A version of this text appeared in the January 2013 issue of Faridabad Majdoor Samachar
What is this that I am doing? Why am I doing this? What
is this, or this, or this that we are doing? Why are we doing this,
or this, or this? Why am I not doing only that in which my heart is?
Why should I not do that, and only that, which I like? Why should we
do anything other than what we think is right? What are the
compulsions? How can we overcome these compulsions? For everyone, for
very many groups, in every part of the world, these simple questions
of what, why, and how, have revolved around the meaning of our very
being, and they still do. Life is what befits body and being; which
is liked by body and being. Life is joy! What is contrary to being
and body, what is not liked by being and body, is a curse, a fall.
The five thousand year old riddle of whether to be born a human being
is a blessing or a curse is being solved by workers in practice, by
human beings in practice.
Over
the last three years, things have changed very rapidly. All around,
in this spring season, the speed of change is faster still. The
significance of each individual, of every group, affirmed by social
churning, is expressing, rejecting, and illuminating so much; is
creating something new. Among seven billion people in the world, with
the interplay of a multitude of practices and ideas, through an
engagement with the experiences and thoughts of hundreds of
generations........regarding the relationship of part and whole, of
the human species and nature, amongst humans, -------- within these
three years alone, 2013-2014-2015, many aspects of domination have
been rejected, and several forms of hostility are being corroded.
Changes have always occurred in “I-We-Ours” and
“They-Enemy-Others” but of late these changes have been very
extensive and extremely rapid. “I-We-Ours” now includes the
entire human species, and goes, beyond it, via all life on earth, to
embrace the entire universe. And “They-Enemy-Others” is
shrinking-contracting, moving towards zero.
*
It is difficult to be precise since so much has happened so fast and
seemingly all at once, but it probably began with the workers
stopping work in a factory manufacturing atom bombs in Texas, USA. In
this factory in the year 2005, a bomb nearly exploded during
production. The bomb was a hundred times more powerful than the one
dropped on Hiroshima in Japan sixty years ago. “What is this that I
am doing? Why are we doing this? How can we stop all this?”
Questions resounding the world over. Stockpiles of atom bombs on
earth, in the sea, in outer space – as many as can destroy all life
on earth several times over. Security above all.....
Workers
stopped work in an atom bomb factory in Texas.........In
Russia......in China......in France........in England........in
India........in Pakistan........ in North Korea........ in
Israel...... in Iran........workers stopped work in factories
manufacturing atom bombs. Everywhere, supervisors and managers were
silent and happy. Soldiers and guards were peaceful and merry.
Directors and generals were quiet and pleased.
Scientists-engineers-sociologists began to feel ashamed of being
scientists-engineers-scholars. Is it meaningful at all to work for
slaughter and war? Among deliberate wrong-doers, the
managers-generals-scholars, being quite knowledgeable about things,
were waiting for workers to do something, so that they could be free
of the heavy burden on their hearts and minds.
