Social Healing [First Edition] 1032017856, 9781032017853

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Social Healing

Social Healing draws on a transdisciplinary approach—bringing sociology, philosophy, psychology, and spirituality together—to understand health, social suffering and healing in our contemporary world. It shows how we can transform the present discourse and reality of social suffering by multi-dimensional movements of social healing. The author argues for the need for a new art of healing in place of the dominant and pervasive technology and politics of killing. It discusses manifold creative theories and practices of healing in self, society, and the world as well as new movements in social theory, philosophy, and social sciences which deploy creative methods of art and performance in healing our psychic and social wounds. It explores the spiritual, social, ethical, and political dimensions of health and healing. This pioneering work will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social theory, sociology, politics, philosophy, and psychology. Ananta Kumar Giri is a Professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India.

Social Healing Ananta Kumar Giri

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Ananta Kumar Giri The right of Ananta Kumar Giri to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-01785-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-49746-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-39540-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

For Bhaijee (Dr. S.N. Subba Rao), Elaben (Ela Bhatt), Lula (President Luiz Inacio Lula da Salva of Brazil) and Fr. Scaria Kaloor

Contents

Foreword Mamphela Ramphele Preface Acknowledgment and Gratitude Social Healing: An Introduction and an Invitation

x xiv xvi xviii

PART I

The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing

1

1 Social Healing: Society as a Patient, Metapathology, and the Challenges of Self and Social Transformations

3

2 Social Healing: The Calling of Transformative Harmony

16

3 Life World and Living Words

29

4 Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Social Healing, Posthumanism and New Horizons of Theory and Practice and the Calling of Planetary Conversations

42

5 Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity: Transforming the Subjective and the Objective and the Calling of Transpositional Subjectobjectivity

61

6 Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies: With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South, Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Contemporary Challenges of Planetary Realizations 74 7 Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism: Social Theories, Asian Dialogues and Planetary Conversations

105

viii Contents PART II

Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha

121

8 Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement and a New Politics, Poetics and Spirituality of Dwelling: The Ethics, Aesthetics and Responsibility of Home and the World 123 9 Healing Identities: Identity and Ahimsa 145 10 Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation

153

11 Social Healing and the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination and the Challenges of Structural Transformations and Transformation of Consciousness: Ambedkar, Shankara and Beyond

166

12 Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity: Learning Across Borders and the Calling of Planetary Realizations 198 13 Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning: Universities at the Cross-Roads and the Challenges of Experimental Creativity and the Challenges of Alternative Planetary Futures 207 14 Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing

221

15 Healing the Wounds of Roots and Routes: Cross-Fertilizing Roots and Routes, Ethnicity and the Calling of Socio-Cultural Regeneration and Planetary Realizations 234 16 Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance: The Multiverse of Hindu Engagement with Christianity and Plural Streams of Creative Co-Walking, Contradictions, Confrontations and Reconciliations 248 17 Social Healing and the Challenges of Transforming Suffering and Striving for Reconciliation and Peace

279

18 COVID-19 and the Challenges of Trauma, Healing and Transformations: Ethics, Politics and Spirituality, and Alternative Planetary Futures

292

Contents  ix

19 Global Social Healing: Upholding our World, Regenerating Our Earth and the Calling of a Planetary Lokasamgraha 311 Afterword 327 FRED DALLMARY

Index

328

Foreword

Engagement with the critically important and rich themes covered in this ground-breaking book raises deeper questions. Who we are as human beings? What do we understand by society? What would social healing look like at the personal, family, community, national and global levels? The COVID-19 pandemic has brutally reminded us about the core of our beings as a relational species. Relationships are what make us human. Africa as the cradle of humanity and of the first human civilization, understood this truism at a very deep level. Ubuntu/Bumuntu (Bantu languages), Omenala (Igbo), Ukama (Shona), Suban (Ikan), Iwa (Yoruba) are all African expressions of the philosophical orientation anchored on the interconnectedness and interdependence of human beings within the wider web of life of all beings.1 The disruption of social connections as part of our inadequate response to the pandemic that demands social distancing, has exacerbated the ill-being of many at the personal, family, community, national levels across the globe. Social healing, like all other healing processes, calls for acknowledgment that the web of life of which we are a part is broken. Like a spiderweb, disrupting one thread on the web undermines the entire web. Each thread in a web of life is important for the integrity of the entire web. Here again we have been rudely awakened to the reality that wellbeing is a comprehensive state of being within the web of life. Wellbeing for only a part of the web is wellbeing for none. For social healing to be a sustainable process humanity has to accept this truism and work tirelessly to promote and sustain wellbeing for all as the only guarantor of social wellbeing. This book is a rich exploratory journey in its 19 chapters from which I identify ten key themes to anchor my own comments. The first theme is one of vision. What is our vision of a healed society from the individual, family, community, nation and global levels? An expansive vision of a healed society demands a willingness to see with fresh eyes, and to be willing to acknowledge and deal with our blind spots. The second key theme is acknowledgment. No healing is possible if there is no recognition of the extent of the disharmony that permeates every aspect of our way of being in the world disconnecting us from what really matters in life, namely, the web of life itself. Acknowledgment of the crises

Foreword  xi of life at the personal, family, community, national and global levels is only now becoming part of our conversations in the context of planetary emergencies. Without acknowledgement of the pervasiveness and depth of these crises, no effective sustainable action is possible to regenerate the web of life to sustain humanity and ecosystems on which we depend. Third, acknowledgement must lead to transformative action to make good what has been destroyed by colonial conquest, undermining cultural and spiritual heritages of those conquered. Social healing requires the restoration of stolen legacies.2 George James’s study Stolen Legacy, first published in 1954, was motivated by the need to reclaim what continues to be regarded as Greek philosophy for which Socrates, Aristotle and Plato are idolized. We need to acknowledge the true originators of that wisdom appropriated by Greeks as ancient Egyptian priests. Acknowledgement of this stolen legacy in George’s view would: free the world from those prejudices which corrupted human relations; and on the other hand, that the people of African origin might be emancipated from their serfdom and inferiority complex, and enter upon a new era of freedom, in which they would feel like free men, with full human rights and privileges. The notion of Africa the Dark Continent needs to be buried as part of deep social healing of our world. The fourth, fifth and sixth themes focus on the theory and practice of planetary conversations and the epistemological questions of objectivity/ subjectivity and the vexed matter of universality. What has come to be regarded as universal is the culmination of cumulative blind spots. Universality is denial of what quantum science teaches us that the very process of observation of a subject brings the impact of the observer to bear on what is being observed. This calls for pluriversality to be the point of departure in our planetary conversations and giving voice to all participants to ensure richer comprehension of the complexities of our ecosystems within the web of life. What the authors propose is to “nurture healing epistemologies with and beyond the dominant epistemologies of violence coming from the Euro-American world.” The seventh theme I would like to reflect on with the author is the emotive issue of home and the world. Displacement of people from what they regard as home is the equivalent of smashing a spider’s web, as Don Pinnock wrote poignantly about the impact of the displacement of poor black people from District Six in Cape Town to the sandy Cape Flats where nothing holds together.3 Displacement sadly continues beyond the colonial/apartheid social engineering destruction in most countries where poor people as seen as surplus to be exchanged for “investments into more productive use of spaces.” The value the “spiders” inhabiting the “webs of meaning” they call home, counts for nothing in our world where material goods are valued above relatedness and wholeness. Social healing is not possible without

xii Foreword humanity learning to value relatedness and the meaning of home using a pluriversal frame of reference. The eighth theme is gender equality and equity. Gender relationships continue to pose challenges to humanity. The feminine in humanity that is expressed in all the things that really matter—life, reciprocity, compassion, empathy, and inclusivity—remains associated with weakness. Men who acknowledge their own femininity tend to be regarded as weak, whereas their apparent weakness is the very strength needed to resist and uproot toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is the source of much violence and destruction of the web of life. Healing gender relationships calls for a fundamental redefinition of power. Transformative power as Hannah Arendt suggests, is to have the ability to work in concert with others. I would suggest that we go beyond Arendt’s suggestion and embrace transformative power as the capacity to enable others to reclaim and enhance their capabilities. The ninth and tenth themes of learning and epistemology that conclude this book, are critical to the radical transformation of learning new ways of being human in the twenty-first century. Our education and training institutions from K-12 to tertiary levels, are largely creatures of the nineteenth century. We need to learn how to learn anew and understand that knowledge is also a web that cannot be fragmented into discreet disciplines and be taught in a linear way. Twenty-first century learning needs to be a collaborative process in which learners and “teachers” are mutually engaged in challenging themselves to shift mindsets towards the complexity that is demanded by the intricate web of life we are part of. I am encouraged by an exciting process of social healing that is finding expression in transformative approaches to museums as places of healing, learning and inspiration. Dr Kojo Yankah, an accomplished entrepreneur, is establishing The Pan African Heritage World Museum at Pomadze in the Central Region of Ghana, to be just such a place. Ghana is symbolically the most appropriate home of a continental healing space. It is not only the first African country to attain its freedom from colonial conquest in 1957, but Ghana embodies Pan Africanism popularized by its first President, Kwame Nkurumah. Africa as the cradle of humanity and the first human civilization, is perhaps the most appropriate space to be a catalyst of the birth a new human civilization that honors our interconnectedness and interdependence as a human race. This book is a must read for all those committed to promoting the emergence of humanity and our ecosystems from the multiple planetary emergencies upon us. Social healing is possible if we all work together to restore wellbeing for all within a healthy biosphere. Mamphela Ramphele Co-President of the Club of Rome/Co-Founder of ReimagineSA

Foreword  xiii

Notes 1 Club of Rome/Africa, New Narratives of Hope, published on the Club of Rome’s www.clubofrome.org, 2020. 2 James, G.M., Stolen Legacy, Digireads 2021. 3 Don Pinnock, District Six Forced Removals, Second Carnegie Enquiry into Poverty in South Africa, 1984.

Preface

The essential reasoning is simple. Between the modern master and non-modern slave, one must choose the slave not because one should choose voluntary poverty or admit the superiority of suffering, not only because the slave is oppressed, not even because he works (which, Marx said, made him less alienated than the master). One must choose the slave also because he represents a higher-order cognition which perforce includes the master as a human, whereas the master’s cognition has to exclude the slave as a “thing.” Ultimately, modern oppression, as opposed to the traditional oppression, is not an encounter between the self and the enemy, the rulers and the ruled, or the gods and the demons. It is a battle between dehumanized self and the objectified enemy, the technologized bureaucrat and his reified victim, pseudo-rulers and their fear-some other selves projected on to their “subjects.” Ashish Nandy (1983), The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, p. xv–xvi. A whisper lures to evil the human heart, It seals up wisdom’s eyes, the soul’s regard, It is the origin of our suffering here, It binds earth to calamity and pain. This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace. This hidden foe lodged in the human breast Man must overcome or miss his higher fate. This is the inner war without escape. […] But few are they who tread the sunlit path […] His eyes are fixed on his immutable aim. Man turns aside or chooses easier paths; He keeps to the one and high difficult road That sole can climb to the Eternal’s peaks […] Sri Aurobindo (1950), Savitri, pp. 448–449 Social healing is an epochal calling of our times. It touches many aspects of our lives, self, culture, society the world. While in philosophy and social sciences, we have the discussion of social suffering in the works of Pierre Bourdieu and his colleagues and Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das and their

Preface  xv colleagues, there is not enough discussion about social healing. Along with social suffering, we also need discourses and initiatives in social healing. This book is a modest effort in this regard. The book brings together my writings on these issues spread in the last ten years. I am grateful to institutions and journals where some of these essays were first presented. I am grateful to Dr. Mamphela Rampele for her Foreword to the book and to Professor Fred Dallmayr for his Afterword. I am grateful to Aakash Chakraborty, Anvitaa Bajaj, Shreya Bajpai and friends in Routledge for their support of this project. I am grateful to my friend and collaborator Vishnu Varatharajan who is now studying at Graduate Institute, Geneva for his help with this work. I am grateful to Madras Institute of Development Studies—the place of my sadhana—for nourishing this work. I dedicate this book to Bhaijee (Dr. S.N. Subba Rao), Ela Behen (Ela Bhatt), President Lula and Fr. Scaria Caloor. Bhaijee is a creative seeker and transformer of our times who bridged many divides and helped us to heal many wounds in self and society. He played a crucial role in the surrender of Bagis in the Chambal valley which contributed to peace and harmony in the region. Ela Behen had founded SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association of India) and contributed to liberation of women and others from economic misery as well as fears. President Lula (President Luiz Inacio Lula da Salva of Brazil) is an inspiring leader from Brazil who has striven to heal wounds of racism and poverty in Brazil which has a global relevance. After concerted efforts to block him including imprisoning him on unproved charges, President Lula has been elected as the President of Brazil. In an atmosphere of hatred and violence, President Lula talks about and practices paths of love, care and inclusion which contributes to healing Brazil and the world. Fr. Scaria Caloor is a philosopher, theologian and activist for peace and reconciliation. He has striven for peace and reconciliation in the context of brutal political killing in his Kanoor district as well as in other parts of Kerala. Their lives and visions can inspire us to envision and practice social healing in our present-day troubled world in creative and transformative ways. Finally, I hope this book helps us in contributing to vision and practice of social healing in our contemporary world. Kartik Purnima and Gurun Nanak Jayanti November 8, 2022 Ananta Kumar Giri Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai

Acknowledgment and Gratitude

I am grateful to the following journals and books on which the following chapters are based and updated: Chapter 1, “Social Healing: Society as a Patient, Metapathology, and the Challenges of Self and Social Transformations, “ Social Alternatives Chapter 2, “Social Healing: The Calling of Transformative Harmony,” Gandhi Marg. Chapter 3, “Life World and Living Words: Healing Works and Meditations and the Calling of Meditative Verbs of Co-Realizations,” Social Change 49 (2): 241–256. Chapter 4, “Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Social Healing and New Horizons of Theory and Practice and the Calling of Planetary Conversations,” in Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border Crossings, Transformations and Planetary Realizations, ed. Ananta Kumar Giri. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Chapter 6, “Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies: With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South, Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Calling of Planetary Realizations,” Sociological Bulletin 70 (3): 366–383, 2021. Chapter 7, “Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism: Social Theories, Asian Dialogues and Planetary Conversations,” Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Chapter 8, “Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement and a New Politics, Poetics and Spirituality of Dwelling: The Ethics, Aesthetics and Responsibility of Home and the World,” in Writing in Times of Displacement: The Existential and Other Discourses, eds, Mbuh Tennu Mbhu, Meera Chakravorty and John Clammer. London: Routledge, 2022 Chapter 9, “Healing Identities: Identity and Ahimsa,” in Transitional Identites, eds, Marucs Bussey et al. London: Routledge, forthcoming. Chapter 10, “Social Healing and Creating Circles of Gender Liberation,” in Gender Matters, ed. Poornima Jain (Delhi: Studium Press, 2018) and Practical Spirituality and Human Development ed Ananta Kumar Giri. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Acknowledgment and Gratitude  xvii Chapter 12, “Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity: Learning Across Borders and the Calling of Planetary Realizations,” Integral Review Chapter 13, “Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning: Universities at the Cross-Roads and the Calling of Experimental Creativity and the Challenges of Alternative Planetary Futures,” in Inside the New University: Prerequisites for a Contemporary Knowledge Production, eds. Kristina Johansson, Goran Lassbo & Eddy Nehls. Ebook of Bantham Science Publishing, 2013 Chapter 15, “Healing the Wounds of Roots and Routes: Cross-Fertilizing Roots and Routes and the Calling of Socio-Cultural Regeneration and Planetary Realizations,” Social Alternatives Chapter 16, “Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance: The Multiverse of Hindu Engagement with Christianity and Plural Streams of Creative Co-Walking, Contradictions, Confrontations and Reconciliations,” The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 18,“COVID-19 and the Challenges of Trauma and Transformations: Ethics, Politics and Spirituality and Alternative Planetary Futures,” builds on a chapter from my book, The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice, Dialogues and Planetary Realizations. London et al: Routledge, 2023. Chapter 19, “Global Social Healing: Upholding our World, Regenerating our Earth and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha,” from Cosmopolitan Civility: Local Global Reflections with Fred Dallmayr. Albany: SUNY Press, 2021.

