and the solution comes from the society. This system of the Panchayat rests on the foundation of thought and philosophy, and it controls and regulates the culture, civilization, lifestyle, and conduct of the Bahujan Samaj.

On the other hand, administrative and judicial systems have been established by the government. The manner in which these systems function is hidden from no one. No common person has complete faith in them. The elite, backed by money, power, and prestige, dominate these spaces. These systems are built for their benefit. Therefore, the Bahujan Samaj has less faith in this official system and greater trust in their own Panchayat system because it represents Loktantra (the system of the people/true democracy).

The life of the Bahujan Samaj is filled with philosophical values. Examples include avoiding actions that cause distress to others, not using nature beyond one’s need, conserving water, performing acts of charity, holding a sense of affection and respect toward nature, trees, plants, vegetation, water, mountains, and rivers, not wasting food, helping one another, remaining free from debt, being grateful for kindness received, and maintaining humane behavior toward plants, animals, and birds. Countless such examples can be observed at every step in the life of the Bahujan Samaj. This is the reason why people of the Bahujan Samaj do not place their elders in old age homes or widow shelters; they consider keeping them there to be against the values and dignity of the Bahujan.

Even if we look at the present times, the elements of knowledge, thought, and philosophy are highly present in the Bahujan Samaj. In the blind race for modern material comforts and development, there is a scramble for Western culture, the glitz of ‘Englishness’, markets, competition, immense wealth, and the acquisition of power. In such a scenario, the knowledge, thought, and philosophy of the Bahujan Samaj based on brotherhood and cooperation serve as a mirror, guiding everyone onto the path of humanity. If the country, the world, nature, and the environment are to be saved, and a society based on humanity is to be built, then the current craving for capital and power must be abandoned, and the system of the saint tradition must be adopted. The Bahujans of the world must unite to bring forth the system of Swaraj (true self-governance).

Bahujan Darshan

Sunil Sahasrabudhey

The ideal of Indian civilization has always been rooted in Ordinary Life. It has also been rooted in the knowledge that resides in Ordinary Life and flourishes there. The Bahujan have been the bearers of this ideal. The story of Bahujan history is the story of a continuous striving towards this ideal.

It is said that until about the Seventh or Eighth century CE, and perhaps even later, one could routinely encounter philosophers at public places in this land. Most came from the Bahujan communities themselves and were inspired by Buddhist thought. As the march of philosophy became intertwined with the history of the elite, a long period of the exclusion of the Bahujan began.

The elite of this country associate the Indian philosophical tradition primarily with the six orthodox systems (Ṣaḍdarśana). They are, for the most part, Brahmins, members of the so-called upper castes, people with zamindari or aristocratic backgrounds, those who can easily read and write English, and the wealthy classes of the country. The Bahujan movement must confront all of them. It must challenge a grand narrative. It must question the dominant narrative of the national movement.

Naturally, this requires raising very large and fundamental questions. One must ask: in the Mahabharata, who truly emerged victorious—the Pandavas or the Kauravas? If Krishna fought against the Yadavas, was he Vasudeva rather than Nandalal? One must ask whether Rama actually succeeded in killing Shambuka. Or was it, instead, that in Shambuka’s own land his spiritual radiance was so great that anyone who sought to strike him found their feet stuck to the ground—just as happened to Angulimala when he set out to kill Shakyamuni Buddha?

Many more such questions will have to be raised.

There is a profound similarity between the philosophy born in Europe and Brahmanical thought. Both designated the Bahujan as Shudras. But today the Bahujan have awakened. They are moving forward to present their true identity before the world. The process of creating a Bahujan narrative has already begun. As one moves to give a concrete shape to the idea of a Bahujan narrative, Bahujan strength and the many stories about their ideas begin to reveal an altogether different picture of the world. The need for a Bahujan philosophy becomes evident.

As an initial effort, we have identified a few conceptual points of departure. These are: Ordinary Life (Sāmānya Jīvan), Lokavidya, Bahujan, Panchayat, Swaraj, Art, and Morality. A brief depiction of the relationships among these concepts is presented below. Additional concepts can certainly be included. Depending on one’s priorities, different sets of foundational ideas can serve as entry points into the world of philosophy.

Reflection on how Bahujan, Lokavidya, Ordinary Life, Panchayat, Swaraj and Art (aesthetic-ethical) are interwoven provides a possible entry into Bahujan Darshan. The following premises may prove helpful in this context.