The
laboratory workshop of biological and pharmaceutical weapons....... Five hundred years
ago, the genocide, of people living a communal life in a gift
culture, by the “gift” of plague-infested blankets, from people
engaged in expanding buying-selling, market-money, had been agitating
the very being all along...... After the Scramble for Africa started in the 1880s, European colonial powers established cities, towns, and other colonial stations. A largely masculine labor force was hastily recruited to work in river and sea ports, railways, other infrastructures, and in plantations. This disrupted traditional tribal values, and favored sexual promiscuity. In the nascent cities women felt relatively liberated from rural tribal rules and many remained unmarried or divorced during long periods, this being very rare in African traditional societies. This was accompanied by an unprecedented increase in people's movements. The growth of cities had a role in the epidemic emergence of HIV, since these viruses started to spread soon after the main Central African colonial cities were founded. The AIDS epidemic emerged as a result of the harsh conditions, forced labor, displacement, and unsafe injection and vaccination practices associated with a world that puts the 'health sciences' in the service of the living-death known as civilization. The workers in plantations, construction projects, and other colonial enterprises were supplied with bushmeat, which would have contributed to an increase in hunting and, it follows, a higher incidence of human exposure to the chimpanzee-based ancestor of HIV, SIV. The colonial authorities also gave many vaccinations against smallpox, and injections, of which many were made without sterilising the equipment between uses. Both these practices which transformed food and medicine into genocidal weapons, together with the prostitution associated with forced-labor camps caused serial transmission SIV. In addition, the conditions of extreme stress associated with forced labor depressed the immune system of workers prolonging the primary acute infection period of someone newly infected and increasing the odds of both adaptation of the virus to humans, and of further transmissions... "What is this that I am doing? Why
are we doing this? How can we stop this?”....... In laboratories of biological warfare and genetic engineering, in workshops for research into drugs that increase and prolong the productivity of miserable slaves (about whom even the World Health Organisation could recognise that 'For many, the prospect of longer life may seem more like a punishment than a gift') scientific workers stopped
working, in universities and research institutes, laboratory
assistants and researchers stopped investigations.
Professors-directors-vice-chancellors were silent and were breathing
easy.......There was a plenitude of factories for the production of a
multitude of armaments and weapons in the world. Amidst the
world-wide waves of “what and why are we doing what we are doing?
How to stop it?” the workers in the factories of pharmaceutical and chemical weapons
stopped production.........In missile manufacturing factories,
workers stopped work. In factories manufacturing fighter and bomber
planes, workers stopped production...... In shipyards, workers
stopped producing ships and submarines for the navies........ In
factories for guns-cannons-tanks-armoured vehicles workers halted the
lines......... In bullet-gun shell-gunpowder factories workers
stopped work......... The preparations and practice of cyber-wars by
radar-computer-internet-telephones-satellites were stopped by
workers........In NASA-ISRO-DRDO etc.etc. everywhere,
supervisors-managers-directors-generals were silent and were pleased.
Let’s
breathe awhile. You too stand at ease. It is no longer a situation of
“No time to die, who has the time to live”. There is no poverty
of time now, no need to be miserly about time. We all have enough
time for all that pleases our being.
*
It
is amazing that laments which were quite commonly heard till three
years ago, such as “Life is nothing beyond a struggle for our daily
bread”, seem almost antiquated now. With the disappearance of
market-money, of currencies, it has become easy for all to have
meals......
This
was the Goodyear Tyre Factory in Faridabad. The barbed wires
surrounding it are no longer here. Now there are no guards, no
workers, no managers here. Babies are shrieking joyfully on the sand,
on the grass. Boys and girls are jumping and skipping, climbing on
neem trees. Young men and women, in couples, in groups, are joking,
singing and dancing, are making merry. The middle-aged are happy, are
looking on at the babies – the children – the youth. In the
intoxicating spring season the old are enjoying life...........
In
the material sphere, for life, after security, air, and water –
food is indispensable. Food available in nature, food bestowed by
nature........ the domestication of animals was the starting point
for humans to go beyond and against nature to obtain food. This
advanced further with the tilling of the earth. The domestication of
animals and the ploughing of the earth increased rapidly with the
extension of the market, and over the last hundred and fifty years,
milk production, meat production, and grain production was being done
on a large scale along factory lines. To produce as much as possible
with minimum expenditure is in the nature of the market, and
alongside the factory mode of production came chemical fertilizers,
pesticides, hybrid seeds, genetically modified (GM) seeds, new diets
and medicines for chickens, cows and pigs for faster and greater
production of meat, new diets, medicines, and injections for more
milk, 20-25 thousand acre farms, thousands of cows in enclosures,
tens of thousands of chicken in closed spaces, the creation of animal
clones, etc. The human species has started producing billions of
tonnes of food grain, millions of tonnes of meat – milk – butter.
