Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: From Democracy to Sampoorn Swaraj

Till date Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam has been more a framework for connecting various levels and dimensions of political work in the manner that new forms of North-South solidarity and partnership could be worked out. It is not an organisation competing with other organisations in terms of visibility and constituency. It owns and considers itself part of the radical democratic movement. The more we dialogue and rub shoulders with each other, the nearer we arrive at a more comprehensive and shared understanding of our times and the possible modes of intervention. The organisational form that Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam takes depends upon the local context in which people come together. Several organisations in India have adopted a programme on dialogues for comprehensive democracy, calling it ‘the Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam programme’. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in India is not a registered organisation but a forum to develop the international dimension of radical democratic politics of the country to become part of the world-wide movement for deepening democracy.

Keeping our basic premises, the challenges covered in the foregoing discussion and the limitations in mind, the following are some suggestions for concrete action:

• Opening up spaces for multiple visions to evolve, flower and express themselves. Dialogue, or in fact multi-logue across the diverse visions and between diverse strands within them, will enrich all human striving. This can occur democratically only when each vision feels secure and empowered.

• Institutionalising quasi-permanent structures/networks for enduring ‘Dialogues on democracy and globalisation’. This can be the most strategic tool for global democratisation. We need to consciously and urgently cultivate peer groups, clubs, institutions, networks, movement groups and political parties to discuss the positive forms of intervention to deepen democracy.

• We urgently need to undertake some defensive actions as well. We need to evolve a defence strategy in preserving what the hegemonic forces have not so far destroyed. Southern civilisations have been practising for thousands of years a way of life that we now describe as ‘green principles’. A careful look at their livelihood support systems will show that limiting the wants was a conscious choice for conservation and regeneration of nature and not due to sheer technological backwardness. But now, the present form of globalisation is destroying these communities at a very rapid rate. Global democratic forums need to set up a ‘defence committee’ to defend ‘green communities’ in the South. Otherwise, what has been preserved through thousands of years will be completely destroyed in the next couple of decades.

• We need an independent information, research and media network to identify the democratic practices, struggles, dreams and dramas being unfolded and enacted in the family called Earth. We need to collect, collate and then share this information, especially for those who are still prisoners of the mirage of the American consumer paradise. We should resolve to set up such media centres all over the world and to disseminate this information in the people’s languages as widely as possible, besides doing so in English.

• All these dialogues and building up of institutions and networks should culminate into building a global front for defending, deepening and expanding democracy. This front can be built through a combination of intellectual activism and organisation building. The organisation building cannot happen through intellectual activism alone. The evolution of ideological frameworks and building up of networks can happen effectively if we use the tool of civil disobedient and constructive action, as evolved by Gandhiji.

• Those who believe in democracy have not only to shun violence themselves but also have to delegitimise violence as a method for social change. They have to sharpen the tools of non-violent civil disobedience. Gandhiji believed that only those who are civil and obey the laws of the land have the right to fight the unjust laws.

• The agenda of boycotting genetically modified food-grains and biotechnology produced edible materials should be adopted and, if necessary, non-violent civil disobedience should be resorted to. This should be done after adequate political and technical preparation, including sustainable land use planning

• A campaign should be launched against all diversionary moves which, in the name of cultural nationalism and ‘national sentiments’, put issues such as the right to work and right to sustainable livelihood at the backburner.

• Democratising existing global institutions by sensitising them to the above processes and making them supportive. Building such pressure on existing institutions and devising new institutions more in consonance with the calling of the present times would then be part of bottom-up movements. The institutions must be constantly renewed by an interactive process and mechanisms for this must be structurally incorporated.

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