Saturday, July 19. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ll call the different activist styles modeled by our last two speakers. It’s easy for me to find Chisti’s style more appealing, but easy too to see why I might want to think critically about that choice. Sharma tends to see the world quite starkly in terms of good and evil. For him the world is a little too neatly defined in terms of industrialism (evil) and agriculture (good), between states and multinational corporations who work in close collusion to manage the flow of cash and commodities and regularly turn to violence to ensure their hegemony, and people who are inherently peaceful, beyond corruption, and are overtly oppressed by the operations of state and corporate colonialism. There are some fundamental truths here, but I find his vision much too simplistic and conspiratorial. I’m attracted more to Chisti’s sense that the world we live in is a mix of the designed and the chaotic, that there is a level of idiosyncrasy to the social, political, and economic structures we inhabit, and that good and evil are spread around in fairly complicated and contradictory ways. It seems to me that in some key ways this vision is closer to Gandhi’s than Prof. Sharma’s, which is for me too doctrinaire and too often based on pat, overly simplified analyses. But, on the other hand, Sharma is much more serious about radical political change than Chisti, and once could argue that his historical analysis of the relationship between state colonialism and corporate colonialism, and what is required to reverse their disastrous effects, is both more comprehensive and politically hard-headed than Chisti’s. Sharma makes it much more challenging to be an activist in his insistence that we need to be “freedom fighters” in the specific mode outlined by Gandhi (including celibacy and non-possession), while Chisti makes it relatively more easy (be yourself, use your energy, be creative, accept that the world if crazy and full of contradiction). Sharma is a political worker, Chisti a cultural worker. If you’re committed to the idea that real change has to be effected politically and that cultural work is in some senses secondary to the primary work of changing political and economic structures, then Prof. Sharma is going to seem the more compelling figure. If, however, you see the political and the cultural as inextricably intertwined and view the whole history of political and economic development over the course of the late-19th and 20th-centuries as more chaotic and less managed than Prof. Sharma does, and if you buy into the idea that cultures and economies are always fluid and changing in ways that make it difficult to identify “pure” cultural forms, then Chisti’s vision of things is going to seem more comfortable.
One striking contrast between the two speakers that underscores the difference I’m trying to get at is that Prof. Sharma was insistent that multinational corporations and industrialism itself had to be eradicated altogether, whereas Chisti sees her artisanal production of khadi as a supplement to mass produced textiles. The two forms of production, in her view, ought to be able to exist side-by-side in a symbiotic fashion. What’s troubling here, of course, is our need to recognize the massive level of worker exploitation and environmental pollution produced by mass market textile production. The whole point of producing khadi is to produce textiles in a way that does not exploit workers and that does no harm to the environment. Prof. Sharma, I believe, would respond by saying right, that’s why the textile industry needs to be eradicated and be replaced by local production utilizing indigenous methods. Chisti, I expect, would respond by arguing that the mass production of textiles is simply a necessity in the contemporary world we live in and that the best approach to reversing exploitation and environmental pollution is through regulation and restructuring, not by a massive and inevitably violent overthrow of “the system.”
Monday, July 21, 2008
Backward Into the Future: Spinning Khadi for the 21st Century
Friday, July 17. Yesterday it was politics and manure, today it was spinning and textiles. Our speaker for today, Rta Kapur Chisti, is the founder of Ananda Delhi Textile, an organization devoted to the marriage of organic cotton farming and hand spinning in the production of khadi, the Indian textile championed by Gandhi. Gandhi’s vision of “swaraj” or self-rule was centered in part on the rejuvenation of the village organized around the spinning of cotton, which also had the political goal of freeing India from its artificially created dependence on British textiles produced in Manchester. Chisti is hard at work reinventing Gandhi’s kadhi revolution in the 21st century as part of her commitment to what she characterized as “alternative culture,” a movement aimed at developing a positive response to contemporary material culture fueled by globalization. I think of her work as analogous to the slow food movement. This is slow textile in the classic sense of “slow” as a response to the quick mass production of goods under globalization. Her organic cotton, grown here at Navdanya, the spinning done in villages throughout India she coordinates, and the careful vegetable based dying processes her workers use, are wonderful examples of the world-wide return to local products produced by local artisans that is the hallmark of the slow food or slow culture movement.
Chisti’s overview of the production process her organization facilitates was detailed and fascinating, but I was also quite taken with the comments she made about how she came to the work she’s doing and, especially, her attitude toward Gandhi. Like many of our speakers, Chisti grew up as an activist but became disenchanted with what she came to believe was the level of dishonesty in contemporary politics (on both the left and the right). A political science major, she also studied theater. Later, she began to write a column for the Economic Times that profiled craftsman. Through this work she was asked to do a series of profiles of spinners and weavers, turned that project into a book, and eventually became involved in the production of khadi. Her commitment to helping foster a business culture and artisanal practice that resists the practices of the dominant culture seemed rooted in her desire to spend less time writing and talking and more time taking some kind of action. Her metaphor was “getting off the bus.” If you’re dissatisfied with the status quo, how do you “get off the bus?” For her the key is to find something to do that will both make a contribution to social change and allow you to remain “true to yourself.” There are huge parts of the population of India and in countries throughout the world who have no choice. We’re privileged to have a choice about how to channel our energy and our productivity, and for her that choice was to get involved in rejuvenating a dying practice (much like Ganesh Devy has done with tribal languages at the Adivasi Academy, or Vandana Shiva is doing with her seed bank here at Navdanya). Her challenge to us as educators was to get our students to see that they’re privileged to be able to make a choice as well, to educate and energize them, and then to let them go and see what they will do.