Social Healing An Introduction and an Invitation

There are many wounds in self, society and around the world which call for healing. Social Healing engages with these tasks of healing. It begins with Part One of the book, “The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing.” The introductory essay, “Social Healing: Society as a Patient, Metapathology, and the Challenges of Self and Social Transformations,” discusses how we need a new art of healing in place of the dominant and pervasive art of killing. It discusses manifold creative theories and practices of healing in self, society and the world. It also discusses new moves in social theory which deploy creative methods of art and performance in healing our psychic and social wounds. This chapter is a transdisciplinary effort in bringing sociology, philosophy, psychology and spirituality together in understanding health, social suffering and healing in our contemporary world. It discusses the concept of society as a patient which challenges us to go beyond an individualized notion of healing. It links this understanding to the contemporary discourse of social suffering. But to transform this it is argued that we need both political and spiritual transformations. In order to transform suffering of self and society, we need to undertake creative suffering on our part. This involves critiquing the existing distinction between normality and pathology. Metapathology, offered by Abraham Maslow and Chitta Ranjan Das, critiques the social construction of pathology and deliberately accepts a mode of life which may be considered pathological by the existing society but bears seeds of critique, creativity, healing and transformations. We need a new vision and practice of metapathology in order to create conditions of self and socio-cultural realizations and overcome existing systems and discourses of pathological normalization and normality. This discussion on social healing is accompanied by Chapter 2, “Social Healing: The Calling of Transformative Harmony,” which argues how healing is linked to realization of harmony in self, culture, society and the world. This second chapter in our book deals with the challenge of harmony and how it can contribute to realization of healing of self and society. Harmony is part of life as there is an existence and yearning for harmony in self, society, Nature and Divine, which, at the same time, struggles with disharmony, chaos, disorder, disjunction and domination of various kinds. At

Social Healing  xix present, there is an epochal challenge of realizing harmony in self, society and the world as we face conflicts, contradictions, disjunctions and violence of many kinds. We face enormous stress in individual and collective lives and go through both soul and social suffering. In spite of all these we still want to live a life of meaning and happiness and we are not bereft of our responsibility to compose an emergent world of commonalty with and beyond disjunctions and violence that permeates self, cultures, societies and the world. Transformative harmony is a multi-dimensional movement for realization of meaning, coherence, co-ordination and joy in self, culture and society which is not status-quoist but transformative. It strives to interrogate and transform existing structures of domination—self and social—and become part of a multi-dimensional sadhana and struggle of liberation. It involves simultaneously transformative ways of knowing and being—epistemic and ontological—involving what can be called ontological epistemology of participation. Transformative harmony involves a creative trigonometry of ethics, aesthetics and responsibility as it also involves compassion and confrontation. It also involves socio-political as well as sociospiritual mobilizations. It addresses both structural and soul violence and strives for structural and soul peace--ensouled structural peace and structural soul peace. It is a multi-dimensional movement for realization of beauty, dignity and dialogue in self, culture, society and the world in the midst of ugliness, terror, disrespect and monological assertions and annihilation of many kinds. This chapter explores how realizing social healing is linked to realization of transformative harmony in self, society, culture and the world. Much of our ill-being and illness in self and society arises from the structuring and our perception of our life worlds. This third chapter, “Life World and Living Words” explores the issue of life world and how we need to heal our life worlds. It argues how life is an invitation and adventure for us but its meaningful realization in our life and seeking is a perpetual challenge. Life is nurtured by both deeds and words which give birth to us and our worlds. But a great challenge before us is that both of our life worlds and living words have become dead-like having lost the will to live and sing. This chapter explores how we can make alive our life worlds through creative transformations. We live under the colonization of the life world as Jurgen Habermas would tell us but Habermas himself still looks at the life world primarily in terms of rationality. But life world is not only a field of rationality it is also a field of intuition and striving for the spiritual in the midst of many rational and infra-rational forces at work. Against this theoretical backdrop and the general background of crisis of self, culture and the world this chapter makes a contemporary re-interpretation of the concept of the life world and then links it to the vision and practice of living words. It shows how by bringing life worlds and living words in creative ways we can contribute to healing self and society. This chapter also explores creative ways of transforming colonization and devaluation of life worlds by initiating anti-colonial and post-colonial cosmopolitan movements in

xx  Social Healing both living words and life worlds. It undertakes a dialogue with the vision and perspectives of Edmund Husserl and Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi and Jurgen Habermas, J.N. Mohanty and Margaret Chatterjee, Martin Heidegger and Veena Das to draw new insights for healing our life worlds. Healing is related to the nature of our practice but practice has both pragmatic as well as spiritual dimension. In this fourth chapter in our book, “Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Social Healing, Posthumanism and New Horizons of Theory and Practice and the Calling of Planetary Conversations,” we explore the links between pragmatism and spirituality and how realization of such a link can help realize healing in self, language, society and the world. It also explores the challenge of humanism and posthumanism and argues how a spiritual approach to humanism and posthumanism can heal its contemporary technological binding. A one-dimensional construction of objectivity in opposition to subjectivity has created much suffering in self, knowledge and the world. Chapter 5, “Healing the Dualism Between Subjectivity and Objectivity: Transforming the Subjective and the Objective and the Calling of Transpositional Subjectobjecivity,” strives to heal such a dualism and transform our dominant construction of objectivity and subjectivity with the emergent and transformational pathways of transpositional subjectobjectivity. Our contemporary moment is a moment of crises of epistemology as part of the wider and deeper crises of modernity and the human condition. The crises of epistemology emerges from the limits of the epistemic as it is tied to epistemology of procedural certainty and closure. The crises of epistemology also reflects the limits of epistemology closed within Euro-American universe of discourse. It is in this context, Chapter 6, “Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies: With and Beyond Epistemologies of the South, Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Contemporary Challenges of Planetary Realizations,” explores how we can nurture healing epistemologies with and beyond the dominant epistemologies of violence coming from the Euro-American world. It discusses Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ Epistemologies from the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. It then explores the pathways of ontological epistemology of participation which brings epistemic and ontological works and meditations in transformative and cross-cultural ways for a fuller realization of going beyond both the limits of the epistemic as well as Eurocentrism. It also explores pathways of multi-topial hermeneutics and transpositional subjectobjectiviy (discussed in the previous chapter) which involves foot-walking and foot-meditative interpretation across multiple cultures and traditions of the world. Theorizing can help us understand our human condition or it can put blinkers in our eyes which is a condition of pathology. Both Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism contributes to production of theoretical pathology and pathological theories. Chapter 7, “Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism: Social Theories, Asian Dialogues and Planetary Conversations” deals with this issue and how we can heal the

Social Healing  xxi theoretical pathology of Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism. It goes beyond the pathological limits of both and tries to cultivate theorizing as healing processes of conversing with each other and learning together. There is much talk about globalization of sociology but there is very little concrete effort to bring sociology and social theory into mutually transforming dialogues involving cultural presuppositions about self, culture and societies from various locations and traditions of our world. In this essay, an attempt has been made to bring certain strands in Euro-American social theory in dialogue with some Asian traditions of thinking and being. The essay discusses self, Confucianism, dynamic harmony and post-colonialism as part of this broader field of social theory and Asian dialogues. With these we come to Part Two of the book, “Global Social Healing and the Calling of a Planetary Lokasamgraha.” It begins with Chapter 8, “Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement and a New Politics, Poetics and Spirituality of Dwelling: The Ethics, Aesthetics and Responsibility of Home and the World.” Displacement, especially involuntary displacement, creates enormous pain and suffering in the displaced and the wider culture and society. But how do the displaced cope with it? Our fellow beings in this field many a time show courage, creativity, resistance and resilience and they write their experiences and through this derive strength. Along with the writings by the displaced, other creative writers also write about the experience of the displaced by narrating how they cope with their pain, vulnerability and suffering. They not only try to survive but strive to thrive. They cultivate new practices and vocations of dwelling. This chapter draws upon the idea of dwelling from philosopher Martin Heidegger and explore the poetics of dwelling that emerges in conditions of displacement as well as in subsequent movements of relocation and resettlement. It also bring insights from Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri to understand the courage and creativity of people going through displacement to confront the death and devastation emerging from displacement. In Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri as well as the epic story in Mahabharat to which it is symbolically related, Savitri is confronting the King of Death to bring her husband Satyavan to life. For this Savitri is trampling upon laws of Death with her living feet.1 This is an act of courageous resistance, defiance and Satyagraha. Here I bring the perspectives of Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi together to understand resistance against displacement and also the strength and tenacity to create new lives and homes. The following chapter, Chapter 9, “Healing identities: Identity and Ahimsa,” deals with the issue of identity and how we can create healing identities in place the entanglement between identity and violence. Identity is a multi-dimensional journey in self, culture, society and the world. Identity refers to dynamic relationship between self and non-self, self and no-self, other within self, self within other and many related fields of existence, reality, realizations, aspirations and transformations. Identity has a dimension of identity as well as non-identity, fixity as well as non-determination. Identity can be positioned or positional or it can be a critical and

xxii  Social Healing creative movement across positions embodying transpositional border-crossing. Identity can be part of an existing hermeneutics of self echoing a fixed grammar and interpretation of texts, traditions or State or it can be part of a new hermeneutics of self. As a fixed hermeneutics of self and as defenders of existing identitarian positions emerging, for example, from one’s position in privileged hierarchies of class, caste, gender, race, religion and ethnicity identity can be entangled in violence. But identity and violence is not only our fate; we can also realize the link between identity and non-violence, identity and Ahimsa. This chapter explores a new vision and practice of identity by cultivating links between identity and non-violence in the midst of prevalent discourses and practices of identity and violence. As part of this, this chapter explores a new vision of transpositional movements and multi-topial hermeneutics which help us move across positions and realize a new hermeneutics, politics and spirituality of self, culture, state and society which helps us realize our journey with identities as a journey of ahimsa. The following chapter, Chapter 10, “Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation,” discusses how social healing crucially depends upon going beyond the violence of gender domination and healing it. Power and existing cultural logics constitute gender identities and gender relations. Most of the time it leads to inequality, subordination and domination. The discourse of empowerment, especially women’s empowerment, is a response to inequality of power in gender relations. But while struggle for empowerment is important and crucial for transforming gender domination and for creating transformational gender relations based upon beauty, dignity and dialogues, it nonetheless challenges us to rethink, reconstitute and realize power itself differently in self, society and the world. Usually we look at power, as articulated by Weber, as one’s ability to exercise one’s power over the will of the others. This leads to a zero-sum approach to and reality of power. In this place we can have a different approach to and realization of power. As Hannah Arendt suggests, to have power is to have the ability to work in concert with each other. Such an approach to power is also reflected in Gandhian approaches to power where power is characterized not only by domination but by the desire for communication and suffering in spite of closed walls and stones falling from all sides. Habermasian approach to power and discourse in his project of discourse ethics also shares aspects of such an approach to power. In discourses and practices of women’s empowerment we can embody such approaches to power as the ability to work in concert with each other with love, co-suffering, joy and communication with a spirit of both resistance and co-creation. This chapter explores new visions and circles of gender liberation and the way it can contribute to realization of social healing. The subsequent chapter, Chapter 11, “Social Healing and the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination and the Challenges of Structural Transformations and Transformation of Consciousness: Ambedkar, Shankara and Beyond,” explores the issue of social healing vis-à-vis the

Social Healing  xxiii challenge of caste domination. It explores how transformation of consciousness is important for transforming caste domination along with structural transformation of caste system. The subsequent chapter, Chapter 12, “Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity: Learning Across Borders and the Calling of Planetary Realizations,” discusses the theme of social networks in our lives. Networks are not just mechanical extensions of existing institutional logic but become networks of agape and creativity where the seekers build bridges by being bridges. We need new understanding and practices of networks which can contribute to healing and creative learning. This chapter argues how it depends upon learning across borders which is facilitated by seeking institutions and networks where leaders and participants become students of life and friends of the world. This chapter explores how education helps us realize our potential as well as that of our cultures, societies and the world when it moves from narrow confines within closed walls of class room and given boundaries of many kinds and embraces the joy of learning with the wider and uncharted paths and rivers of life in this vast world of ours. The subsequent chapter, Chapter 13, “Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning: Universities at the Cross-Roads and the Challenges of Experimental Creativity and the Challenges of Alternative Planetary Futures” continues to explore the links between healing and learning begun in the previous chapter and focuses on the task of transforming existing universities as crucial to realization of healing in self, knowledge and the world. It explores how our universities are at a crossroads now. This is followed by Chapter 14, “Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing,” which continues the challenge of transcending boundaries for healing knowledge, self and society. It explores new arts of crossing our dominant and prevalent boundaries. Chapter 15, “Healing the Dualism of Roots and Routes: Social Creativity, Cultural Regeneration and Planetary Realizations,” deals with the issues of roots and routes. It tells us how we suffer from a dualism of roots and routes. In certain dominant forms of identities such as ethnic identity we become too bound up and imprisoned within closed roots and we do not realize their integral linkages with overflowing and criss-crossing routes. This separation and dualism creates pain and suffering and we need to heal this for realizing healing in self, culture, society and the world. This chapter deals with some of these issues beginning with a discussion of the problem of ethnicity in our contemporary world. This is followed by Chapter 16, “Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance: The Multiverse of Hindu Engagement with Christianity and the Plural Streams of Creative Co-Walking, Contradictions, Confrontations and Reconciliations,” continues the exploration of creative border-crossing across boundaries which can contribute to social healing. It explores the multiverse of engagement between Hinduism and Christianity and the plural streams of co-walking, contradictions, confrontations and movements towards reconciliation it involves.

xxiv  Social Healing The subsequent chapter, Chapter 17, “Social Healing and the Challenges of Transforming Suffering and Striving for Reconciliation and Peace,” discusses the challenges of suffering and peace for realization of social healing. It discusses the work of philosopher K. Satchidananda Murthy and urges us to realize how we need to go beyond disciplinary boundaries such as philosophy and sociology in our task of understanding challenges of suffering and peace. The following chapter, Chapter 18, “COVID-19 and the Challenges of Trauma, Healing and Transformations: Ethics, Politics and Spirituality, and Alternative Planetary Futures,” discusses the challenge of corona virus and the task of healing. This is accompanied by the concluding Chapter 19, “Global Social Healing: Upholding our World, Regenerating Our Earth and the Calling of a Planetary Lokasamgraha,” which addresses the challenges of upholding our world and regenerating our Earth and how both would lead to global social healing. It also presents the vision and practice of Lokasamgraha. Lokasamgraha challenges us to realize well-being and happiness for all but for this we are all invited to be creative in our strivings and struggles and it cannot be left to the others, society and state. At the heart of Lokasamgraha is care and responsibility which contributes to healing self, society and culture in the world. Thus the book explores different dimensions of visions and practices of social healing in our world.

Bibliography Greogorios, Paulos M. 2017. “Holistic Healing.” In Paulos Mar Gregorios: A Reader, ed. K.M. George, pp. 149–158. Nagpur; Delhi: Stots Press; Media House. Kapur, Rupi. 2017. “Healing.” In idem, The Sun and Her Flowers. London: Simon & Schuster. Sen, Amartya. 2021. Home in the World: A Memoir. London: Allen Lane.

Part I

The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing

1 Social Healing Society as a Patient, Metapathology, and the Challenges of Self and Social Transformations

Introduction and Invitation Health and healing are perennial challenges of life, but in modernity our approach to it is predominantly atomistic, reductionist and one-dimensional. We reduce the problems of health, ill-being and disease to individuals and do not relate to the wider environments of culture and society. We adopt a bio-medical approach to health and do not realize health as a multi-dimensional journey of wholeness which includes body, mind, soul, society, nature and cosmos.1 As Hans-George Gadamer (1996) challenges us in his The Enigma of Health: The Art of Healing in a Scientific Age, we do not realize that health is something that cannot be simply made and produced. Thus he argues: “Instead of being the result of manipulation or forceful intervention, our health is something that [each of us can create] through the way in which we lead our lives.” Our life is a journey of wholeness even when, for existential reasons, it is lived in parts. But when parts do not realize the integral connection among themselves, it creates a condition of pathology at the levels of self and society.2 A holistic engagement with health challenges us to realize that health is not just a matter of the individual. The health of an individual depends upon the health of a society as the illness of an individual is crucially shaped by the pathology of society. Unfortunately in sociology, social work and social welfare the discourse of social pathology has been replaced by the reigning discourse of social deviance, which puts the blame squarely on the individual for his or her condition of disease and disruptive behavior. Fortunately for us there is the rise of the discourse of social suffering in sociology, anthropology and social theorizing, which seeks to relate social suffering and illness to wider systems of self, culture and society.