Godowns full of grain, problems of storage, perishing grain – in
the entanglements of market prices thousands of cows killed, food
grain destroyed, fields left fallow.......... and millions in the
world remained hungry. To prevent bird flu from spreading, thousands
of chicken were culled and buried, to stop diseases from spreading
among cows and pigs, thousands were slaughtered, buried,
exterminated.........
Food
was produced in the factory mode in Australia, America, Canada and
Europe, with workers employed to produce for the market. In India,
Egypt, Brazil, etc. production for the market in farms of
2-4-10-20-50 acres, by ones’ own and ones’ family’s labour was
noteworthy. But everywhere in the world, there was more and more use
of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc. in food production.
Pesticides etc. had entered vegetables,
fruits, food grains,
meat, milk- even mothers’ milk. .... chemical fertilizers,
pesticides, mixed in and seeping into, ground water..... Cancer-
cancer- cancer. .... the production of food became the production of
poison. Consuming food, eating bread, drinking water, became the
production of disease. ......
“What is this that we are doing? Why are we doing
this? How can we stop this? - these questions which were echoing all
around began to get answers in quick succession from several places
three years ago. Workers stopped work in meat factories - the
assembly line system originated in meat factories in America. ......
Workers let out into the open the cows, pigs, and chicken that were
being reared for meat in large farms where they worked. .....
pesticide factories were brought to a standstill by workers. .....
Workers stopped work in factories making chemical fertilizers. ......
farmers in Bhatinda, in Palwal, farm workers in Australia, America
and Canada, stopped using pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hybrid
seeds, GM seeds. ..... in agricultural universities, workers on seed
farms began to relax and scientists engaged in research stopped
working and heaved a sigh of relief.
Stopping all this is fine.... but where will food come
from? This question was expected to arise, but one had not estimated
the extent to which a churning regarding food had already taken
place, and how much more, and faster it would be now.
To eat when one is hungry. Very well, but there is
hunger of the body and hunger of the mind. People were eating more
than the body required which was harmful. The reason for overeating
was social, for the being was hungry.......
How much food is needed to feed the body? But before the
question of how much is the question of what kind. Junk-food was much
talked about earlier as well but now it was discarded at an amazing
speed. In these three years, the consumption of food grains, meat,
and milk, has come down a lot. The production of grains without using
chemical fertilizers and pesticides has been such that taking out
grain from old stocks has been minimal.
Food, whether cooked, or raw, germinated...... There
were many more discussions about the relationship between the three
whites: salt-sugar- milk and the human body. While granting that
mother’s milk is sufficient for a human child, discussions about
cow-buffalo- goat milk not being suitable for the human body have
continued into 2016.
That the domestication and milking of animals is not
good and not necessary had been a thought provoking idea for quite
some time. But of late, talks such as whether food production can
be imagined without ploughing, without cleaving the earth, without
working, have been very interesting.
The wheel of time cannot be turned back but methods of
food production compatible with nature are an essential requirement.
...... There were many such ancient methods and in many places
several persons have been conducting tests and experiments, but they
have remained few and far between. ..... in these three years,
methods of food production with an affinity to nature, have become
central in experiments and in practice.
*
In
Gurgaon, such tall buildings, and exploitation of ground water on
such a large scale, seemed, to young architects, to be an invitation
to upheavals in the earth’s womb. They were afraid that these high
buildings, strengthened by science-engineering-technology, can at any
moment come down like a house of cards. Before natural upheavals
could occur, social upheavals began to resolve the problem of housing
in practice. ...... Workers came out of the rented rooms in
Kapashera, Dundahera, and Mullahera, and began to live in the
ten-twenty storeyed buildings which were lying vacant. Because of
market-money, commercial considerations, a large number of houses
used to remain vacant in towns. For people to collectively occupy and
settle down in houses lying vacant in towns- metropolises was an
instant solution to the housing problem in towns. The wave of workers
making houses that were lying vacant here and there into their homes
began three years ago. The instant relief this gave encouraged
worldwide exchanges about proper and appropriate housing. Here, in
the spring of 2016, discussions regarding housing have become even
more extensive. .....