1. Bahujan knowledge is Lokavidya. Lokavidya resides in Bahujan Samaj.
2. Bahujan life is Ordinary Life. Values of Bahujan Samaj guide Ordinary Life.
3. Panchayat is the location of Bahujan discourse and resolve / decision-making. Bahujan ideal of consensus guides the Panchayat process.
4. The ideal of Bahujan governance is Swaraj. Swaraj is secular and spiritual creation of the Bahujan.
5. Art / emotion infuse every Bahujan act. Bahujan logic epitomizes art / emotion.
6. Ordinary Life finds its knowledge-referral in Lokavidya. Lokavidya dwells in Ordinary Life.
7. Lokavidya forms the knowledge base of the Panchayat because of its ethical / emotional kernel. The Panchayat accords Lokavidya the status of supreme knowledge.
8. Lokavidya is the knowledge base of Swaraj. Swaraj is the gross expression of Lokavidya.
9. Art / emotion contextualize Lokavidya. The logic of Lokavidya is infused with art / emotion. (Loka)Kala is the very form of Lokavidya.
10. Ordinary Life accords routine acceptance to Panchayat. Panchayat is an aspect of Ordinary Life.
11. In Ordinary life autonomy of every social formation is the social foundation of Swaraj. In Swaraj, Ordinary Life resolves its own inconsistencies.
12. Every process in Ordinary Life relates to emotion and ethical reflection. Art pervades every aspect of Ordinary Life.
13. Panchayat underlines autonomy and the sense of community inherent in Swaraj. In Swaraj, Panchayat ensures adherence to norms and rules.
14. Panchayat is a form of moral agency. The process of ethical and social resolve / decision-making is located in Panchayat.
15. Swaraj is that thought and arrangement in which every process and act relate to moral-ethical consideration. When Art is sovereign in the world of knowledge, Swaraj is perceived as a natural formation.

Revisiting the idea of liberation as बहुजन हित (welfare of all)

J K Suresh and G Sivaramakrishnan

The term liberation immediately raises the question, “from what?”. Assuming that we are able to answer this, the next question that arises is “what does it mean?” and “how shall it be achieved?”

Considering the ongoing processes that are leading India towards greater destitution in its economic, cultural and social dimensions, we may identify it as the condition that we primarily seek liberation from. Through an evaluation of the Indian society, we aim to outline a skeletal approach for understanding the Indian condition and what it may take to change it. This in turn leads us to the next questions, viz., what does liberation mean and how may it be attained? These are deeply connected and determined both materially and culturally, as we will see below.

An Epochal Change

A great change is taking place in the world in recent years. We are being prepared for it through sweeping developments in the areas of politics, culture and economics. In every country, its current manifestation is in the form of heightened deterioration of all aspects of public life caused by State violence, authoritarian politics and suppression of dissent in society. At the global level this has resulted in an alarming increase in relative and absolute impoverishment, inequality and institutional dysfunction. The driving force for these changes is the strong alignment of the State with the interests of capital resulting in the disruption of all previous notions and practices governing social structure, organization and relationships. Together, these changes herald a new age of capital that demands the forcible elimination of all forms of opposition to its endless search for profits and markets, domestic and foreign.

Elite command of political and cultural spaces is not a new development. However, technology and social engineering in recent decades have successfully created virtual spaces for attention capture that has had effects in different dimensions. In economics, demand for goods and services is stoked through persuasive alternate realities based upon symbols, signs and media representations whose gradual departure from reality ultimately creates a hyper-real world that no longer needs references to the real. Hyper-reality makes it possible to continuously generate demand for real goods and services by replacing their use value by their sign value (e.g., luxury items) and for their virtual counterparts by completely divorcing their use value from material reality (e.g., in-game virtual good purchases). In the social sphere, these virtual spaces can be tuned for converting information consumers into products by studying all aspects of their behavior and weaponizing such data for marketing, surveillance and control. In addition, the ability to manipulate information flow in social media platforms through selective content filters, reinforcements or bans enables the suppression of resistance to actions of governments or business oligarchs long before it crystallizes into organized opposition. Culturally, the virtual spaces have all but ensured the complete erasure of the local in favor of a more universal, elite acceptable and sophisticated form of arts, protests, counter-cultural acts etc. whose benign nature ensures the elimination of any threat of subversion. Given the grip that virtual spaces have on the real world actions of people, these effects have combined to render ordinary people incapable of organizing resistance to the onslaught on their lives even in the physical spaces.