Society as a Patient: With and Beyond Social Suffering and Social Pathology Sociologists and anthropologists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das and John Clammer have challenged us to understand the work of social suffering (Bourdieu et al. 1999; Clammer 2012; Kleinman et al. DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-2

4  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing 1997). Before we briefly discuss this discourse of social suffering, it is helpful to relate this to the concept of society as a patient as it was articulated by Lawrence K. Frank a long time ago. In his initial essay on the subject and then the book with the same title, Frank challenges us to realize: There is a growing realization among thoughtful persons that our culture is sick, mentally disordered and in need of treatment. This belief finds expression in many different forms and from a variety of professions. […] Anyone who reflects upon the present situation […] cannot but fail to see that we have passed from the condition in which deviations from a social norm were to be regarded as abnormal. Today we have so many deviations and maladjustments that the term “abnormal” has lost almost all significance. (Frank 1933; also see Frank 1948) In his work, Frank challenges us to understand the shifting contours of social normality and abnormality. He also challenges us to realize how a particular organization of society makes society a patient. He suggests that “the competitive system and distortion created by the ineptness of our practices for socializing in the home and the school” makes society a patient (Frank 1933). A system of society that produces large-scale poverty and impoverishment makes a society a patient. Without wholesale a priori characterization and condemnation, it is helpful to keep the concept of society as the patient as a work of investigation to find out what kind of organization and consciousness of society makes it a patient. In the contemporary Indian context, the persistence of caste discrimination and caste-based violence makes Indian society a patient. Similarly the reign of neo-liberalism with a brutal policy of extraction of resources for profit making and accompanying cut of expenditure on health care and social well-being makes many contemporary societies all over the world patients. In their work on social suffering, The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Societies, Pierre Bourdieu et al. (1999) tell us how societies are being made patients under a neo-liberal regime. They present us other instances of social suffering in their own society, i.e. France. In this collaborative work, Bourdieu and his colleagues tell us about different ways in which social suffering is produced. In his essay, “The View from the State,” Patrick Champagne writes: “The ‘meditatization’ of ‘social malaises’ has the effect of proliferating all sorts of publications and reports to describe, explain and ‘treat’ these ‘malaises’, so bringing them into the open” (Bourdieu et al. 1999: 213). About the way the school system produces outcastes, Bourdieu and Champagne write: “[…] the school system turns into a permanent home for potential outcasts” (ibid: 422). Regarding the way social suffering creates wasted lives, Bourdieu writes: “Malik is nineteen and has already ‘lived a lot’. When we met him he was doing—without many illusions—an unpaid internship, giving him minimal training, that he had to find for himself to fulfill a poorly defined path of study at a nearby,

Social Healing  5 low-ranked suburban high school” (ibid: 427). Bourdieu here points to institutionalized violence. He also speaks about “poisoned gifts” that are “Superhighways that turn out to be dead-end streets” (ibid: 511). Bourdieu tells us how with social suffering public streets become a desert street. Such an articulation of social suffering can be related to reflections by psychologists, sociologists and philosophers. In his classic work on suffering and healing, Victor Frankl (1967) tells us about the collective neurosis of our times which has the following main symptoms: (i) an ephemeral attitude to life; (ii) the fatalist attitude toward life which “misinterprets and misrepresents man as a product of environment” (ibid: 115)3; (iii) “conformist or collectivist thinking” (ibid: 115); (iv) denial of one’s own personality. For Frankl, the neurotic who suffers from the fourth symptom, fanaticism, “denies the personality of others” (ibid: 116). For Frankl, 2[…] all the four symptoms can be shown to derive from fear of and flight from freedom and responsibility; yet freedom and responsibility together make a man a spiritual being” (ibid: 117). Frankl’s pointer to issues of freedom and responsibility also reminds us of the reflections of Erich Fromm who tells us how escape from freedom constitutes a pathology of our times. To this problem of escape from freedom, we can also add the problem of escape from responsibility. Building a sane society challenges us to realize both freedom and responsibility and create an institutional and personal context for both. In this journey we can walk with both Gandhi and Levinas and strive to embody both freedom and responsibility, which contributes to building a healthy self and healthy society. Gandhi challenges us to be ever wakeful to our calling of responsibility especially remembering the faces of the poorest of the poor, which helps us to overcome our pathology of self-centeredness and move towards self and social healing. Similarly Levinasian vision and practice of responsibility help us in paths of self, mutual and social healing. To these reflections on social pathology, we can also invite the insights of sociologist Richard Sennett and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. In his The Corrosion of Character and other works, Sennett tells us how contemporary organization of work and time especially the valorization of “no long term” “corrodes trust, loyalty and mutual commitment” (see Sennett 2000: 127; also Sennett 2006 and 2012). Kierkegaard tells us about despair, which constitutes a “Sickness unto Death” (1842). For Kierkegaard, So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die—yet not as though there were hope for life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. […] So when the danger is so great that death has become one’s hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die. (1848: 345) Kierkegaard insightfully links certain aspects of contemporary despair to the working of the state:

6  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing The minimum of despair is a state which (as one might humanly be tempted to express it) by reason of a sort of innocence does not even know that there is a such a thing as despair. So when consciousness is at its minimum the despair is least […]. (ibid: 348) Kierkegaard points to the way working of the state creates despair but then cannot recognize it as for a State there is no such thing as despair. The State also cannot shed tears for the tears and suffering it creates (see Scott 1998). The State creates large-scale displacement through many development projects, but its conscience is least developed to acknowledge the pain and suffering it creates. But we need not leave state as it is as a machinery of violence, and we can strive to transform state through political and spiritual revolutions so that if the state cannot weep, at least, the keepers of the State can weep with the suffering of fellow beings.4 But while the State creates despair, this condition of despair can also be transformed. In fact, creative selves, association and social movements do transform such conditions of despair. Social, political, cultural and spiritual movements counter social suffering and work towards social healing.5 In cases of conflicts and violence such as during anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984 and riots in Gujarat in 2002, common men and women, civil society groups helped to heal the wounds of self and society. This is both social healing and social therapy, which calls for a new realization of meaning in the lives of individuals and societies. Frankl had spoken about logo therapy, a soulful therapy that can contribute to healing. We need an accompanying social logo therapy that can contribute to healing the wounds of society. We can call it soulful social logo therapy, which leads to soulful social healing.

Social Healing Social suffering has been talked about in social science discourses and social practices but not much social healing. John P. Lederach and Angela Jill Lederach discuss this theme in their book When Blood and Bones Cry Out and refer to social healing “as an intermediary phenomenon located between micro individual healing and wider collective reconciliation” (Lederach and Lederach 2010). They further explain that social healing “deals with wounds created by conflict, collective trauma and large-scale oppression.” Drawing inspiration from this work, Hella Najibullah, peace studies scholar from Afghanistan explores this in the context of Afghanistan in his book Reconciliation and Social Healing in Afghanistan: A Transrational and Elicitive Analysis Towards Transformation. Concerned actors engage in social healing in conditions of trauma and conflicts but this essay is concerned not only with this. Social healing is used also in a broad sense of overcoming many kinds of ills and pathologies in social relationships and modes of thinking. We get glimpses of such a broader engagement with social healing in works such as Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural

Social Healing  7 Women’s Voices edited by Jeanine M. Canty (2016). In another essay entitled “Edges of Transformation” Women Crossing Boundaries Between Ecological and Social Healing,” Canty (2017) tells us how social healing does not “progress in regular stages marked by continuous progress towards a defined goal.” Social healing involves many contingencies, ups and downs and creative moves ahead. This essay builds upon such related discourses and visions of social healing.

Social Healing and the Calling of Metapathology Social suffering creates social pathology; society becomes a patient. But to transform social suffering we need transformative social actions, institutional transformation and transformation of what Bourdieu calls “institutional bad faith.” We also need creative suffering and voluntary suffering on the part of individuals and social institutions for transforming conditions of suffering. As Goethe had said a long time ago: “There is no condition which cannot be ennobled either by a deed or by suffering” (quoted in Frankl 1967: 123; also see Murty 1973, Toynbee 1956). While social suffering is produced by society, transformation of suffering calls for voluntary co-suffering on the part of both self and society. Gandhi, Victor Frankl and Chitta Ranjan Das have urged us to realize the significance of voluntary co-suffering for transforming suffering in the lives of both individuals and societies. The calling of voluntary co-suffering challenges us to transform an existent social distinction between normal and pathological. Social and cultural movements challenge the existing definition of normality and pathology in the direction of dignity and co-realizations. Along with the work of socio-cultural and socio-spiritual movements, we also need the creative self who can undertake suffering for the sake of realizing beauty, dignity and dialogue. Their work may be considered pathological by others but this is not a normal and conventional pathology. This is metapathology as Abraham Maslow (1971) challenges us to realize. Transforming social pathology and social suffering calls for the embracing work of metapathology on the part of creative selves, associations and social movements in a society. Such movements create a condition for fuller self, social and cultural realization on the part of participants (Honneth 2007). While existing distinctions of normality and pathology block fuller cultural realizations, a voluntary embrace of metapathology creates a space and condition where self and society can fully realize themselves. But embrace of voluntary suffering is not here a substitute for the need for structural transformation of conditions of suffering such as poverty, violence and insecurity. It is also not an apology for self-infliction and masochism. Social healing calls for creating appropriate conditions at the level of self and society. Social healing and social therapy calls for being together in vibrant communication and deep meditation while helping each other heal our wounds, listen to our stories and realize our potentials (see Canty 2016).6 It depends upon creating what Vygotsky called “zones of proximal

8  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing development.” Louis Holzman has insightfully applied Vygotosky’s insights in creating performative circles of social therapy where the participants become each other’s therapists and going beyond a dual model of the doctor and patient (Holzman 2009). Such going beyond is an instance of holistic and collaborative social therapy. We can bring together the vision and strivings of Victor Frankl and Lois Holzman and nurture a creative social logo therapy.

Healing and the Challenges of Self and Social Transformations In the context of a perfected art of killing, where we kill not only reality but also possibility, we need a new art of healing which is multi-dimensional— political, spiritual, medicinal as well as meditative. This begins with nurturing a new realization of temporality. In our society, the pursuit of a short-term time perspective and the work of what David Harvey (1989) calls “space-time compression” creates a fleeting and impoverished relationship with time which is indeed killing as it makes us breathless and always be on the run. Our contemporary organization of time creates anxiety and stress which are produced by structures of politics and economy so that we remain perpetually anxious and lose our spirit of creativity and resistance. A new art of healing has to address this question of temporality and create a new pregnant spatiality and temporality where we can breathe with ease and love and can give birth to each other’s dreams, aspirations and potentials. We can give birth to a new being, inter-being and a new society (Giri 2012b). This becomes an act of new self-creation, co-creation and birthing of a new consciousness and society.

Health as a Journey of Wholeness Health is not just absence of disease; it involves an all-round development of individual and society.7 Good health depends upon a good life and good society. While healing is both noun and verb, health is a noun. But for realization of health we need to realize it as simultaneously noun and verb. As a verb, health is not only activistic but also meditative. Realization of health depends upon both appropriate action and meditation. Action and meditation help us realize health as a continued journey of wholeness. In his work on health and healing, Hans-George Gadamer challenges us to realize and restore wholeness for the sake of health. Chitta Ranjan Das, a creative thinker from India, also presents us similar and added challenges. For Das (2010), realizing health is a continued journey of climbing towards peaks of self and society in the midst of disease, illness and ugliness of various kinds.8 For Das, to oppress others is a disease as is to tolerate oppression. So for a healthy self and society, we would have to resist domination and oppression. A healthy person does not just adapt to society especially its systems of domination and disease; rather they try to transform such conditions (see Giri 2012a). A healthy person does not betray themself and the potential of society which awaits a fuller realization.

Social Healing  9 Resonating with the spirit of Lawrence Frank, Das raises a number of questions about wider structures of society and modes of thinking that produce illness and social pathology. For Das, caste system and a sense of fatalism that one cannot change one’s fate contributes to production of illness and pathology in self and society. Similarly the use of science and technology for profit making and warfare without concern for human well-being and social welfare contributes to production of social pathology. Das does not believe in an absolute distinction between health and disease as he challenges us to realize that every diseased person has a deeper yearning within himself or herself for being healthy. Similarly he challenges us to transform the one-sided hierarchical relationship between the doctor and patient. For Das, “One is not just either a patient or a doctor; it is not just the case that the doctor would prescribe and the patient would obey. Both have to listen to each other” (Das 2010: 157). The reflections of Das and Gadamer on health and healing also remind us about the classic work of Alfred Korzybsky (1933) on science and sanity. For Korzybsky, Until recently we have had a split medicine. One branch, general medicine, was interested in the “body” (soma); the other was interested in the “soul” (“psyche”). The net result was that general medicine was a glorified form of veterinary science, while psychiatry remained metaphysical. However, it has been found empirically that a great many “physical” ailments are of a semantogenic origin. (Korzybsky 1933: li) Korzybsky pleads for an integration of the body and soul for realization of health. This also calls for a new grammar of life in which we realize health as simultaneously a noun and verb of action, meditation and transformations which includes both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of our lives, intension as well as extension.9 It calls in short for a new art of integration.

In Lieu of a Conclusion Social healing is a multi-dimensional movement and practice in self, society, culture and the world to move with and beyond illness, pathology and wounds in social relationships and modes of thinking. It involves both structural transformation and self-transformation. It involves new initiatives in therapy at the personal and social level, which can be called soulful social therapy. It is transdisciplinary as it involves creative border-crossing among sociology, psychology and spirituality as well as transparadigmatic as it involves border crossing among different paradigms of thinking and action such as a bio-medical approaches and socio-cultural and sociospiritual approaches. It emerges in the fields of conflicts, trauma and violence but it is not confined only to these realms. Social healing is a reality, aspiration and cry in many domains of our lives.

10  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing

Notes 1 Here what Bernard Lown, M.D, writes in his Introduction to Norman Cousins’ The Healing Heart: Antidotes to Panic and Helplessness, deserves our careful consideration: […] contemporary medicine is ever more sharply focused on the disembodied disease, rather than on the afflicted patient. This conventional biomedical model, though giving pi service to the patient as the object of care, largely ignores the subjective dimension and views it as an irrelevant epiphenomenon. The patient’s body is the battlefield; when the physician prevails, recovery follows While psychological processes color the patient’s perceptions, they are deemed to have little relevance to the outcome of the case and regaining of health. (Cousins 1983: 11–12) Lown invites us to realize that the predominance of the bio-medical approach to medical education and training: dehumanizes even those who come with deeply held aspirations to serve. The four-year, intensive indoctrination aims to install scientific competence and train bioscientists to manage complex technology. Little time and effort is devoted t the cultivation for caring. (ibid: 26) For this, Brown echoing the spirit of Cousin’s Healing Heart, pleads for including art, literature and philosophy in our training of physicians as not only subjects to learn but themes to live with. He also challenge us to realize the dangers of the gap between science and philosophy that the current bio-medical approach to health and health education epitomizes: Current developments have widened the ancient gap between science and philosophy. Science is constantly changing; human nature and psychological realities remain fairly stable. While artistic and literary creativity incorporates and expands upon the past, scientific truth negates the past from which it derives. A medical text book, even a decade old, is already outdated. The idolatry of the latest issue of a medical journal reflects restiveness and impatience with yesterday’s facts. The modern physician tends to ignore the past. There are no medical heroes, merely temporary celebrities. To the artist and the writer the mainspring of creativity is an umbilical cord to the masters of bygone ages. Aeschulus and Shakespeare are as relevant as Dostoevski and Hemingway. The all address the same human condition, exposing the inexhaustible diversity of life and probing the reason for being. (Cousins 1983: 27–28) 2 Here we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts: In order to speak of a social pathology […] we require a conception of normality related to social life as a whole. The immense difficulty involved in this project has been made evident by the failure of social-scientific approaches that have sought to fix the functional requirements of societies solely through external observations. Since what counts as a developmental goal or as normality is always culturally defined, it is only by a hermeneutic

Social Healing  11 reference to a society’s self-understanding that social functions of their disorders can be determined. Thus we may have a defensive possibility of speaking of social pathologies within a culturally contingent notion of normality, since we can limit ourselves to an empirical description of what a given culture regards as a disorder. […] A paradigm of social normality must, therefore, consist in culturally independent conditions that allow a society’s members to experience undistorted self-realization. […] The question then becomes crucial whether it is a communitarian form of ethical life, a distance-creating public sphere, non-alienated labor or a mimetic interaction with nature that enables individuals to lead a well-lived life. (Honneth 2007: 34, 35, 37) The patient of our time is less concerned with the state of his morals than that of his finances. (Frankl 1967: 112) A dynamism would have been the norm and routine of our life. To tell you the truth, that spontaneous dynamism is the health of our life […] With our sacred conservatism if we bound ourselves only to what is there then there would be lots of mud in the pond of our life. So there should be a continued process of cleaning up mud which means we would have to continuously widen the paths so that new streams of waters can enter there. (Das 2010: 2–3) 3 What Frankl writes here for depth psychology is relevant in all efforts in restoring health and healing in the face of such neurosis: “A depth psychology which considers its main task to be that of ‘unmaking’ comes in most handy for the neurotic’s own tendency towards ‘devaluation’” (1967: 114). Depth psychology here has a spiritual dimension which can also become part of all work of restoration of generation of health and healing. 4 This is explored through the following poem of the author: State, Spirit and Commons: Co-Emptying and A Festival of Co-Realizations Ananta Kumar Giri State Political and economic Caste, class and gender Movements and self Transforming machineries of violence Ethical Critique and a New Aesthetics of Commons Collective Action and Collaborative Imagination Transforming State from Within and Across State and Spirit Dancing in an Open Way With Hegel, Kierkegaard, Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo Going Beyond the Divide Between History and Pre-History Towards a New Unfoldment of Potential State Becoming a Non-State A Non-State State As Self Becomes a No-Self Democracy as Political and Spiritual

12  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Toward a New Tapasya of Co-Emptying And evolution of consciousness A Festival of Co-Realizations (Giri 2022) 5 In his study of the livelihood impacts of the Lam Ta Khong Pumped Storage Project in northeastern Thailand, Nitinan Khanprom engages with the social suffering framework of Arthur Kleinman and others and emphasizes the role of social movements in countering this: In exploring the social suffering of people affected by the development project, I argue that people in turn have employed their suffering to negotiate within their everyday lives, as well as to construct a counter-discourse as part of their social movement. (Kanprom 2011: 68) I am grateful to Professor Chayan Vaddanaphuti, the Director of Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) for gifting me his co-edited book, Transcending State Boundaries: Contested Development, Social Suffering and Negotiation, in which Khanprom’s article appears, during our meeting at RCD, Chiangmai University in 2018. 6 Bernard Lown, M.D., here invites us to understand the healing power of caring moments doctors and patients spend with each other. He also invites us to understand the healing power of reassuring words as well as destructive power of negative words and environment. Brown invites us to realize the condition of modern hospitals which lacks space and time for sympathetic communication: The patient arriving in a hospital emergency ward with a fresh heart attack is confronted by technical proficient house staff. Their immediate aim is not not still the terror induced by the uncertainty of survival but to insert catheters, obtain measurements, and deliver drugs. Human uniqueness and individuality are washed away under the indifferent onslaught of rehearsed protocol procedures. Anxiety and fear are allayed not by comfortable reassurance but by the prescription of Valium round the clock. When the heart rhythm grows chaotic and degenerates into ventricular fibrillation, this is ascribed to the magnitude of the infarction. There is scant appreciation that the kind of ministration and absence of sympathetic communication have cut loose the anchor of the patient’s identifiable being. (Lown 1983: 24) Brown tells us about the transformative power of words and time and spaces for sympathetic communication. This is borne out by experiences and reflections of other doctors and anthropologists as well. Andre Grieder is a poet and an anthropologist who has worked in the difficult spaces of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide there. Grieder writes: “As an anthropologist and poet, I work with poetry as a way of healing experiences of violence, through the transformative power of words” (2017; also see Grieder 2015). Similarly Rabi Narayan Dash, a doctor and a poet, tells us how once a patient of his suffering from the pain of phantom limb got healed reading his poems. Dash, a childhood friend of mine from Odisha, works as a doctor in Malmo, Sweden. He writes both poems in Odia, English and Swedish. Dash tells me that his book of poem in Swedish on Pigs waiting for Sun, Grisarnas Kansla for solen, was inspired by his sharing

