Summary of  Session 2: Kannada Knowledge Traditions

 20 Feb 2025 Convention on Knowledge in Society, Kuvempu University

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Mahatma Gandhi and Knowledge in Society are the two pillars

 on which India’s Voice may be constructed

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A just 21st century can only be imagined

via alternative knowledge paradigms

One defining feature of the 21st century thus far is the serious unsettling of the 20th century post-WW2 global economic order. Both the “Keyensian consensus” of the 1950s-70s and the “Neoliberal consensus” of the 1980s to the early 2000s are in question today. This cen- tury has seen a dramatic increase in the economic, political and military power of China, along with the reassertion of Russia trying to re-establish her own sphere of influence and return of trade protectionism in the advanced capitalist countries as a result of a popular backlash against globalisation. There are two large perspectives to be found against the rise of new nationalisms and populisms across the world – the old left seeking a return to the Keynesian consensus and the new liberals seeking a return to the neoliberal consensus. But neither return seems likely. The question facing countries such as India is, how to imagine a just future for their own people with the 20th century paradigms exhausted and conflict between large powers once again becoming a fact of life even as the climate crisis deepens. To make the challenge even more complex, the next 20 years will also see a demographic shift in the Global South such that China and India will become ageing societies (China much faster than India) while sub-Saharan Africa remains relatively young. The Lokavidya Jan Andolan (LJA) has maintained the position since some time that exist- ing varieties of development paradigms do not offer a road to a just society. LJA has also pointed to the space created by unsettling of old knowledge hierarchies by the coming of the Knowledge Age. Thus far, this space has been effectively used by large social media companies to create an era of “post-truth” where unsettling of the “rule of experts” has been put in the service of new anti-people forces. Unless a new imagination is produced by peoples’ movements going beyond the confines of 20th century visions of democracy, secu- larism, socialism etc. the road to a just society appears blocked. In my talk I will take stock of these developments of the past 10 or 15 years and offer some tentative suggestions on where the knowledge movement can go from here.

AI touching lives of ordinary people

Brief Summary: Artificial Intelligence is based on representation of knowledge that obtains in ordinary life. The idea is to reduce the need for human intervention in knowledge processes. I will briefly discuss philosophical underpinnings of AI and some dimensions of how it is going to affect the dynamics of knowledge in society. Abstract: Human beings are knowledgeable beings. Knowledge for them is sahaj – meaning easy, spontaneous, natural. This capacity to know is not constructed by humans but is a part of life. In Contrast, artificial intelligence is a human construction. Its knowledge is the polar opposite of sahaj. It seeks to imitate the sahaj. AI is based on simulation of human capacity of knowledge. It seeks a particular type of understanding of human cognitive capacities which can be simulated in a technology to create a non-human intelligence. In the process a new idea of knowledge is emergent. We are going to approach AI from the perspective of knowledge in society. Knowledge is central to AI as it seeks to create non-human intelligence. This non-human intelligence in the form of technologically created knowledgeable agents will perform increasing number of cognitive tasks that are currently performed by humans. The idea is to reduce the need for human intervention in knowledge processes in industry, governance, and daily life. Knowledge processes are where data are gathered, interpreted, reasoned with, and decisions are made. With increasing urbanisation and technologisation of life, the knowledge that was required to conduct our ordinary lives is slowly being replaced by ‘information’. Information handling is the new knowledge that is crucial for the conduct of life. This knowledge of ‘information handling’ is also knowledge in society. We will ask the question regarding who, and in what manner, is excluded and included in these developments. What is the kind of political imagination that is needed in order to intervene in matters related to development of AI and other ascending technologies?

Ordinary Life, Lokavidya and Converging Technologies

Abstract Traditionally, modern science and technologies are viewed as concerning themselves exclusively with nature or the external world. From the cybernetics movement in the 50s to the coming together of cognitive science, biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology in the form of what is called convergence technologies, ‘the human subject’ has become an explicit object of scientific inquiry and technological design. This leads to a rupture within science itself as well as constitutes a serious challenge to what the Humanities has conceived of as the ‘human’. Seen in this light, there would seem to be three levels of discourse of knowledge in the current context:

1. Knowledge in Society: Internet, Lokavidya, Art, Language, Media
2. Science: Converging Technologies, Artificial Intelligence; emerging academic The disciplines like Evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, network theory, game theory; And finally the traditional scientific disciplines like physics, biology etc. There are certain research programmes which have broken free of the earlier constraints and are also in some way outside the ambit of Converging Technology, but without an alternative vision of science and ‘science in society’.
3. Philosophical, scientific, and artistic discourses of the Human Being, which cuts across the last two levels.

Paradigm of Artificial Intelligence and Converging Technologies seem to convey the idea that human being is incomplete and obsolete in some way unless it is embedded in some technology or some technology is embedded in it. Even the industrial civilization communicated the idea that civilised human life is not possible without modern amenities and comforts of industrial society. In fact, the idea of civilisation itself communicates this idea that human life is barbaric unless conditioned by certain technology, certain ideology, certain religion, certain language etc. Humanity of the human is considered to be an achievement of civilisation or of technology. Is this true or is there a different richer vision of life possible and needed? Ordinary Life “Ordinary life is life without condition. It assumes no science, no technology, no religion, no methods of organisation and communication of knowledge, it assumes nothing. It is not true, austere or moral life, for there is falsehood, extravaganza and immorality in ordinary life. But it has the criteria of truth, morality, justice, wisdom etc. in it.” (https://vidyaashram.org/lokavidya-standpoint/) Ordinary life has always existed. It was taken for granted. Everything else came and then passed away – political systems, religions, technologies, philosophies appeared and disappeared. But ordinary life was always there. One did not need to speak of it, it was taken for granted. Ordinary does not begin with civilisations. If we try to trace human life back in time however deep we go it is difficult to locate a beginning. Humanity’s past includes tens of thousands of years before the rise of civilisations. We can think of hunters and gatherers. Hunters and gatherers were not individuals living alone but always in groups however small. And living together is ordinary life – hour after hour, day after day. It is a rich life full of meaning already at any time we want to pin it to. The first material signs of human life furthest in the past that we can find are the cave drawings. These are extensive. Ordinary life is life in the world. The world for us has at its centre the earth. Sometimes known as the Mother Earth. But the earth has many worlds these are the worlds of ordinary life. There can be excellence and appreciation of excellence in ordinary life – excellence of knowledge, art, ethical behavior. Everything is not ‘ordinary’ in ordinary life. Lokavidya Lokavidya is the knowledge with the people. It keeps changing with the life of the people. There is nothing in lokavidya which remains unchanged. Millions and millions of people survived the onslaught of colonialism and they still live based on their own knowledge without having modern education. Today many knowledge traditions of non-modern origins are surviving. We are all familiar with medical knowledge traditions, much beyond the few well-known systems like Ayurveda, Siddha and Yunani. In fact, there are a myriad of knowledge traditions of different kinds undergoing change, development, transformations and producing hybrid traditions. These knowledge systems that have survived in different forms did not do so because of any advocacy to save traditional knowledge, or because of the recognition they were accorded. As a matter of fact, the normative framework of modern science, which was the dominant knowledge system of last two centuries, had little place for these knowledge systems, if any. These knowledge systems survived because they kept renewing and because the people, whose knowledge systems these were, survived on account of the strength they derived from their knowledge. Lokavidya is knowledge without a ground. Modern science was conceived as knowledge with a firm ground and therefore inviolable. It was supposed to be grounded in eternal principles and/or experience. A century of interrogation has been unable to find a firm ground for science. Search for such a ground has been abandoned and modern philosophy is plagued by the spectre of groundless knowledge. Postmodernism embraced this condition and sought to imagine knowledge as a playground of desire, power, and information. Now we find the new CT and allied paradigms abandoning the idea of a ground and seeking instead to invest in technology which can reshape human reality. Lokavidya is groundless knowledge par excellence. It is itself the ultimate ground of any knowledge. All knowledge begins in life and has to ultimately be tested in ordinary life. Humanity of the human Humanity of the human is rooted in ordinary life and lokavidya. It is not tied to any science, any religion, any technology, any civilisation. It is not conditional on any eternal principles or on an ideology. The world and the human reality as being constructed with converging technologies and artificial intelligence in the lead is running up against certain limits. New communication technology seems to have hit a limit to the extent of connectivity. Till a few years back all talk was about building knowledge society and to expand internet connectivity. Now we find the discourse of artificial intelligence has taken the prime position. Environmental destruction all over the world is another limit that modern civilisation is up against, dreams of human colonies on other planets notwithstanding. All this of course is in the name of the next ultimate step for humanities’ progress where the humanity is emancipated from its dependence on natural processes of earth and reproduction of living creatures. Human being is a knowledgeable being. They are always engaged in constructing and reconstructing truth. This activity is embedded in ethical and practical concerns as well as in spiritual and aesthetic aspirations. Human societies are constituted by knowledge traditions in important ways. All human activities in whichever area of life are also knowledge activities. It is from such a starting point we have re-conceive the future work of of knowledge. A new imagination for knowledge activities is needed and a dialogue on knowledge in society can form a springboard for this new imagination.

A World without Grandmothers:

AI and Society in the 21st Century

“When the looms spin by themselves, we’ll have no need for slaves.” – Aristotle “I speak and speak, Marco says, but the listener retains only the words he is expecting…It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.” – Italo Calvino Abstract Popular imagination has for long held Knowledge as being agnostic to the affairs of the World. However, a close analysis of the relationship between Knowledge and Power in the modern age provides necessary clues to establish the nexus between the State, Capital and Power that in recent centuries seek to establish complete control over the lives of people. The gains of mercantilism and colonialism since the 1600’s, together with rapid advances in Natural Sciences and technologies, enabled the West to develop huge capital and labor intensive productive capabilities by the turn of the 19th Century. Such large changes led to the need for a radical restructuring of society in which Knowledge of various types started playing a central role. In turn, this resulted in a strong dialectic connection between the State, Capital, Power and Knowledge whose effects began to manifest themselves in a big way in the 1900’s in the form of widespread disillusionment across societies about the nature and quality of the lives of the majority. More recently, in the 35 years following the widespread adoption across the world of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in all walks of life, their nexus has significantly strengthened their hold over societal processes. Recent developments in AI (Artificial Intelligence) indicate that the world is likely to witness another round of large transformations that are likely to fundamentally alter current ideas about society, life, work, livelihood, equity, justice and freedom. In summary, it is only by recognizing the new dynamics of Knowledge in the modern era that we may comprehend its evolving alignments, connections and relationships with societal processes; in turn, this will enable us to interrogate its nature and effects on the world today. This paper attempts to lay the foundations for such an exploration with special emphasis on recent developments in AI.