Houses breathe. In London, 60% of the population suffers
from breathing problems. The use of cement, steel, and paint in
construction and decor was a major cause of this. What materials for
construction of houses. ..... concrete houses harmful for babies.
...... exploitation of an area of a hundred miles around Delhi for
the provision of daily needs of the metropolis. ..... the whole sea
bay polluted by a breakdown of the garbage purifying plant in Los
Angeles city. ........ And then, not only did the fear and greed
linked to towns and cities push each and everyone into loneliness,
into a lack of community; it also carried, alongside, a
tough-ruthless-vast apparatus of security- administration –control.
Villages, meanwhile, were strongholds of the suffering and
frustrations of a distorted-spoilt-deformed community. There used to
be numerous experiments to create new collectivities-communities in
towns, in villages. In these three years, various new communities
have emerged which reject both villages and towns as units for living
on this earth.
Although forcibly joined, the entire human species had
been joined together. Several attempts to join up on the basis of
ones’ own wishes rather than by force had been made earlier. In
these three years, attempts to come together on the basis of ones’
desires have increased a lot the world over. In the spring of 2016,
there is a virtual flood of mutual exchanges, of links made as per
ones’ own wishes. Many experiments are on. The size of social
units. .... the relation between an individual and a social unit
....... the universal form of human habitation formed by social
units. .......
*
In
Chicago, America, energetic children came out of schools along with
enthusiastic teachers. ........... in Delhi, parents refused to send
their 2 ½ -3 year old children to nurseries and pre-nurseries.
...... in Beijing, China, students put locks on universities, the
factories for the production of knowledge. ........ all these came
like a hurricane three years ago. This was the starting point for
taking the discussions- practices about childhood- the relation
between generations- the role of schools –the meaning of knowledge
– to a new plane. By the time spring 2016 arrived,
schools-colleges- universities were shut down the world over, old age
homes were closed. ......
The relations between generations are pleasurable and a
prime necessity for the survival of every living species. Each stage
of life in the passage from birth to death has a happiness of its
own. Amongst human beings, all this had gone topsy turvy and the
terrible destruction wrought by the expansion of market-money had
completely crushed the entire earth. The expansions of market–money
brought with it the extension of literacy, and schools in large
numbers. Schools, teaching lessons of discipline for wage labour in
the factory mode, were important locations for preparing workers for
factories. To teach children how to sit as soon as they entered
school was to destroy childhood. The teachers’ cruelty towards
themselves and towards their students in order to remain teachers.
And student- teacher relations making grandfathers and grandmothers
redundant. The elderly awaiting death; and at a certain age, the old
age home. .......
This was an industrial model town in Manesar. There was
a Honda motorcycle and scooter factory here. In spring 2016 there are
birds chirping here and fun filled conversations about science are
taking place among children- youth- and elders ...... the scriptures
and knowledge had played a significant role in controlling and
domesticating human beings. To increase control-oppression –
exploitation was the essence of knowledge. ..... but people had also
used scriptures against oppression- exploitation .... like skill,
knowledge too is just an accumulated form of our activities. .....
what kind of knowledge – that is significant . ....... For loving
relations between human beings and between humans and nature it is
essential to bury most of our inherited knowledge. ........ to decide
what all to not do the inherited knowledge can be useful. ....... new
relationships demand new knowledge .......
*
What
is this that we are doing? Why are we doing this? Come let’s stop
this. ..... In Paris drivers stopped working – trains stopped, the
metro stopped, buses stopped, trucks stopped, taxies stopped. ......
