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Eco-swaraj
Ashish Kothari
In response to the abysmal socio-economic inequities and catastrophic ecological collapse we are witnessing globally, powerful resistance and alternative movements are emerging around the world. These are articulating and promoting practices and worldviews relating to achieving human and planetary wellbeing in just and sustainable ways. Some of these are re-affirmations of continuing lifestyles and livelihoods that have lived in relative harmony with the earth for millennia or centuries. Others are new initiatives emerging from resistance movements against the destructive nature of capitalism, industrialism, patriarchy, statism, and other forms of power concentration.
Though incredibly diverse in their settings and processes, these initiatives display some common features that enable the emergence of a general set of principles and values, forming a broad ideological framework, that may be applicable beyond the specific sites where they are operational. One of these features is the assertion of autonomy; or self-governance; or self-determination. This is most prominently articulated in numerous movements of indigenous peoples around the world, culminating globally in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Zapatista and Kurdish autonomy movements are also based on the principle of autonomy.
One such a framework that has emerged from grassroots experience in India, with significant global resonance, is eco-[i]swaraj[i]. The term [i]swaraj[i], simplistically translated as self-rule, stems from ancient Indian notions and practices of people being involved in decision-making in local assemblies. It became popular and widely articulated during India’s Independence struggle against the British colonial power, but it is important to realize that its use to mean ‘national independence’ is a very limited interpretation. MK Gandhi[1] , in fact, in numerous writings including in particular [i]Hind Swaraj[i], attempted to give it a much deeper and wider meaning. Encompassing individual to community to human autonomy and freedom, integrally linking to the ethics of responsibility towards others (including the rest of nature), and to the spiritual deepening necessary for ethically just and self-restrained behaviour[2].
Autonomy and Self-rule
Equally, though, the notion of eco-[i]swaraj[i] emerges from grassroots praxis[3]. This is illustrated in the following examples from three communities in different parts of India:
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[i]‘Our government is in Mumbai and Delhi, but we are the government in our village’[i], Mendha-Lekha village, Maharashtra.[4]
The village of Mendha-Lekha, in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state, has a population of about five hundred Gond [i]Adivasi[i] people, indigenous people who in India are also called ‘tribals’. About thirty years ago these people were part of a resistance movement against a large dam that would have displaced them and submerged their forests. This mobilisation also led them to consider forms of organisation that could help deal with other problems and issues. They established their ‘gram sabha’ (village assembly) as the primary organ of decision-making, and after considerable discussion adopted the principle of consensus. They realised that voting and the [i]majoritarianism[i] that comes with it can be detrimental to village unity and the interests of minorities. The villagers do not allow any government agency or politicians to take decisions on their behalf, nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own. This is part of a ‘tribal self-rule’ campaign underway in some parts of India, though few villages have managed to achieve complete self-rule as it is a process that requires sustained effort, natural leadership, and the ability to resolve disputes – features that are not common. Both in Mendha-Lekha and at several other sites, communities are now also using the recent legislation that recognises their communal rights to govern and use forests, along with constitutional provision
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1. Parel, Anthony (ed), 1997,[i]M. K. Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings[i], Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
2. Some of the understanding of [i]swaraj[i] used here comes from the ongoing work of Aseem Shrivastava, including ‘The Imperative of Prakritik Swaraj’, June 2016, unpublished.
3. It is important to recognize that the term ‘eco-[i]swaraj[i]’ is not used by the peoples in these initiatives, who all speak their own language; the term is a composite that the author has come up with, integrating the more commonly used term ‘swaraj’ with a focus on ecological wisdom and integrity.
4. Kothari, Ashish and Pallav Das, 2016, Power in India: Radical pathways, in [i]State of Power 2016: Democracy, sovereignty and resistance[i], Transnational Institute, https://www.tni.org/stateofpower2016
5. See www.vikalpsangam.org (alias www.alternativesindia.org) for several hundred examples from rural and urban India; and a newly launched site, www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org for examples from the rest of the world. See also Demaria, Federico and Ashish Kothari, 2017, The Post-Development Dictionary agenda: paths to the pluriverse, [i]Third World Quarterly[i] for details of a forthcoming [i]Post-Development Dictionary[i] containing nearly 100 entries on alternatives from around the world.
6. Parallel similar initiatives in other parts of the world include ‘oil in the soil’ and ‘coal in the hole’, anti-pipeline resistance movements in the Americas and Africa, the Zapatista and Kurdish autonomy regions, indigenous peoples’ territorial rights struggles across the global South, agroecology, commons and de-growth movements in Europe and elsewhere, and many others.
7. See Kothari, Ashish (2014) ‘Radical Ecological Democracy: A way for India and beyond’, [i]Development[i] 57(1): 36–45; Shrivastava, Aseem and Ashish Kothari (2012) [i]Churning the Earth: The making of global India[i], New Delhi: Viking/Penguin India.
See also www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org for details of the Peoples’ Sustainability Treaties process for the Rio+20 Conference.
8. Adapted from ‘In Search of Alternatives’, a discussion note evolving through the Vikalp Sangam process (see footnote 5), available at: http://www.vikalpsangam.org/about/the-search-for-alternatives-key-aspects-and-principles/. For information on the Vikalp Sangam process and its outputs, pl. see http://kalpavriksh.org/index.php/alternatives/alternatives-knowledge-center/353-vikalpsangam-coverage.
9. www.vikalpsangam.org
10. http://www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/treaty/
11. An approach linking feminism with ecological perspectives, advocating the rehealing of the earth by reconnecting humans and nature that have been split by patriarchy.
12. Broadly translated as ‘good living’, this and other equivalent terms like sumac kawsay are from indigenous peoples in Latin America, encompassing worldviews based on collective, mutually respectful living amongst humans and between humans and the rest of nature.
13. www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org
14. For one example see Kothari, Ashish and KJ Joy, In press, ‘Looking back into the future: India, South Asia, and the world in 2100’, in Ashish Kothari and KJ Joy, [i]Alternative Futures: Unshackling India[i], Authors UpFront, Delhi.
15. A system in which the state concentrates most power in itself.
References
Demaria, Federico and Ashish Kothari, 2017, The Post-Development Dictionary agenda: paths to the pluriverse, [i]Third World Quarterly[i], DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1350821
Kothari, Ashish (2014) ‘Radical Ecological Democracy: A way for India and beyond’, [i]Development[i] 57(1): 36–45
Kothari, Ashish and Pallav Das, 2016, Power in India: Radical pathways, in [i]State of Power 2016: Democracy, sovereignty and resistance[i], Transnational Institute, https://www.tni.org/stateofpower2016
Kothari, Ashish and KJ Joy, In press, ‘Looking back into the future: India, South Asia, and the world in 2100’, in Ashish Kothari and KJ Joy, [i]Alternative Futures: Unshackling India[i], Authors U
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