I am sending the enclosed article to bring to the notice of a peculiar type
of danger posed to the third world countries. I have no (repeat no)
intention of highlighting the religious analogies used. In fact, I do not
know why the author felt the need to do so. I think the author is definitely
NOT a supporter of the Hindu fundamentalists in India. However, the points
that she otherwise makes has much merit.
Sachin Phadte
THE SECOND COMING OF COLUMBUS
VANDANA SHIVA
---------------------------------
Our struggle is against all forms of colonization.
ON 17TH APRIL, 1492, Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand granted Christopher
Columbus the privileges of "discovery and con- quest". One year later, on
4th May, 1493, Pope Alexander VI through his "Bull of Donation" granted all
islands and mainlands "discovered and to be discovered, one hundred leagues
to the West and south of the Azores towards India" and already not occupied
or held by any Christian king or prince as of Christmas of 1492, to the
Catholic monarchs, Isabel of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon. Walter
Ullmann has stated in Medieval Papalism:
"The Pope as the victor of God commanded the world, as if it Were a tool in
his hands; the Pope, supported by the canonists, considered the world as his
property to be disposed according to his will."
Acts of piracy were thus transformed into divine will by charters and
patents. The peoples and nations which were colonized did not belong to the
Pope who "donated" them to the European monarchs. However, this canonical
jurisprudence made the Christian monarchs of Europe rulers of all nations,
"wherever they might be found and whatever creed they might embrace."
The Papal Bull, the Columbus charter and the charter-patents granted by
European monarchs laid the juridical and moral foundations for the
colonization and extermination of non-European peoples. The Native American
population declined from 72 million in 1492 to less than 4 million in a few
centuries.
The principle of "effective occupation" by Christian princes, the alleged
"vacancy" of the targeted lands, the "duty" to incorporate the "savages"
into civilization were components of the charter-patents.
Wherever they might be found, whatever knowledge they might embody, patents
and intellectual property rights (IPRS) today are no different from the
"patentes" and "charters" issued by European monarchs to merchants of their
era.
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS after Columbus, a more secular version of the same
project of colonization continues through patents. The Papal Bull has been
replaced by the GATT treaty. The principle of effective occupation by
Christian princes has been replaced by "effective occupation" by modern-day
rulers, the transnational corporations. The vacancy of targeted lands" has
been replaced by "the vacancy of targeted life-forms" and species
manipulated by the new biotechnologies. The duty to incorporate savages into
Christianity has been replaced by the duty to incorporate local and national
economies into the global marketplace, and to incorporate non- Western
systems of knowledge into the reductionism of commercialized Western science
and technology.
The creation of property through the piracy of others' wealth remains the
same as it was 500 years ago.
The freedom that transnational corporations are claiming through
intellectual property rights protection in the GATT agreement on Trade
Related Intellectual Property rights (TRIPs) is the freedom that European
colonizers have claimed since 1492 when Columbus set precedence in treating
the licence to conquer non- European peoples as a natural right of European
men. The land titles issued by the Pope through European kings and queens
were the first patents. The colonizer's freedom was built on the slavery and
subjugation of the people with original rights to the land. This violent
takeover was rendered "natural" by defining the colonized people as savages,
thus denying them their humanity and freedom.
Locke's treatise on property effectually legitimized this same process of
theft and robbery during the enclosure movement in Europe. Locke clearly
articulates capitalism's freedom to build on the freedom to steal; he states
that property is created by removing resources from nature through mixing
with labour. But this "labour" is not physical labour but labour in its
spiritual" form as manifest in the control of capital.
According to Locke, only those who own capital have the right to own natural
resources; a right that supersedes the common rights of others with prior
claims. Capital is thus defined as a source of freedom, but this freedom is
based on the denial of freedom to the land, forests, rivers and biodiversity
that capital claims as its own and to others whose rights are based on their
labour. Peasants and tribals who demand the return of their rights and
access to resources are regarded as thieves.
THESE EUROCENTRIC notions of property and piracy are the bases on which the
Intellectual Property Right laws of GATT/WTO (World Trade Organisation) have
been framed. When Europeans first colonized the non-European world, they
felt it was their duty to "discover and conquer", to "subdue, occupy and
possess". It seems that the Western powers are still driven by that
colonizing impulse to discover, conquer, own and possess everything, every
society, every culture.
The colonies have now been extended to the interior spaces, the "genetic
codes" of life-forms from microbes and plants to animals, including humans.
John Moore, a cancer patient, had his cell lines patented by his own doctor.
A company, Myriad Pharmaceuticals, has patented the cancer gene in women in
order to get a monopoly on diagnostics and testing. The cell lines of the
Hagahai of Papua New Guinea and the Guami of Panama have been patented by
the USA Commerce Secretary. The assumption of empty lands, "terra nullus",
is now expanded to "empty life" seeds and medicinal plants emptied of the
cultural and knowledge imprint of non- Western sciences and cultures.
The takeover of native resources during colonization was justified on the
ground that indigenous people do not "improve" their land.
"Natives in New England, they enclose no land, neither have they any settled
habitation, nor any tame cattle to improve the land by. So have nor other
but a Natural Right to those countries. So as if we leave them sufficient
for their use, we may lawfully take the rest."
The same logic is now used to appropriate biodiversity wealth from the
original owners and innovators by defining their seeds, medicinal plants,
medical knowledge into nature, into non-science and treating the tools of
genetic engineering as the yardstick of "improvement". Defining Christianity
as the only religion, and all other beliefs and cosmologies as primitive,
finds its parallel in defining commercialized Western science as the only
science, and all other knowledge systems as primitive.
500 years ago it was enough to be a non-Christian culture to lose all claims
and rights. 500 years after Columbus and Vasco de Gama it is enough to be a
non-Western culture with a distinctive world-view and diverse knowledge
systems to lose all claims and rights. The humanity of others was blanked
out then and their intellect is being blanked out now. Conquered territories
were treated as peopleless in the patents of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
Today patents have a continuity with the patents issued to Columbus, Sir
John Cabot, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh. The conflicts that
have been unleashed by the GATT treaty, by patents on life-forms, by the
patenting of indigenous knowledge and by genetic engineering are grounded in
processes that can be summarized as the second coming of Columbus and Vasco
da Gama.
At the heart of Columbus' "discovery" was the treatment of piracy as a
natural right of the colonizer and necessary for the deliverance of the
colonized. At the heart of the GATT treaty and its patent laws is the
treatment of biopiracy as a natural right of Western corporations and as
necessary for the "development" of Third World societies.
Biopiracy is the Columbian "discovery" 500 years after Columbus - patents
are still the means to protect this piracy of the wealth of non Western
peoples as a right of Western powers.
Through patents and genetic engineering, new colonies are being carved out.
The land, the forests, the rivers, the oceans, the atmosphere have all been
colonized, eroded and polluted. Capital now has to look for new colonies to
invade and exploit for its further accumulation. These new colonies are, in
my view, the interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants and animals.
Resistance to biopiracy is a resistance to this ultimate colonization of
life itself - of the future of evolution as well as the past and future of
non- Western traditions of relating to nature and knowing nature. It is a
struggle to protect the freedom of diverse species to evolve; it is a
struggle to protect the freedom of diverse cultures to evolve; it is a
struggle to conserve both cultural and biological diversity. It is a
struggle against new and old forms of colonization.
Vandana Shiva is a physicist and philosopher. Her books include Monoculture
of the Mind and Staying Alive.
_________________________________________________________________
Cant have enough of SRK? http://server1.msn.co.in/sp05/iifa/ Help him bag
the award.