About Gandhi she reflected an ambivalence characteristic of many of our speakers, insisting that you can’t “throw him out the window” but you can’t “live with him in the house” either. Her Gandhi was brilliant and comical, idiosyncratic and imaginative, a man who embraced contradiction and lived it. Chisti is much less interested in devotion to Gandhi as a historical figure or as someone whose principles and ideals must be applied in some kind of absolute way, than as someone whose imagination ought to be an inspiration for action in the present. This is a thread running through what for me are the most inspiring speakers we’ve heard, those like Ganesh Devi and Vandana Shiva who have found ways to construct institutions which draw on Gandhian principles to deal with contemporary problems. They have Gandhian imaginations in the sense they’re able to replace the spinning wheel with another object that has both real and symbolic value (tribal languages, indigenous seeds), or, in Chisti’s case, to re-imagine the function of the spinning wheel and the products it can produce for a new century. This is becoming, for me, the most impressive kind of Gandhism. It isn’t doctrinaire and rigid, it isn’t stuck in the past, it isn’t politically smug or self-righteous. This Gandhism emulates Gandhi by deploying his genius for invention and his ability to respond strategically and morally to contemporary problems in imaginative ways.
Chisti’s overview of the production process her organization facilitates was detailed and fascinating, but I was also quite taken with the comments she made about how she came to the work she’s doing and, especially, her attitude toward Gandhi. Like many of our speakers, Chisti grew up as an activist but became disenchanted with what she came to believe was the level of dishonesty in contemporary politics (on both the left and the right). A political science major, she also studied theater. Later, she began to write a column for the Economic Times that profiled craftsman. Through this work she was asked to do a series of profiles of spinners and weavers, turned that project into a book, and eventually became involved in the production of khadi. Her commitment to helping foster a business culture and artisanal practice that resists the practices of the dominant culture seemed rooted in her desire to spend less time writing and talking and more time taking some kind of action. Her metaphor was “getting off the bus.” If you’re dissatisfied with the status quo, how do you “get off the bus?” For her the key is to find something to do that will both make a contribution to social change and allow you to remain “true to yourself.” There are huge parts of the population of India and in countries throughout the world who have no choice. We’re privileged to have a choice about how to channel our energy and our productivity, and for her that choice was to get involved in rejuvenating a dying practice (much like Ganesh Devy has done with tribal languages at the Adivasi Academy, or Vandana Shiva is doing with her seed bank here at Navdanya). Her challenge to us as educators was to get our students to see that they’re privileged to be able to make a choice as well, to educate and energize them, and then to let them go and see what they will do.
About Gandhi she reflected an ambivalence characteristic of many of our speakers, insisting that you can’t “throw him out the window” but you can’t “live with him in the house” either. Her Gandhi was brilliant and comical, idiosyncratic and imaginative, a man who embraced contradiction and lived it. Chisti is much less interested in devotion to Gandhi as a historical figure or as someone whose principles and ideals must be applied in some kind of absolute way, than as someone whose imagination ought to be an inspiration for action in the present. This is a thread running through what for me are the most inspiring speakers we’ve heard, those like Ganesh Devi and Vandana Shiva who have found ways to construct institutions which draw on Gandhian principles to deal with contemporary problems. They have Gandhian imaginations in the sense they’re able to replace the spinning wheel with another object that has both real and symbolic value (tribal languages, indigenous seeds), or, in Chisti’s case, to re-imagine the function of the spinning wheel and the products it can produce for a new century. This is becoming, for me, the most impressive kind of Gandhism. It isn’t doctrinaire and rigid, it isn’t stuck in the past, it isn’t politically smug or self-righteous. This Gandhism emulates Gandhi by deploying his genius for invention and his ability to respond strategically and morally to contemporary problems in imaginative ways.
Politics and Manure
Thursday, July 16. We were introduced to Navdanya on our first day as both an experiment in organic farming and a political movement, and true to that introduction, our second and third days here have been organized around lectures and discussion about the politics of Gandhism and a hands-on introduction to methods of organic farming. Our speaker over the past two days has been Banwari Lal Sharma, a mathematics professor by training and a life-long political and social activist devoted to using Gandhian principles in the struggle to free India from what he sees as the grip of corporate colonialism under globalization. In his lectures Prof. Sharma distinguished between three facets of Gandhi, the rebel, the inventor, and the liberator. Together these three versions of Gandhi represent for Prof. Lal a model for social and political action in the 21st century. Like most of the contemporary Gandhians we’ve met, Prof. Sharma doesn’t see Gandhi as a static historical figure to be revered, the “father” of Indian independence, but rather, as a deeply moral and inventive thinker whose philosophical outlook and political strategies can be used today to fight against a new form of colonialism related to globalization. As he argued in his provocative final lecture today, India, like other so-called developing countries, is being run on economic polices formulated by organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and GATT, groups dominated by huge American run multinationals who have, together, developed policies designed to ensure new markets for themselves, markets that too often undermine local forms of productivity wherever they become dominant. He made a compelling (if, at least to me, not a wholly convincing) case that economic globalization is being designed and run by western multinationals in ways that flatten local economies and cultures of scale into markets for the consumption of mass produced western commodities, commodities produced in ways that pollute the environment and which are uniformly inferior to those produced locally. Prof. Sharma believes nothing short of a revolution against these multinationals and the industries they support is required, a revolution that will liberate India and other developing nations from corporate colonialism. On the one hand, his vision of social change was breathtaking in its scope and a testament to how Gandhi’s thought can help us to confront contemporary problems. On the other, it seemed to me to be unrealistically ambitious in the scope of change it envisioned, and failed to consider the massive level of economic and political upheaval, and, I believe, mass violence the changes he envisions would probably unleash. The other approach to fighting the destructive effects of corporate colonialism would of course be through regulation, sanctions, restructuring, etc., a more piece meal approach to change but one that perhaps has a more realistic prospect of success with a minimum amount of violent upheaval.