In its totality, the technosocial ecosystem erected over the last few decades to serve imperial interests may now be recognized as having ushered in a new era of rentier capitalism, extractive colonization and elite global power broker networks. During this period, erosion of privacy, thought and behavior control etc. are attributes built into its DNA of society to promote greater value removal from transnational supply chains of labor and material.

Today, the standards for the condition of human life is determined by the social, cultural or economic conventions established within the digital ecosystem that conforms to the interests of the Western elite and its vassals spread across the world. Consequently, the digital cage which envelops the people today not only determines the lives of the net-savvy but also of those who are marginally, or not at all, integrated into the global society.

It is here that we are faced with a paradox, wherein the large majority of people seemingly support those very forces whose search for increasing returns on capital creates conditions for their further enslavement. This has been helped in no small way by the capacity of technology to create the infrastructure for a virtual world that shapes people’s emotions, opinions and behavior into tools that are used to manipulate the people as evidenced in the revival of religion, identity, language as effective diversions meant to neutralize potential or actual opposition to the designs of capital.

While they point to a dire future for humanity, a new awareness is also developing – growing inequality, mass surveillance, violence, control and suppression have cracked the crafted image of independence, freedom, development etc. cultivated by the champions of libertarianism of the West for centuries. As a result, in the absence of a cogent alternate world-view to replace it, hitherto accepted theories of society, politics and economics have become delegitimized. This provides us with a leeway to formulate a new understanding of imperialism, taking into account its recent evolution, the new contradictions it has resulted in, and explore ways by which opposition to it may be mounted. Minimally, it is hoped that it enables a dialogue with likeminded groups interested in mass politics.

Today, across the world, it is increasingly being realized that the era of colonization never ended and that the collective West has enforced its will not only through violence but also through its propagandist claims of imposing democracy, free trade and self-determination of people. Some aspects of this are discussed below.

The Broken Mirror: The Changing Perception of the West in our times

Until recently, the self-perception of the West as a liberating influence on the World served as a persistent conceptual desideratum for capitalism to rationalize the plunder of global resources under the garb of development or the subjugation of dissenting societies through just wars in the name of democracy or justice. The self-perception endured in the West through large scale propaganda using co-opted national and international influencers and the mainstream media (MSM) to shape the beliefs and opinions of a large section of the people. The indoctrination has been so effective that, in spite of conditions of relative poverty and distress into which a large section of middle classes have fallen of late, the view that the West is virtuous, democratic and egalitarian continues to dominate. And conversely, the view that the rest of the World not only suffers from a lack of these attributes, but also are evil, despotic and primitive.

Nonetheless, across the rest of the world (with few exceptions), ordinary people are by and large free of comfortable illusions projected by doctrines, faced as they are with increasing hardships in their daily lives and livelihoods. The elite in these societies are another matter altogether. Historically, their existence and circumstances have largely been determined by their relationship with the West, playing a wide range of roles: agents, facilitators for import and export, vendors for machinery and parts, suppliers of parts and products for its consumer markets, subsidiaries of foreign and domestic entities in the areas of banking, commerce, financial products, intermediaries in government dealings, defense contractors, press and media barons, academics shilling various versions of modern S&T (Science and Technology), economic, political and social etc. policy recommendations, etc. The elite is not merely enamored of the West but increasingly consider themselves a part of the transnational global network of plutocrats with an exaggerated belief in the founding principles of the liberal, democratic modern West. Or whatever else that that the West currently is into.

Such a consensus has held for nearly a hundred years or two now, an achievement made possible through the construction and capture of West-inspired institutions of the State by the elite. The control of media, social and cultural organs, law and administration, education and instruments of propaganda has made it possible to parade the slogans of freedom, democracy etc. as though they are long practiced virtues of the West responsible for its spectacular progress, and therefore deservedly serving as a “beacon on the hill” to motivate lesser nations to emulate and excel. Within the West, insistent propaganda has also made it possible to appeal to the fear in people by painting a picture of a brave society striving to better the lot of mankind that nevertheless is surrounded by hostile forces seeking to impose obscurantism, slavery and dictatorship on it.

