Politics & Social Issues: Interview
A Conversation with Krishna Raj
Ananta Kumar Giri
Manare refers to being on its rising forth. This is not, in terms of the
division that dominates Western ontology, either an essence or an existence,
but a manner of rising forth; not being that is in this or that mode, but being
that is its mode of being, and thus, while remaining singular and not
indifferent, is multiple and valid for all.
Only the idea of this modality, of rising forth, this original mannerism of
being, allows us to find a common passage between ontology and ethics.
Georgio Agamben (1993), The Coming Community, p. 27.
Thinking cannot simply put together ideas as though they are slabs of stone..
Thinking has to enter into them, loosen their rigidity, transform them into the
fluidity of its own movement, and refashion a new form out of that fluid, like
the way a jeweler transforms an ornament into a new one.
J.N. Mohanty (2002) Between Two Worlds, p. 113.
It was a day in the third week of last September and I had just arrived in
Mumbai from my fieldwork in Gujarat. In fact, I was coming from Sabarkantha and
Bhuj trying to understand how people there are dealing with the aftermath of
communal carnage and the earthquake. On getting off the train in Mumbai, I
called Krishna Raj at his home. As always, he was kind and cordial and quickly
agreed to meet me in the EPW office in the evening. My friend, Tattwamasi of
the Tata Institute Social Sciences joined me and we went eagerly to meet him.
Shuttling along the suburban trains, we were late. Krishna Raj greeted us with
kindness and generosity. Coming back as I was from Gujarat, I wanted to use
this occasion to hear from Krishna Raj his opinion on the increasing
annihilatory politics of our times. With his characteristic humility, Krishna
Raj said: “You should tell us about it.” I said: “On the train from Gujarat, I
was reading Toynbee’s An Historian’s
Approach to Religion. Toynbee tells us that if the technology of violence
increases and if people’s moral power to resist it does not, then it spells
doom for mankind. Earlier, the technology of violence was on a much smaller
scale, now it is more brutal.” Krishna Raj said with grace, “Oh, you are
reading Toynbee. But these days nobody talks about him much. What you say seems
acceptable and self evident, but if one were to question it, we would have to
ask, in what way has violence become more brutal now? What exactly do you have
in mind?” I said, “Violence has been there for a long time and it has also been
brutal. We cannot say that violence now is more brutal than it was five
thousand years ago. But the technology of violence has become more brutal. Look
at the way they bombed Iraq.”
Continuing with the same concerns but taking the discussion further, Krishna
Raj said, “I want to know what you mean. Violence and brutality have always
existed. The powerful have always acted in accordance with their own interest.
In the past, they have been checked by other powerful people.. But today, we
see the emergence of the powerful being checked not only by the other powerful,
but by a system of public norms which, over a period of time, may affect our
behaviour. In so far as America is concerned, world public opinion is a factor.
The situation now is not Vietnam where the Vietnamese defeated the US. What is
important now is grass-roots opposition in the US and around the world. Take
the WTO meeting in Cancun. Developing countries were able to have their way.”
At this point, Tattwamasi said, “The nature of violence has changed: from
individual to collective.” Then, Krishna Raj said, “Our whole life has become
more complex. Violence cannot have the same form as it did in primitive
society.” I said, “We need to look at the mechanism of violence, in fact, the
technology of violence as part of the risk to society. States are producing
weapons of mass destruction which baffle our imagination. There is a lot of
investment in it. America is a big player.” Krishna Raj responded, “Well, the
Soviet Union was also a big player. Russia continues to be a big player in so
far as arms exports are concerned.” I said, “But what I am worried about is the
production of the technology of violence which seems to be outside the sphere
of democratic public deliberation let alone of control.. There is no Cold War
any longer. But why is the United States producing weapons of mass destruction?
What is our ability to
protest in the face of such brutal technologies of violence? There is another
dimension of violence linked to the State that I wish to draw your attention
to. Under globalization, while the State is becoming a client of multinational
capital, it is becoming a ruthless police state to protect its own interest as
well as that of predatory capital. It is unleashing violence against movements
that are fighting for land, resources and survival.”