1. The New Role of Knowledge Popular imagination for centuries has held Knowledge as a unique human trait that is somewhat untainted by the affairs of the World, except as a benign aid to progress and development. At first glance, it therefore appears unusual to treat Knowledge as being implicated, other than as a tool, in the machinations of State, Capital and Power that seek to control and drive the socio-economic and cultural processes of a society. It might appear for example that although the West in the modern era began to place faith in the Baconian dictum that Knowledge is Power, their connection was neither unambiguous nor well defined for long? In fact, a consideration of the work of scientists such as Newton, Laplace, Maxwell, Einstein, etc. or of philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Marx, Wittgenstein etc. might even bear out the relative independence of the pursuit of Knowledge from affairs of society or considerations of the State! Or, as in the case of Galileo, demonstrate how the State could be inimical to the pursuit of Knowledge?Rich ideas about Knowledge seem to have been pervasive on the other side of the world, in India, as well. We do know that the country’s non-oral traditions have for long considered Knowledge as a thing of value to the extent it pertains to Paravidya. On the other hand, its oral traditions do not seem to have had great theories of Knowledge at all, although a modern analyses give an appearance that they do!However, it is in recent centuries that the relationship between Knowledge and Society has undergone a remarkable transformation. To provide context, an exploration of the evolving relationship between Knowledge and Power in the modern age is provided below. For three hundred years starting from the 16th Century, guns, steel and finance played an important part in the colonization of the new World as well as the East. This phenomenon may be considered the first successful attempt to set up a large global supply chain of raw materials and labor as well as of some finished and semi-finished goods that readied Europe for its next step. In subsequent years, the consolidation of the gains of mercantilism and colonialism of earlier times, along with the ongoing advancement of Natural Sciences and technologies, resulted in great changes that enabled the West to develop large Capital and labor intensive productive capabilities. Together with the Knowledge developed in various disciplines, they created a base for an intensive restructuring of society to accommodate emerging ideas of time, space, life, leisure and culture that came to rule it.Over time, a strong dialectic connection between the State, Capital, Power and Knowledge developed to a point in the early 1900’s where the purpose of Knowledge came to be increasingly seen as utilitarian and not merely as a search for truth, beauty or certitude that is to be detachedly pursued. This period introduced a greater degree of inter-connection and complexity in all societal processes involved in the control of raw materials, production and distribution of goods and services and the manipulation of tastes, preferences and choices of consumers. In cadence with it, the combine of State, Capital, Power and Knowledge seem to have become isomorphic: hierarchical, closed, secretive, propagandist, open to inspection yet difficult to comprehend, etc. This is usually justified by concerns of national interest and security, social and economic well being, free trade and commerce, common good of society, protection of intellectual property rights etc.To summarize, it is only by recognizing the new dynamics of Knowledge in this period that we may understand its evolving alignments, connections and relationships with societal processes; in turn, this will enable us to investigate assumptions of its independent status and interrogate its nature and effects on the world today. This note attempts to lay the foundations for such an exploration by seeking to provide a broad framework for understanding the current status and future prospects of 21st Century society with a particular emphasis on the status of the majority of its ordinary people.
2. AI and Society It is important to note that AI is not a development out of the blue. Visions of machines that think, speak and act like humans have been on the margins of Western thought for millennia, at least since the time of the Greeks. However, it is in the second half of the 20th Century that they acquired momentum following the development of the digital computer. After an initial phase of euphoria engendered by small successes, AI went relatively dormant for a few decades. Its rejuvenation around ten or fifteen years ago was predicated on the convergence of several factors: extraordinary increases in computing power, social networks, knowledge of human behavior, business oligarchies, political power, commerce and the technologies of surveillance and war that are enabled by ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). This paper argues that AI must not be considered a mere development in the area of knowledge whose effects are solely determined by societal dynamics. It involves a deep dialectic between knowledge and power that cannot be represented by a one dimensional preoccupation with either one of them alone. The author believes that the true effects of AI remain to be grasped in the years to come. What we see now is a situation that is developing and whose future forms and actions are not readily deducible at this point in time. However, it is important, especially from the standpoint of countries like India, to continuously monitor the developments in the broad areas of AI development, deployment, control and dispersion in order to evaluate its effect on Indian society and measures to increase public awareness about its consequences.
3. Questions that need Discussion In this context, some questions that become relevant for any discussion on AI are the following:
   1. Implications of the huge resources being pumped into its development: It appears that in addition to the huge investments made in AI over the last 10 years, a half trillion USD will be spent on it in the next few years. This raises concerns about aspects of its ownership, control, areas of deployment and consequences to ordinary people across the world.
   2. AI and its challenge to the foundations of S&T (Science and Technology): Are concepts such as verifiability, repeatability, reliability and traceability applicable to AI? What place do socially mediated cognitive functions such as recognition of truth and fact have in the world of AI? Will AI lead to a new understanding of language, cognition, knowledge and intelligence? Are challenges such as the Turing Test (or TTT), the Chinese room no longer relevant?
   3. AI and Human Society: The frontline players of the AI industry have today forgotten their previous acknowledgements of significant threats to humanity from AI and are now in a competitive frenzy to develop associated technologies at breath taking speed. How do we address job losses because of AI in India? How do we ensure the safety, welfare and freedom of ordinary people in this situation? When regulatory authorities across the world appear bemused about containing the possible ill-effects of AI, what can India possibly do?
   4. Consequences of Knowledge as Power in the AI era: Knowledge and Power are today in perfect alignment more than ever before in history; in earlier times, enlightened segments of society that had the intellectual capacity to intercede between the laity and the State would often lend their support to the poor and the oppressed through dissent, opposition and discourse. Spaces for dissent, opposition and discourse by the oppressed have drastically shrunk with the rise of Techno-Capitalism across the world. In this context, what is the meaning of Equity and Justice in a world where Knowledge, Capital, Power and control vests with less than a tenth of a percent of humanity? What are the possible sources of opposition to this phenomenon?
4. Conclusion To conclude, in reflecting upon the various possibilities engendered by AI, it may be useful to recall an evolutionary oddity that characterizes three species on earth – the whales (not all, though!), the chimps and humans – the only ones where the female undergoes a menopause. Not co-incidentally, these are the only species where nurturing children is both intensive and of long duration. With age, post-menopausal females of these species (not just the humans) are observed to become increasingly interested and helpful in rearing their “grandchildren”. Menopause allows extension of maternal nurturing well beyond the usual in the animal kingdom, and because grandmothers play such an important a role in caring for offspring that are already born, it is possible to hypothesize that it may have evolved to benefit the social group. In the age of AI, what would be the position of grandparents? Are they irrelevant to society? How would the immanent logic of the development of AI affect our ideas and practice of all that has been taken as self-evident truths about the world, human society, child development, wisdom of the elders, care for the old and life itself?

The Knowledge Question in People’s Movements

A vast majority of ordinary people live by their own knowledge. This knowledge they acquire from their family and their community through their social interactions in their everyday lives. It is a part and parcel of lokavidya, or Knowledge in Society. People’s movements are largely movements of these people, the lokavidya samaj. Today they reflect the primary reality of their condition – that the work they do does not give them a position in the larger society and a return, that would ensure a life even of a sustained primary existence, let alone one of contentment, honour, and promise for their children. Compared to the return guaranteed for work based on modern knowledge acquired through formal education, return on their knowledge-work is not just meager and irregular, but also precarious  and subject to large fluctuations and uncertainties. This immediately raises the following knowledge question: Why should this be so? This is a knowledge question because it forces one to raise questions about the knowledge criteria that justify this state of affairs, support such hierarchy in the contemporary knowledge world, and perpetuate the starkest forms of injustice in human society. People’s movements indirectly raise questions of knowledge criteria. At times they do so directly too. The Kisan Andolan, or the Farmers’ Movement, is a movement of the largest section of the lokavidya samaj. The Movement began with questioning official wisdom on causes of poverty. It declared that poverty is unnatural and perpetuated by subjecting their produce to grossly unequal terms of trade fostered by state policies. It exposed development as a neo-colonial practice funded by value-extraction. The demand for equal exchange for farm produce has remained with the movement. Central to the Movement, and to the unity forged by it over intervals of its relative strength during its journey, is its non-political creed. The “political” clashes with its ideas of governance and representation and signifies locations of ultimate loss of initiative and autonomy of the samaj. The novel and entirely peaceful methods of mobilization, organization, assembly, protest and satyagraha and of autonomous decision making created by the Movement all along its long journey show this awareness. All this is once again in evidence today. After three decades of globalization, as the Movement rose again it characterized the moves on agriculture by the state as attempts ‘to confine food to coffers’ and ‘to trade in hunger’ and warned that this will be the end of fraternal sentiments (bhaichara) in the samaj. Its demand for legal guarantee of minimum support price with a minimum wage for agricultural labour should be seen as a demand for right to life and livelihood by one’s own knowledge. Movements of adivasis, collectively known as the Jal-Jangal-Jameen Movement, assert ownership of local natural resources. The Movement has questioned development and exposed the environmental devastation it has caused. It emphasizes the role of community knowledge, local wisdom and local control over natural resources for their sustainable and just management. Movements of weavers, fishermen, and artisans of various crafts point to how application of technological and financial wisdom in modern knowledge systems has mercilessly deprived them of the very means and markets which enable them to sustainably continue their knowledge-work. The movement for environmental justice holds modern lifestyles responsible for destruction of the environment. Without global finance and markets backed by modern S&T, ICT-AI and the State these lifestyles are neither possible, nor sustainable even for a small part of humanity. Women and youth have always played dominant and, at times, leadership roles in all these movements. They are the biggest victims of destruction of families and loss of lokavidya-work which has led to displacement, migrations and unemployment. People’s movements then clearly show an increasing insistence on facts of the condition of their people. That amounts to an implicit rejection of future imagination of development and questioning of its knowledge-basis.  This suggests that a knowledge dimension must be added in any meaningful debate about  a just and equal future society. The implicit demand of people’s movements is one of a future imagination on a new knowledge basis. A clear message is that lokavidya, the knowledge basis of their life and the primary source of their strength, must enjoy status of equal merit and honour with other streams and systems of knowledge in all matters of social, economic, political governance. The message has far-reaching implications for the discourse on future imagination. The ideas put forward by practices of people’s movements over their journey – equal exchange, right to life by one’s own knowledge, autonomy of social formations, strength and capacities of local wisdom and initiative, local control on natural resources, equal distribution of national resources, life in synergy with nature, social values of nyaya, tyaga and bhaichara all gain fresh and contemporary meanings as central ideas in the knowledge basis for reconstruction of a just and equal society.