Social Healing  13 with one of his patients who worked as a butcher (personal communication) (cf. Dash 2013). Once we are nurturing a health camp in a village in Odisha, India where Dash was helping with patients and I was with the patients waiting to see him. I initiated conversations and sharing of poems and songs with the waiting patients, which helped all of us to transform the waiting moment of anxiety to one of co-creative sharing of joy and patience. Poetics thus when linked to spaces like waiting rooms of hospitals can transform condition of emergency to one of creative emergence where both doctors and patients cultivate a mode of patient cultivation of creativity of life transforming the one-dimensional construction of patient as deficient (cf. Giri 2017; this paragraph appears in Giri 2017). Such conversations, meetings and spaces create “reassurance,” which according to Norman Cousins is the “first order of treatment” (Cousins 1983: 28). 7 As the famous definition of health by World Health Organization states: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” 8 Norman Cousins (1983) here urges us to realize the “importance of mobilizing healing emotions” (Brown 1983: 24) and the need for patients “to search in themselves for the powers of healing, thereby fostering the self-reliance and optimism necessary to overcome the travail of illness” (Lown 1983: 28). 9 Earlier we have argued about the limits of the distinction between noun and verb. This also points to limits of existing modes of defining things. Korzybsky here challenges us to realize the distinction between definition by intension and definition by extension: If we orient ourselves predominantly by intension or verbal definitions, our orientations depend mostly on the cortical region. If we orient ourselves by extension or facts, this type of orientation by necessity follows the natural order of evaluation, and involves thalamic factors, introducing automatically critically delayed reactions. In other words, orientations by intension tends to train our nervous system in a split between the functions of the cortical and thalamic regions; orientations by extension involves the integration of cortico-thalamic functions. Orientation by extension induce an automatic delay of reactions, which automatically stimulates the cortical region and regulates and protects the reactions of the usually over-stimulated thalamic region. (Korzybsky 1933: lviii) Korzybsky further writes: “I may add that all existing psychotherapy, no matter of what school, is based on the partial and particular extensionalization of a given patient” (ibid: lx).

Bibliography Bourdieu, Pierre. et al. 1999. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Canty, Jeane M. (ed.) 2016. Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices. London: Routledge and CRC Press. ———. 2017. “Edges of Transformations: Women Crossing Boundaries Between Ecological and Social Healing.” Langscape 4 (2). Clammer, John. 2012. Culture, Development and Social Theory: Towards Integrated Social Development. London: Zed.

14  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Cousins, Norman. 1983. The Healing Heart: Antidotes to Panic and Helplessness. New York and London: W.W. Norton Company. Das, Chitta Ranjan. 2010. Byakti O Byaktitya [Person and Personality]. Bhubaneswar: Pathika Prakashani. ———. 2011. Yoga Samanyaya: Prabeshika [Synthesis of Yoga: An Introduction]. Bhubaneswar: Pathika Prakashani. Das, Veena. 2015. Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty. New York: Fordham University Press. Das, Veena, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret M. Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds (eds.) 2001. Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering and Recovery. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Frank, Lawrence K. 1933. “Society as the Patient.” American Journal of Sociology 42: 335–344. ———. 1948. Society as the Patient. New York: Rutgers. Frankl, Victor. 1967. Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy. Hammondsworth: Penguin. Gadamer, Hans-George. 1996. TheEnigma of Health: Art of Healing in a Scientific Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2010. “Towards a New Art of Integration.” Integral Review 9(2): 113–122. ———. 2012a “Beyond Adaptation and Meditative Verbs of Co-Realizations.” In Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2012b “Towards a Vibrant and Pregnant Spatial and Temporal Creativity.” Paper presented at Goethe Institute, Chennai, February 2012. ———. 2017. “Poetics of Development.” International Journal of Social Quality 7: 36–52. ———. 2022. Alphabets of Creation: Taking God to Bed. New Delhi: Authors Press. Grieder, Andrea. 2015. “Transformation of Barbarity by Beauty.” In New Horizons of Human Development, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Studera Press. ———. 2017. “Haiku By Rwandan Poetesses: Illuminations of Being.” In Aesthetics of Development (co-edited) John Clammer & Ananta Kumar Giri. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Holzman, Lois. 2009. Vygotsky at Work and Play. London: Routledge. Holzman, Lois & Rafael Mendez. 2003. Psychological Investigation. New York: Routledge. Honneth, Axel. 2007. Disrespect: Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Kierkegaard, Soren. 1989/1848. Sickness Unto Death. London: Penguin. Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das and Margaret Lock, (eds.) 1997. Social Suffering. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Korzybsky, Afred. 1933. Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Lakeville, CT: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co. Lederach, John P. & Angela Jill Lederach. 2010. When Blood and Bones Cry Out. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Maslow, Abraham. 1971. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: The Viking Press. Murty, K. Satchidananda. 1973. The Realm of Between: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.

Social Healing  15 Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sennett, Richard. 2000. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 2006. The Culture of New Capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 2012. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Toynbee, Alfred J. 1956. A Historian’s Approach to Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

2 Social Healing The Calling of Transformative Harmony

Introduction and Invitation Healing is linked to realization of harmony in self, culture, society and the world. This second chapter in our book deals with the challenge of harmony, which is rarely explored in social science discourses. Harmony is part of life as there is an existence and yearning for harmony in self, society, Nature and Divine, which, at the same time, struggles with disharmony, chaos, disorder, disjunction and domination of various kinds. At present, there is an epochal challenge of realizing harmony in self, society and the world as we face conflicts, contradictions, disjunctions, violence of many kinds. We face enormous stress in individual and collectives and go through both soul and social suffering. In spite of all these we still want to live a life of meaning and happiness, and we are not bereft of our responsibility to compose an emergent world of commonalty with and beyond disjunctions and violence that permeates self, cultures, societies and the world. Transformative harmony is a multi-dimensional movement for realization of meaning, coherence, co-ordination and joy in self, culture and society, which is not status-quoist but transformative. It strives to interrogate and transform existing structures of domination—self, social and social—and becomes part of a multi-dimensional sadhana and struggle of liberation. It involves simultaneously transformative ways of knowing and being— epistemic and ontological—involving what can be called ontological epistemology of participation (Giri 2006). Transformative harmony involves a creative trigonometry of ethics, aesthetics and responsibility as it also involves compassion and confrontation. It also involves socio-political as well as socio-spiritual mobilizations. It addresses both structural and soul violence and strives for structural and soul peace--ensouled structural peace and structural soul peace.1 It is a multi-dimensional movement for realization of beauty, dignity and dialogue in self, culture, society and the world in the midst of ugliness, terror, disrespect and monological assertions and annihilation of many kinds.2

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-3

Social Healing  17

The Discourse of Harmony In our present-day world, there are many discourses of harmony. The Dalai Lama is urging us to realize the significance of harmony and challenges us to link it to responsibility (Giri 2016). The Chinese government has also been talking about the need for harmonious development of society which builds upon Confucian traditions of harmony but such a discourse is silent about the suffering produced by statist and authoritarian production of harmony. In this context, the work of Leo Semashko and our co-walkers in the Global Harmony Association (see www.peaceharmony.org), a group of friends from around the world, deserve attention. They urge us to realize the significance of harmony what Semashko calls the “value priority of harmony” (Semashko 2009). Semashko here challenged us to realize the shift from value priority from freedom to the value priority of harmony in the context of pathology of industrial mode of production and the need for building a harmonious civilization: “The value priority of harmony replaces the value priority of freedom which drove down humanity up to the freedom of self-destruction […].” (ibid: 27). This value priority of harmony is accompanied by “self-restriction.” This is also being accompanied by striving to replace “a priority of materialism with the spiritual priority,” as Noor Gilani, a participant in this dialogue, urges us to realize: “The two—spirituality and harmony—are linked” (ibid: 48). Semashko is seeking to find signs of a harmonious civilization from the ravages of industrial civilization, which, among other things, gives priority to children, a green economy, non-violence and harmonious ways of thinking and being. Education in and of harmony plays an important role in this process. Semashko plans to build Academies of Harmony in Russia and around the world. He also seeks to have a new global currency named “Harmon,” which is not guided by the profit motive of industrial civilization but by the desire to build harmony and dignity in the lives of economies of individuals and nations. This collaborative text Harmonious Civilization also presents many other projects such as creative festivals of harmony, harmonization in case of militarization in case of conflicts such as 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia, and inculcating harmonious education around the world. For Semashko, without harmonious education contemporary efforts such as moves towards global nuclear disarmament initiated by the joint treaty of President Barack Obama of the US and President Dmitri Mendeyev of Russia would not go very far. Without harmonious ways of thinking and being facilitated by harmonious education, disarmament is not possible.

Harmony and Disharmony The above are important and inescapable challenges before us which call for deeper rethinking and transformative actions. In this global collaborative dialogue, in one place Semashko himself writes: “Harmony is inescapable

18  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing from disharmony” (ibid: 50).3 This is an important insight but little developed and attended with care by our co-travelers in the Global Harmony Association (GHA) whose euphoric enthusiasm for harmony is understandable but needs to be accompanied by critical thinking about the very terms of discourse such as harmony and disharmony. For Semashko and GHA, harmony is a positive value but he and all of us here do not always realize that both the discourse and social system of harmony can manifest and hide a condition of indignity, domination and annihilation of potential of self and society. In this context, Andre Beteille’s reflections on “Harmonic and Disharmonic Social Systems” are helpful (Beteille 1983). While harmony is a positive value in the discourse of harmonious civilization, in Beteille’s articulation of harmonic and disharmonic systems it is much more complex. For Beteille, A harmonic system is one in which there is consistency between the normative order and existential order: society is divided into groups which are placed high and low, and their divisions and ordering are considered as right, proper and desirable or as part of the natural scheme of things. A disharmonic system by contrast shows a lack of consistency between the existential and normative orders: the norm of equality is contradicted by the pervasive existence of inequality. (ibid: 54) As examples of harmonic social systems, Beteille tells us about caste society in ancient and medieval India and the feudal society in medieval Europe. In these societies and histories discourse and social organization of harmony manifested through hierarchy. For Beteille, “The hierarchical order of traditional Indian society was embodied in the institution of caste which has had a commanding position in it for two thousand years” (ibid: 57). Beteille continues: European civilization before modern times had also a hierarchical character, although the hierarchy was less complete, less elaborate and less stable in the Indian case. It manifested itself in various spheres: in the division of society into estates, in the laws governing their relations; in religious organization, values and beliefs; and in the conception of the world in art and literature. (ibid: 64) In both Europe and India in such conditions, “There was harmony between the external conditions of life and socially accepted ideals of life” (ibid: 75). Modernity with its discourse and pursuit of equality in place of hierarchy disrupted this harmony which, for Beteille, gave rise to disharmonic social systems. But the discourse and practice of equality did not and do not totally transform conditions of inequality and hierarchy. Beteille here draws our attention to the class structure of modern Western societies. For Beteille,

Social Healing  19 Despite the idealization of equality, the class structure continues to be an important part of Western social reality, some would say it’s most important part. […] Only this structure is no longer a structure of privileges and disabilities, but one of unequal life chances. (ibid: 76) But Beteille himself concludes his reflections with the challenge of “crisis of legitimation”: “there is a perpetual crisis of legitimation hanging over the class structure of every modern society” (ibid: 77). In fact, Beteille tells us that in drawing the distinction between harmonic and disharmonic social systems he wants to draw our attention to this crisis of legitimation “rather than to any state of bliss” (ibid). But the harmony between the “external conditions of life and socially accepted ideals of life” was fractured and challenged in pre-modern world in both discourses and practices. Not only was the so-called harmonic system was based upon disharmony but it was challenged by many movements and mobilizations in discourses and practices which later on gave birth to modernities in different parts of the world. While in ancient India social harmony in the name of caste hierarchy was challenged by Buddhism as well as Upanishadic movements, in medieval India this was challenged by Bhatki and Sufi movements. In medieval Europe hierarchy was also challenged by various socio-religious and socio-political movements. Would Beteille consider such discursive and mobilizational challenges as disharmonic moves in harmonic systems? And in modern conditions of lack of fit between ideals of equality and the pervasive fact of inequality that Beteille terms disharmonic there are also challenges to such conditions. There are various efforts to overcome the “crisis of class legitimation” in modern societies to which we must also add the crisis of gender, caste and generational legitimation which points to the legitimation crisis involving relationship towards our children and future generations which call for a new trigonometry of creativity of generational solidarity, generativity and generosity.4 At the same time, in these so-called disharmonic social systems, disharmony is not a priority value; rather it is order. Modern society and state, as much of modern social theory, is preoccupied with order, which many a time, like earlier discourse of hierarchy, uses the language of harmony but is based upon social relations of disharmony in the way it perpetuates existing logic of state, class, caste, gender domination and annihilation of soul. Thus construction of typologies of harmonic and disharmonic social systems is challenged with the above mentioned problems as the discourse of harmonious civilization is faced with the challenge of not taking disharmony seriously. No system is entirely harmonic or disharmonic as no civilization is entirely harmonious. Rather, it is helpful to talk of and explore harmonious streams in civilizations as harmonic and disharmonic dimensions in social systems. Beteille uses the term harmonic social system while Semashko deploys “harmonious civilization,” which can challenge us to understand the complex relationship between social systems and

20  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing civilizations and understand the systemic dimension of civilization and cilvilizational dimension of social systems. In Beteille’s construction of harmonic and disharmonic social system, there is a civilizational stream at work; but it is not the usual civilizational divide of East or West. Hierarchy as harmony in ancient, medieval India and Europe was possible with supporting civilizational values of hierarchy drawing resources from multiple sources such as religion, social structures and cosmologies. Similarly, hisharmonic social system draws inspiration from what Eisenstadt, the doyen of civilizational approach in contemporary sociology, might call civilization of modernity (Eisenstadt 2009). But the civilizational approach can be further developed in Beteille’s approach, especially the civilizational streams of peace and harmony which Semashko talks about. These civilizational streams flow in civilizations of hierarchy as well as flow in civilizations of modernity and contemporary moves to build a new civilizational space of harmony going beyond the limitations of hierarchy, modernity and the industrial mode. But while exploring civilizational streams of harmony in both harmonic and disharmonic social systems, it is not helpful to uncritically valorize either civilization or harmony; rather, we need to keep these as themes to explore and investigate as students of societies and histories. Civilization is a complex arrangement of values and power where multiple values of harmony and violence are at work blurring the distinction between civilization and barbarism.5 And as seekers of these values of harmony, we need to cultivate these in our lives, relationships, societies, cultures and the worlds taking note of their complex embodiment and here critical sociological and historical work can contribute to such a realization instead of a priori enthusiastic valorization or assertion of “value priority of harmony.” There is also a possible socio-systemic dimension to Semashko’s construction of harmonious civilization. This is in his project of Tetrasociology (four-dimensional sociology) (Semashko 2003). Semashko looks at society consisting of four spheres of resources—people, information, organization, things—leading to formation of social spheres, informational spheres, organizational spheres and technical spheres or in short, sociosphere, infosphere, organisphere, technospheres.6 People working in these spheres constitute corresponding sphere classes such as socioclass, infoclass, organiclass and technoclass. Semashko does not look at relationship among classes only through the angle of conflicts but through the perspective of potential for harmony. As Bernard Phillips, a co-walker in this dialogue, tells us: “He departs from a Marxist emphasis on an inevitable conflict between social classes, emphasizing instead the potential harmony among peoples throughout the world based upon shared values […]” (Phillips 2003: 186). Based upon this tetra-sociological approach, Semashko proposes a tetramathematics of social harmony in place of a simple mathematics of harmony, which can be just quantitative and lack an aesthetic dimension and cultivation.7 With the above brief elaborations of the work of Semashko, we can realize that harmony is a part of reality as well as a normative quest and

Social Healing  21 aspirational struggle in the lives of self, society and the world. Harmony exists in many ways in the midst of and along with disharmony of many kinds. Both harmony and disharmony are dynamic caused by both structural conditions such as social domination and conditions of self and soul such as readiness or lack of it for overcoming one’s exclusionary and annihilating ego-centeredness and embracing the other (Giri 2012). Many a time, a social discourse of harmony perpetuates domination and inequality and kills both self and society. Chitta Ranjan Das (1923–2011), a creative thinker and experimenter from India, calls this demonic harmony (see Das 2006b; also Giri 2011). Demonic harmony demands easy and uncontested conformity from members because society as well as individuals treat each other as demons. It does not believe that either of them has a conscience. This is close to conventional harmony in society where to live in harmony is to live within the lines and limits drawn by society. Building upon Sri Aurobindo, Das characterizes such harmony as “typal-conventional,” which is in need of post-conventional critique, interrogation and transformations, to put it in the words of Jurgen Habermas (1990). In this context, we need to strive to realize harmony of a different kind what may be called transformative harmony. Transformative harmony transforms the status quoist and domineering legitimation of harmony and realizes harmony as part of multi-dimensional sadhana and struggles for transformation of self, society and the world. For Das, this is a harmony arising out of creative critiques and movements: “harmony in movements and establishment of harmony in movements [..] Continuous climbing is the movement and is the mediating law of harmony” (Das 2006a: 153). Das calls this spiritual harmony.8