The American literary and social critic, Kenneth Burke, once told me that the cure for a few good ideas was digging in the dirt, and the cure for digging in the dirt was a few good ideas. He had a piece of property in rural New Jersey and, when he got tired of theorizing and writing, he would work in his vegetable garden. But sooner or later, while working in his garden, he’d start getting some new ideas and would rush back to his study. The rhythm here at Navdanya reminds me of Burke’s story, because for every every hour we’ve spent discussing Gandhi’s thought and its impact on political activism we’ve been getting our hands or feet dirty becoming familiar with the whole cycle of organic farming, from the production of manure to the cooking of vegetables. Over the course of the past two days I’ve shelled peanuts in the hot sun with my friends, sat outside sifting rice for stones and bugs, trudged through rice paddies and corn fields to listen to the staff discuss experiments in planting and soil preservation, and attended an on-site seminar on how cow dung and water are used, in conjunction with twigs and leaves, to produce manure. I can also explain to you how cooking gas gets produced from cow dung and fuels the stove in the kitchen. And last night I spent an hour with the cooks in the kitchen helping to prepare dinner, chopping vegetables, cooking a few pieces of chapati bread in a frying pan, and helping with the dal (I did a video clip while cooking and will try to post it at some point).
There’s a link, of course, between these two sides of our experience here, for organic farming, is, in a very real sense, a political act, especially when done within the framework of Gandhi’s wider vision of “swaraj,” or self-rule, and “ahimsa,” or avoiding doing harm. Organic farming, as it’s taught here, can be the basis for the decentralized, small-scale production of foods that are healthy, environmentally friendly, and free of pesticides, and thus in a small but important way can be integral to the resistance to what Prof. Sharma characterized as corporate colonialism. This focus on organic farming in a village setting was central to Gandhi’s vision of a liberated India, an India free not only of British colonization but of the grip of modernity itself. Gandhi’s critique of modernity and western civilization was, of course, extremely controversial (Nehru, for example, was quick to reject it), and it remains so, even within our group. What role can villages and small scale farming play in saving a country like India, which is rapidly urbanizing and whose economy is being driven increasingly by industry and technology? Can its economic problems be solved by shifting most people back to the villages where they must be content to farm and to spin their own cotton? What role does the city and urban culture play in a Gandhian vision society? If it does have a role, what kind of balance can be created between rural and urban India in the 21st century? These are questions we all look forward to exploring as we continue with our trip, but there is no doubt that as a a model for small scale, organic, sustainable agriculture Navdanya is a very impressive, even revolutionary place.
In the late afternoon we took a short walk to the nearby village of organic farmers, who are predominantly Muslim (each afternoon the prayer calls from their mosque faintly echo through Navdanaya, along with the “hut, “hut” shouts of the men employed to scare the birds out of the mango trees). There we met with two different families. The men discussed with us their experiences as organic farmers while their children scampered about and there wives stood nearby. If I am able to post pictures from this walk you’ll find them here (I’ve also included a couple of shots from the main road from which we could see the Himalayas in the distance).
The American literary and social critic, Kenneth Burke, once told me that the cure for a few good ideas was digging in the dirt, and the cure for digging in the dirt was a few good ideas. He had a piece of property in rural New Jersey and, when he got tired of theorizing and writing, he would work in his vegetable garden. But sooner or later, while working in his garden, he’d start getting some new ideas and would rush back to his study. The rhythm here at Navdanya reminds me of Burke’s story, because for every every hour we’ve spent discussing Gandhi’s thought and its impact on political activism we’ve been getting our hands or feet dirty becoming familiar with the whole cycle of organic farming, from the production of manure to the cooking of vegetables. Over the course of the past two days I’ve shelled peanuts in the hot sun with my friends, sat outside sifting rice for stones and bugs, trudged through rice paddies and corn fields to listen to the staff discuss experiments in planting and soil preservation, and attended an on-site seminar on how cow dung and water are used, in conjunction with twigs and leaves, to produce manure. I can also explain to you how cooking gas gets produced from cow dung and fuels the stove in the kitchen. And last night I spent an hour with the cooks in the kitchen helping to prepare dinner, chopping vegetables, cooking a few pieces of chapati bread in a frying pan, and helping with the dal (I did a video clip while cooking and will try to post it at some point).
There’s a link, of course, between these two sides of our experience here, for organic farming, is, in a very real sense, a political act, especially when done within the framework of Gandhi’s wider vision of “swaraj,” or self-rule, and “ahimsa,” or avoiding doing harm. Organic farming, as it’s taught here, can be the basis for the decentralized, small-scale production of foods that are healthy, environmentally friendly, and free of pesticides, and thus in a small but important way can be integral to the resistance to what Prof. Sharma characterized as corporate colonialism. This focus on organic farming in a village setting was central to Gandhi’s vision of a liberated India, an India free not only of British colonization but of the grip of modernity itself. Gandhi’s critique of modernity and western civilization was, of course, extremely controversial (Nehru, for example, was quick to reject it), and it remains so, even within our group. What role can villages and small scale farming play in saving a country like India, which is rapidly urbanizing and whose economy is being driven increasingly by industry and technology? Can its economic problems be solved by shifting most people back to the villages where they must be content to farm and to spin their own cotton? What role does the city and urban culture play in a Gandhian vision society? If it does have a role, what kind of balance can be created between rural and urban India in the 21st century? These are questions we all look forward to exploring as we continue with our trip, but there is no doubt that as a a model for small scale, organic, sustainable agriculture Navdanya is a very impressive, even revolutionary place.
In the late afternoon we took a short walk to the nearby village of organic farmers, who are predominantly Muslim (each afternoon the prayer calls from their mosque faintly echo through Navdanaya, along with the “hut, “hut” shouts of the men employed to scare the birds out of the mango trees). There we met with two different families. The men discussed with us their experiences as organic farmers while their children scampered about and there wives stood nearby. If I am able to post pictures from this walk you’ll find them here (I’ve also included a couple of shots from the main road from which we could see the Himalayas in the distance).
Navdanya I
NEW: Selection of pictures from Navdanya are here.Some of these pictures are of the grounds, a few of us shelling peanuts, and others of people who work at Navdanya, including women working in the rice fields. The interior shots with paintings are of the seed bank.