लोकविद्या जन आन्दोलन (लोजआ)

लोगों और समाजों का ज्ञान आन्दोलन

ChatGPT translated English version pdf      Hindi pdf

Knowledge, Society and Swaraj

Knowledge and Society Any discussion of knowledge in society will be uni-dimensional and incomplete if the interplay between knowledge and society is left out of discussion. Given below are some of the points that need to be considered in this context –

• Knowledge and Society are interdependent. One cannot exist without the other. All attempts to objectify knowledge as an entity independent of and out of reach of society must be resisted.
• Society is the ultimate creator and owner of all knowledge. Any scheme of things that seeks to privatise, individualise and compartmentalise knowledge or create a schism between knowledge and society is disastrous for both.
• Establishing new elitist exclusivist institutions/social formations or preserving/strengthening existing ones for the purposes of creation, preservation, application and transmission of knowledge is against the larger interests of society and can weaken social cohesion by giving rise to social hierarchies.
• Any person belonging to any social formation or strata of society must not be denied access to knowledge or its practice on the basis of his birth, status in society or his affiliation to state-recognised institutions.
• The power to oversee the workings of all institutions of knowledge must rest with the society. In a representational democracy, elected representatives of society need to be part of the mechanism of this oversight. For example, the boards of governors of IITs must include the local people’s representatives, like MLAs and MPs, in addition to those nominated by the government on the basis of well established criteria of expertise and experience in different knowledge streams. In any case, this principle of oversight by society cannot be set aside under any circumstances. The notion that experts in the field of any particular knowledge stream must be assigned the responsibility of oversight of the institutions of that particular knowledge stream must be abandoned. The oversight body must ideally include people from all walks of life.
• Who is to be considered an expert of a particular stream of knowledge? Is formal training and education imparted through an institution recognised by the state and the award of a government recognised degree a prerequisite for being considered an expert in that stream of knowledge? This will exclude all those knowledge practitioners who do not possess a degree of formal education, even though they may possess immense knowledge of their craft or trade. This division is sharp in the field of health, where many vaidyas, siddhas, hakims who learnt their trade in traditional ways have been asked by the state to desist from practising their trade because they lack an officially certified qualification. The distinction between formal degree-holder practitioners and non-formal practitioners is particularly illogical and glaring in the area of performing arts.

Concentration of Power and Monopoly over Knowledge in Capitalism

• The deep penetration of the capitalist market reinforced by the state’s coercive apparatus is what defines a modern nation state. Extreme concentration of political and economic power in the hands of few is the result.
• This concentration of power in the hands of few has its ill-effects on the creation, preservation, application and transmission of knowledge. There is an increasing attempt by corporations and the state to deny the power to create, apply/preserve and transmit knowledge to non-state and non-state-approved members of society. Only those institutions and individuals who are authorised and approved by the state are allowed to do so. An instance is the recent Kerala Public Health Act (2023) brought by the Kerala Govt which forbids the appointment of non-allopath doctors as Medical Officers. Such govt policies severely limit the practice of knowledge by individuals, communities and institutions other than govt recognised ones. Even if they manage to practise their knowledge despite all odds, they are ignored at best and prohibited and silenced at worst.
• Even research undertaken in govt approved universities are suppressed if they go against the interests of corporations. Recently a research paper published in a research journal that highlighted the adverse effects of Covaxin was forced to be withdrawn at the instance of ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) and Bharat Biotech, the manufacturer of Covaxin.
• Although we do talk about knowledge in society, the harsh reality is that this knowledge in society is steadily being eroded by the state and corporations. The power, autonomy or swaraj of society to create and preserve knowledge independently of governments and corporations is being severely curtailed. Through the enactments of laws such as the right to education act and the new education policy, independent initiatives by society to run alternative modes of education and research are nipped in the bud. Even state governments-run institutions of learning are being prevented in exercising their limited autonomy by the Union government. It would not be an exaggeration to say that we have reached a stage of “development” where any creation, preservation, application or transmission of knowledge in society, not explicitly approved by the state, may be declared an illegal activity.
• One pointer in this direction is the attempt by the Indian state to arm itself with the power to declare what is true and what is false. Although to begin with, this power is purportedly sought only to declare the truth of information shared on social media related to govt’s policies and activities, once the govt starts appropriating the power to declare what is truth, its scope may easily be widened to cover any information in which the govt may have a stake. Mercifully, the Bombay High Court has declared illegal this move by the central govt. But, the matter will be settled finally only in the Supreme Court.
• Another pointer is the overarching control over all knowledge that corporations seek through the deployment of Artificial Intelligence in all spheres of human activity. First, the AI will be trained on “authentic” data sourced by the AI developer team from “reliable sources”. Most often this data of knowledge is stolen without the knowledge of those whose data is used for training the AI. For example, Elon Musk’s Grok AI is using the data available in the form of tweets and other content posted on the X platform. Google is developing video generation capable AI by training AI on the content posted on YouTube by lay users, who have no knowledge of what their contents are being used for. The prejudices, biases and inaccuracies that the set of training data contain will be incorporated into the AI, impairing the decision making process of those who use the AI.
• Development of AI is being monopolised by a few MNCs like Google, Amazon, XAI, Meta and so on. AI development is turning out to be a highly capital and resource intensive activity which only these corporations can afford. Deliberate “hype” is being created over the capabilities of AI, although reliability and accuracy of AI for mission critical applications is far from being established. This is in character with the current phase of capitalism which needs such ‘bubbles’ to grow because it has become highly exclusionary, catering to the interests of a miniscule minority, may be 0.01% or even less of the world’s population. The ruling classes also seem to be joining the hype as they see AI as a powerful weapon in controlling and regulating public opinion. Personal verification using AI equipped biometric and face recognition technologies are being employed to hunt down dissenters and other “trouble makers”. Personal privacy is being violated by states using surveillance technology which is now being endowed with AI. The common agenda of both the states and the corporations is to employ AI in all businesses and governance so that it becomes all pervading and nothing remains outside the reach of AI. Because, AI becomes powerful only through constant use and feedback by the people. So AI is being freely disseminated to the public through smart phones and personal computers. Ultimately the corporation-owned and state-controlled AI will be declared as the final arbiter of what is the truth or otherwise of any piece of knowledge. No Independent and alternative ways of determining the truth and veracity of knowledge will be left once AI takes control over all human activities.
• Thus AI will end up as a weapon to control the thought processes and activities of the general public. Ironically, the very same data/knowledge gathered from the contents posted on the internet by the public (society) will be manipulated to create AI that will be owned by corporations and sold back to the public, not only to make profit, but also to control the activities and thought processes of the public (society). This loss of autonomy and swaraj of the society will then be celebrated as yet another milestone in human development.
• After the agricultural revolution (8000 BCE), the industrial revolution (1800 CE), the internet revolution (2000 CE), we are told we are on the cusp of the AI revolution (2025 CE). While opinion is divided on the agricultural revolution, the other three revolutions have destroyed society’s inherent capacity for Swaraj (loosely defined as its power to be an Autonomy of Autonomies) and paved the way for extreme concentration of power in the hands of few. In its latest phase, capitalism has transformed itself into a monster with a limitless appetite for self-aggrandisement: one that is destroying social bonding and disbalancing human-nature relationships. And all this is being done under the facade of “development”.
• Centralisation of the processes of knowledge generation, knowledge preservation and application, and knowledge transmission is the key that is enabling modern nation states and corporations to accumulate power. Unless, this question is confronted and dealt with face to face, discussions on knowledge in society will end up only as a lament on the steady decline and destruction of independent and alternative knowledge practices present in society.
• What are the mechanisms by which this centralisation of knowledge is being accomplished? Unless we become aware of the subtle machinations by nation states and corporations centralise and control knowledge, we won’t be able to fight this process of centralisation. Internet Communication Technologies along with newly emerging AI technologies are at the core of this knowledge centralisation.
• The internet, when it was launched more than two decades back, was promoted as a free space for knowledge exchange. Over the last 20 years the governments and corporations have captured and colonised the internet to make sure that society’s strengths of resistance to misuse of power are eroded by dividing and weakening It. Society has been effectively sidelined from having a say on how the internet functions.
• Some examples of these machinations are:
  1. Communication networks: Technologies that enable local community based networks of communication have disappeared: for example LAN, MAN and WAN architectures are no longer being talked about. The internet has become the sole medium of knowledge communication. Even local communication between neighbours in a neighbourhood is mediated by the internet now. Those who control the internet are effectively controlling the flow and exchange of knowledge in society, thereby destroying the autonomy and swaraj of society.
  2. The bodies responsible for the working and technologies of the internet like the Internet Architecture Board seem unable or unwilling to prevent the monopolisation and commercialization of the internet by corporations. These corporations that provide various platforms like Search Engines (Google), E-commerce (Amazon), Social Media (Meta, X), Cloud Services (Microsoft) and so on seem to monopolise their positions by killing competition. The AI services, soon to be part of the internet based services, is being monopolised from the beginning itself.
  3. Access to the internet is denied to communities which seek to raise their grievances through agitations or movements. These denials of internet access are arbitrarily done in the names of law and order, national security, communal harmony and such undefined and vague terms that cannot be interpreted exactly.
  4. In addition to monopolisation of internet based services, proprietary operating systems and software along with the willful neglect of inexpensive and open source software (we are stuck with expensive opaque Microsoft Windows OS and its other proprietary software) have resulted in severely restricting society’s capacity to independently practise knowledge.
  5. Local communities are effectively barred from broadcasting news locally. Community radios are allowed to broadcast only cultural content, not political.
  6. Social media is rife with political party sponsored bots amplifying fake and hate content. The party commanding the largest resources for disinformation dissemination, usually the ruling party has dedicated media cells that drown out saner voices on the social media. It is said that AI and sophisticated algorithms are being employed to filter out content disagreeable to governments and corporations. Social media users tend to be grouped into separate echo chambers where their prejudices are mutually reinforced. Instead of any serious discussion or exchange of knowledge, what we see are slanging matches between bigots engaged in violent and hateful speech.