Transformative Harmony Transformative harmony is not based upon an absolute distinction between harmony and disharmony as it realizes that there is need for moves to disturb existing harmony of domination, which may be perceived as disharmonic. Transformative harmony emerges out of multi-dimensional sadhana, struggles and mobilizations where an existing harmony legitimizing domination is challenged in discourses and practices giving rise to new conditions of thought, social relations and self-awakening.9 Transformative harmony can build on the perspective of dynamic harmony presented by Robert Bellah. Robert Bellah tells us that while Japanese religion is concerned with harmony—harmony among persons and harmony with nature—this is not static harmony but dynamic. For Bellah, What has been said about the unity of man, nature and divinity should not be interpreted as a static identity. Rather it is a harmony in tension. The gratitude one owes to superordinate benevolent entities is not an easy obligation but may involve the instant sacrifice of one’s deepest interests or even of one’s life. Union with the ground of being is not

22  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing attained in a state of coma but very often as the result of some sudden shock in daily living. Something unexpected, some seeming disharmony, is more apt to reveal the Truth than any formal orderly teaching. Japanese art and aesthetic attitude toward nature are also concerned with the unexpected. (Bellah 1985: 62–63) Harmony here is not imprisoned in the logic status quo; rather, it is animated by a spirit to unsettle the existing status quo and invite the unexpected in a spirit of dynamic harmony. It is the work of “harmony in tension.” It resonates with the vision and practice of Greaet Harmony (Datong) in Confucianism, which is “not a static structure but a dynamic process” (Tu & Ikeda 2011: 60). Realization of dynamic harmony is also an animated aspiration in paths of other religious and spiritual traditions such as Kashmir Saivism.10 But in many discourses of harmony, such views of dynamic harmony and harmony in tension might be missing. For example, Confucianism speaks about harmony but many a time in history this has been used to legitimize domination rather than striving for a life of beauty, dignity and dialogue for all (Giri 2015). The contemporary Chinese government also talks about harmonious development as its official goal, but this challenges us to think about it critically and transformationally, and ask the question whether it is a vision and practice of transformative harmony. Such a critical interrogation is missing in Semashko and GHA’s celebration of the official declaration of harmony by the governments of China, Singapore and other countries. They enthusiastically, and perhaps a bit naively, take it as evidence of birth of a harmonious civilization.11

Transformative Harmony: Compassion and Confrontation Transformative harmony involves both compassion and confrontation. Compassion means to share in the suffering and joy of others. It is only with compassion—with sharing in joys and suffering of and with others— that we can realize transformative harmony. Confrontation means to challenge and transform parts of self and society which do not help us to blossom and realize our potential. It can be violent as well as non-violent. Human histories and societies have gone through both violent and non-violent confrontations; Gandhi and Martin Luther King being the inspiring exemplars of non-violent confrontation in our recent past. Their confrontation was not only non-violent but also compassionate as they sought to understand the oppressors and systems of oppression compassionately. Compassionate conformation is an epochal evolutionary challenge now. It is compassion that enables us to confront even our friends, not only enemies, giving rise to pathways of compassionate confrontation. Transformative harmony is accompanied by the work of compassionate confrontation.

Social Healing  23

Compassionate Confrontation Compassionate confrontation, as has already been suggested, involves both compassion and confrontation. Compassion here is not simply confined to feeling empathetic about others but taking steps to make life better. It is linked to what Thai political scientist Vira Somboon calls creating opportunities for all: “The practice of generosity in contemporary world may be entangled to include sharing of opportunities for all” (Somboon 2002). It is manifested in varieties of attempts in what is called Engaged Buddhism such as the Sarvodaya Sramadana movement in Sri Lanka where the ideal of compassion is said to be put into practices of self-development. Compassion is also essential for security—human as well as social (see Ogata & Sen 2003). But compassion does not mean letting oneself be run over by others, this is what is called idiotic compassion by Buddhist monk Prema Chodron (Tagesson 2009). In transformative harmony, we confront with compassion and out of compassion. It is also linked to what is called the loving quarrel or loving struggle for the transformation of self, other and the world. But we struggle not only for our existence, for the survival of the fittest, we struggle to excel, not just for individual achievement, but for mutual excellence and shared excellence (Das 2006a; Dallmayr 2001). Compassionate confrontation thus redefines our concept of struggle. It is then linked to such discourses like jihad and nirvana in transformative ways. It involves practical jihad where jihad means the practical struggle in daily life to lead a life free from temptation to degrade oneself or others (Engineer 2011). It also involves multi-dimensional initiatives in practical nirvana where the objective is to realize nirvana in our moments of existence and in our everyday life. We realize this sate by leading a life which is not governed by temptation which degrades ourselves and others but by noble paths in our everyday life. The Buddha has told us about the eightfold path consisting of right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right “samadhi” (meditative absorption or union). We continuously strive to overcome our temptation12 and lead a life of noble truths despite our many failures in our life. Such a struggle constitutes practical nirvana.

Striving for Transformative Harmony Sadhana and Struggles Transformative harmony is a multi-dimensional sadhana and struggle. Quest for harmony needs such a vision and practice of harmony. It is animated by the work of compassionate confrontation, which can address and transform the “crises of legitimation” in both so-called harmonic and disharmonic systems as well as in our enthusiastic articulations of a harmonious global civilization. Transformative harmony calls for new initiatives in and experiments

24  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing with self-development, embrace of the other, social transformations and planetary realizations where we strive to go beyond domination and dualism of many kinds and realize that we are all children of Mother Earth.

Notes 1 Johann Galtung speaks about structural violence and structural peace, but we need to address the challenge of both soul violence and structural violence and cultivate ensouled structural peace (see Galtung & Ikeda 2004). We get a glimpse of this when Galtung and MacQueen tell us that striving for peace is a “joint project, building on and building positive cognitions and emotions. A project is something spiritual, imbuing the parties with meaningful lives together” (2010: 17). 2 As we move ahead with this exploration, we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts: Tear off my bonds one by one, Wake me up and ring in my consciousness The note of freedom through aeons of time.

(Rabindranath Tagore)

My mother had a strongly Protestant streak in her character, and it may not be too fanciful to think that my father’s Roman Catholic temperament found some kind of resonance in my grandmother’s Hindu outlook on life. (Beteille 2012: 36) Without ideas in common, no common action would be possible and without common action, men might exist, but there could be no body social. (Alexis de Tocqueville) The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values I mean the qualities we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness—or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner values emerge. We all appreciate in others the inner qualities of kindness, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, and generosity, and in the same way we are all averse to displays of greed, malice, hatred and bigotry. So actually promoting the positive inner qualities of the human heart that arise from our disposition toward compassion, and learning to combat our more destructive propensities, will be appreciated by all. And the first beneficiaries of such strengthening will, no doubt, be ourselves. Our inner values are something ignore at our own peril, and many of the greatest problems we face in today’s world and the result of such neglect. (Dalai Lama 2011: x–xi) 3 Here we may also note the accompanying views of seekers such as Tagore who, as Susan Visvanathan writes, “took the example of war and peace as harmonic principles.” Tagore “argued that by war he did not mean killing, but the use of moral weapons. Without force, love was mere weakness and without love, force was brutal” (Visvanathan 2007: 76).

Social Healing  25 4 In order to understand the challenge of generational legitimation, we can consider the following reflections of philosopher of J.N. Mohanty on Edmund Husserl, the inspiring pioneer of phenomenology: Husserl reflects upon the idea of “generation”—that everyone has parents, the essential human property of ‘natality’ as motivating the idea of time stretching endlessly into the “past,” but that still leaves the question of time stretching endlessly into the future. But then is also the feature of ‘iterability’ which belongs to every experience. (Mohanty 2002: 94) In this generation and generativity come together. But to this we can also add generosity. It is the value of generosity that animates and nurtures generation and generativity. This generosity is one of sharing of stories and resources. Thus to understand life worlds, we need to explore this creative trigonometry of generation, generativity and generosity against the backdrop of lack of these as well in the vision and dynamics of life. Harmony builds upon this trigonometry of creativity of generation, generativity and generosity. I am grateful to my dear friend Dr. Marcus Bussey of University of Sunshine Coast, Australia, for pointing to me the need for paying attention to our children while considering the challenge of legitimation. 5 For Walter Benjamin, every document of civilization is a document of barbarism. Perhaps Semashko would find this statement true for his model of industrial civilization which he critiques. Sri Aurobindo also uses the language of barbarism in characterizing some of the value priorities in modernity: “Just as the physical barbarian makes the excellence of the body and physical force […] so the vitalistic or economic barbarian makes the satisfaction of wants and desires and the accumulation of possessions his standard and aim” (Sri Aurobindo 1962: 94). 6 Here my dear friend Dr. Marcus Bussey of University of Sunshine Coast, Australia, comments that it is unfortunate that Semashko does not include natural sphere—the ecosphere/biosphere in his scheme. 7 Semashko presents a new mathematics of harmony what he calls four-dimensional and tetra-mathematics of social harmony as a response to Alexey Stakhov’s, also a GHA member, mathematics of harmony who tells us: The notion of ‘mathematical harmony’ goes back to the Pythagoreans, who led all things to numbers and relations between them. In mathematical sense, the harmony is defined as equality or proportionality of parts with one another and with a part. (2009: 55) But Stakhov himself writes: ‘The Mathematics of Harmony’ is studying a harmony only from quantitative, numerical point of view. The most striking examples of mathematical understanding of harmony are the ‘golden section,’ which has a strict geometric and algebraic definition, and Fibonacci numbers, which are expressed with a simple recurrence relations F(n) = F(n − 1) + F(n − 2). (Stakhov 2009) Stakhov also discusses new developments in generalizations of the “golden section.” But Stakhov himself quotes from Seshakov’s book Harmony as an Aesthetic Category: “The mathematical understanding of harmony fixed primarily quantitative definiteness of harmony, but it does not reflect an aesthetic harmony, its expressiveness, connection with beauty.”

26  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Here we need to look into the limits and possibilities of mathematics of harmony and seek to broaden it to a new mathematics and spirituality of social harmonization. Here we can build upon the seminal work of Rudolf Steiner who has cultivated pathways of projective geometry as an important companion of self and social transformation. Keeping Steiner’s work on projective geometry and Goethe’s approach to Nature in mind, Davy tells us: Euclidean geometry deals with rigid forms; projective geometry with forms that are in continual metamorphosis, and with how forms change when they are looked at from various points of view. […] Now picture a circle (or the surface of a sphere). It can be formed in two ways—radially from its point- center as when a circle is drawn with a compass or peripherally by planes which, acting as tangents to its circumstance, would it from outside. […] The first activity is visible but the second activity has to be imagined. Perhaps the nearest approach to an illustration is to mould an invisible circle in the air, using one’s hands as the tangent planes. Start with a large circle and gradually draw inward the moulding movement, so that the circle becomes smaller. While doing this one must imagine that at the center of the circle one is conjuring up an expansive, out-growing potency, as though at the center there were a seed about to sprout. (Davy 1961: 130) 8 Marcus Bussey (personal communication) here shares a valuable insight that demonic harmony can also be looked at tamasik based upon the three gunas— tama, raja and sattwa. The challenge here is to transform tamasic harmony to one which is sattwic. Sattwic harmony can be spiritual harmony. 9 This way it resonates with the project of creating a creative society articulated by Manoranjan Mohanty (Mohanty, 1998) and good society nurtured by Robert Bellah (Bellah et al. 1991; also see Giri 2011). Semashko and our co-travelers in GHA can take note of the challenge of overcoming domination which is a continuous challenge even with our focus on the value priority of harmony. We can link realization of harmony with the project of overcoming domination and building a creative society. Here the following lines of Mohanty can be helpful:` Creative society embodies a methodology of viewing society in terms of liberation from multiple dominations—class, caste, race, ethnicity, gender and many more yet to be discovered sources of domination—and it points at processes already active or yet to be articulated, seeking to reconstitute society. […] The concept of creative society opposes any formation which suggests a terminal view of the history of society. […] the advanced industrial society may not be quite the example of a creative society that is fulfilling the people's democratic urges. It may actually be the picture of a system that manages instrumental creativity in a narrow framework. […] capitalism in modern history represents the taming of creativity and taming of reason. The creative society, therefore, is bound to break out of the capitalist process in pursuit of creativity and liberation. (Mohanty 1998: 67–68) 10 As Harish Deheja (2006: 422; emphasis added) writes about it: Kashmir Saivism postulates that Parama Shiva contains the entire universe, pulsating within it, just as the seed of the mighty nyagrodha potentially contains the entire tree. At the immanent level, the transcendent prakashavimarshamaya splits into prakasha and vimarsha, Shiva and Shakti, aham and idam, I and this, subject and object, held together in pulsating, dynamic harmony […] At every level there is differentiation into subject and object,

Social Healing  27 aham and idam, but the differentiation is based in, and unified by the non-duality of consciousness. 11 Semashko writes: “Harmony became a principle of national policy in Singapore, Malayasia, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, China and a number of other countries. It became a principle of regional policy in the European Union. […] It is the inevitable tendency of a modern epoch of harmony globalization” (Semashko et al. 2009: 27). 12 This continuous striving to overcome temptation is expressed in the following poem: Oh Buddha I, Buddha, touch your lotus heart Oh Tara, Tara of Heart Being a breast I salute your breast My love for breast gets transformed Desires become white flowers Insects become roses They kiss, Oh Buddha, you and me Tara and all beings (poem originally written by the author in Oriya and then translated by him)

Bibliography Bellah, Robert N. 1985 [1957]. Tokugawa Religion. Glencoe, NY: Free Press. Bellah, Robert N. et al. 1983. “Harmonic and Disharmonic Social Systems.” In idem, The Idea of Natural Inequality and other Essays, pp. 54–72. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1991. The Good Society. New York: Alfred A. Knof. Beteille, Andre. 2012. Sunlight on the Garden: A Story of Childhood & Youth. Delhi: Penguin. Dalai, Lama. 2011. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. Boston, MA: Houghton Miffin Harcourt. Dallmayr, Fred. 2001. Achieving Our World. Lanham, MD: Rownan & Littlefield. Dama, Lama. n.d. The Middle Way: Faith Grounded in Reason. Boston, MA: Wisdom. Das, Chittaranjan. 2006a. Bira Jodha Kari [Being a Heroic Warrior]. Bhubaneswar: Suhrut Gosthi. ———. 2006b. Sikhara Bibeka [The Conscience of Education]. Bhubaneswar: Pathika Prakashani. Davy, Charles. 1961. Towards a Third Culture. London: Faber and Faber. Deheja, Harsha V. 2006. “Kashmir Saivism: A Note.” In Abhinavagupta: Reconsiderations, (ed.) Makarand Paranjape, pp. 414–428. Delhi: Samvad India. Eisenstadt, S.N. 2009. “Modernity and the Reconstitution of the Political.” In The Modern Prince and the Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Sage Publications. Engineer, Ashgar Ali. 2011. A Living Faith: My Quest for Peace, Harmony and Social Change. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. Galtung, Johan & Daisaku Ikeda. 1996. Choose Peace. London: Pluto Press. Galtung, Johan & Graeme MacQueen. 2006 “Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods and the Calling of an Ontological Epistemology of Participation.” Dialectical Anthropology 30: 227–271. ———. 2010. Globbalizing God: Religion, Spirituality and Peace. Transcend University Press.

28  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing ———. 2011 “Chitta Ranjan Das: A Creative Thinker.” Social Change 41: 359–380. ———. 2012 “Sociology as a quest for a Good Society: A Conversation with Robert Bellah.” In idem, Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2013. Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London: Anthem Press. ———. 2015. “Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations.” In From Big Bang to Global Civilization: A Big History Anthology, (eds.) Barry Rodrigue et al. Delhi: Primus Books Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2023. The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice, Dialogues and Planetary Co-Realizations. London: Routledge. Habermas, Jurgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Mohanty, J.N. 2002. Explorations in Philosophy Vol.2: Western Philosophy. Delhi: Oxford U. Press. Mohanty, Manoranjan. 1998. “Towards a Creative Theory of Social Transformation.” In People's Rights: Social Movements and the State in the Third World, (eds.) Manoranjan Mohanty & Partha N. Mukherjje, pp. 9–26. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Ogata, Sadako & Amartya Sen. 2003. The Commission on Human Security Now. New York: United Nations. Phillips, Bernard. 2003. “Towards a New Age of Enlightenment: Tetrasociology and Web Approach.” In Semashko 2003: 185–190. Semashko, Leo et al. 2003. Tetrasociology: From Sociological Imagination Through Dialogue to Universal Values and Harmony. St. Petersburg: SPBSU Publications. ———. 2009. Harmonious Civilization. St. Petersburg: Global Harmony Association. Somboon, Vira. 2002. Ariyavinaya in the Age of Extreme Modernism. Bangkok: Komol Keemthong Foundation. Sri Aurobindo. 1962. Human Cycles. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Tagesson, Helena. 2009. “A Yearning of the Heart: Spirituality and Politics.” In The Modern Prince and the Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri, pp. 342–364. Delhi: Sage. Tu, Weiming & Daisaku Ikeda. 2011. New Horizons of Eastern Humanism: Buddhism, Confucianism and the Quest for Global Peace. London: I.B. Tauris. Visvanathan, Susan. 2007. Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism: Essays in Dialogue. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.