It’s early evening on Tuesday, July 14th, and I’m sitting on the stone veranda outside my modest room at Navdanya, the biodiversity farm founded by Vandana Shiva, just outside of Dera Dun, a town in the foothills of the Himalayas. From this spot I look across unmown grass, a footpath, a few rows of wide, flat tumeric plants, fruit trees further in the distance, and beyond, in the grey mist skies a faint outline of the Himalays shimmers above the trees. There is a light rain, and thunder in the distance, punctuated by the shouts and laughter of a group of Navdanya staff members sitting under a huge thatched roof meeting room playing a card game called “Uno” with Wendy Brown, a member of our group.
We arrived at Navdanya late last night after a 6 _ hour train ride from Delhi. We had gotten up at the Jambughoda Palace Resort at 4:00 a.m. and driven for an hour to the airport at Baroda, where we caught a plane to Delhi. We had another driver committed to showing off his reckless driving to the Americans. We started off behind the other two cars in our convoys but our driver passed the other two cars and sprinted into the lead as if we were in a race to the airport. Contemporary Hindi Hip Hop blared from the stereo, and we careened through the dark swerving to avoid the dim images of children, adults, cows, goats, and the occasional autorickshaw or truck. At one point I heard the back door to the jeep slam shut and turned to see the driver’s companion crawling up onto the roof. He made his way to the front of the car and swung himself around so that he could wipe the windshield clean, then crawled back over the roof and into the car again. This was all done while we were driving at a good 45 mph. I guess the windshield wipers don’t work and, like I said, these guys like to show off.
We had a nice lunch break in Delhi at a very fancy restaurant in a large hotel. We could have been in Chicago. Most of the patrons of the hotel seemed to be very well off westernized Indians or, perhaps, NRIs (non-resident Indians) visiting from somewhere else. I decided I needed a break from Indian food and had, of all things, pasta carbonara. It would have been a disappointment at home but under the circumstances I loved it. From the hotel we took our private coach to the raucous New Delhi train station, a place I’ve described before that is absolutely teeming with people from all over India, some seemingly carting their whole lives around with them (others seems to have next to nothing, or perhaps live in the station, for there are people with no possessions sleeping on the floor everywhere, and here and there you see the occasional sadu or holy man). A group of men who make their living as porters at the station contracted to carry our bags to the train and store them in the small overhead bins. More than one man carried two full suitcases on his shoulders through the crowded station in the hot, humid heat of the day, up and down stairs and across platform after platform until we got to our gate at the far end of the station. It was quite a scene. The ride itself was quite relaxing. Everyone napped or read or played card games, which attracted quite a crowd of kids. Barbara has now run out of balloons but the kids loved to watch a group play scrabble and hung around long after to chat with us.
The scene at the Dera Dun train station, much smaller than Delhi’s, was quite a contrast. The floors were clean and the place well lit, and where in other stations people were sleeping everywhere and whole families dined on blankets spread with food, pots, and utensils, here people were simply making their way out of the station or onto cars. As we drove from Dera Dun to Navdanya we could see the town was much cleaner and relatively more prosperous than anywhere we’d been before. As we left the town itself we drove through what looked like a very nice, middle class neighborhood of stucco homes with courtyards, parked cars, and verandas. Eventually the neighborhood turned predominantly Muslim and we drove by a large mosque. By the time we settled into our rooms at Navdanya it was nearly 11:30. A long, long day and I slept like a baby under my mosquito net with the fan whirring as fast as it could go. No airconditioning out here.
It wasn’t until morning that we could see what a beautiful place we’d arrived at the night before. We’re in lush foothills, with green and tropical plants everywhere and the sound of birds, many of them, singing nearby and in the distances. The low, redbrick buildings, all single story, are spread around the property so there is plenty of open space. All of the sleeping quarters are small and modest, but each has a large stone veranda that opens out to views of the countryside. We were offered elephant grass tea in the morning before breakfast. For a guy who takes two espressos every morning to wake up it was a shock, and at first I could barely taste anything, but the more a drank the more I appreciated the subtle flavors, and later we were served classic masala chai, which got my system kick started. Breakfast was a delicious mix of hot, whole grain cereals, fruit (local bananas and, of course, mangos) and a potato patty crusted with amaranth seeds. Delicious. At Navdanya everyone wipes off their plates with newspaper sheets into a bin for composting, and then washes his or her dishes.
During the morning we had an introduction to Navdanya from one of its senior staff members, who gave us an overview of the on-the-ground experiments they are doing here with organic farming. He also discussed the social and political advocacy Vandana Shiva and her program are involved in as they urge farmers and villagers around the country, and the Indian government, to modify their reliance on mass produced hybrid seeds and return to the use of indigenous seeds for the production of crops so that the diversity of crops historically grown in the country can be rejuvenated. Where Ganesh Devy is hard at work at the Adivasi Academy preserving, cataloguing, and reviving the indigenous languages of India, Dr. Shiva and her organization are working to preserve, catalog, and revive indigenous seeds in India. Both see their projects in metaphorical as well as practical terms, for in their view the reviving of languages and traditional methods of farming can form the seeds for the rejuvenation of villages and peoples all over India.
Navdanya was described to us as both a “seed college” and a movement. Dr. Shiva told us she thinks of seeds as “the spinning wheel of now,” a vehicle both practical and symbolic for rejuvenating village life and providing swaraj or self rule for Indians. Taking control of seeds away from multinationals driving the hybrid, pesticide driven business of agriculture under globalization by returning to basic organic farming methods is, for Dr. Shiva, like Gandhi’s earlier move to counter the British textile industry’s decimation of Indian cloth production by encouraging the spinning and weaving of local cotton. At Navdanya they keep a seed bank and offer the seeds free to farmers, asking only that at harvest they return a portion to replenish the bank. Most of the planting areas are devoted to various forms of experimentation with soils and planting techniques, all of which are monitored in their laboratory by the staff scientist. Navdanya encourages mixing crops on a single property, part of their commitment to diversity. The educational component of the institution is a mix of lecture and hands-on work. Dr. Shiva’s lecture today was exemplary. She provided a condensed overview of the effects of globalized farming techniques on Indian farmers (who have a high suicide rate—they drink the pesticide when smothered in debt), the positive effects of organic farming, and the success she has had both in getting Indian farmers to adopt Navdanya’s practices and in rolling back at the international level some of the more insidious practices of the multinationals, like Monsanto and Coca-Cola. Be sure to visit their website to find out more about the inspiring work she and her organization are doing.