Attack on Knowledge in Society under the Garb of Development

• Knowledge in society is under attack by governments and international institutions which would like to render society totally powerless to resist state’s onslaught on its autonomy. A convenient trick is to erode society’s autonomy in the name of bringing “development”. People are made to believe that the primary responsibility of governments and institutions is to bring “development” to the people. Each and every action of the government is being sought to be done and justified in the name of development. Since the second world war the “development” discourse has dominated politics. Bringing “development” to backward regions and people is the biggest industry in the world today. The development goals are periodically widened in scope in the name of environment and sustainability. The UN has adopted many SDGs, i.e.,sustainable “development” goals which are to be met by 2030. The USA is the self professed leader in bringing development to backward people and regions of the world. China is the next in line. India, although a laggard, has high ambitions in this regard. That said, all govts in the world today without exception are engaged in bringing “development” to its people.
• Bringing “development” is another name for handing over resources like land, water and forests to the corporations to “develop” them. Because, in the eyes of the modern nation state, society, and its constituent social formations and communities are backward, without expertise and knowledge, and thus incapable of developing by their own efforts. Only governments, corporations, universities and other modern institutions such as banks and stock markets have the capacity, knowledge, expertise and resources to bring “development”.

The Path of Swaraj

• Thus, we are faced with the unpleasant reality that knowledge in society is facing an existential crisis in the modern nation state. So, what can be done to save society and its capacity to practise knowledge independently of governments and corporations? How to prevent the latter two from collaborating with each other to impose monopoly capitalism on society? And in the process destroying and disbalancing human-human relationships and human-nature relationships?
• The answer lies in weakening both the nation states and the corporations. The top to bottom flow of command and power must be reversed. Local units of self governance at the lowest level, the panchayats, and municipalities must be granted constitutionally mandated powers to manage the lives and needs of the people of the locality. In particular, the lowest units of self governance must be models of face-to-face democracies.
• There is a need to guard against the involvement and interference of ICT in human-human communication. A non-cooperation movement against the use of algorithm controlled social media for human-human communication is needed. Face to face communication along with face to face democracy must be granted the highest priority in public life. It is in this context that panchayats must be energised and allowed to exercise their constitutional powers.
• The constitutional scheme of local self governance must be made flexible enough to accommodate the surviving traditional forms of self organisation and self management of society such as village panchayats, caste panchayats, guilds, professional bodies, and so on. There is scope for the creation of new bodies of self management and self governance. For example, the traditional panchayat system of dispute resolution must be recognised as a valid method of dispute settlement and the disputes so settled must be legally recognised.
• The police and other law enforcement agencies of the state must seek the permission of the gram sabha before entering the village to intervene in any dispute.
• The village panchayat must have the power to run local markets to facilitate the fair exchange of goods and services among the people of the area as well as between them and traders from outside. The village panchayat must have the power to charge extra local taxes on goods brought from outside.
• Only on the basis of a fair exchange of goods and services with the outside world can the knowledge in village society survive and flourish. The local units of self governance must possess the strength to ensure this fair exchange in the local village markets.
• The demand by the farmer movement for legally enforced minimum support prices (MSPs) for agricultural crops is an articulation of this demand for fair exchange between practitioners of different knowledge streams.
• Only when practitioners of different knowledge streams are rewarded equitably under a just socio-economic order, can both knowledge and society flourish.
• Many similar ideas need to be explored so that local communities everywhere can exercise their power of swaraj and thereby ensure that knowledge in society survives and flourishes.

Caste, Guild, Village and Swaraj

Jatis (castes) versus Varnas

Thousands of ethnic, localised, occupation based, and endogamous social formations called jatis (castes) crystallised in India by the 3rd-4th centuries CE. Evidence for this has come from many sources, including DNA analysis. Parallelly, villages evolved to become autonomous units of social organisation (units of swaraj). The division of labour in village based decentralised production systems strengthened the occupation based caste system. However, horizontal coalescence of same occupation jatis across regions and kingdoms rarely happened, except in the case of the Brahmana and Kshatriya jatis. The Vedic Brahmanas attempted to accommodate the thousands of jatis in the four-fold hierarchical varna system. In this system of ritual-purity based graded hierarchy, the Brahmanas assumed the highest status and assigned Kshatrias, Vaishyas and Shudras lower status in that order. However, in practice, except for the Brahmanas who claimed the highest ritual purity, there was no rigid hierarchy among the thousands of jatis of the other varnas. Even Shudras could become kings. Except in the case of untouchable castes, social segregation was rarely practised. Jainism and Buddhism repudiated the Vedic religion and the claims of superiority of the Brahmanas. It is significant that Mahavira and Budhha both belonged to Kshatriya clans that ruled the Mahajanapadas of the Eastern Gangetic plains where the Vedic religion of the Brahmanas spread rather late after the Mahabharata war. Jainism and Buddhism both trace their origins to the native Sramanic traditions of the pre Vedic India. Both opposed social hierarchies based on jati and varna. However, they did not call for annihilation or elimination of jatis. They advocated only the elimination of discrimination based on jatis and varnas. During the time of Mahavira and Buddha, jati, gotra and kula identities were commonly used to denote a person’s origins. But there was no strict one to one correspondence between jati and occupation. However, during this period of second urbanisation in North India, those who followed the same profession as a rule settled in the same locality be it in towns or villages. Sometimes, villages entirely consisting of people following the same profession also came up. Over centuries, those who followed the same profession came to be associated with one jati. However, this jati-occupation correspondence was limited geographically. Jatis following the same occupation but separated geographically came to have separate identities. The Brahmana and Kshatria jatis somewhat deviated from this rule. The arrival of the Muslim faith and the Muslim rule provided the Shudra castes the space and opportunity to assert themselves. Concomitantly, the rise of Bhakti movements signified a challenge to the social inequalities based on the caste system. In the south, they rose earlier and led to the establishment of the Shaivite and Vaishnavite traditions that opposed the older Jain and Buddhist faiths, which had lost touch with common people. The Lingayat movement led by Basavanna in Karnataka challenged discrimination based on caste. In the north, Nanak, Kabir, and Raidas challenged the idea that lower castes and their occupations were inferior to higher castes and their occupations. Even after they attained recognition as sants, Kabir and Raidas continued to follow their jati professions and took pride in them.

Jatis versus Guilds

Powerful independent and autonomous merchant and artisan guilds came up during the second urbanisation period identified with the rise of Mahajanapadas. Their existence is attested to by the numerous inscriptions that proclaim the contributions of guilds to the construction and maintenance of Buddhist Viharas and Stupas as well as Jaina and Hindu temples throughout India. In the beginning, persons of different jatis could become members of a guild that promoted a particular profession. In the pre-Gupta period, guilds were formal autonomous organisations whose membership was restricted to persons who excelled in the profession the guild represented. A membership fee was charged. In addition to promoting the profession, guilds adjudicated on disputes involving its members. They acted as banks that financed not only the members of the guild. but outsiders too. Guilds were economically so powerful that even kings borrowed money on interest from them. Charity and public works was another activity. The King hardly dared to interfere in the affairs of the guilds. Chiefs of guilds were appointed as advisors by the King. The guilds also functioned as quasi judicial bodies which lay people could approach to seek justice in those areas where king’s courts were inaccessible. During the Mauryan rule, the guilds and its functions were monitored by the king’s officers and taxes were levied on them. After the decline of the Muryan empire, the guilds became even more powerful and autonomous. After the Gupta period, India’s external trade suffered due to multiple factors. Among these were the collapse of the Roman Empire, the attack of Huns, and the decline and disintegration of the Gupta Empire. The intercine wars among the various kingdoms was not conducive to internal trade either. Towards the end of the first Millennium CE, a series of invasions by Muslim forces from beyond the northwestern borders contributed to the economic and political disruption. As a result of all these factors, both external and internal trade in north India declined. The urban centers and the trade networks of north India that had flourished for centuries after the second urbanisation period lost their glory. However, during the same period, South Indian kingdoms, especially Chola kingdom, established sea trade links with SouthEast Asia and China. Arrival of Muslim merchants on the west coast of India led to increase in trade with the countries of West Asia. Powerful merchant and artisan guilds arose in South India during this period. The earliest mention of South Indian merchant guilds date to the 11th century in the inscriptions in SouthEast Asia. After Kalingas and Pallavas, Cholas dominated the sea routes to SouthEast Asia. Ayyavolu (Arunurruvar), Nanadesis, Anjuvannam, Manigramaam are mentioned as these guilds which were based in South India but were engaged international trade. Anjuvannam guild consisted of traders of Muslim, Jewish and Christian origins and was active in Malabar coast. Mummuridandas was a guild of mercenary troops who offered their services of escorting and protecting traders in their travels. Like in the case of north India, trade guilds were so powerful that even kings were afraid of their power. Many times kings sought their financial assistance and sometimes even military help, as these guilds maintained private armies to protect themselves. It is said that these guilds acted almost like states within a state. Throughout the second millennium CE, the trade guilds of south India played a very important role in the socio-economico-political life of south India. This continued well into the modern period of British rule and independent India. In the North, under the Mughal rule, the royalty and nobles set up Karkhanas where goods of exquisite quality were manufactured under the supervision of master craftsmen (ustads). Ustad employed artisans of his caste as workers who were paid decent monthly wages. The goods manufactured in these Karkhanas were consumed by the royalty and nobility, and the military. A resurgence in India’s external trade took place during this period. India emerged as the largest exporter of fine cotton and silk textiles to the rest of the world under the Mughals. Items made of steel like swords were also exported. India-made ships were in high demand. The arrival of the Europeans initially increased manifold the export of Indian textiles to all parts of the world. Dhaka in Bengal was the epicentre of Indian textile manufacturing which reached a peak around 1800 CE. However, within a period of 50 years, India’s dominance in textiles exports ended due to adverse policies of the British.