3

Life Worlds and Living Words*

Introduction and Invitation Life is an invitation and adventure for us, but its meaningful realization in our life and seeking is a perpetual challenge. Life is nurtured by both deeds and words which give birth to ourselves and our worlds. But a great challenge before us is that both of our life worlds and living words have become dead-like having the will to live and sing. This creates conditions of illness in self and society which calls for healing works and meditations. We live under the colonization of the life world as Jurgen Habermas (1981) would tell us but Habermas himself still looks at the life world primarily in terms of rationality. But life world is not only a field of rationality it is also a field of intuition and striving for the spiritual in the midst of many rational and infra-rational forces at work. Against this theoretical backdrop and the general background of crisis of self, culture and the world I take up the challenge of life worlds again and link it to the challenge of living words. I discuss the concept of life world discussed by Edmund Husserl, the inspiring pioneer of phenomenological vocation and its creative elaboration by two thoughtful philosophers of our times, J.N. Mohanty and Margaret Chatterjee.1

The Calling of Life World: Husserl and Beyond Husserl started using the concept of life world towards the late 1920s. As J.N. Mohanty tells us, It is generally agreed upon that about the year 1925, more definitely about 1929, there came about a remarkable and profound change in Husserl’s thought which may be indicated, though not adequately characterized, by the fact that he began to make more and more use of the term life-world. (Mohanty 1974: 46) * This builds on my presentation at the international seminar on “Postphenomenology,” Department of Philosophy, Sri Sankara University, Kalady in Jan 2012. I am grateful to Dr. Abbey Koshy, the organizer of the seminar, for his kind invitation and hospitality and to participants for their comments, questions and reflections.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-4

30  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Mohanty further tells us: An appendix to Ideas 11 (dating from the early 20s) identifies the “natural world” with the Life World (LW). This possibly is one of the earliest passages in which the concept of LW is found to replace the earlier “natural world.” The basic relation of life world is said to be not causality, but motivation: the subject can be motivated only through which it experiences as possessing “value” [..] Things are not mere bodies but are “valuable.” In the LW, the other is directly perceived. The mode of givenness is “subjective.” (ibid: 46) For Husserl, life word is the world of self-evidence and original intuition. Its mode is subjective relative, which he contrasts with that of objective science. In his Crisis of European Sciences, Husserl tells us about the crisis of natural science, which is only confined to its own view of objectivity. For Husserl, science must go back to the self-evidence of the life world. Husserl tells us: When science poses and answers questions, these are from the start, and hence from then on, questions resting on the ground of, and addressed to, the elements of pre-given world in which science and every other life-praxis is engaged [..] an explicit elucidation of the objective validity and the whole task of science requires that we first enquire back into the pregiven world. It is pre-given to us all quite naturally, as persons within the horizon of our fellow men, i.e. in every actual connection with others, as “the” world common to us all. Thus it is [..] the constant ground of validity, an ever available source of what is taken for granted, to which we, whether as practical men or as scientists, lay claim as a matter of course. (2002: 163) For Hussserl, “The knowledge of the objective-scientific world is ‘grounded’ in the self-evidence of the life-world” (ibid: 169). The life world is the source of “ever available intuited data” (2002: 164). Relating the objective standpoint of science to the subjective-relative of the life world Husserl again tells us: While the natural scientist is thus interested in the objective and is involved in his activity, the subjective-relative is on the other hand still functioning for him, not as something irrelevant that must be passed through but as that which ultimately grounds the theoretical-logical ontic validity for all objective verification, i.e., as the source of self-evidence, the source of verification […] thus that which actually exists in the life world, as something valid, is a promise.

Life Worlds and Living Words  31 The promise of the life world, for Husserl, among others, is that gives us a horizon of depth and challenges us to go beyond a mere plane of state of life and being. What appears as a plane which natural science takes for granted is “nevertheless only a plane within an infinitely richer dimension of depth” (2002, 161–162).2 Life world has other worlds in and beyond it (cf. Berger 1978).3 Husserl gives primacy to intuition in his presentation and realization of life world. In fact, Mohanty talks about the work and dynamics of living intuitions. Life world is also a field of what Sri Aurobindo calls spiritual intuition. Husserl’s call for self-evidence and experience in the life world can be further deepened by having a dialogue with Sri Aurobindo who talks about the challenge of realization and not just speculative thinking. The spiritual dimension of the life world is suggested in Husserl and now it can be further realizing by walking together with Sri Aurobindo. For Husserl, “the life world was always there for mankind before science, then just as it continues its manner of being in the epoch of science” (p. 164). Engagement with the life world calls for a new vocation, “a complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion, which then, however, over and above this, bears within itself the significance of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind as such” (p. 173). The life world is the world of the subjective-relative but it is not closed within itself. It contains plurality and needs to relate to the other meaningfully. Margaret Chatterjee tells us that “it is within life worlds that diverse traditions are embedded” (2005: 2). Chatterjee urges us to realize that “to draw attention to life worlds pulls us back to take stock of where we stand” (ibid: 3). For Husserl, the I is intimately connected with we. Furthermore, for Chatterjee, “the preparatory work of laying bare the structure of the life world would lead us to an analysis of what he called universal constitution” (ibid: 5). “Husserl’s viewpoint is connected with what one would describe as a horizontal regional ontology, rather than […] a hierarchical one” (ibid: 4). Chatterjee tells us that “Husserl shifts from taking the ego as primordial to a world constitution which he says ‘extends before me and after, before us and after us in a community of generations’” (ibid: 6). Thus in Husserl, in the life worlds, transcendental subjectivity is related to historicity.4 J.N. Mohanty, a creative interpreter of Husserl and himself a deep philosopher, tells us that though the life world is animated by the work of what Husserl called subjective-relative, it is not relativistic in a closed sense. There is a reality and possibility in the life world to overcome pull towards closure and work towards creative pluralization. For Mohanty (2002: 91), “At first it appears as if the life world […] provided exactly that which we need in order to overcome relativism […]” For Mohanty, Husserl falls back on “idealization as the process by which a common homogeneous, nonrelative world is constituted.” For Mohanty, “relativity of the life world is to be overcome (by making what is strange, foreign, unfamiliar gradually familiar. The later process requires ‘understanding the other’” (ibid: 92).

32  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Along with idealization, Mohanty tells us that here we need to take part in what he calls “apperceptive attribution” and “analogizing apperception”: “The gap between the far and the near is closed by analogizing apperception of the far, ‘as if’ it were near (for example, apperception of the earth as a star and of star as earth” (ibid: 92). Life world has thus both singular and plural dimension and cultivating pluralism in the life world calls for a new logic. Here both Chatterjee and Mohanty offer multi-valued logic as important for modes of thinking and interaction in our life worlds. Mohanty here relates Husserlian methodology of overlapping contents to both Gandhian mode of non-violence in behavior and non-injury in thinking as well as to the multi-valued logic of Anekantavada (many paths to and perspectives to Truth) in Jainism.5 In her dialogue with life world, Chatterjee brings the concept of dharma (right conduct) and lokasangraha (gathering of people). Life world is a field of reality and realization of dharma and lokasangraha. We also need to realize that life world is also the field of strivings towards purusarthas such as dharma (right conduct), artha (wealth), kama (desire) and moksha (salvation) and their attendant complexities and contradictions. Life world is also the field of work of rasas in life (cf. Sundara Rajan 1992).6 Life world is also full of a lot of suffering, neglect and violence which calls for listening to the pangs of crying consciousness. For Chatterjee, “life worlds contain much that needs to be overcome; and history’s meditation includes warfare, colonialism and numerous forms of exploitation” (ibid: 6). Husserl tells us that phenomenological engagement with life world calls for personal transformation and similarly Chatterjee tells us how consciousness that identifies with the suffering with the life worlds “cries out for transformation” (2005: 16). Chatterjee here presents us the situation in the lifeworld of a Delhi neighborhood: On this side of the wall children have milk to drink at least once a day. On the other side, one pawa of milk has to stretch for glasses of tea for five adults plus children. A six year old girl told me this. Near the milk shop there are three mithai shops. This is where the bulk of the milk goes. Consciousness cries out for transformation, a consciousness imbued with conscience. Such a consciousness would grow laterally, horizontally, turning the search light of attention on the endless anomalies around us, the endless injustices and lack of any sense of priorities.

Life Worlds and the Challenge of Crying Consciousness: Colonization of the Life World and Beyond If Husserl discusses the calling of the life world against the backdrop of the scientific orientation to life and its need to be ever connected with the intuitive self-evidence of the life world, Habermas discusses the significance of the life world against the backdrop of the limits of the system world and its threat of colonization. Today our life world is colonized by the system

Life Worlds and Living Words  33 worlds of state and market. This colonization also raises the problem of crying consciousness. But colonization is neither our fate or destiny and we can always transform this condition of colonization to one of a post-colonial condition of creative autonomy, intersubjectivity and cosmopolitanism. Here we can take help from Gandhi. In his anti-colonial and post-colonial struggle Gandhi used both Swaraj and Satyagraha. We can bring these modes of critique, creativity and struggle. In our discussion with the challenge of the life world from Husserl, we have seen how participants and observers of the life world need to go beyond their relativistic closure and embrace the plural invitation of the other. Gandhian Swaraj and Satyagraha help us in realizing post-relativisitic plane of being and truth. Gandhian Swaraj also helps us to have practical autonomy such as doing our work ourselves and together and not slavishly dependent upon state and market. For instance, one example of going beyond the colonization of the life world by the forces of the market is to cook our own food and bring our lunch pack and not solely depend upon the market. Life worlds are plural and at present our life worlds have multiple modes of thinking and social organization. Habermas still looks at the life world mainly in rationalist terms and he calls for rationalization of the life world. But we need to be open to the emotional and spiritual dimension of the life world about which Habemas has become more sensitive in his recent works. The spirituality of the life world is practical. Life world is animated by practical spirituality and spiritual pragmatics. Life world also at present is not only modernistic but also contains streams from tradition, postmodernity and what Dussel (2017) calls transmodernity. In transmodern there is a creative memory work and it is not just after modernity but there is a vital creative link between tradition and transmodern. So we need to understand how life worlds today are constituted of circles of autonomy and interpenetration of traditional, modern, postmodern and transmodern. Today the predominant rationalistic closure of the life world in certain spheres need to be completed by a process of creative pluralization. Though our life worlds are plural at present we live under a predominantly singular life world which is rationalistic, capitalistic and bureaucratic. For Habermas, our life worlds are now colonized by system worlds of state and market. In this context, a crucial challenge before us is to go beyond this colonization of the life world. But how do we do it? Here we can learn from the anti-colonial and post-colonial struggles especially Gandhi’s? In going beyond the colonization of the life world, we can learn from Gandhi’s swaraj and satyagraha. Here we can walk with both Gandhi and Habermas.

Living Words The dissipation of springs of life in our life world corresponds to the stagnation of our words and becoming dead instead of alive. The revitalization of life worlds calls for creativity in living words. This calls for rethinking our concept of language. In our thinking about language, we are predominantly

34  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing influenced by Wittgenstein. We look at language as a form of life, but in this we are sometimes more caught up in form rather than struggles and sadhana with life.7 In our modern world, the predominant form of life is nation-state and this form of life has killed and continues to kill plural languages of life and people.8 So language is not only a form of life it is also a movement, an aspiration, a prayer, a work for living and transformation. 9 Here we can walk with Heidegger (2004). For Heidegger, language is a way-making movement. For Heidegger, “What unfolds essentially in language is saying as pointing. Its showing does not culminate in a system of signs. Rather, all signs arise from a showing in whose realm and for whose purposes they can be signs” (Heidegger 2004: 410). Furthermore, “What is peculiar to language thus conceals itself on the way, the way by which the saying lets those who listen to it get to the language” (ibid: 413). For Heidegger, “the way to language is the […] way-making movement of propriation and usage” where “propriation propriates human beings for itself, […] propriation is thus the saying’s way-making movement toward language” (419, 418): What looks more like a tangle than a weft loosens when viewed in terms of the way-making movement. It resolves into the liberating notion that the way-making movement exhibits when propriated in saying. It unbinds the saying for speech. It holds open the way for speech, the way on which speaking as hearing, hearing the saying, registers what in each is case is to be said, elevating what it receives to the resounding word. The saying’s way-making movement to language is the unbinding bond, the bond that binds by propriating.10 (ibid: 419) What Heidegger speaks about language as saying as part of “way-making movement” is suggested in the tradition of people’s enlightenment in Europe namely the folk high school movement and people’s enlightenment patiently cultivated by Grundtvig and Kristen Kold (see Das 2007b). Both of them challenged us to realize language as “living words”—words that could enliven and energize us. This is also akin to Sri Aurobindo’s suggestion to create poems that would work like mantra. Sri Aurobindo also builds upon the Tantric tradition and talks about pashyanti vak (seeing word).

Living Words, Pragmatics of Communication and Spiritual Pragmatics In our conception of and engagement with language, we talk about pragmatics of communication. But this pragmatics also has a spiritual dimension. There is a pragmatic dimension to Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo, but this pragmatics is not an ordinary pragmatics, it has a spiritual dimension, it is spiritual pragmatics.11 Beginning with Wittgenstein, there is a spiritual struggle in Wittgenstein’s concept of form of life. Wittgenstein also writes “an entire mythology is stored in our language”

Life Worlds and Living Words  35 (quoted in Das 2011: 240). Veena Das builds upon this Wittgenstenian insight to tell us how the mythological aspect of language can help us cross borders and live in our everyday life with mutuality in the midst of differences of many kinds such as the religious. In her study of a neighborhood in Delhi in which Hindus and Muslims live, Das writes in a spirit of Wittgenstenian spiritual pragmatics: I suggest that the […] terms at hand such as bhagwan, and khuda which travel easily in the speech of Hindus and Muslims are deployed in both formal and informal contexts, make it possible to imagine the practices of the other and to get on with the daily commerce of living together. Further the thought that Wittgenstein speaks of a whole mythology of being buried in our language should be understood to include the history of concepts, words, and gestures not only as rooted within a tradition but also in the manner in which they travel and become nomadic. For instance, Iqbal Mian prides himself as one who uses aql, or reasoning, and thus tells me often that it is his obligation as a Muslim to understand other religions. According to one hadith (a saying of the Prophet) he has heard, a Muslim must tell others about the glories of Islam, but he cannot do without understanding what others hold dear in their own religion.12 (Das 2011: 248) There is a dimension of spiritual pragmatics in both Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo talks about a nobler pragmatism. In order to cultivate and nurture living words, we need to bring the dimension of spiritual pragmatics to language. As there is a spiritual pragmatics in our living words, there is a dimension of practical spirituality in our life worlds. Husserl, Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo urge us to realize this.

Notes 1 As we explore these issues, we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts: The life-world is a realm of original self-evidences. That which is self-evidently given is, in perception, experienced as “the thing itself,” in immediate presence, or, in memory, remembered as the thing itself; and every other manner of intuition is presentification of the thing itself. Every mediate cognition belonging in this sphere—broadly speaking, every manner of induction—has the sense of an induction of something intuitable, something perceivable as the thing itself or rememberable as having been perceived, etc. All conceivable verification leads back to these modes of self-evidence because the “thing itself” (in the particular mode) lies in these intuitions themselves as that which is actually, intersubjectively experienceable and verifiable and is not a substruction of thoughts. Whereas such a substruction, insofar as it makes claim to truth, can have actual truth only by being related back to such self-evidence. (Husserl 2002: 167)

36  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing It is only if there is a greater consciousness beyond Mind and that consciousness is accessible to us that we can know and enter into ultimate Reality. Intellectual speculation, logical reasoning as to whether there is or is not such a greater consciousness cannot carry us very far. What we need is a way to get the experience of it, to reach it, enter into it, live in it. […] In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts this Supreme authority is held invalid. Secondly, each philosophy has been armed with a practical way of reaching to the supreme state of consciousness. (Sri Aurobindo 1933: 18–19) an as yet unchartered territory awaits a philosopher willing to return to the lifeworld with a diagnostic eye and address a host of questions that arise in our situation. The most important ones, I believe, are in the field of ethics, social and political philosophy […] How much are we responsible for? Chatterjee (2005: 16) 2 Husserl here refers to Helmholz’ notion of plane beings and writes: This schema for a possible clarification of the problem of objective science reminds us of Helmholz’s well-known image of the plane-beings, who have no idea of the dimension of depth, in which their plane-world is a mere projection. Everything of which men—the scientist and all others—can become conscious in their natural world-life (experiencing, knowing, practically planning, acting) as a field of external objects—as ends, means, processes of action, and final results related to these objects—and on the other hand, also, in self-reflection, as the spiritual life which functions thereby— all this remains on the “plane,” which is, though unnoticed, nevertheless only a plane within an infinitely richer dimension of depth. But this image is universally valid whether it concerns a life which is merely practical in the usual sense of a theoretical life. 3 Peter Berger (1978) discusses this in his creative simultaneous engagement with Alfred Schutz and Robert Musil. 4 What Mohanty (2002: 94) writes below deserves our careful attention: Husserl reflects upon the idea of “generation”—that everyone has parents, the essential human property of “natality” as motivating the idea of time stretching endlessly into the “past,” but that still leaves the question of time stretching endlessly into the future. But then is also the feature of “iterability” which belongs to every experience. 5 As J.N. Mohanty (2000: 24) tells us: The ethic of non-injury applied to philosophical thinking requires that one does not reject outright the other point of view without first recognizing the element of truth in it; it is based on the belief that every point of view is partly true, partly false, and partly undecidable. A simple two-valued logic requiring that a proposition must either be true or false is thereby rejected, and what the Jaina philosopher proposes is a multi-valued logic. To this multi-valued logic, I add the Husserlian idea of overlapping contents. The different perspectives on a thing are not mutually exclusive, but

Life Worlds and Living Words  37 share some contents with each other. The different “worlds” have shared contents, contrary to the total relativism. If you represent them by circles, they are intersecting circles, not incommensurable, [and it is this model of] intersecting circles which can get us out of relativism on the one hand and absolutism on the other. 6 Here what Sundara Rajan (1992: 210) writes deserves our careful attention: Men do not pursue pleasure or wealth or righteousness or emancipation in the same way; different manners of aspiration and effort and achievement of value; it is these different styles of pursuit of value that may provide us with a phenomenology of the quality of life. Sundara Rajan uses theory of rasa to “give us a framework for the description of different forms of life, each, as it were, having its unique flavor, symbolized by a rasa” Rajan (1992: 210). For Sundara Rajan, There is a correlation between basic human dispositions and aesthetic modes. The aesthetic modes are called rasa and their human bases are called sthayi bhavas. […] Classical Indian aesthetic theory recognizes eight sthayi bhavas and correspondingly eight rasa, later on, ninth rasa was added, shanta. The eight rasas and their sthayi bhavas are: Sthayi Bhavas

Rasas

1.