In New York, pilots refused to fly aeroplanes. ........ On Bombay
harbour, dock workers stopped all coming and going. ......... in
factories in China workers stopped the production of all types of
vehicles. ........ three years ago in many places in the world the
system of work stoppages began and the din on earth started coming
to a stand still. After the stopping of wheels the spring season kept
becoming more and more pleasant. In spring 2016 there is peace all
around and peoples’ hearts and minds are in full bloom.
This was the Maruti Suzuki factory in Gurgaon. Today, at
leisure, many people are looking back at it, and discussing the
production of speed, the consumption of speed, transport. .........
speed, faster and faster speed – in this mad rush, where were we
going? What were we fleeing from? We were running to avoid meeting
our own gaze. ............
The effort to increase speed beyond what is naturally
granted to human beings, besides stretching the body and exhausting
the mind, was accompanied by a tinkering with nature. .........
Since the last two hundred years, speed was being produced by the
factory mode. And, a hundred or a hundred and twenty five years ago,
caught in the grip of faster speed, people had started becoming small
or big cogs of machines, of systems, of institutions. .....
Increasing the production of speed, and making speed faster and
faster through coal, electricity, nuclear power, and electronics,
meant a devastation of the earth’s womb, along with its surface.
For transporting people from here to there in increasing numbers and
at growing speed, and to carry increasing quantities of goods to and
fro at faster and faster speeds, the ever lengthening rows of
vehicles of all kinds made accidents a matter of routine. ...... the
production and consumption of speed brought with it the pollution of
air-water -soil, global warming, and a hole in the ozone layer which
naturally carried in itself the destruction of life on earth.
By halting the wheels, workers opened the pathways to
save life on earth..........
*
In
China, women workers came out of factories and male workers were with
them. ....... in Bangladesh women workers came out of factories and
male workers were with them. ......... in India, girl and boy
students came out together from schools- colleges- universities.
........ three years ago waves of natural easy relations between men
and women began to rise all over the world. The growing relations of
mutual respect and love between men and women made the world
extremely fragrant. Together with the blossoming of nature in the
intoxicating spring season of 2016, there is also a worldwide
blossoming of the human species. ..........
This was the Shahi Export Factory in Faridabad. Today
there are many kinds of conversations here about the multifaceted
male and female relations, between boys and girls, men and women.
Interesting discussions. ....
In scriptures, in words of god, why have women been
called sin personified? What is the meaning of the saying that not
even gods can understand the character of a woman? Nature has given
greater sexual capacity to women as compared to men, one man cannot
satisfy the sexuality of even one woman, then what is the meaning of
man attempting to keep several women under his control for sexual
gratification? There are genders other than male and female in
nature........
When did a family- like institution emerge amongst human
beings? Why were men at the centre of the family? Blood originates in
the mother’s womb, so what is the meaning of men proclaiming ‘my
blood’? How can we understand the changing forms of the family?
What does women becoming wage workers show? How was the
transformation of women into wage workers, women’s empowerment?
It was a matter of chance that during the breakdown of
communities the “I” that was engendered had men as its vehicle.
Death, a certainty after birth- the unbearable pain born of this for
the “I” made men go mad. And, the crazy antics of males, who were
afraid of females, made the relations between men and women
problematic. .......
In the factory mode, in the wages system, it was the
worsening situation of wage workers (men) which brought about many
transformations in the family, and women began to become wage workers
in increasing members. ....
The women who had become wage workers became the new
vehicles of “I”. To be a woman and a wage worker was more
problematic than being a male wage worker. The long experiences of
imagination-construction – creativity to overcome complex
situations made women wage workers fit to inflict a mortal blow on
the system of wage labour. It was the interaction of male workers
and women wage workers with myriad experiences of wage work that
initiated the end of the wage system three years ago. In contrast to
the increasing insignificance of each individual in the wages system,
we are now proceeding along the path of good relations between men
and women on the basis of each person’s importance.......
*
For
the continued survival of any living species, an indispensable
requirement is that murder within that species be an exception. The
human species, which calls itself the best in all living species, had
become an exception........