Guilds, Jatis and Knowledge in Society

The guilds of the ancient India played a significant role in the transmission of knowledge in society. The master craftsman took under his mentorship young apprentices whom he taught the skills he possessed. In pre Mauryan times when there was no strict correspondence between Jatis and occupations, a person from any jati could take up a particular profession. The Gurukuls where the apprentices were taught were mostly residential institutions overseen by the Guru or master. But by the 4th century CE, strict correspondence between jatis and professions came to be established. So the methods of knowledge transmission started changing. Instead of formal Gurukuls, knowledge of a profession now started getting transmitted within families, extended families and Jatis. Thus knowledge transmission in society came to be channelised through castes and families. Though these channels were informal, yet there were unwritten codes of behaviour which none violated or dared to violate for fear of social boycott or expulsion from the caste. The foremost consideration was loyalty to the caste and protection of its trade/professional secrets. This state of affairs persist to the present day in many castes.

Village Swaraj and its end under British rule

From ancient times villages were largely autonomous and self governed and were independent of the direct interference by the king’s officers. The panchayat or the village council usually consisting of minimum five members, going up to a maximum of 30, managed the village affairs. It was the duty of the village Mukhiya or Pradhan or Gramani to collect the taxes and deposit it in the king’s treasury. Taxes were in kind and ranged from ⅙th to ¼th the quantity of crops produced. Mukhiya was assisted in his work by a record keeper or Patwari, who kept all the records of lands cultivated, crops produced, taxes paid etc… The village Chowkidar acted as the messenger and communicator of the village council’s decisions. He escorted outsiders during their transit through the village and made a note of the crimes committed. These three were the officials of the village and they were compensated for their services by the village council. However, more persons, including school teacher, barber, potter, washerman, smith, carpenter, priest, dancing girl could be employed by the village council, as was reported by a British officer in the case of a Madras village to the British government in 1812. This autonomy or swaraj of the Indian villages was taken away by the British. Extraction of more revenue from villages was the immediate concern of the British. The beginning was made in Bengal, where the East India Company wrested the office of Diwan from the Nawab. In 1765, the Company made Patwari an employee of the company and the policing powers were taken away from the village council and handed over to the Daroga appointed by it. All judicial powers were taken away from the village council, which rendered it ineffective in settling village disputes. The story of the village republics for which India was famous thus came to an end under the British. Later, the British made half hearted attempts to partially restore the dispute resolution powers to the village councils as a means to reduce administrative expenses. Among these were the self-government scheme of 1882, espoused by Viceroy of India Lord Ripon, which proved to be ineffective as it was never fully implemented. Realising this lag a Royal Commission on Decentralization studied the issue of local self-governance in 1907-1908. While in the urban areas there was some progress, there was hardly any progress to local self governance in rural areas due to resistance from the bureaucracy. Here the role of the district administration was decisive and the revenue officials down to Patwari ruled the roost. Under the constitutional reforms of 1935, the subject of local self governance was transferred to the provincial governments who for a variety of reasons did not make any serious attempt to introduce self governance in rural areas.

Impact of British rule on Castes

The British rule destroyed the native textile industry and other industries like steel and shipbuilding for which India was famous all over the world. A long period of de-industrialisation of India ensued after 1800 CE and large sections of population, particularly the jatis linked to these industries, had to fall back on agriculture to earn a living. There was large scale disruption of village industries and movement of jatis from one occupation to another. In particular, the decennial census operations involving caste enumeration during the period 1871 to 1931 are said to have fundamentally changed the caste dynamics of India. The motivations of the British behind such a move may have been a desire to find out more details of India’s demographics that would help them in strengthening their rule. For example, the British wanted to ascertain whether Brahmanas formed a significant part of the population, as appeared from their high visibility as experts of languages and sastras. The British were also on the lookout for martial races/castes whom they could recruit into army and police forces. Yet another reason could be that the British wanted to cultivate a higher caste elite who would take pride in India’s nationhood, a creation of the British where previously there was none. However, the census operations had many unintended consequences also. For example, the impression gained ground that getting enumerated as caste belonging to a higher varna could bring more power, prestige and economic benefits. So many castes who claimed to be Rajputs are said to have claimed to belong to the Brahmana caste in subsequent decennial censuses. Many castes formed associations to make representations to the British government regarding their higher status in the varna hierarchy. Many like Yadavas invented myths regarding their past in support of their claims. The anxiety of Hindu leaders to claim majority led them to ask the government to group Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists also as Hindus. Most importantly, the British census operations resulted in the hitherto localised castes coalescing into numerically large groups with a common national identity and a larger geographical spread. With their increased power of political mobilisation, they could bargain with the state to extract more concessions for their caste. This suited the British who wanted to play different castes, religions and their combinations against one another as part of their divide and rule policy. Post independent electoral democracy has only strengthened these tendencies. Indian National Movement and Village Swaraj From the 1920s to 1947, the Indian National Congress organised movements for independence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. There was no consensus among the top leaders regarding the status and role of rural local self-government, leading to divergent views on the subject. Gandhi favoured Village Swaraj and aimed to strengthen the village panchayat to the fullest extent, while Dr. B.R. Ambedkar opposed this idea. He viewed the village as a symbol of regressive India and a source of oppression, and bieved that only the nation state founded on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity could end such social oppression. Parliamentary democracy with separate electorates for the untouchables was seen by him as the way to end caste oppression. In the Constituent Assembly, as a compromise, the Panchayati Raj Institutions were included in the non-justiciable part of the Constitution, namely, the Directive Principles of State Policy, as Article 40. This Article stated, ‘The State shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government.’ However, nothing substantial happened at either the national or state level to implement it till 1993, when the parliament passed the Panchayati Raj Act. Swaraj versus Nation building The argument that only a centralised and strong nation state can rid the villages of their backwardness and catapult India into the ranks of the advanced nations of the world somehow sounds hollow today after seventy five years of our independence. The sovereign Indian nation, once looked up to as the saviour of the people of the country, has failed to deliver. It has become subservient to the interests of a few monopoly capitalists, to satisfy whose global ambitions people are being dispossessed and exploited. The concept of nation and the process of nation building, the primary motivation of the founding fathers of our republic, need re-examination and re-valuation today. At its core, implicit in the conception of a modern nation, is the idea of a homogeneous mass of atomised individual citizens who have no loyalty other than to the nation and have no identity other than that of the citizenship of the nation. The statement, “We are Indians, firstly and lastly”, succinctly states this sole loyalty and the sole identity of the ideal Indian citizen. The above quoted aphorism is popularly attributed to Ambedkar and appears to have originated in a 1938 Bombay Legislative Assembly debate, “On the creation of a separate Karnataka province”, in which Ambedkar argued that the “dismemberment” of India into states organised on linguistic lines would undermine his ideal of “want[ing] all people to be Indian first, Indian last and nothing else but Indians”. He re-used the expression elsewhere, and, as “We are Indians, firstly and lastly”, it is now frequently used, devoid of context, in online Republic Day and Independence Day greetings. When India gained independence, the citizens of the country were very far from such an ideal. But, to Ambedkar and his contemporaries who shared the Western ideal of a nation state, “nation building” was the process by which the people of India would achieve the ultimate goal of an ideal nation. The preamble of the Constitution that states this ideal as “We the people…”, that is, the Idea of Indians as one people having only one identity. Although at that time and even now, we Indians are far from being one people. We continue to be a collection of many peoples, many communities and many social formations. It clear that the loyalty to and identity with the nation has not been able to exorcise people’s minds of the multiple identities of language, caste, religion, region etc… that still holds them in thrall. What lessons do we learn from this? First thing that comes to mind is the saying, “Nature abhors vacuum”. Just because we declared “We the people…” in the Constitution, we did not become one people. We continued to use and own the multiple identities we inherited. To think of any society, which evolves under multiple and simultaneous historical forces, as a unidimensional construct with a single identity seems totally fallacious and self-defeating. Natural processes of evolution incorporate multiple histories, multiple experiences and multiple identities. Every human being is simultaneously part of multiple social formations and corresponding multiple identities, with long histories. These identities are more ingrained and internalised than the national identity which is more recent, somewhat artificial, and less internalised. There is also another dimension to this problem. We often forget that human society always evolved in collectives, groups and social formations; never at the level of the individual. Hence an approach to nation building that places the individual at the centre ignoring and/or suppressing the social formations of the past is bound to irrevocably fail. The very fact that Ambedkar at the fag end of his life was forced to convert himself and his followers to Buddhism is telling. He had to, in the ultimate analysis, adopt an identity that preceded the national identity by thousands of years. We may therefore conclude that a populous nation of hundreds of million people with extensive territories, varied geographies, cultures, social formations can hardly be a homogeneous society consisting of atomised individuals having only one identity – the national identity. As described above, India has a rich legacy of multiple social formations, which acted as the foundational units of swaraj. Of these, villages, jatis and guilds are the three types of social formations that played important roles in India’s social life and history. It would be instructive to assess whether their potential for strengthening swaraj still stands undiminished. Compared to jati and guild, village presents itself as a more conducive environment for swaraj to flourish for a number of reasons. First, being a geographically confined settlement of a few hundred families, it is a face to face society where everyone knows everyone else and direct democracy is practised. Second, the village is largely self sufficient and can sustain itself without the help of the the state or other external agencies. Third, villagers are engaged mostly in farming, cattle rearing, weaving, handicrafts and other occupations that have synergy among themselves and the environment. They have developed their own knowledge of these occupations and are not critically dependent on external institutions for pursuing them. Fourth, there is substantial interdependency, sharing, mutual exchange among the social formations of the village. This gives rise to a sense of belonging and unity among the villagers. What complicates this scenario of swaraj is the hierarchy and unequal share of power among the jatis that are part of the village. Historically this was the result of the systematic attempts of the Brahmanas to grade the occupational castes in a scale of ritual purity as a means to not only keep the jatis from mingling with one another, but also to establish their own superior status as law givers and and regulators of society. Although they proclaimed the Vedas as the source of all knowledge, it was through their later day creations of the Dharmashastras like Manusmriti that they imposed caste based discrimination as a method of exploiting the labour of the lower castes. In this they were able to enlist the cooperation of the Kshatria kings, who were able to extract higher revenue from village economy on the basis of the forced labour of lower castes. While the lower castes remained geographically fragmented, unorganised, largely confined to the villages they lived, and thus unable to unite and resist exploitation, the Brahmanas as a jati were not localised to villages and were able to extend their hegemony across large areas on the basis of their religious practices. They captured and used the temples as the centres of their power. Through them they could bring to the village society the externalities of organised religion and associated forces to shift the balance of power in their own favour. The royalty, mostly kshatriya kings, were made partners in power by making them dependent on the Brahmanas as law givers and law interpreters. Because of these external factors, all castes could not become equal partners in village swaraj and the full potential of village swaraj could not be realised, except in areas where Brahmanical influences were negligible like in parts of South India. Jatis and guilds were not in general geographically confined entities of swaraj, like villages, often described by historians and travellers as miniature republics. Being confined to certain professions or occupations, jatis and guilds can be said to possess swaraj of a lesser order, in the sense that they are incomplete and dependent on the rest of the society much more than the village republics. Like a republic being a sovereign entity, village republics could be said to possess an element of sovereignty (completeness born of self sufficiency) that is absent in the case of jatis and guilds. Although guilds of south India, which maintained their own private armies and had tremendous financial clout, have been described as states within states, jatis, in so far as they were incorporated and sought to be controlled and regulated under the hierarchical varna system, can be said to possess swaraj of a lesser order than even guilds.