It’s early evening on Tuesday, July 14th, and I’m sitting on the stone veranda outside my modest room at Navdanya, the biodiversity farm founded by Vandana Shiva, just outside of Dera Dun, a town in the foothills of the Himalayas. From this spot I look across unmown grass, a footpath, a few rows of wide, flat tumeric plants, fruit trees further in the distance, and beyond, in the grey mist skies a faint outline of the Himalays shimmers above the trees. There is a light rain, and thunder in the distance, punctuated by the shouts and laughter of a group of Navdanya staff members sitting under a huge thatched roof meeting room playing a card game called “Uno” with Wendy Brown, a member of our group.
We arrived at Navdanya late last night after a 6 _ hour train ride from Delhi. We had gotten up at the Jambughoda Palace Resort at 4:00 a.m. and driven for an hour to the airport at Baroda, where we caught a plane to Delhi. We had another driver committed to showing off his reckless driving to the Americans. We started off behind the other two cars in our convoys but our driver passed the other two cars and sprinted into the lead as if we were in a race to the airport. Contemporary Hindi Hip Hop blared from the stereo, and we careened through the dark swerving to avoid the dim images of children, adults, cows, goats, and the occasional autorickshaw or truck. At one point I heard the back door to the jeep slam shut and turned to see the driver’s companion crawling up onto the roof. He made his way to the front of the car and swung himself around so that he could wipe the windshield clean, then crawled back over the roof and into the car again. This was all done while we were driving at a good 45 mph. I guess the windshield wipers don’t work and, like I said, these guys like to show off.
We had a nice lunch break in Delhi at a very fancy restaurant in a large hotel. We could have been in Chicago. Most of the patrons of the hotel seemed to be very well off westernized Indians or, perhaps, NRIs (non-resident Indians) visiting from somewhere else. I decided I needed a break from Indian food and had, of all things, pasta carbonara. It would have been a disappointment at home but under the circumstances I loved it. From the hotel we took our private coach to the raucous New Delhi train station, a place I’ve described before that is absolutely teeming with people from all over India, some seemingly carting their whole lives around with them (others seems to have next to nothing, or perhaps live in the station, for there are people with no possessions sleeping on the floor everywhere, and here and there you see the occasional sadu or holy man). A group of men who make their living as porters at the station contracted to carry our bags to the train and store them in the small overhead bins. More than one man carried two full suitcases on his shoulders through the crowded station in the hot, humid heat of the day, up and down stairs and across platform after platform until we got to our gate at the far end of the station. It was quite a scene. The ride itself was quite relaxing. Everyone napped or read or played card games, which attracted quite a crowd of kids. Barbara has now run out of balloons but the kids loved to watch a group play scrabble and hung around long after to chat with us.
The scene at the Dera Dun train station, much smaller than Delhi’s, was quite a contrast. The floors were clean and the place well lit, and where in other stations people were sleeping everywhere and whole families dined on blankets spread with food, pots, and utensils, here people were simply making their way out of the station or onto cars. As we drove from Dera Dun to Navdanya we could see the town was much cleaner and relatively more prosperous than anywhere we’d been before. As we left the town itself we drove through what looked like a very nice, middle class neighborhood of stucco homes with courtyards, parked cars, and verandas. Eventually the neighborhood turned predominantly Muslim and we drove by a large mosque. By the time we settled into our rooms at Navdanya it was nearly 11:30. A long, long day and I slept like a baby under my mosquito net with the fan whirring as fast as it could go. No airconditioning out here.
It wasn’t until morning that we could see what a beautiful place we’d arrived at the night before. We’re in lush foothills, with green and tropical plants everywhere and the sound of birds, many of them, singing nearby and in the distances. The low, redbrick buildings, all single story, are spread around the property so there is plenty of open space. All of the sleeping quarters are small and modest, but each has a large stone veranda that opens out to views of the countryside. We were offered elephant grass tea in the morning before breakfast. For a guy who takes two espressos every morning to wake up it was a shock, and at first I could barely taste anything, but the more a drank the more I appreciated the subtle flavors, and later we were served classic masala chai, which got my system kick started. Breakfast was a delicious mix of hot, whole grain cereals, fruit (local bananas and, of course, mangos) and a potato patty crusted with amaranth seeds. Delicious. At Navdanya everyone wipes off their plates with newspaper sheets into a bin for composting, and then washes his or her dishes.
During the morning we had an introduction to Navdanya from one of its senior staff members, who gave us an overview of the on-the-ground experiments they are doing here with organic farming. He also discussed the social and political advocacy Vandana Shiva and her program are involved in as they urge farmers and villagers around the country, and the Indian government, to modify their reliance on mass produced hybrid seeds and return to the use of indigenous seeds for the production of crops so that the diversity of crops historically grown in the country can be rejuvenated. Where Ganesh Devy is hard at work at the Adivasi Academy preserving, cataloguing, and reviving the indigenous languages of India, Dr. Shiva and her organization are working to preserve, catalog, and revive indigenous seeds in India. Both see their projects in metaphorical as well as practical terms, for in their view the reviving of languages and traditional methods of farming can form the seeds for the rejuvenation of villages and peoples all over India.