However, none of these are by themselves sufficient to suppress popular discontent in the background of the increasing immiseration of the middle classes in the West. To overcome it, the Western elite has successfully been able to create self-referential virtual worlds and virtual realities that capture attention, create engagement, promote acute individualism and isolation from groups, and serve the objective of unfettered consumption that in turn slakes capital’s thirst for production of goods and services, and profits. Moreover, they also act as an opiate to lure people away from understanding the true nature of what it does to individuals in society – objectification, exploitation, alienation and dehumanization. The attraction of extreme individualism, enveloped as it is by a simulated reality that promotes ever greater addiction to it, appears to be strong enough for large swathes of the middle classes across the world to be easily conscripted into the arms of appealing propaganda in the name of freedom, personal enjoyment, development and prosperity.

Meanwhile in recent decades, the technological boom has enabled an increase not only in the rate of extraction of profit from capital, but also a large transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, resulting in decreasing real wages of workers and increased inequality in society to an extent not witnessed before. However, the search for profits seems to have now hit a wall – as it does every so many years, a major crisis has enveloped capitalism that is reflected in the conflict between major powers regarding the current configuration of supply chains, claims over resources and national aspirations. Unlike past crises, this appears to be both structural and terminal. It is structural in the sense that capital flows are unable to generate increased returns and surpluses. However, factors such as overproduction, business cycles or inefficient capital allocation do not seem to be driving this crisis. This leads to a suspicion that it might be caused by factors such as the exhaustion of lands to conquer for materials or societies to supply labor. In this context, it may be useful to recall that a major economic crisis after the abrogation of the Bretton-Woods arrangement in the 1970’s was averted not so much by brilliant economic planning but by factors like the introduction of the petro-dollar system, control over the resources of former colonies and erstwhile constituents of the former USSR, and the incorporation of China into the global capitalist network. Thirty five years after the end of the Cold War, there are no more frontiers to expand into! Therefore, it is likely that the innate drive of capital to seek better returns, fuelled by 500 years of expansion across the world, suddenly faces a great impediment it does not seem to know how to tackle.

Understanding the developing crisis of capitalism is best served by considering the situation of USA. While we recognize that imperialism is not a preserve of the US and exists as a web of relationships at the physical (through force) and virtual level (through ideas) across the Collective West, it is useful to focus on it because it drives the essential core of imperial rule followed by the rest of the West by accepting subordinate roles in it.

Two factors have thus far ensured the continuance of American hegemony – its economic strength and the status of the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world. Trade pegged in US dollars, for e.g., petroleum, ensures its constant circulation and strength through re-investment (into US treasuries, real estate, industrial investment, etc.). However, in recent years, the policies that exclusively enrich the miniscule elite coteries that own more than 80% of the income and wealth of the country have reached a point where further concessions to them can be made only at the cost of completely suppressing labor – reducing worker wages to unsustainable levels, eliminating jobs through automation, slashing healthcare benefits and subsidies to the poor, etc. This creates social tensions and dissent that have been tackled thus far by diverting attention through raising bogeys such as of migrants, China, Canada, Mexico, etc. In continuation with it, US politics recently has thrown world trade, international relations and cooperative development into disarray through illegal wars, blockades, refutation of international laws, sanction regimes, tariffs, etc. These seem to indicate that the current crisis is different from the periodic structural crises that ail capitalism and appear incapable of easy resolution.

These moves have led to a breakdown of all “established” conventions and norms of relationships within and across nations, the language of discourse to establish international “order”, institutional integrity, “rule based” systems etc. As a result, it has created cracks in the global “consensus” about the moral legitimacy, material stability and continued dominance of the West in imposing “order” on the world. In just a few years, all so-called principles guiding trade & commerce between countries, sanctity of international institutions, dispute resolution mechanisms and “rule based” international order have eroded, leading to an instability with serious long term economic, political and social implications. For the West, and not just the rest as has been the case for five centuries.

In this background, it is now useful to turn our attention towards India and its present condition with the hope that the changing international context can provide an understanding of where the society is and what its prospects are, from a social, political and economic standpoint.

Post-colonial India

Post-independent Indian society did not undergo sufficient atomization for it to be effectively reorganized in accordance with the changing needs of capital over time. As a result, it has not been well integrated into the global economy as dozens of other Asian countries or post-Soviet economies have been. While the lack of intensity of capital formation and political will are often identified as the reasons for this in the initial years after 1947, the situation has not changed even after 1990’s when the liberalization of the economy resulted in an ever increasing scale of capital accumulation by the political and capitalist elite. The primary obstacle for it seems to be the large number of geographically dispersed social divisions aligned with caste, region, economic status and religion. While it is indeed true that the dominance of the capitalist mode of production has fundamentally altered the relationships of production across the board over these years, it is also true that social divisions have not expectedly splintered as in the 19^th Century West to yield an atomized society, but morphed into new divisions that are aligned with the needs of capital. In addition to acquiring new forms over time, social divisions have developed new alliances between groups to attain new identities and positional advantages in the caste hierarchy to serve their evolving political, social, economic or cultural interests. This impedes the process of atomization of society, and the consequent ability for capital, among others, to enable ease of labor availability, malleability and fungibility across the country.