Swaraj – the regulatory principle of nature

Humans being part of nature, the principles of organisation and regulation of human societies such as swaraj may also be extended to natural phenomena. Conversely, the principles of organisation and regulation inherent in nature may also be said to extend to human societies. One way to visualise nature is to view it as a collection or an ensemble of ecosystems. We can consider an ecosystem as consisting of many elements that function as parts of a continuous and self-sustaining cycle. Thus considered, an ecosystem possesses a self governing mechanism which enables it to deal with changing external conditions and preserve itself. This property of the ecosystem we can term as the swaraj of the ecosystem. Nature itself, considered as an ensemble of ecosystems each possessing swaraj, may also be looked at as an autonomy of autonomies. A village can be called an ecosystem because of its high level of self-completeness and self-sufficiency, except in case of marriage relationships, marriages between residents of the same village being considered incestuous and thus prohibited. (There could be sound biological reasons why marriage within members of the same village is forbidden.) Thus a village can be considered the best approximation to a swarajist society, provided external forces whether originating in a centralised state, or religion are kept out. Jatis and guilds too have potential for swaraj provided they too are free of external forces that try to place them in a hierarchical order.

Swaraj:

Towards A New and contemporary Political Imagination

Political ways of thinking largely meaningful in the 20^th century no more appear to apply to the new world being created by the new Information Technology, in particular the internet. We shall attempt to come to grips with the new situation in continuity with what has been happening up till the 20^th century. Given below are the points which may serve as points of departure for a new political imagination in this country.

1. Bahujan means the non-elite. It is in this sense that Shakya Muni Buddha used it frequently. Today too it is used mainly in this sense, that is to refer to ordinary people. They always happen to be a majority, but that is not part of the meaning of this word ‘bahujan’. As politics has expanded to include ordinary people as citizens and not just as subjects, ‘bahujan’ has got mixed with non-elite castes which have become a major explicit factor in politics. However, we shall prefer to use this word bahujan to refer to ordinary people.
2. Swadeshi samaj refers to contemporary non-capitalist social formations which have far too many similarities with their pre-capitalist avatars. Farmers, artisans, adivasis, the small retailers. Women constitute the main stay of their domestic organization, economic activity and preservation of social/moral values.
3. Bahishkrit samaj is made up of people who have no place in the modern structure of opportunities, people who have no place in modern institutions like government, big industry, institutionalized services like education, health, police, military etc. It is seen as distinct from pashchimikrit (Westernised) samaj. It is also seen as Bharat as distinct from India.
4. Lokavidya samaj refers to people who possess lokavidya, a form of knowledge that resides in society and not in (organized) institutions. Lokavidya is living knowledge based on tradition and enriched by the later experiences.

These are all more or less the same people, the ordinary people, Bahujan. Ordinary life is life without a condition, it assumes no religion, no technology. Ordinary language is language without a condition, it assumes no grammar. Ordinary experience is experience without a condition, it assumes no theory, no conceptual pre-condition, it includes nirvikalpa pratyaksha. So Bahujan has a thoughtful and active mind, a genius of its own pervaded by thought but with no canonical (ideological) binding. When this Bahujan comes up with a new political imagination, the elite shall not understand it, for it will not be reducible to any of their imagination. The following may constitute some points of departure for such an imagination.

1. Ordinary life is the life of the Bahujan-Samaj.
2. Lokavidya is the knowledge of the Bhaujan-Samaj.
3. Swaraj is the idea and practice of governance of the Bahujan-Samaj.
4. Sant-parampara expresses the values of the Bahujan-Samaj.
5. Swadeshi darshan bench-marked by neighborhood and proximity is the philosophy of Bahujan-Samaj.
6. Women constitute the main stay of the domestic organization, economic activity and preservation of social relations and moral values in Bahujan-Samaj.
7. Panchayat is central to the social and economic organization and regulation (enforcement of a code of conduct) in society. It is popular in Bahujan-Samaj.
8. Traditions of Public Finance and fiscal systems are rhizome like, similar to the power distribution in Bahujan-samaj.
9. Traditions of Indian agriculture are traditions of the Bahujan-samaj. Food sovereignty has been central in their thought and practice.
10. Indian industrial products constituted more than one-third share of the industrial production of the world up till less than 200 years ago. Bahujan-Samaj had the required skills, knowledge, controls of the means of production and social control for such production.
11. Brahmanic thought and ritual robbed the Bahujan-Samaj of its independent and equal status.
12. Moghuls took away the say and participation of the Bahujan-Samaj in the governance of the society.
13. The British robbed the Bahujan-Samaj of its land and control on the means of industrial production. They created conditions such that Bahujan-Samaj could not use its knowledge for the betterment of society.
14. The Independence Movement resurrected the idea of swaraj and mobilized the ordinary people.
15. In independent India the relations between different segments of the Indian society remained more or less the same as in British India. Bahujan-Samaj was caught in the process of sanskritization guided by the professional classes. For a few decades now, they have their own political leadership. The challenge, however, remains to substantially undo what the Brahmins, the Moghuls and the British did them in past. A resurgence to connect India back to its soul demands a new political imagination in the leadership of the Bahujan Samaj.
16. The new political imagination is to be born through a lokavidya knowledge movement of the Bahujan-Samaj which explicitly entails for the Bahujan-Samaj social equality, political participation and leadership, control on means of production, distribution and communication and equal status for lokavidya in the world of knowledge.
17. Swaraj has a long tradition in the Indian society. It still provides the pivot for a new and contemporary political imagination. Re-emergence of swadeshi darshan is a broad requirement. A beginning was made by Mahatma Gandhi. As can be traced back to him, lokavidya knowledge movement is the bridge between swadeshi darshan and swaraj in today’s world.
18. Mahatma Gandhi’s path of reconstruction and building afresh is expressed in the phrase ‘based in our tradition and enriched by the later experiences’. Attempts of this kind were made in some countries of South America. Early this century, Bolivia and Ecuador went through large mobilizations asserting that they need to rebuild their nations taking lessons from their knowledge (cultural) roots. The key ideas that came out were Rights of Mother Earth and Rights of Nature. They adopted new constitutions and called themselves Plurinational States which, briefly said, recognize multiple politico-social formations and autonomy of the same within a nation/state. This is in stark contrast to the concept of the State born in Europe and spread all over the world through colonialism and imperialism and now in the name of ‘Democracy’. It is also a complete opposite of the very recent concept of civilizational state born in the wake of the neo-conservative developments in many countries across the world.
19. Two major outcomes of the internet in the shape of the World Wide Web may be noted: one, the unprecedented expansion of communication and dialogue and two, the Artificial Intelligence. Whereas the former distributes and spreads knowledge and intelligence almost without limit, the latter mops up the intellectual resources available on the internet at one place with lightening speed. The first inaugurates a new epoch of knowledge dialogue, briefly called The Age of Dialogue and the other concentrates all knowledge for profiteering by a few.
20. The new political imagination or a contemporary conception of swaraj depends on how well we understand this new Age of Dialogue and how effectively we construct a Bahujan knowledge dialogue in this new world.