Navdanya was described to us as both a “seed college” and a movement. Dr. Shiva told us she thinks of seeds as “the spinning wheel of now,” a vehicle both practical and symbolic for rejuvenating village life and providing swaraj or self rule for Indians. Taking control of seeds away from multinationals driving the hybrid, pesticide driven business of agriculture under globalization by returning to basic organic farming methods is, for Dr. Shiva, like Gandhi’s earlier move to counter the British textile industry’s decimation of Indian cloth production by encouraging the spinning and weaving of local cotton. At Navdanya they keep a seed bank and offer the seeds free to farmers, asking only that at harvest they return a portion to replenish the bank. Most of the planting areas are devoted to various forms of experimentation with soils and planting techniques, all of which are monitored in their laboratory by the staff scientist. Navdanya encourages mixing crops on a single property, part of their commitment to diversity. The educational component of the institution is a mix of lecture and hands-on work. Dr. Shiva’s lecture today was exemplary. She provided a condensed overview of the effects of globalized farming techniques on Indian farmers (who have a high suicide rate—they drink the pesticide when smothered in debt), the positive effects of organic farming, and the success she has had both in getting Indian farmers to adopt Navdanya’s practices and in rolling back at the international level some of the more insidious practices of the multinationals, like Monsanto and Coca-Cola. Be sure to visit their website to find out more about the inspiring work she and her organization are doing.
Art and Heritage Among the Adivasi
Friday, July 12. This morning we took an unplanned trip at the suggestion of yesterday’s speaker, Ganesh Devy, to a World Heritage Site only a _ hour from hour hotel. The site consists of the ruins (very intact, as you’ll see from the photos) of three early 16th century mosques. It was a rainy, misty morning and we were the only visitors. We explored two of the mosques. The largest, the Jama Masid, had a large enclosed courtyard and a vast pillared area designed for prayers. The layout here was very similar to the mosque we visited in Delhi. The place is inhabited by about a dozen monkeys who had the run of the place, hanging around inside and scampering about the roof and minarets. Adjacent to the mosque was an enormous, very deep well, about 50 yards across. A second, smaller mosque lay about 10 minutes beyond along a very muddy, pool-filled road. Just as we were turning to enter the gate to this mosque a man appeared in the distance carrying a baby goat in his hands. It had just been born and still had the umbilical cord attached. The mother came trotting along behind and we spent a few moments watching her clean the baby off as it tried to figure out how to begin to nurse. A number of us climbed the interior steps of the minaret in this mosque for a panoramic view of the countryside. You could see the minarets of the third mosque in the distance, towering above the forest below.
In the afternoon we set out in three jeeps for a long drive to a remote village and the home of a tribal man whose father is a well-known painter. The particular painting we saw on the wall of what is now his son’s home, is a ritual painting called “Pithora.” As it was explained to me the next day by a man who has dedicated his life to studying tribal practices, when a family has run into some form of misfortune (it might be related to farming, or to personal relations within the family) they may decide to take an oath with the village shaman to have a Pithora picture painted on the wall of their home. This involves a heavy financial commitment on the family’s part. It’s hoped that making this special commitment, which involves an elaborate feast and festival at the time the painting is done, will help the family overcome their misfortune. There are accomplished Pithora painters throughout the area, and while historically these paintings have been restricted to village homes and have a specific ritual function related to village life and thus are not “art” in the western sense, more recently they have begun to be produced on sheets of paper or canvas for sale to visitors (or reproduced as weavings). The Adivasi Academy defends this change in its museum statement about the Pithora paintings, insisting there’s a value in having the pictures, and the cultural significance they have for the adivasi, communicated to a larger audience beyond villagers and those who study them. As you’ll see from the pictures I’ve posted of the Pithora we saw, these are intricate paintings that represent animals, spirits, and other key figures in village life. Some sections seem to have a narrative element to them, as with Italian frescos, and the local villagers who took us to see the Pithora painting were able to explain the symbolic meaning of each figure in detail. It was wonderful to see the painting, meet the artist’s son, who has become a painter himself, and to spend time in his home with he and his family.
In the afternoon we set out in three jeeps for a long drive to a remote village and the home of a tribal man whose father is a well-known painter. The particular painting we saw on the wall of what is now his son’s home, is a ritual painting called “Pithora.” As it was explained to me the next day by a man who has dedicated his life to studying tribal practices, when a family has run into some form of misfortune (it might be related to farming, or to personal relations within the family) they may decide to take an oath with the village shaman to have a Pithora picture painted on the wall of their home. This involves a heavy financial commitment on the family’s part. It’s hoped that making this special commitment, which involves an elaborate feast and festival at the time the painting is done, will help the family overcome their misfortune. There are accomplished Pithora painters throughout the area, and while historically these paintings have been restricted to village homes and have a specific ritual function related to village life and thus are not “art” in the western sense, more recently they have begun to be produced on sheets of paper or canvas for sale to visitors (or reproduced as weavings). The Adivasi Academy defends this change in its museum statement about the Pithora paintings, insisting there’s a value in having the pictures, and the cultural significance they have for the adivasi, communicated to a larger audience beyond villagers and those who study them. As you’ll see from the pictures I’ve posted of the Pithora we saw, these are intricate paintings that represent animals, spirits, and other key figures in village life. Some sections seem to have a narrative element to them, as with Italian frescos, and the local villagers who took us to see the Pithora painting were able to explain the symbolic meaning of each figure in detail. It was wonderful to see the painting, meet the artist’s son, who has become a painter himself, and to spend time in his home with he and his family.
Dinner at the Jambughoda Palace
Dinner with Royalty at the Jambughoda Palace
Saturday, July 13. On our last night at the Jambughoda Palace resort we had dinner in the home of the resort’s owner, who on his elegant business card, complete with family crest, calls himself Maharana Vikrimsinh. Vikram is a descendent of royalty, one of hundreds of princely families throughout India who were given authority by the British colonialists to help administer their affairs. The Raj couldn’t have survived without them. These royal families had a pretty good deal under British rule. They lived a rich life, were cultivated and indulged by the curious British, and were able to exercise power in the areas over which they had authority. At independence these royal houses were disbanded in order to make way for democracy, and the families, while able to keep their estate properties, lost specific political power over their villages and, of course, the more general power they derived through being in the good graces of the British. Later, under Indira Gandhi, the financial stipends they had been receiving from the Indian government were revoked altogether. This meant they were left with huge estates but had little money to keep them up. These royals, who must be seen as complicit with Britain’s colonization of India, seemed bathed in a kind of dilapidated nostalgia for the days when they had stature and socialized with British officials. These days are documented in the array of old photographs and prints that cover the walls of Vikram’s large living room. There are regal family portraits and scenes from tiger hunts interspersed with huge, elaborately staged dinners in which the royal family entertained visiting British officials. It look like a pretty even trade-off. The Indian royals get to rub shoulders with the powerful western colonialists while the British get a close up view of exotic Indians. The more I looked at the pictures of these dinners the more connected our own dinner with Vikram and his family seemed to be to the earlier ones documented in the pictures. History was repeating itself as farce. Our little band of American educators in search of Gandhi’s legacy in India had quite improbably taken the place in the minds of our hosts of the British official of long ago. We came baring the imprimatur of the west and all of the trappings of “civilization” it had represented to Vikram, his father, his grandfather, and great-grandfather. To have us in their homes (bewildered guests though we were) somehow replayed those earlier times when their families consorted with western power and bathed in the illusion that real civilization somehow resided with these westerners and would rub off on them.