Rati (love)

Sringara (erotic)

2.

Hasa (laughter)

Hasya (comic)

3.

Shoka (sorrow)

Karuna (pity)

4.

Krodha (anger)

Raudra (fury)

5.

Utsaha (enthusiasm)

Veera (heroic)

6.

Bhaya (fear)

Bhayanaka (terror)

7.

Jugupsa (disgust)

Bhibatsa (revulsion)

8.

Vismaya (astonishment)

Addhbuta (wonder) (ibid: 211)

Sundara Rajan urges us to “apply the theory of rasa as a kind of interpretive framework for the theory of purusarthas, the result of such an application would be the formation of different types of pursuit of each one of the four values” (ibid: 211). Furthermore, “Given that there are four purusarthas and eight rasas, the possible number of life forms would be 32; (in fact, it would be much more, if we take the idea of the presence of all het four in each of form of life into account)” (ibid: 212). Sundara Rajan concentrates only on the four modes Sringara (the romantic), hasya (the ludicrous), veera (the heroic) and bhibatsa (the revolting) and tries to show how each one of the four purusarthas, kama, artha, dharma and even moksa—can be sought for in these modes. Here Sunder Rajan’s cross-fertilization of rasa theory and purusartha theory as for example in his following description is helpful: Kama in the mode of Sringara rasa This is the life of natural spontaneous uncontrived felicity. Life is lived out in natural grace and each thing is savoured effortlessly and there is an idyllic feeling of the constancy and stability of enjoyment.

38  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Kama in the theory of hasya rasa

[Here kama is pursued in a comic way, people train themselves to relax and enjoy] Kama in the mode of veera rasa These are the epicurean heroes, men and women who have battled against odds and inspite of much anguish, trial and tribulation, have not given up the dignity and value of happiness […] Kama in the mode of bhibhatsa rasa This is the life of lechery and drooling sensuality […] It is the pursuit of pleasure in its perverse and revolting forms and modes. Such men do not merely provoke anger in us and much less pity, but a sense of disgust. (ibid: 213) 7 Veena Das building upon Stanley Cavell shares some insightful reflections here: When anthropologists have evoked the idea of forms of life, it has often been to suggest the importance of thick description, local knowledge or what it is to learn a rule. For Cavell [Stanley Cavell, the noted contemporary philosopher] such conventional views of the idea of form of life eclipse the spiritual struggle of his [Wittgenstein’s] investigations. What Cavell finds wanting in this conventional view of forms of life is that it not only obscures the mutual absorption of the natural and the social but also emphasizes form at the expense of life […] the vertical sense of the form of life suggests the limit of what or who is recognized as human within a social form and provides the conditions of the use of criteria as applied to others. Thus the criteria of pain do not apply to that which does not exhibit signs of being a form of life—we do not ask whether a tape recorder that can be tuned on to play a shriek is feeling the pain. The distinction between the horizontal and vertical axes of forms of life takes us at least to the point at which we can appreciate not only the security provided by belonging to a community with shared agreements but also the dangers that human beings pose to each other. These dangers relate to not only disputation over forms but also what constitutes life. The blurring between what is human and what is not human sheds into blurring over what is life and what is not life. (Das 2007a: 15–16; emphasis added) 8 Wittgenstein himself left Cambridge to fight on behalf of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the first world war. 9 This is suggested in the following poem by the author: Oh friend You said We need a new language A new sadhana of words and tapasya of worlds This is not a language of victory Nor is one of self-advertisement and aggrandizement Neither is it a language of doomsday This is a language of walking our ways together Walking our dreams, sadhana and struggle

Life Worlds and Living Words  39 II In our co-habitations of affection Of compassion and confrontation Words become mantras Of a new life, a new responsibility Of wiping tears from our eyes and Again taking each other into our laps Renewing our strength from embrace We create new paths by walking We create new language Our language is the language of walking Stars of mantra leap from our lap (Giri 2019: 81) But language as movement with and for transformation also faces the reality of deformation of language which is also an integral part of story of language as a form of life especially in the era of nation-state and contemporary speedy neo-liberal capitalism. The following by the author hints at this challenge: Deformation of Language Devaluation of Life Words turned into its opposite Democracy becomes tyranny Love Hatred How do we recover Retrieve its semantic potential? When language has lost its metaphor What to speak of it as a Mantra? 2 Recovery of language Is it only a semantic act? Or also a work of creativity? Walking and meditating together Memory work and womb work Nurturing our pregnant future In our palms Stars of Infinity Dancing with Our Bare Feet (Giri 2019: 81) 10 In this context what Luchte (2009) writes below deserves our careful attention and further realization especially the Heideggerian notion of ecstatic temporality as the womb of birth of a new language and society: […] this is then what Heidegger means by world, a thrown projection of binding commitments which has it root in ecstatic temporality and the events of world projection. We can see traces of this root most readily in Heidegger’s indication of existential spatiality […] Yet his existentials are not merely arbitrary as they themselves arose amidst the projection of world, in its meaning and its morphology. In this way, various conventional names Heidegger chose such as Sorge or Schulde would be seen to contain the historicity of such names as they themselves were originally

40  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing projected amid an anticipatory resolution, of an individuation, or better a singularization—a creative rule-breaking, transgression of the rule of the conventional (the prevailing restricted economy) in an expression of innovation in the grammar of existence. 11 For Luchte, the pragmatists “focus upon the convergence between Wittgenstein and Heidegger in terms of their pragmatic criteria of meaning as use. This stream explicitly opposes the early mysticism of Wittgenstein, and the later mysticism of Heidegger […]” (Luchte 2009). But we find “the shared appreciation by Wittgenstein and Heidegger of the mystical, of the wonder in face of existence, expressed in such questions as ‘why is there something, rather than nothing?.’” But the mystical and the pragmatic are not opposed to each other. There is also a tradition of practical mysticism. For example, Sri Ramarkrishna embodied practical mysticism (cf. Rolland). Ramakrishna’s practical mysticism embodied both deep silence as well as creative communication. It was also passionately concerned with human suffering, with the challenge of what we have already referred to as crying consciousness. Ramakrishna wept seeing human poverty and suffering and tried to do his best to ameliorate it. 12 Das shares with us such moral strivings faced by Muslims in their everyday lives: […] how do I cultivate morality as a dimension of everyday life, when certain forms of knowing (e.g. that Hindus are characterized as Kafirs, as nonbelievers) somehow contradict my feelings that there are forms of being together that I can come to experience as part of my ordinary life that I wish to acknowledge but for which I should not be required to give justifications. (Das 2011: 233) Das further writes: But there is a dimension in everyday life that cannot be derived from a reflection on well-honed concepts but combines different fragments from the past, improvisation on concepts that simply “at hand,” in Wittgenstein’s terms. This is neither a story of secularism nor of syncretism but rather one in which the heterogeneity of everyday life allows Hindus and Muslims to receive the claims of each other that have arisen by the sheer fact of proximity, face to face relations, and the privileging of aesthetic immediacy of emotions even over the prohibitions emanating from various authoritative discourses of Hinduism and Islam. (ibid: 248)

Bibliography Berger, Peter. 1978. “The Problem of Multiple Realities: Alfred Schutz and Robert Musil,” Phenomenology and Sociology, ed., Thomas Luckman, New York: Penguin, pp. 343–367. Heidegger, Martin. 2004. “The Way to Language.” In idem, Basic Writings. London: Routledge. Das, Veena. 2007a. Life and Words: Violence and Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press. Das, Veena. 2011. “Moral and Spiritual Striving in the Everyday: To Be a Muslim in Contemporary India.” In Ethical Life in South Asia, (eds.), Anand Pandian & Daud Ali. Delhi: Oxford U. Press.

Life Worlds and Living Words  41 Das, Chitta Ranjan. 2007b. Kristen Kold: A Revolutionary in Education and a Pioneer of Danish Folk Highs School Movement. Translated by Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Shipra Publications. Dussel, E. 2017. Transmodernity and interculturality: An interpretation from the perspective of philosophy of liberation. In Giri, A. K. (ed.), Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony. Delhi: Primus Books. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2019. “A New Language.” In Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays. Delhi: Studera. Habermas, Jurgen. 1981. A Theory of Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1970 [1962]. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 2002. “The Way into Phenomenological Transcendental Philosophy By Inquiring Back From the Pre-Given Life-World,” The Phenomenological Reader, pp. 151–174. London: Routledge. Luchte, James. 2009. “Under the Aspect of Time: Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the Place of Nothing.” Philosophy Today 53 (1). Mohanty, J.N. 1974. “Life-World” and “A Priori” in Husserl’s Later Thought.” In Analetica Husserliana, Anna-Teresa Tymie Mieka (ed.), pp. 46–65. D. Riedel Publishing Co. Mohanty, J.N. 2000. Self and Other: Philosophical Essays. Delhi: Oxford U. Press. Mohanty, J.N. 2002. Explorations in Philosophy: Western Philosophy. Vol. 2, (ed.), Bina Gupta. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sri Aurobindo. 1933. The Riddles of the World. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Sundara Rajan, R. 1992. “Nature and Life World: Towards a Hermeneutics of Nature.” In Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy, D.P. Chattopadhyaya, Lester C. Embree & Jitendranath Mohanty (eds.), Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.

4 Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society Social Healing, Posthumanism and New Horizons of Theory and Practice and the Calling of Planetary Conversations

Introduction and Invitation Social healing calls for new discourses and practices of humanism, pragmatism and practice. Humanism has been in crisis for a long time and for some time now there has been talk about the challenge of the posthuman transformation of humanity and society. This challenges us in many ways, two of which deserve our special attention. One is the technological manifestation of the posthuman in terms of a new type of human being, which is emerging out of the interaction between humans and technology, especially biotechnology. The other is a spiritual reading of the posthuman, which resonates with perspectives such as Nietzche’s ubermensch (overman) and Sri Aurobindo’s superman or supramental being. In this chapter, building upon these two streams of thought and practice, I look at posthuman transformation at the conjunction of practice and consciousness, which can be facilitated creatively by technological transformations. I explore spiritual pragmatism as a pathway of transformation of the posthuman, i.e. how spiritual pragmatism can help us in creative transformation of the posthuman. Spiritual pragmatism is a creative and transformative interplay of the pragmatic and the spiritual, which is of immense importance in our current moment of transition and transformation. It can also contribute to healing pathological consequences of technological determination of the posthuman. Pragmatism has been an important philosophical and socio-cultural movement in the US, which has influenced our view of language, social reality and the human condition. American pragmatism as cultivated by C.S. Pierce, William James and John Dewey has a spiritual dimension, which is not usually acknowledged and explored enough in conventional mainstream discourses of pragmatism.1 Similarly spiritual seekers and actors from many traditions including India include a pragmatic dimension. In this context, Sri Aurobindo (1970) in his Life Divine talks about a nobler pragmatism “guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge.” In his important reflections on pragmatism, Richard Hartz tells us that Sri Aurobindo had read William James and had a deep appreciation of his work and significance. In Hartz’s words: DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-5

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  43 A few years after the death of William James, we find Sri Aurobindo noting “that the gulf between East and West, India and Europe is much less profound and unbridgeable now than it was thirty or forty years ago.” He commented particularly on the rise in the West of “new philosophies … not indeed directly spiritual, vitalistic rather and pragmatic, but yet by their greater subjectivity already nearer to Indian ways of thinking.” Occasionally he mentioned names in this connection. He referred, especially, to “the thought of Nietzsche, of Bergson and of James.” Speaking of the interest of Bergson, James and others in intuition and mysticism, he emphasized that the writers in question could by no means be dismissed as “incompetent dupes of the imagination,” but were “psychologists of the first rank and the most original contemporary thinkers in the philosophic field.” Sri Aurobindo clearly had a favourable impression of William James, but we have almost no clues to what he might have read of his philosophical writings. He recalled in the 1930s that “a long time ago” he had read a book on psychology by James (perhaps The Principles of Psychology, unless he meant the abridged version, Psychology: Briefer Course). He had found it “not at all an ordinary book in its kind,” a rare compliment from the Indian Yogi to a Western psychologist. Otherwise on the few occasions when he mentioned James by name it was in connection with his philosophy. These passing references provide little specific information. But they do suggest that he regarded James as a key figure in a trend of modern thought that was important for the future. (Hartz 2016: 11) In his The Human Cycle Sri Aurobindo (1962) also talks about spiritual vitalism. Sri Aurobindo also urges us to look at language as mantra and cultivate the mantra dimension of language (Sri Aurobindo 1997). Harold Coward who has written on Sri Aurobindo’s approach to language as mantra tells us: The term mantra signifies a “crossing over” through thought (root man “to think”, and tr (to cross over) from the Transcendent to the human levels. As mantras, the Vedas are primarily manifestations of the descent of Spirit into the world, and, through the repeated chanting of them, an ascent from the physical to the spiritual can be accomplished. As pure Sanskrit language, the mantras are conjunctions of certain powerful seed syllables which endure a certain rhythm or vibration in the psychosomatic structure of consciousness and arouse a corresponding psychic state. This is Sri Auobindo’s theory as to how language evolves from certain seed-sounds into root words from which come an immense progeny. Not only does language evolve, but also seed-sound mantras represent concentration points of transcendental energy from which evolutionary spiritual growth can take place. (Coward 1989: 145)

44  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Sri Aurobindo strove to realize such a meaning of language as mantra in his sadhana of poetry. In Raghunath Ghosh’s words: Sri Auorobindo’s poetry is generally called “overhead poetry” is the poetry of the overmind. The overmind in terms of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, is nearest to the identity of being and becoming, the supermind, the sovereign truth—consciousness. From this plane of expression and vision, word and rhythm become at once intense and immense to the utmost. The overhead utterance is marked by a value and a form in which all qualities of the subordinate planes fuse in something diversely ultimate, and variously transfigured by an inmost oneness with the cosmic harmony and with the supracosmic mystery. Language in such an atmosphere becomes mantra. Sri Aurobindo’s poetry has shown how and when mantra is possible. (Ghosh 2008: 93) Sri Aurobindo developed his approach to language by walking and meditating with the dance of words in the Vedas and with his own sadhana of poetry. But this view of language is not confined only to these realms. Mantra constitutes a part of all language as a reality or potential and it can bring forth a different and a new world and word. This urges us to go beyond a simplistic view of language as a reflection of society. This resonates with Martin Heidegger’s conception of language as a way-making movement. What Heidegger writes in his essay, “Way to Language” deserves our careful attention: “What unfolds essentially in language is saying as pointing. Its showing does not culminate in a system of signs. Rather, all signs arise from a showing in whose realm and for whose purposes they can be signs” (Heidegger 2004: 410). Furthermore, “What is peculiar to language thus conceals itself on the way, the way by which the saying lets those who listen to it get to the language” (ibid: 413). For Heidegger, “the way to language is the […] way-making movement of propriation and usage” where “propriation propriates human beings for itself, […] propriation is thus the saying’s way-making movement toward language” (419, 418): What looks more like a tangle than a weft loosens when viewed in terms of the way-making movement. It resolves into the liberating notion that the way-making movement exhibits when propriated in saying. It unbinds the saying for speech. It holds open the way for speech, the way on which speaking as hearing, hearing the saying, registers what in each is case is to be said, elevating what it receives to the resounding word. The saying’s way-making movement to language is the unbinding bond, the bond that binds by propriating. (ibid: 419) What Heidegger speaks about language as saying as part of “way-making movement” is suggested in tradition of people’s enlightenment in Europe