Reflections on Knowledge in Society

Knowledge has been a subject of curiosity, investigation, understanding, ownership, application, typology etc since time immemorial.  What constitutes knowledge, how to distinguish knowledge from non-knowledge, how to validate knowledge, what constitutes a pursuit of knowledge, what about various ‘traditions’ of knowledge and their interrelationships if any, etc. are some of the questions that continue to be subject matter of discussions up to contemporary times.  This article does not try to engage with all of these questions except for the last one to some degree.  Two dimensions of knowledge question need to be kept in view in the context of this article: knowledge pertaining to material objects, processes, natural environment and so forth that equip the knower with certain capabilities for maintaining and enhancing his/her physical existence and conveniences of life; and knowledge pertaining to how to relate to other people such as family, society – proximate and remote – with all of environment, concerning the values that guide one’s life, knowledge that helps in organization of society and its affairs etc. At an abstract and most general level, every human being possesses knowledge.  It is in this context that the question of ‘Knowledge in Society’ is to be discussed and examined.  Further, here it is limited to the Indian context. The sharp contrast is witnessed when one encounters (a) different knowledge traditions and their status in societies as witnessed across recent centuries; (b) knowledge as systematized, codified, associated with organized centres such as universities, research institutions etc. and the knowledge as residing with the people.  There have been fairly long debates on (a) and it does not concern this article.  The examination is focused on (b) which is formulated in terms of ‘Knowledge in Society’.  Are these the two components of knowledge in society – and how do they relate or not relate to each other? Or do they constitute fairly different worlds which interact largely in such ways that put these two are put on grossly unequal footing with adverse consequences for the latter.  These questions have been posed over the last couple of decades and more and clear statements enunciating position/standpoint have been put forward.  Contemporary discussions seem to suggest that knowledge in society is largely outside the institutions mentioned above (university etc.) and that a major, though nor the only, constituent of lokavidya resides is rural India.  The explicit mention of rural India is not to exclude the other dwelling locations of knowledge in society, but to focus on what I am immediately and rather intimately able to relate to. The proposition that knowledge in society is indeed knowledge first and foremost (and not just practices that are denied status of knowledge) has been put forward clearly and forcefully in all the discussions on this question in all PPST and in all Lokavidya discussions. Further, discussions have put forward numerous examples, illustrations from lives of people in these societies to demonstrate their vitality in supporting these same societies.  However, beyond such illustrations, a critical appraisal and examination of (a) propositions concerning knowledge in society on the one hand; and (b) on the other hand, nature of relations between organized knowledge (in contemporary times) and knowledge in society, have been by and large missing.  But this is of much importance. Note that the propositions are mostly claims on behalf of the holders of lokavidya (knowledge in society) about the vitality of that society and the role of that knowledge. However, if some or many of these propositions are not borne out in reality supported by evidence, then what the society needs to do to move forward, also gets somewhat blocked from the view.  The two specific aspects that need to be examined are: one, in addition to self-realization of the power of lokavidya (the knowledge in society), awareness of shortcomings is important too; and two, except for occasional cursory mention, the question of relation between the two kinds of knowledge in the same larger society is almost wholly missing – indeed these two knowledge domains are seen to be engaged in an antagonistic relation.  Does this have to be an inevitability? Or is a different kind of relation, which is organic and rather non-exploitative, possible?

‘Knowledge in Society’ is a new term. The convention proposes to lift it to the level of an idiom in all kinds of discourses – economic, political. philosophical, cultural etc. Once it is raised to a level of an epistemic idiom, it can hope to enter the discourses also in the universities, on the internet and the places of spiritual persuasion (Mutths, Ashrams, Monasteries), the major organized locations of knowledge and knowledge activity today. We are familiar with terms like traditional knowledge, local knowledge, indigenous knowledge, ethnic knowledge etc. What if we suggest that knowledge in society includes all these. We may include under knowledge in society also knowledge in the university and that in places of spiritual persuasion. But then this is the point where dialogues in the proposed convention may return again and again. The science and technology discourse of the previous era has changed into a knowledge discourse largely after the Information Revolution. What was, earlier categorized as skills and practices of the people at large has come to be recognized as knowledge in the present era. The domain of knowledge therefore stretches from one end in artisanal-peasant communities to the other end of artificial intelligence. Searl’s Chinese Room experiment has reappeared in a new guise. This has far reaching consequences, for now different ways of thinking and doing, which unlike modern science do not abhor the ethical and aesthetic considerations, have a common address ‘Knowledge in Society’. ‘Knowledge in Society’ does not prioritize between the material, ethical, aesthetic, spiritual etc. So, now men and women are rational not just because they can construct analytical and scientific arguments, but also because they can, equally well, construct sound arguments for ethical, aesthetic and spiritual understandings and undertakings. Human rationality liberates itself from the European yoke and a new flowering is there for anybody to see, feel or perceive. The proposed convention hopes to address the entire width and ‘Knowledge in Society’ appears to be the most suited term for this. There is a sense of non-hierarchy and equity built into it. Let the peasants and artisans not be inferior knowledge beings compared to the professionals from the university. So, the convention shall explore the knowledge question and knowledge choices involved in the processes of nation building and development and also in people’s movements. We shall explore whether and how knowledge issue enters the realm of art and are also inclined to conceive a new political imagination, may be an idea of ‘swaraj’ suited for the contemporary times. There will be dialogue on regional/cultural/linguistic knowledge traditions, specifically focused on Kannada traditions of knowledge. So, put together this Knowledge dialogue is at the same time also about ethics and esthetics, not leaving out metaphysics, and about matters of language, policy and governance. Will it take us to a new concept of emancipation at the same time both political and philosophic? India should be a reasonably well suited land for heralding some such new idea and practice thereof.

1. Knowledge in society, with the people, is called lokavidya. It cannot be held or stored in a book, caste, village, family, religion, library, university or computer. It is ‘living knowledge’ with the people.
2. Everybody is knowledgeable in the sense that everybody possesses lokavidya, which is his/her knowledge life-line. Everybody lives with autonomy of decision making based on what he/she learns through lived life (informally as lokavidya and formally in school/college). That is to say that lokavidya is ubiquitous both in space and time.
3. Those who have not been to college or university are not ignorant people. They go through an elaborate learning process, in the family, peer group, village, community and the larger society, in and through their life activity. Markets, governance, work site, cultural phenomena, games, schools and places of knowledge dialogue may be specially mentioned where people learn.
4. Farmers, artisans, adivasis, service providers, small retailers, artists and generally women acquire their knowledge in society. They earn their livelihood and manage all their affairs by lokavidya, so they may be said to constitute lokavidya samaj.
5. Although lokavidya -samaj is composed of poor people, mainly in the former colonies, it should be noted that the professional classes also posses lokavidya and mostly their lived life (different from the professional earning life) is governed by This applies to professional classes across the world, be they in former colonies or in the  Western Europe, England, USA, Japan, Australia.
6. People’s way of thinking, manner of abstraction, methods of argumentation, social values, thoughts about and methods of organization, relations among themselves and with nature, information they command, skills they possess, their art and their darshan (philosophy), all put together constitute a world of knowledge, which may be called
7. Lokavidya is fresh every day, for in response to their needs, people incessantly improve upon the given, by their genius and based on their experiences and fresh experimentation.
8. The source of people’s strength is in lokavidya. It is on the basis of lokavidya that they earn their livelihood, build their relationships with other people and with Nature, distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, confront injustices and build their worldview.
9. Lokavidya does not separate physical labor from the mind and its activity. From the lokavidya standpoint there is nothing that is done by labor alone and everything is done by coming together of the required labor and knowledge. In other words, in the lokavidya way of thinking, nobody is a mere worker, everybody is knowledgeable.
10. Talking about society: the social and the economic disparity can be eradicated only when lokavidya fetches economic returns equal to that obtainable by university knowledge and is accorded the same social respect as is given to university knowledge.
11. Lokavidya Jan Andolan is the knowledge movement of the Lokavidya-samaj. Its objective is to obtain an equal status for lokavidya and lokavidya-samaj in the world of knowledge and society.

Bauddhik Satyagraha

The following is a summary of contents of two bulletins (expanded on in the third bulletin) on Bauddhik Satyagraha from 2006-07 with some new additions. Links from our website included at the end. In the text below the black text is the summary and the blue text is intended to capture the changes and the emerging situation as it emerged in earlier discussions. It is for initiating the discussion on Wednesday, 11Feb2025. 2006-07 Karachi (Virtuality and KiS) / Delhi ISF / Nairobi (Radical Politics & the K-Question)

• Knowledge management – place above science, command to control all K-activities;
• Philosophical analysis of nature and society of past 400 years in West in total disarray;
• Philosophical, scientific, political, economic, cultural dialogues merge into one – K-dialogue; Intervention in this dialogue from lokavidya standpoint to render it closer to the people, activists
• Locations of knowledge: Monastery – other-worldly, University – science-based, Internet – knowledge management, and Ordinary Life – lokavidya; Data centres / AI Factories – AI / AGI(?) – Different paradigms, philosophies, roles in society.

Change

Science, Knowledge Management, AI in opposition to each other

Conflict

Those who command Knowledge vs those who practice KM; Those who command Knowledge vs New AI K-elite

Way ahead?

Not through struggles rooted in ideologies of resistance in industrial societies.

Demand of a standpoint on knowledge – the lokavidya standpoint

Not because it is complete, but is one of truth, justice, provides starting point; Respects traditions which only struggles can transform into contemporary ones

Demand of a standpoint on new knowledge production by AI from the viewpoint of knowledge production by lokavidya

Action Program

• Rejecting hierarchy and social stratification in the realm of knowledge.
• Not considering any one form of knowledge as superior.
• Not giving undue importance to any one place of knowledge (e.g., universities).
• Not considering any one method of knowledge creation as the most correct.
• Opposing the privatization of knowledge.
• Adopting diverse methods for organizing knowledge.
• Recognizing and exposing the limitations of the virtual world.
• Giving respect to lokavidya as a form of knowledge.
• Working for the social recognition of lokavidya.
• Having a respectful attitude towards societies that hold lokavidya.
• Developing ways to include lokavidya in education.
• Opposing the commercialization of art as merely entertainment.
• Exposing systems that exploit knowledge and participating in struggles against such exploitation.
• Opposing the exploitation of the knowledge of farmers and artisans through trade and markets.
• Supporting societies holding lokavidya to freely use their knowledge without restrictions.

Given that AI claims to replace human intelligence and aspires to AGI, do we need to consider whether the above program is sufficient to address knowledge produced by AI systems?