“What is this that we are doing? Why are we doing
this? “........... The soldiers in America took off their uniforms
and proceeded to make arms and ammunition dysfunctional, Colonels and
Generals also took off their uniforms and joined the soldiers in
making armaments dysfunctional........ In Russia ...... in China.....
in France ........ in England ........... in Iran ......... in India
soldiers took off their uniforms and proceeded to make arms and
ammunitions dysfunctional .............. Three years ago throughout
the world soldiers began to disband armies speedily. All this
happened so rapidly that it is difficult to say whether the
initiative came from China’s army personnel or from U.S.A.’s air
force personnel. The paramilitary forces and police personnel all
over the world had behaved as did soldiers and officers of the armed
forces. Such a wind blew all over the world that the doors of jails
were opened up and locks were put on courts.
Within three years the production of a lot of things was
totally stopped. Whatever production of things of the past is taking
place now is a twentieth to a thirtieth part of the earlier amount.
Quite some people are still engaged in doing away with stocks of
fatal- harmful things. And, a significant number of people are
enthusiastically engaged in activities for establishing harmony with
nature.
In spring 2016, on the entire earth, people have
themselves formed communities, and are themselves directing
life........
This was an air force station in Faridabad. Today, here,
on the sand, on the grass, children are shrieking joyfully. Girls and
boys are jumping around. In couples, in groups, youth are laughing
and talking, dancing and singing. In many such groups, discussions
are also on...........
This was not a miracle that had occurred. In Egypt,
Iraq, Iran, Israel, China, India, Greece, Rome, for four to five
thousand years, generation after generation, many generations, were
engaged in recognizing and breaking the shackles that bound human
beings. Our ancestors had given birth to many divergent and diverse
views based on their own experiences and thoughts. The expansion of
money – market had forcibly joined together the entire human
species, in order to yoke and exploit it. In the factories
established on the basis of steam and coal two hundred years ago, in
the wages system, the shackles that bound human species were
recognized as social relations, and wage workers had the capacity to
break these shackles. Then in 1871, by establishing the Paris
Commune, abolishing the army and police, breaking the jails, wage
workers showed a glimpse of that capacity. During periods when
governments were indulging in massacres and killings on an increasing
scale, in Russia in 1905 and again in 1917, wage workers displayed
their potential by forming Soviets. In Germany in 1918-1919, workers
gave a glimpse of their capability by forming worker’s councils.
Together with steam and coal, factories based on oil engines and on
electrical motors had been increasing the number of wage workers in
the world. But it is electronics that has led to an extremely rapid
rise in the numbers of wage workers in the world. Electronics made
the factory mode dominant, not just in the field of material
production, but in every sphere of social life;
trade-transport-education- health-entertainment. In China, in India,
the social death and social murder of peasants –artisans happened
at a very rapid pace, and the flood of wage-workers began. Wage
workers became a majority in the world’s population. The entry of
electronics in the production process increased greatly the number of
non permanent, temporary workers, and in many places, 20-22 year old
workers became workers with personal experience of several places.
Then, T.V.- mobile phones- Internet soon broke through the barriers
of numbers and distances, and along side, also made the experiences
and thoughts of our ancestors easily accessible. The crises of the
factory system, of wage labour, had been wreaking terrible havoc for
a hundred and fifty years, but cushions were available, though of a
diminishing size. Three years ago, the vast population of wage
workers exercised its capability on a world-wide scale and the
creation of a new human society began........
By making instant and extensive exchanges between people
spread all over the world possible, electronics had played a
significant role in creating change which was multidimensional and
fast. And now, in view of the fact that together with pure metals,
iron, aluminium, etc., electronics, with its heavy elements is
harmful for life on earth, large numbers of people are making efforts
to get rid of them.
Security, air, water, food, is undoubtedly essential for
life, but being happy is life’s primary need. Straight forward,
mutually at ease relations........