All of this called attention to the ruined state of the institution to which Vikram and his family once belonged, and the slow but steady decay of the house is a material embodiment of the loss of their stature and their power. Yet you couldn’t help appreciating their graciousness and hospitality (although we were presented with quite a large bill for food and drink at the end of the night, something I doubt happened to the Brits who dined there), and even having some measure of sympathy for their plight. They’re marginal victims of the very colonial system they helped support, attached to their estate and the illusion of their royal status, insistent that the country somehow owes them a living, or at least, ought to declare their estates “heritage” sites important to documenting the history of India and plow some money into their upkeep. I asked Vikram, politely, if he had a job (which I thought might help his family out), but he said no, struggling to keep the palace above ground was a full time job. And his children won’t be off to school in the U.S. or entering the IT sector in Bangalore very soon, for they’ve been called back by their father to help save the estate.
We were able to meet Vikram’s wife and some of his extended family, the most colorful of whom was his uncle, Rana Harishchandrasinji, who in his 79 years seemed to have failed successively at selling petrol at wholesale, running a painting contracting business, raising chickens, and running his own organic farm. He was an elegantly dressed man with huge muttonchops who spoke impeccable British English and spoke as fondly of his days at Cambridge as he did of his attempts to make a living at organic farming, a next to impossible enterprise, he claimed, since all of the surrounding tribal families now had their own land to work. This of course brought me back full-circle to thinking about Ganesh Devy and his work with the adivasi. What an irony that our group spent time being hosted by these two men, the one on the cutting edge of reviving historically oppressed indigenous peoples and trying to help them gain a real economic foothold in a new India, the other consumed in resentment and a decaying nostalgia for the very system that oppressed both the adivasi and himself.
Saturday, July 13. On our last night at the Jambughoda Palace resort we had dinner in the home of the resort’s owner, who on his elegant business card, complete with family crest, calls himself Maharana Vikrimsinh. Vikram is a descendent of royalty, one of hundreds of princely families throughout India who were given authority by the British colonialists to help administer their affairs. The Raj couldn’t have survived without them. These royal families had a pretty good deal under British rule. They lived a rich life, were cultivated and indulged by the curious British, and were able to exercise power in the areas over which they had authority. At independence these royal houses were disbanded in order to make way for democracy, and the families, while able to keep their estate properties, lost specific political power over their villages and, of course, the more general power they derived through being in the good graces of the British. Later, under Indira Gandhi, the financial stipends they had been receiving from the Indian government were revoked altogether. This meant they were left with huge estates but had little money to keep them up. These royals, who must be seen as complicit with Britain’s colonization of India, seemed bathed in a kind of dilapidated nostalgia for the days when they had stature and socialized with British officials. These days are documented in the array of old photographs and prints that cover the walls of Vikram’s large living room. There are regal family portraits and scenes from tiger hunts interspersed with huge, elaborately staged dinners in which the royal family entertained visiting British officials. It look like a pretty even trade-off. The Indian royals get to rub shoulders with the powerful western colonialists while the British get a close up view of exotic Indians. The more I looked at the pictures of these dinners the more connected our own dinner with Vikram and his family seemed to be to the earlier ones documented in the pictures. History was repeating itself as farce. Our little band of American educators in search of Gandhi’s legacy in India had quite improbably taken the place in the minds of our hosts of the British official of long ago. We came baring the imprimatur of the west and all of the trappings of “civilization” it had represented to Vikram, his father, his grandfather, and great-grandfather. To have us in their homes (bewildered guests though we were) somehow replayed those earlier times when their families consorted with western power and bathed in the illusion that real civilization somehow resided with these westerners and would rub off on them.
All of this called attention to the ruined state of the institution to which Vikram and his family once belonged, and the slow but steady decay of the house is a material embodiment of the loss of their stature and their power. Yet you couldn’t help appreciating their graciousness and hospitality (although we were presented with quite a large bill for food and drink at the end of the night, something I doubt happened to the Brits who dined there), and even having some measure of sympathy for their plight. They’re marginal victims of the very colonial system they helped support, attached to their estate and the illusion of their royal status, insistent that the country somehow owes them a living, or at least, ought to declare their estates “heritage” sites important to documenting the history of India and plow some money into their upkeep. I asked Vikram, politely, if he had a job (which I thought might help his family out), but he said no, struggling to keep the palace above ground was a full time job. And his children won’t be off to school in the U.S. or entering the IT sector in Bangalore very soon, for they’ve been called back by their father to help save the estate.
We were able to meet Vikram’s wife and some of his extended family, the most colorful of whom was his uncle, Rana Harishchandrasinji, who in his 79 years seemed to have failed successively at selling petrol at wholesale, running a painting contracting business, raising chickens, and running his own organic farm. He was an elegantly dressed man with huge muttonchops who spoke impeccable British English and spoke as fondly of his days at Cambridge as he did of his attempts to make a living at organic farming, a next to impossible enterprise, he claimed, since all of the surrounding tribal families now had their own land to work. This of course brought me back full-circle to thinking about Ganesh Devy and his work with the adivasi. What an irony that our group spent time being hosted by these two men, the one on the cutting edge of reviving historically oppressed indigenous peoples and trying to help them gain a real economic foothold in a new India, the other consumed in resentment and a decaying nostalgia for the very system that oppressed both the adivasi and himself.