AI vesus Knowledge in Society

Irrespective of whether the hype about AI as a knowledge revolution turns out to be true or not, two of its unmistakable outcomes are the standardisation and the monopolisation of knowledge. This process of standardisation and monopolisation of knowledge started with the IT revolution some 30 years back. AI has only made things much worse and is doing it in a scale unimaginable before. A handful of companies like Open AI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and X are monopolising the AI revolution, all of them based in the US. They see AI as an all pervading tool of shaping the world to maximise their profits and rule over markets. The US government itself is actively engaged in limiting the AI technology development to America. Every possible hurdle is being placed before foreign countries and companies so that they do not overtake or even compete with the US in AI. The active involvement of the US government arises from the potential use of AI as a weapon to control, manipulate, surveil and subujugate ordinary people all over the world. Naturally, other governments of the world are equally anxious to put AI to similar uses. AI and Knowledge in Society (KIS) are antagonistic to each other. KIS is situated in society, is with people, and is decentralised, distributed and non-standardised. The state is largely ineffective in controlling it, despite its best efforts. This vesting of knowledge with ordinary people, in society, among communities and social formations provides them the strength to fight the depredations of the state and corporations. KIS sustains ordinary life and helps thwart the attempts of external powers to destroy it. In short, KIS is the basis of swaraj in society. Monopolisation and standardisation of knowledge with a view to denying ordinary people any role in knowledge production and transmission, is the way companies rob ordinary people of independent thought and reduce them to mere consumers. It is how profits can be made and capital accumulated. On the other hand, the state, by robbing independent thought and preventing collective actions of ordinary people, wants to render them submissive law abiding citizens never daring to question the actions of the state. AI is being deployed by the state and its various agencies to manipulate public opinion and spread disinformation. AI is also used as a tool to identify, intimidate and falsely implicate dissenting voices. So, states and corporations have huge stakes in weaponizing AI. So far the discourse on “development” was focused on the ways in which capital accumulation took place in human societies. But the AI has ushered in a new era of “knowledge accumulation” or “knowledge concentration”. AI development is based on training AI on existing data stored and continuously updated on the internet. These data are nothing but existing knowledge of the world available on the internet (web content in the form of text, images, video and so on).. Social media such as YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, provide invaluable data on which AI is trained. Online published works in the form of books, journals, newspapers and other media provide enormous data for training. All this data is the knowledge produced and shared by ordinary people. Therefore, the bulk of the data on which AI is trained can broadly be termed KIS. This data is scraped from the web and made available to the AI for it to learn. It is in this sense that AI development becomes “knowledge accumulation”. As a result we have two accumulations, one of “capital” and the other of “knowledge”, concurrently taking place today. Another aspect to this process is that “knowledge” has become coterminous with “capital”. But this “knowledge” that is being accumulated by AI, is knowledge of an inferior kind. It is knowledge of how to manipulate the world to increase productivity and generate profits. It is also knowledge of how to enable the state to control, manipulate and dominate people and communities. As opposed to this,  knowledge that builds on swaraj is about how to live in harmony with other human beings and nature. AI is incapable of guiding us in this direction because its very purpose is destruction of all forms of swaraj in society. Taking away knowledge from people and creating an AI that will then be sold back to the people and deployed everywhere, will result in loss of creativity and originality everywhere. For example, if AI can be asked to write a poem through a given set of prompts, and the process is repeated, the chances are that the poems it writes will tend be repetitive. We can therefore expect that the response of AI to a given task will tend to be repitive and stereotyped. What this means is that, individuality or originality will be absent in the artistic creations of AI when compared to those of humans. Hence artistic endeavours of AI will most likely result in standardised, repetitive and monotonous creations. Someone remarked very aptly, I want the AI to wash dishes, clean my apartment and so on, so that I can compose music, poetry, paint, etc…, not the other way round.” Leaving art and creativity to AI and our being forced to spend our time on drudgery, will really be tragic.

AI and …: Notes

Modern society of today is a managed society. It is managed with a promise of providing a certain kind of life. It is a life of speed and limitless development. It ensures access to global  goods and services of global standards and quality. It serves global food and entertainment by global media. And a feeling of belonging to global culture. Steady incomes, reasonable time for leisure and smart entities make all this possible. There is also a certain kind of reassuring uniformity coaxed by capitalist values. Spawned by global finance and global market, they promote free flow of finance capital and commodities over everything else. They champion national security against internal and external enemy. Also, death to terrorism and forces of disintegration and chaos. The detailed features change as they continuously have in the past, becoming more and more conspicuously global. But, not its exclusive nature. It has always been there. Not that it excludes everyone. Only a huge majority. It invites too, all those who can make it, prompting them to cultivate a disdain for what they left behind. At times even a sympathy for those they left behind. Almost always the feelings are inspired, and sustained, by the perception of supreme position of its often flaunted knowledge basis. Modern life is ruled by a convergence of state, capital and modern knowledge systems. These last are populated largely by organized S&T and ICT. The fledgeling civilizational states have exerted to similarly align their own shastras. At any time there is a dialectical, and largely a mutually reinforcing relationship between these three. Changes in any one give rise to perturbations. At times these can become large  disturbances. Re-adjustments will happen so long as they do not force any fundamental questioning of knowledge basis of modern life by the larger society. Recent questioning of the make-up of the modern state triggered by a loss of face by its liberal democratic variety in several countries including India did create such a situation. There was talk of a state of a new civilizational variety. In absence of any questioning of bases of modern life, ripples may continue possibly in wait for more amanable times in international relations for re-adjustments within the convergence. Around three decades back the world of knowledge was rocked by the quake caused by spread of the internet and systems of communication. The new technologies, networking computers the world over, enabled a form, and a reach, of management and control that was eagerly embraced by finance capital and eventually, though more slowly, by systems of the state. In the society it left a gaping digital divide. Mechanisms to bring products of all kinds of human activity all over the globe into the global capitalist mode of production and trade were quickly created. Diverse and distributed streams of knowledge going into these productive activities around the globe received a tacit recognition. That  shook up the hitherto singular position of modern science as the supreme and only system of knowledge validation and production. A certain criterion of organizability by the ICT became the chief window to securing the label of knowledge-product. Readjustments were forced by processes of ICT-aided globalization and liberalization. The knowledge society emerging from all this, however, denied any equality of position with S&T to the newly admitted knowledge streams. Quite the opposite. State and market driven extractive processes became more centralized, more efficient and better controlled. The exploitation of communities living by these knowledge streams became more intense than ever before. We are again witnessing a massive disturbance in the modern knowledge world of today. That is AI. Award of 2024 Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry to AI killed any lingering doubts about its position as the new ‘science’.  Its disruptive potential for all type of work, not just the so-called knowledge-work, is widely recognized. There is ‘excitement in the air and alarm in the mind’ [Devy, 2023]. The excitement came from the launch of chatbots beginning with ChatGPT, mainly because any one with a cell phone can chat with the bot on any subject. The alarm is caused by apprehensions about the scope and meaning of impending disruption. Due to the large presence of smart phones today the whole process exposing a large number of people to so-called generative AI of the chatbots has been incomparably faster than adaptation of the ICTs. Spanning just a couple of years since the end of 2022, these chatbots have shown a rapidly expanding list of human-like conversational capabilities. Apparently, the goal of the technology is to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI). That is understood in various ways. For example, one of them identifies intelligence with the ability to solve problems never before encountered. On this criterion certain chatbots score high. Whatever they are capable of, they have learnt to do. However, that learning is nothing like human beings do – from their live interactions with the world around them. The learning that chatbots do is based on a representation of the world. The representation these particular chatbots have used is the one populating the internet – petabytes (million gigabytes) of numerical data. The AGI is then some sort of completion of the virtual world landmarked by creation of a representation of intelligence of real human beings – an intelligent representation in the world of representations. In this connection, compared to AGI, a possible incorporation of folk theories of mind into design of  AI systems points to a different type of political goal. Apparently, there is as yet no consensus among AI developers on whether to do this. Or, would it make more sense to incorporate computational theories of mind instead. But, if this is attempted the goal would be a virtual representation of collective wisdom, rather than human intelligence. Just as it happened with the internet, this representation – of intelligence, or collective wisdom –  is not just virtual. Through its virtual presence it positions itself to dominate reality as a real phenomenon. There seems to be not much of a question, even at its young age, that in this virtual-real incarnation AI will serve a re-adjusted and renewed convergence of state, capital and modern knowledge. There is no denying that the re-adjustments are likely to be massive. Also, hardly any doubt that they will further only deepen the built-in exclusive character of modern life. All in the name of astounding addition to human capabilities.   How does AI affect, or change science as a knowledge paradigm? In a very definite sense AI has done away with the notion of ‘law’ as understood in natural sciences, disciplines modelled on them and in protosciences –  as a formulation that inter-relates entities with a physical meaning, or interpretation of some sort, that is entities on which the scientist has a direct handle.  In AI the law makes way for a black box, which provides no such handle – it is opaque. The black box is a learnt software – a layered neural net, learnt merely from data. Of course, the data is numerical data measuring entities, which themselves are most likely physical and systematically understandable; or, it may be numerical data symbolically representing things, say, text or image etc. Inpite of that, post-learning, there is no possible explanation for how the black box produced what it did. Apart from that, is there is no guarantee that what it produced is even meaningful, or factually true. That is understandable. After all the black box processes representations, not real entities. What it spews out by itself is again a representation, which needs to be mapped back into the real world. To what it maps back can very well be some absurdity. Unless the representation is in some miraculous way like the ‘state’ in the sense the term has in, say, Newtonian Mechanics. [So, for deterministic systems of the type studied in physics, the black box may be a true pragmatic replacement of the law in the sense that it produces predictions matching what the law will make. An example to clarify this: In 2021, a Princton physicist created a AI computer program which was trained with data from past observations of the five inner planets in the solar system. This program could then predict orbits of other planets without using Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. He described his program like this: “What I’m doing is replacing this process – create a theory based on observations, and then use that theory to predict – with a type of black box that can produce accurate predictions without using a traditional theory or law.” Whether this is actually so in general for all such cases, or not, is not known. Why should a neural net converge to the solution of a mathematical equation?]