At the conceptual level, these divisions may be visualized in the form of cocoons of ideas, beliefs and practices that are organized around micro world-views that mediate the learning, knowledge and experience of people who are born or grow into them. The group’s self-description and its social and cultural rituals and practices is determined by its geographical expanse, relative economic status and position in the caste system, and distance from power. Correspondingly, the micro world-views of groups overlap and change over time, sometimes resulting in a merger into a bigger grouping that is usually but not always determined by politics, their relative economic status and social position. Thus, for example, following great social and economic success over the last 80 years, the Brahmanas of several parts of South India no longer consider their allegiance to underlying philosophies such as Advaita, Dvaita, etc., or to practices of endogamy and ritual purity etc., as a primary distinction in their pursuit of a good life, although some of it survives in a rhetorical form. As with elite elsewhere, they pursue power and influence with greater vigor through their new identity that counts Brahmanas as a whole, because it gives them a greater geographical spread and numbers in comparison with the past. Similarly, while strict distance is observed from castes that are much lower in the hierarchy, several groups that belong to the agricultural castes, the Sudras, consider themselves as forming a common caste, as for e.g., the Vokkaligas of old Mysore, formerly divided into regionally and occupationally separated endogamous groups (numbering 80) such as Gangadikara, Mullegowda, Kunchatiga etc. The same is true of the Lingayats of North Karnataka whose avowed origins are said to isolate them from the ills of Hinduism and yet whose internal divisions reflect the caste system almost perfectly! It is thus that the dynamic self-perceptions, alliances and evolving world-views of social groups provide the basis for a dynamic tapestry of social and economic intent and purpose in India.

Politics plays a great part in determining the evolution of social divisions that are loosely organized around the system of caste. For example, the anti-caste movement of Tamil Nadu of the 1960’s triggered a strong alliance of the Sudras resulting in the ouster of the forward castes from the center of the social, political and cultural affairs of the state. Sixty years later, the alliance seems splitting from within and the state seems to be ripe for new alliances with a new world-view that suits the political and economic needs of the time. Another example is the policy for reservations pursued by all political parties in India. Progressively, what was intended to serve the lowest of the low in socio-economic terms has come to include every group that has the strength to militate for a right to a part of the national pie. This is as much a result of the push from politics to fuse together their vote base as due to the pull from social groups that have used reservations to consolidate in order to strengthen their bargaining positions.

It is therefore important to recognize that the social divisions in India continue to not only exist, but also evolve in response to larger changes in the socio-economic character of society. In a manner of speaking, caste as a system has found new ways of expressing itself in the context of the political economy of post-independence India.

The Indian Condition

As observed before, social divisions present significant barriers to the command of capital in the effective organization of resources, structuring of production and wide acceptance of capitalism as a Natural law of human society. That is, prevent the wide acceptance of capital as a central principle that legitimizes the maximization of profit and the commodification of labor while also promoting the illusion that all other ways of organizing economic activity in society are either defunct or false. Consequently, the capitalist economic organization of society not only becomes inefficient and semi-functional, but also incapable of committing a large majority of people to its unquestioning command. Moreover, possibly because of historical reasons, the level of atomization varies widely across the geography and social divisions, leading to significant variations in the development, modernization and prosperity in society.

As a result of the peculiarities of Indian society that have shaped its response to capitalism, the development of post-independence India has been significantly different from that in the early stages of capitalism in the West. From a strictly state-led accumulation model designed to prevent private monopolies till around 1980, it subsequently converted itself into a market-driven economy where private capital dominates and the state acts primarily as a facilitator of public-private partnerships and regulatory oversight thereafter.

The initial decades after independence were to a certain extent more egalitarian, with strict controls on profiteering, labor abuse and raw material exploitation. This was a time that saw efforts to improve education, develop agriculture and promote industrialization to create a strong economy that could stand on its own and boldly strive for betterment of lifestyles through improved infrastructure, social services and universal employment.

