 Dharampalji in an intense conversation at his kuti in Sevagram Ashram, 2005 | Could
you tell us how, and why you took a keen interest in the functioning of the pre-British
Indian society, especially of the late 18th century…we understand, you are
not an academic scholar / researcher by training or by profession. Dharampalji (D): This has to be explained in terms of my long association with the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD). I was its Secretary from 1958 to 1964. AVARD was interested to study the working of the Panchayat Raj system in our villages. Working with and for AVARD I came to realise that the Indian society by and large functioned according to traditional idioms and beliefs and that I, like many other ‘outward – looking’ Indians, was not aware of the indigenous social system and its dynamics. I shall give you a concrete instance of this. I visited a village in Rajasthan as a member of a team to study the working of the Panchayat system. |
We found that the panchayat had constructed a new building. When we went through the Panchayat records and proceedings there was no mention about the decision to construct a new building for the village Panchayat. On inquiry we were informed that the decision to construct a building was taken at what they called Bees Biswa Panchayat (20 parts Panchayat), an ‘unofficial’ panchayat on traditional line which was more representative of the village than the statutory panchayat.
This was an interesting case of how the villagers perceived certain things and how they reacted to things from outside. It also showed how little we knew about our villages. I had similar experiences in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and other places. Between 1963-65, we undertook a study of the working of the panchayat system in Tamil Nadu. I went round several districts of Tamil Nadu talking to knowledgeable people and holding discussions with panchayat leaders. In Tanjore I met the chairman of the local Bharat Sevak Samaj. He told me about the existence of over 100 Samudayam villages in Tanjore area even around 1937. Samudayam villages are those in which while members had specific shares in the land of the village, the land which any of them cultivated was changed from time to time and the whole vested in the village community. Such a change was stated to be based on the assumption that a certain alteration occurs in the fertility of all land from time to time which creates inequality among the members of the community and hence occasional redistribution was considered necessary.
When I went through the revenue records and other reports, I found that in the district of Tanjore around 30% of villages were classed as Samudayam villages in 1807. The more I went into the late 18th and early 19th century records, the more I was convinced that the picture of Indian society that we all have is wrong. Some one had to go into the late 18th century British records and I thought I should begin and do whatever I can.
On Western influence
But why hasn't any moment started till now on de-linking from the western minset? After Gandhi, there seems to have been no commensurate effort in that direction. The predominant thrust among Indian leaders and thinkers was to make India Western. Or that we could not survive unless we took aid from the West. Even extraordinary individuals like Swami Vivekananda held such views.
D: I think we are too demoralised. I think even the great Vivekananda, after he had gone around the country for about four years, from 1889 to 1893, and saw the wretchedness, the poverty, the impoverishment of the mind and attitudes and so on, was perplexed as to what had happened. Then he went to the West and saw a different world and that made him feel that we could not do anything on our own. We have to have Western aid, Western muscular power, but what he meant was that we might require these things to stand up. He didn't mean that it would be forever. He meant that we needed such support in the next generation or so, 10-20-30 years and we'd come into our own, chart our path, to some extent similar to that of Western man, but in other ways perhaps very different. The West was to serve as an example, but not forever. That doesn't seem to have been Vivekananda's idea. Our people got stuck because, I think, we are too literal. Whether it is Vivekananda or Mahatma Gandhi or someone else we seem to take them too literally; something has happened to us. Maybe this is a much older trait. It may that because of Vasco da Gama and the British and partly the Islamic period - all this could have made a contribution to the degradation, the loss of faith, the loss of courage - added to it. Is it of our own making, or is this what happens eventually to all civilisations and maybe they have a new birth at some other stage?
Would the West be of any help today?
D: We can get out of this only on our own. There are examples of people growing more and more inwards and I think this is what the Indian people have done. They have shrunk into themselves, the ordinary Indian, because even with one meal a day or half a meal, the way he lives in shacks, without much water, with very little fuel, because of his environment and also his world-view, he could survive. He must have devised a way - as civilisations have a knack of doing - that in adverse times, you reduce, you shrink into yourselves and you think of something else and distance yourself from your larger society, and your goal becomes some other goal, non-societal, non-material, that keeps you going. But it seems that we have over the past ten to twelve generations forgotten how to get out of this shrunken state and return to normality. Perhaps it has become a habit and perhaps because whenever our people tried to come out of it, in a very short time, they got another beating and their experience may be that such effort will not do. So they become diffident about it. So they have sort of retired from life. But the spark remains and hence the possibility is there. Now if they are to be brought into social life, into the running of society - taking it into their own hands, they would only come out of it for something which is worthwhile, which is do-able. If it is not do-able, then they wouldn't. Normality would return when the communities and groups are allowed to have control over their lives, resources and decisions.
What about the Westernised class?
D: Those who have become Westernised - the Western type of commodities may be used by a very large number of people, but those whose minds have been Westernised - I think are not more than half a per cent of us. Probably less, basically not more than half a million people - the officer class in the European sense of the term, which could mean scholars, administrators, army personnel, high dignitaries, managers of industry, etc. And those who are completely lost, among these half a million wouldn't be very many, maybe a few thousand or so - the rest I think can be brought back by a movement backed by spirit and courage and hope. Such a movement however has to be of much greater dimensions and inner energy than even the freedom movement under Mahatma Gandhi. It may not be India-wide, it could initially be a regional thing - because if we are going to wait for the spark to be all over India, then we would be waiting for many generations. The spark may arise in some corner of Tamil Nadu or in Bihar or anywhere, or in areas where movements like that of Swadhyaya have made visible impact during the past three to four decades, wherever there is this feeling of 'What happened to us', 'We have got Lost', 'Let's stand up, do something.'