Subject: More re Indian Mystics a la Shiva & Gail Omvedt:re PEN-L digest 224; Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:51:05 -0400From: Hari Kumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] References: 1 1) By some strange coincidence, recently, I had occasion to cite a lengthy critique of Indian eco-feminists on another list, to which no response was noted. But I see that Shiva has surfaced here. I will post that critique – done I should say to Ulhas – by Marxist-Leninists at: "PURE GREEN, AND NO RED" POLITICS: ENVIRONMENT, INDUSTRIALISATION AND THE PEASANT IN THE UNDER-DEVELOPED WORLD In Alliance 16, 1995: at: http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/ALLIANCE16_ECOLOGY.htm
2) Most of the critiques that I see were proffered on PEN of Shiva point out the Luddite nature of her beliefs, and the false ethos of a mystical ‘blame the technology and not the class relations; in this regard the similarity to GANDHISM & the ‘back to the chakra’ loom movement – is evident. She embraces Mohandas K. Gandhi : "Like Gandhi challenged the processes of colonisation linked with the first industrial revolution with the spinning wheel, peasants and Third World Groups challenge the recolonisation associated with the biotechnology revolution with their indigenous seeds." Shiva 1, p.16. "Mahatma Gandhi said, "there is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for some people's greed". Shiva 2, p.6. "Why must India become industrial in the Western sense?' Gandhi has asked. 'What is good for one nation situated in one condition is not necessarily good for another differently situated. One man's food is often another man's poison.. Mechanisation is good when hands are too few or the work to be accomplished. It is an evil where there are more hands than required for the work as is the case in India." Shiva 1,p 239. The self-proclaimed core of the Indian eco-feminist movement rejects the philosphical basis of what has come to be termed the scientific revolution. Shiva and other eco-feminists (Carolyn Merchant, Marie Mies etc) all object to Baconian science. These objections begins with Bacon's terminology (Nature - she; Science - He): "In Tempores Partus Masculus or the Masculine Birth of Time.. Bacon promised to create 'a blessed race of heroes and supermen' who would dominate both nature and society.. Modern science was a consciously gendered patriarchal activity." Shiva 2. p.16-17. "The rise of mechanical philosophy with the emergence of the scientific revolution was based on the destruction of concepts of self-regenerative selforganising nature which sustained all life. For Bacon.. nature was no longer "Mother "Nature, but a female nature, conquered by an aggressive masculine mind." Shiva V; "The Seed and the Earth: Biotechnology and the colonisation of Regeneration." In : "Close to Home Women reconnect ecology health and Development Worldwide." Ed. By Vandana Shiva. Philadelphia, New Society Publ, 1994. Shiva counterposes to this a total reactionary myticism & Shiva joyfully enters Indian cosmology. "From the point of view Indian cosmology.. the world is produced and renewed by the dialectical play of creation and destruction, cohesion and disintegration. The tension between the opposites from which motion and movement arises is depicted as the first appearance of dynamic energy (Shakti). All existence arises from this primordial energy which is the substance of everything pervading everything. The manifestation of their power is energy is called Nature (Prakriti). Nature, both animate and inanimate is thus an expression of Shakti, the feminine and creative principle of the cosmos; in conjunction with the masculine principle (Purusha), Prakriti creates the world. Nature as Prakriti is inherently active a powerful productive force in the dialectic of the creation renewal and sustenance of all life. In Kulacudamim Nigama Prakriti says: 'There is none but Myself, Who is the Mother to create.'" Shiva 2. p.38.” (For many other relevant quotes from Shiva see the text at above web-site; some of the extraordinary mysticism of Shiva is counter-posed to the views of the ‘Dead White Male’ so often castigated by feminists – Engels). 3) I believe that there are at least two other aspects that bear commentary: 3(I) One is the number of utopian movements (by which I will loosely refer to ‘impossibilists’, anti-realist, wish-like progressive movements) – in India & elsewhere – that Vandana Shivaism is related to. In India, the long overdue, & recently renewed movement of the Untouchables has in turn, re-spawned a rural peasant socialism. This latter is linked to the name of Gail Omvedt. This 'petty-bourgeois' socialism, is in general linked to the anti-Luddite views of the Shivaites. Cumulatively, a general view is taken that the poor peasant in reality as driven off the lands by modern Indian agri-business – can be fought by what amounts to enlightened reformists/captalists. As such she seriously proposed the UN Brundlandt Commission as a means of effecting ‘sustainable development”: "This sustainable development approach is seen in the Brundtland Commission, the South Commission and is expressed in the recent Human Development Report that: "The central fallacy in the old ideological debate was that the state and the market are necessarily separate and even antagonistic - and that one is benevolent, and the other not. In practice both state and market are often dominated by the same power structures. This suggests a more pragmatic third option: both state and market should be guided by the people." United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 1993, Oxford U. Press, Delhi,1993, p. 52-53."; Cited Ibid; Omvedt 1; E&PW. 3(ii): The other point worth making I feel, is that although these movements are based in a non-metropolitan country, they are closely linked to the anti-Marxist tendency to de-emphasise the working class movements that were and are, more usually thought of as the well-spring by those who have called themselves Marxists: "While Marxism has been called the historical materialism of the proletariat, what is needed today is a historical materialism of not only industrial factory workers, but also of peasants, women, tribals, dalits (ie. The previously so called Untouchable, or Harijan caste in India - ed) and low castes, and oppressed nationalities. It can no longer be assumed that a theory that (apparently) serves the needs of the industrial working class is adequate for the liberatory struggles of the whole society. An analysis of capitalism will be insufficient, even erroneous, if it does not move out of the sphere of commodity production and exchange in which value is defined in terms of abstract labour time and capital accumulation is defined through the appropriation of surplus value only." Omvedt 3, p.xvi. Hari Kumar _______________END____________________