However, the slow pace of change wrought by state capitalism soon led to policy failures, widespread disaffection and shortage of inputs to the economy. An easy explanation for this was driven by the standard set of arguments from apologists for capitalism: the government is by definition ineffective in allocation of resources because of bureaucracy and centralization, state capital eliminates incentives and innovation in society, state imposed constraints on returns on capital emboldens trade unionism and inefficiency, etc.

Around early 1980’s, the Indian elite, enthralled and enamored by Western thought for two centuries, seems to have realized that this vast geography, with its complex web of socio-political divisions, cannot be managed within the framework of the ideas of 1947 for three reasons. One was that the rising political dissension and social discontent in the country which diluted the consensus that obtained during independence for a socialist path to be adopted for India’s development and also threatened elite dominance. The second was that the returns on capital, whether directly from private capital, or routed by government through subsidies and sinecures obtained through the elite’s privileged position were not sufficient for accommodating the growth in its numbers that resulted from the production of public goods and services in the previous decades through State capital. Lastly, the Indian elite’s desire to catch up with the global elite, in terms of life styles, consumption and wealth, acted as an important driver of the “urgency” to reform the economy and bring it on a fast track.

The new framework that replaced the old was predictably based on the Western neo-liberal thinking. To rationalize which, standard arguments were trotted out to forge a new elite consensus that soon led to the privatization of the economy on a large scale and the creation of a market economy with little or no restraints on the movement of capital across sectors, profiteering and wealth transfers to the elite from the poor. In the decades after 1990, a wave of deregulation of banks, withdrawal of public sector financing from agriculture, private capital inflows, a massive transfer of public assets into the hands of private players, financialization of the economy and capital concentration in corporates facilitated the process of transfer of wealth and control to the business oligarchs who slowly took control of the economy. As a text book example of the effects of unbridled crony capitalism in society, recent developments in India illustrate the true nature of capital: when allowed to operate without constraints, its internal logic of continuous profit seeking compels it to exploit and marginalize natural and human resources relentlessly. And in the process, it legitimizes extraordinary levels of inequality in society through the transfer of the fruits of labor to the owners of capital.

बहुजन हित (Welfare of all)

The records of our freedom movement show that a mere hundred years ago, Indians rose up in a mighty show of resistance to British colonialism and, even while being reduced to utter poverty and misery under the jackboots of tyranny, found great courage to oust the colonial oppressor from the country. Gandhi was and remains the only leader who seems to have, for a time, woken up the large mass of people and encouraged them to carry out impossible tasks of defiance, non-cooperation, non-violent resistance and material dispossession as part of the struggle.

Today, we live in an India where kleptocracies and business oligarchies have stolen untold amounts of wealth and sustenance from the masses, destroyed public institutions, degraded infrastructure, privatized the commons, profited obscenely from commerce and promoted instruments of large scale surveillance and fear to suppress dissent. The propaganda machines of the business-political elite have effectively converted the majority of people into willing tools of the establishment through the ideology of Hindutva that provides outlets to their frustrations and ambitions through religious exceptionalism, hatred and violence.

Ordinary people, albeit equipped with a robust and practical understanding of justice and fair play that is a part of their micro world-views and lived experiences, appear to be helpless and confused in the face of the sophisticated techno-socially determined propaganda and falsehoods that are presented to them through every platform that they experience in the digital and non-digital world. Efforts to organize them into larger progressive forces in society, while successful for a while as for example in the arduous, long drawn and frequent farmer protests, have ultimately faced attrition due to their inability to create a sustained alliance between groups across the social divide. The rigors of ordinary life, which has increasingly become marginalized and fraught with unsustainability, also contributes to the endurance of protest movements – a consequence of the harsh extraction of value from the poor by 21^st century capitalism.

At this point, it may be useful to recall that in the last two hundred years, it has been the middle classes and parts of the elite which have been at the forefront of the struggle against oppression, societal collapse and fascism. Today, however, all sections of the Indian middle classes and the elite seem to have gone into a deep slumber.

It appears to us that the idea of welfare of all is a deeply held belief across India. If a radical attempt to rekindle the spirit of opposition to oppression is to be made, we consider that it must begin by evoking this idea as the practical basis for the masses to be rallied together with. For this, a section of the elite must be made ready to sacrifice their all by, as Mao said long ago, “going to the people”. That is when, in our age of hyper-realism, miracles can still possibly happen.

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