Jambughoda Palace
(For pictures please click here)
Thursday, July 10. We’re now at the Jambughoda Palace hotel near Tejgadh, far from Delhi and Ahmedabad and deep in the tribal forests of Gujarat. We’ve left the city with its hectic traffic and pollution for clear air and the sound of birds singing in palm trees. Jambughoda Palace is an old estate that has been turned into a kind of nature retreat resort. We drove four hours from Ahmedabad to get here, the last hour of which took us up into foothills and into the forest where people officially categorized by the government as “tribals” are working small farms off the main road. While we passed some of the same kinds of shanty towns here we saw in Ahmedabad the people seem marginally more well off than the urban poor. Some of the homes are stucco with tile roofs, and there are farmhouses dotting the landscape. People were at work in the fields sowing seeds behind cows pulling plows, and others were busy fetching water, keeping house, or selling things by the side of the road (there is a dizzyingly complex network of impromptu roadside commerce everywhere we go) and kids in uniforms were getting off school buses and heading home. These people are working hard to scratch out a very basic living, but the conditions here strike me as better than in the city, for the landscape is beautiful, the flora and fauna are dense and green, and the whole rhythm of life is much more relaxing than anything we’ve experienced before. But the poverty remains stark, the living conditions often bleak and unsanitary.
The somewhat pompously named Jambughoda Palace Resort is beautiful, but pretty funky. The building is stately and has a lot of character, but it’s quite run down, even dilapidated, and the rooms are very basic (no AC, but we’ve got ceiling fans, and the bathrooms are in a tile room out in back of our rooms—you can have a cold shower or fill up a bucket of warm water and dump it over yourself). No one is complaining too much, however. We’re pretty glad to trade AC and hotel rooms for the sound of birds and the absence of traffic noise, the constant din of honking that dogged us in Delhi and Ahmedabad. The grounds are beautiful, as you’ll see from the pictures, lush and colorful, with a large outdoor veranda adjacent to the main house for dining (we just finished a wonderful dinner out there). The Jambughoda is adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary featuring panthers, hyenas, and antelopes. We’re told panthers occasionally roam on the property. I’ll let you know if they do. Tomorrow we head to the Tribal Arts Academy for a full day. See the link on this site for details about the academy, which works to preserve and enhance the culture of the tribal peoples of the area.
This morning before leaving Ahmedabad we stopped for a tour of the Calico museum, one of the jewels of the city. The building and grounds of the museum are beautiful, and the collection of weavings, carved statuary, and bronze work is amazing. The collection is housed in a palace with beautiful marble floors, intricately carved wood inside and out, and a maze of rooms, stairways and terraces, all of which are covered with displays of quite stunning woven work of all kinds, carved statutes and carts, replicas of the interior of royal tents, and bronze works. It’s much too vast to see properly in less than a full day, and we only had a couple of hours with a guide. More an introduction than anything else, but quite marvelous. Take a look at the website if you want to see more since, as I said, photos were not allowed.
Thursday, July 10. We’re now at the Jambughoda Palace hotel near Tejgadh, far from Delhi and Ahmedabad and deep in the tribal forests of Gujarat. We’ve left the city with its hectic traffic and pollution for clear air and the sound of birds singing in palm trees. Jambughoda Palace is an old estate that has been turned into a kind of nature retreat resort. We drove four hours from Ahmedabad to get here, the last hour of which took us up into foothills and into the forest where people officially categorized by the government as “tribals” are working small farms off the main road. While we passed some of the same kinds of shanty towns here we saw in Ahmedabad the people seem marginally more well off than the urban poor. Some of the homes are stucco with tile roofs, and there are farmhouses dotting the landscape. People were at work in the fields sowing seeds behind cows pulling plows, and others were busy fetching water, keeping house, or selling things by the side of the road (there is a dizzyingly complex network of impromptu roadside commerce everywhere we go) and kids in uniforms were getting off school buses and heading home. These people are working hard to scratch out a very basic living, but the conditions here strike me as better than in the city, for the landscape is beautiful, the flora and fauna are dense and green, and the whole rhythm of life is much more relaxing than anything we’ve experienced before. But the poverty remains stark, the living conditions often bleak and unsanitary.
The somewhat pompously named Jambughoda Palace Resort is beautiful, but pretty funky. The building is stately and has a lot of character, but it’s quite run down, even dilapidated, and the rooms are very basic (no AC, but we’ve got ceiling fans, and the bathrooms are in a tile room out in back of our rooms—you can have a cold shower or fill up a bucket of warm water and dump it over yourself). No one is complaining too much, however. We’re pretty glad to trade AC and hotel rooms for the sound of birds and the absence of traffic noise, the constant din of honking that dogged us in Delhi and Ahmedabad. The grounds are beautiful, as you’ll see from the pictures, lush and colorful, with a large outdoor veranda adjacent to the main house for dining (we just finished a wonderful dinner out there). The Jambughoda is adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary featuring panthers, hyenas, and antelopes. We’re told panthers occasionally roam on the property. I’ll let you know if they do. Tomorrow we head to the Tribal Arts Academy for a full day. See the link on this site for details about the academy, which works to preserve and enhance the culture of the tribal peoples of the area.
This morning before leaving Ahmedabad we stopped for a tour of the Calico museum, one of the jewels of the city. The building and grounds of the museum are beautiful, and the collection of weavings, carved statuary, and bronze work is amazing. The collection is housed in a palace with beautiful marble floors, intricately carved wood inside and out, and a maze of rooms, stairways and terraces, all of which are covered with displays of quite stunning woven work of all kinds, carved statutes and carts, replicas of the interior of royal tents, and bronze works. It’s much too vast to see properly in less than a full day, and we only had a couple of hours with a guide. More an introduction than anything else, but quite marvelous. Take a look at the website if you want to see more since, as I said, photos were not allowed.
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