I talked about the anti-mining struggle in Kashipur, Orissa. For the last nine
years, the people of the area have been fighting against mining in their
locality which would take away their land and culture. The State has become an
ally of this capital and instead of providing the people with basic information
about what might be the scope of the mining project and how many villages might
be displaced, the State has become an agent of the capitalist and a police
state. In December 2000, the police descended on the village of Maikanch, fired
at people even as they were fleeing for their lives into the hills, and killed
three people.” As he has listened to the people of the Kashipur struggle by
publishing many articles on their protest in the pages of EPW, Krishna Raj
listened to me sympathetically and said, “We have to look at this as part of a
larger process of change, especially with regard to the use of land. Land now
has so many potentialities,
which it did not have earlier. If we continue to use the land the way it was
traditionally used, it just won’t work. The issue is whether continuing to use
the land the way it was traditionally used benefits society, or whether putting
the land to a different use benefits society.” Tattwamasi, who had done some
research on the problem of resettlement and rehabilitation as a consequence of
mining in the Kashipur area, said, “In that region, the land is not very
productive. As far as mining is concerned, some people received compensation
for the land they had lost. But they have already spent the money. Mining is
taking over the area, but tribal people do not have any education. What kind of
jobs will they get? At least these people could have been educated. They could
have been given vocational training.” Thinking along, Krishna Raj said,
“Obviously, the nature of intervention in such a situation has to have many
dimensions. Local
organizations with credibility should have been involved. The point I would
like to make is this: there is not a single way. There are many factors. If you
focus on just one, it is very superficial. If an industry is located in a
particular area, then are the people living in the area the only stakeholders
or, are there other stakeholders as well?”
I said, “But who are the primary stakeholders? Aren’t they the people of the
area who are going to be evicted by such development projects? The tragedy with
all development projects in India is that there has been very little dialogue
with the people whose homes, land, lives and cultures have been devastated.
Even after ten years of struggle in Kashipur, people have not been given
reliable information about the mining projects, let alone being included in a
dialogue. A decade ago, people in neighboring Indravati dam area were evicted
and many of them are still on the streets. In this context, a friend of mine
had suggested to the state government that those whose lands are submerged
because of the dam should be given some land in the newly irrigated area. He
told me that the then Chief Minister of Orissa had even agreed to implement
this proposal, but a few IAS officers buried it to safeguard the interest of
the power people in the command area.”
Continuing to listen sympathetically but still trying to probe further,
Krishna Raj said, “But where do you get this land? Would not you take it from
somebody?” Tattwamasi too, added, “Landholdings are small and fragmented.” I
said, “Take the case of the upper Kolab project in Indravati. Because of the
dam, many villages, mostly tribal, have been submerged. The water from this dam
is going to benefit landowners of a different kind downstream. In the Indravati
case, some of the beneficiaries are large landowners. Doesn’t the State, which
has evicted people for the sake of the dam, have a moral duty to make it a
policy that the beneficiaries of such sacrifice should share some of their land
and prosperity with those because of whose blood and tears water flows on their
land and fields?”
Krishna Raj was listening but he wanted us to think further. In fact he had
begun our conversation by drawing our attention to the problem of speaking only
to the converted. Krishna Raj had said, “I am mobile. I am not dependent upon
industry in my region, but I know of people whose employment prospects are
dependent upon industry coming up in their region. If industrial development is
stopped, the losers are not people who are better-off..”
It was after ten years that I had this opportunity to be part of a conversation
with Krishna Raj. The last one had been in November 1993 and I was visiting
Mumbai for the first time to take part in the Congress on Traditional Science
and Technology held at IIT, Mumbai. During our meeting, Krishna Raj was very
eager to listen to me and hear about my work. We had then talked about the
collapse of State socialism in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But while
during our first meeting Krishna Raj was primarily a listener, during our
second meeting he was a participant; he wanted to work with some of the
thoughts we brought to our conversation with kindness and care and, most of
all, with a probing concern. I was eagerly looking forward to continuing our
dialogue when I was in Mumbai last January for the World Social Forum. I could
not believe it when I got an email from a colleague that Krishna Raj breathed
his last the night before, “last night asleep in
bed.” When I shared this with Tattwamasi, she cried inconsolably as if her own
father has passed away. Tears flowed from my eyes, too.
Krishna Raj has not left us. He is with us, still. He lived a life which
posterity will remember. His life was an art and his inspiring and endearing
manners emerged from the very core of his heart. His manners brought his
ontology and ethics together and he fashioned and refashioned not only
thoughts, but also relationships, like a jeweler. As we remember his exemplary
life, let us not forget that Krishna Raj is always with us and let us not fail
in our striving for a different world that Krishna Raj silently dreamt of and
strove for.
TOP
Ananta Kumar Giri is currently on the faculty of the Madras Institute of
Development Studies, Chennai, India, and has worked and taught in many
universities in India and abroad including Free University, Amsterdam,
University of Kentucky and Aalborg University, Denmark, and Albert Ludwig
Universitats where he was a Humboldt Fellow (2006-7). He studied sociology at
the Delhi School of Economics, India and anthropology at the Johns Hokpins
University, USA. He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural
change, criticism, creativity and the contemporary dialectics of
transformation, theories of self, culture and society, and ethics in management
and development. Dr. Giri has written numerous books in Oriya and English.
Among his recent books are: Rethinking Social Transformation: Criticism and
Creativity at the Turn of the Millennium (editor, 2001); A Moral Critique of
Development: In Search of Global Responsibilities (co-editor, 2003);
Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods (editor, 2004);
Religion of Development, Development of Religion (co-editor, 2004).
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