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  45 namely the folk high school movement and people’s enlightenment patiently cultivated by Grundtvig and Kristen Kold. Both of them challenged us to realize language as “living words”—words that could enliven and energize us. This is also akin to Sri Aurobindo’s suggestion to create poems which would work like mantra. In Sri Aurobindo and Heidegger we find streams of spiritual pragmatism in their meditations on language, self, being and reality, which can also inspire us to explore the spiritual struggle in Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. Veena Das building upon Stanley Cavell shares some insightful reflections here: When anthropologists have evoked the idea of forms of life, it has often been to suggest the importance of thick description, local knowledge or what it is to learn a rule. For Cavell [Stanley Cavell, the noted contemporary philosopher] such conventional views of the idea of form of life eclipse the spiritual struggle of his [Wittgenstein’s] investigations. What Cavell finds wanting in this conventional view of forms of life is that it not only obscures the mutual absorption of the natural and the social but also emphasizes form at the expense of life […] the vertical sense of the form of life suggests the limit of what or who is recognized as human within a social form and provides the conditions of the use of criteria as applied to others. Thus the criteria of pain do not apply to that which does not exhibit signs of being a form of life—we do not ask whether a tape recorder that can be tuned on to play a shriek is feeling the pain. The distinction between the horizontal and vertical axes of forms of life takes us at least to the point at which we can appreciate not only the security provided by belonging to a community with shared agreements but also the dangers that human beings pose to each other. These dangers relate to not only disputation over forms but also what constitutes life. The blurring between what is human and what is not human sheds into blurring over what is life and what is not life. (Das 2007: 15–16; emphasis added) This spiritual pragmatic approach to language can help us to find a new language of inter-relationship and border-crossing between the human, the non-human and the posthuman. With these many-sided dialogues, we can cultivate spiritual pragmatism as a multi-dimensional vision and path of self and social transformation. We can cultivate paths of spiritual pragmatism as new ways of looking at self, society, language and reality. In spiritual pragmatism new languages and practices are born of multidimensional sadhana (strivings), and struggles touching both the social and spiritual bases of life and society. Spiritual pragmatism involves interpenetration of the spiritual and the material, immanence and transcendence, capability and transcendence. Spiritual pragmatism involves a transformation of anthropocentrism and a creative mutual interpenetration of the human, nature and the divine. In this

46  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing chapter, I discuss spiritual pragmatism as a possible pathway of embodiment and realization for the posthuman, including presenting a new ethics and aesthetics of self-development, inclusion of the other, and planetary realizations (cf. Giri 2013). For example, vitalism is an important aspect of posthuman meditations as it appears in the work of Bruno Latour who builds on Nietzsche. The vitalist streams in posthumanist meditations find a resonance in Sri Aurobindo’s (1962) attention to the vital, but this includes the need for its transfiguration through art and spirituality. The posthuman strives to go beyond the dualism of human and non-human; in my chapter I argue how spiritual pragmatism can help us in overcoming these boundaries. The conventional representation of the posthuman mainly takes a technological turn; it does not explore the challenge of the divinization of the human. In my chapter, I explore all the dimensions of the posthuman including humanization of the divine and divinization of the human. I explore the challenges posed by the conjunction of neo-liberal economic revolution, biotechnological revolution and communication revolution, which leads towards a technological and commercial fixation of the human. I explore how spiritual pragmatism can suggest alternative pathways of humanization beyond technological and commercial determination (cf. Vandenberg 2014).

Crisis of Humanism, the Limits of Socio-Centrism and the Challenge of Posthuman Transformations Our quest for posthuman transformation emerges out of the crisis of humanism, especially European humanism and its critique. The critique of humanism in the West urges us to be cautious in our valorization of the human taking stock of the violence that humanism has generated. Gasper et al. (2008) talk about the need for a new “political humanism” in the context of Europe, but this now needs to be based upon a foundational realization of the critique of humanism and the need for learning to be human in a “posthuman” way. Escobar writes in almost the last sentence of his much discussed book, Encountering Development: “For what awaits both the First and the Third World, perhaps finally transcending our difference, is the possibility of learning to be human in post-humanist (post-man and postmodern) landscapes” (Escobar 1995: 226). But what is the meaning of posthuman here? Should Foucault’s critique of humanism be taken at face value or should we explore the link between Foucault’s critique and the humanistic strivings of savants such as Erasmus especially as Erasmus urges us to move beyond a power-model of the human condition and cultivate sraddha, reverence for life. It is Foucault himself who has written: “for Nietzsche, the death of God signifies the end of metaphysics, but God is not replaced by man and the space remains empty” (Foucault quoted in Carrette 1999: 85). Being human in the modern West is intimately linked to a power-model of the human condition and a new humanism that is simultaneously social, cultural, political and spiritual has

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  47 to overcome this primacy of the political and nurture new modes of conviviality such as sraddha or reverence for life. We are also invited to a critical genealogical work, for example, reflecting upon the images of the human in modern Western moral, social and spiritual traditions. As a case in point here we can consider the weltanaschauung of Martin Luther and Erasmus. Luther has a much more power-driven view of the human where critique of religious authority surrenders to the authority of royalty to the point of killing those who oppose this new alignment of the church and the state; but Erasmus looks at the human as embodiment of reverence(sraddha), a view that has close kinship with the perspective of the human coming from the Bhagavad Gita where humans are looked at not only as characterized by hunger for power but also hunger for sraddha, love or reverence (cf. Giri 2008; Wilfred 2008). The critique of humanism urges us to be engaged in a foundational critique of the telos of power as also a nation-state centered view of the human and the social. Our conception of humanity in modernity was confined to a nation-state bounded conception of self and citizenship; the current processes of manifold globalization and cosmopolitanization challenge us to overcome such a bounded conception of humanity and realize a global humanity facilitated by post-national transformations and the rise of varieties of transnational public spheres and communities of feeling (cf. Ezzat 2005). Our existent conception of humanity, including much of the anti-humanist declarations of certain postmodern thinkers, is anthropocentric as well as Eurocentric; but the called-for new humanism which is “posthuman”— both politically and spiritually2—challenges us to overcome anthropocentrism, transform the relationship between the human and non-human through acknowledgment of shared suffering and realize what Martha Nussbaum (2006) calls “cross-species dignity” and Donna Haraway (2006) “companion species.” In this context, what Derrida writes referring to Bentham’s question vis-à-vis animals “Can they suffer?” deserves our careful consideration: the question is not to know whether the animal can think, reason or speak, etc., something we still pretend to be asking ourselves (from Aristotle to Descartes, from Descartes, especially, to Heidegger, Levinas and Lacan) […] but rather to know whether animals can suffer. (Derrida 2008: 27) Our conception of humanity is also confronted with a foundational rethinking of the human not only as an agent of immanence but also as a seeker and an embodiment of transcendence—in fact of an immanent transcendence—but such a realization challenges us to go beyond a Eurocentric Enlightenment, which arbitrarily cuts off the human and the social world from its integrally linked relationships with transcendence.3 It must be noted here that many contemporary thinkers such as Habermas (2002) and Nussbaum (1990) are comfortable with some conception of internal

48  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing transcendence, but they would like to confine themselves only to the shores of immanence. Consider here what Nussabaum writes in the chapter on “Transcending Humanity” in her Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Nussbaum writes: there is a great deal of room for transcendence of our ordinary humanity … transcendence, we might say, of an internal and human sort […] There is so much to do in this area of human transcending (which I also imagine as a transcending by descent, delving more deeply into oneself and one’s humanity, and becoming deeper and more spacious as a result) that if one really pursued that aim well and fully I suspect that there would be little time left to look about for any other sort. (Nussbaum 1990: 379) The posthuman transformations build upon not only a critique of humanism but also a critique of what may be called sociocentrism and the accompanying state-centrism in modernity. In contemporary societies, especially Euro-American ones, there is a recognition of the limits of the social in many spheres of life such as education, love and ethics (cf. Beck 2000; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 1995). The ideal of society is now being foundationally rethought as providing a space for self-development of individuals. Even in sociological explorations there is now much more of a nuanced understanding of the place of the human and social in the context of the non-human and nature, which inspires us to look at cultures and societies beyond a conventional understanding of “forms of life.” Conventionally building upon Wittgenstein we look at both the human and the social as forms of life but this invites us to reflect further on the meaning of life and not only feel secured with the formality and typology of forms. Such a rethinking of the human and the social calls for deep reflection and our earlier critique of sociocentrism gets a new height and depth in John Clammer’s pathways of a “deep sociology” resonating with pathways of deep ecology (2009). Clammer invites us to explore pathways of a deep sociology going beyond continued “epistemological Eurocentrism” (2009: 333) and taking the philosophical dimensions of globalization seriously. Clammer also urges us to realize that “an oversocialized and overculturalized notion of self cannot provide the foundation for an adequate sociology of the real world, as the sociology of the body demonstrates” (ibid). Clammer urges us to transform the existential shallowness, culturalism and anthropocentrism of conventional sociology with the possibility of a rich and transforming engagement with the issues and approaches to life that artists, spiritual seekers, poets and deep ecologists have long pioneered and the absence of which is both the source of so much of aridity of sociology and the crises that global society and environment now confront. (ibid: 344)

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  49 This resonates with Melucci’s inspiring project of playing self and planetary society, which helps us in rethinking the human and the social. Writes Alberto Melucci in his The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society: We live on a planet that has become a global society, a society totally interconnected by its capacity of intervening on its environment and on social life itself, and yet still dependent on its natural home, the planet Earth. This twofold relation to the Earth, as the global field for social action and physical boundary, defines the “planetary society2 in which personal life takes place. (Melucci 1996: 2) But for Melucci, planetary realizations are not unitary and simplistic processes: Melucci speaks of complexity, difference and uncertainty, which demand from “individuals the capacity to change form (the literal meaning of metamorphosis)” (ibid: 2–3). This is in tune with de Chardin’s stress on “complexification of consciousness” as an important part of the evolutionary unfoldment of “noosphere” a “growing new organ of consciousness”—“an interlinked system of consciousness and information, a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication” (Judith 1996: 1). Melucci speaks of the inner planet “consisting of the biological, emotional and cognitive structures that underlies the experience and relations of us all” (ibid: 56). Melucci also challenges us: An ecology of economic, political, and technological choices cannot operate independently of an ecology of the everyday, of the words and gestures with which we call into being or annihilate the inner planet. To pay attention and respect to details; to be aware that we are part of a whole and we need to connect the different elements into this whole, to value the path and not only the end. (ibid: 69; emphases added) Contemporary rethinking of the human and the social also can creatively build upon savants of an earlier generation such as Sri Aurobindo and Rudolf Steiner who provide a foundational critique of both humanism and socio-centrism in their works such as Life Divine (Aurobindo 1970), The Human Cycle (Sri Aurobindo 1962) and Renewal of Social Organism (Steiner 1985) and urge us to realize that human beings are not only rational and human, they also have a spiritual dimension to their very existence (Cf. Sri Aurobindo 1962, 1970; Steiner 1985). In such critique of humanism as well as socio-centrism, spiritual pragmatism can help us.

Spiritual Pragmatism as Mystical Pragmatism Our current discourse of humanism is posited in a dualism between science or rationality and mysticism. The creative cultivation of the post-human

50  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing calls for us to go beyond this. Charles Sanders Peirce was the father of pragmatism and he went beyond the dualism between science and mysticism and was deeply engaged with mysticism. He also walked in the paths of other religious and spiritual traditions such as Buddhism. As Paul Hague writes: Most significantly, Peirce’s architectonic studies led him to a life-changing mystical experience in 1892, writing in a letter, “I have never before been mystical, but now I am.” This experience led Peirce to see that there are no divisions in Ultimate Reality, which he saw as an Immortal Continuum, sometimes called “Field” in science today. To denote this seamless, borderless worldview, he coined the word synechism “continuity”, from Greek synekhēs “holding together, continuous, contiguous”. This is of central importance in Mystical Pragmatics. As Peirce wrote in an unpublished article titled “Immortality in the Light of Synechism” following his profound mystical experience, “though synechism is not religion, but, on the contrary, is a purely scientific philosophy, yet should it become generally accepted, as I confidently anticipate, it may play a part in the ‘onement of religion and science”. (Hague 2014: 54) As is well known, Pierce developed triadic semiotics of firstness, secondness and thirdness. He also developed a theory of abduction,4 which “rests on a philosophy of anticipation which includes a theory of divine on an evolutionary basis” (Brier 2016). Here Soren Brier helps us understand that “In Pierce’s philosophy, God as thirdness is agape or evolutionary love, which makes the universe grow evolutionarily by taking habits.” Pierce helps us go beyond the dualism between science and religion and his “philosophy of pragmaticist triadic semiotic transcends the usual boundaries between philosophy, religion and science in modernity after Kant and Hegel” (ibid). Furthermore, Peirce’s mature semiotic philosophy is especially focused on the connection between faith, love and logic as well as knowledge, truth, signification and ethics as means to obtain the Summum Bonum. One could call it the best of all possible worlds. It is a magnificent philosophy encompassing both science and religion. (ibid) What is to be noted is that Pierce’s semiotics embodied deep cross-cultural and trans-religious border-crossing and co-realizations. Pierce strove to realize not only some of the inner truths in Christianity but also in Buddhism. Brier tells us how Pierce “saw Buddhism and Christianity melting together within a transcendental religious view of empathy and love as the foundation of reality.” In the context of the current war among religions and the still lack of interest in dialogue on the part of Euro-American philosophers

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  51 and sociologists with other religious and cultural traditions, Pierce’s semiotics of dialogues and pantheistic mysticism suggest us creative pathways to future.

Spiritual Pragmatism: Self, Culture and Society as Fields of Practical Mysticism and Practical Transcendence Mystical pragmatism in Pierce encourages us to explore and realize streams of mystical pragmatism in other related movements of thoughts and practice as well. For Luchte, the pragmatists “focus upon the convergence between Wittgenstein and Heidegger in terms of their pragmatic criteria of meaning as use. This stream explicitly opposes the early mysticism of Wittgenstein, and the later mysticism of Heidegger” (Luchte 2009). But we find “the shared appreciation by Wittgenstein and Heidegger of the mystical, of the wonder in face of existence, expressed in such questions as ‘why is there something, rather than nothing?.” But the mystical and the pragmatic are not opposed to each other. There are also traditions of practical mysticism. For example, we see this in the works of both Meister Eckhart and Sri Ramarkrishna. Eckhart was not just mystical but he also preached in the languages of people and gave support to the emancipatory movements of women in the church and society, that is known as the Beguines (cf. Mieth 2009). Sri Ramakrishna from India also embodied practical mysticism (cf. Rolland 1954). Ramakrishna’s practical mysticism embodied both deep silence as well as creative communication. It was also passionately concerned with human suffering when consciousness does not merely witness but also weeps. Saint Arakshita Das from Odisha, India, tells us in one of his writings that Parama, the Supreme, weeps with the suffering of humanity (cf. Das 2004). The weeping of the Supreme urges us to acknowledge that human beings also weep at the suffering of self and other. As Derrida urges us to realize in the following passage, our eyes are meant not only to observe but to weep: And Nietzsche wept a lot. We all know about the episode in Turin, for example, where his compassion for a horse led him to take his head into his hands, sobbing. As for Confessions […] it is the book of tears. At each step, on each page, Augustine describes his experience of tears, those that inundate him. […] Now if tears come to the eyes, if they well up in them, and if they can veil sight, perhaps they reveal, in the very course of this experience, in this coursing of water, an essence of the eye. […] the eye understood in the anthropo-theological space of sacred allegory. Deep down, deep down inside, the eye would be destined not to see but to weep.5 Ramakrishna wept seeing human poverty and suffering and tried to do his best to ameliorate it. Ramakrishna’s practical mysticism was also border-crossing and dialogical as Ramakrishna strove to go beyond a single

52  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing religious identity and lived as a seeker in many religious paths such as Christianity and Islam.6 Ramakrishna’s practical mysticism was thus deeply dialogical embodying what is now called “dialogic dialogue” (cf. Cousins 1992; Panikkar 2010). This had a deep influence on Swami Vivekananda who in his own way strove to embody the dialogical quest of his master as well his concern with human suffering (cf. Giri 2014b). Swami Vivekananda “was formed by the mystical experience of his teacher” (Schouten 2012: 82). For him, The best commentary on the life of [Jesus] is his own life. “The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” That is what Christ says as the only way to salvation; he lays down no other way. He writes about Jesus: He had no other occupation in life, no other thought except that one, that he was a spirit. […] And not only so, but he, with his marvelous vision, had found that every man and woman, whether Jew or Gentile, whether rich or poor, whether saint or sinner, was the embodiment of the same undying spirit as himself. Therefore, the one work his whole life showed was to call upon them to realize their own spiritual nature. […] You are all Sons of God, immortal Spirit. “Know,” he declared, 2the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” “I and my Father are one.” Dare you stand up and say, not only that “I am the Son of God,” but I shall also find in my heart of hearts that I and my Father are one? (Swami Vivekananda 2011: 21) With a creative dialogue with Meister Eckhart, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Habermas and Dewey, we can cultivate paths of spiritual pragmatism as a new way of looking at self, society, language and reality. Spiritual pragmatism involves practical discourse as suggested in the critical theory and practice of Jurgen Habermas and practical spirituality as suggested in the works of Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo as well as in many transformative spiritual movements in societies and histories. Spiritual pragmatism thus contributes to strivings for realization of non-duality as an ongoing sadhana and struggle in life, culture and society. It must be noted that there is an important legacy of overcoming dualism in American pragmatism as well which we notice in the work of social philosophers such as George Herbert Mead who urge us to go beyond the dualism of subject and object (cf. Giri 2012). Spiritual pragmatism in its more social manifestation of critique, creativity, struggle and emancipation resonates also with a tradition of American pragmatism which Cornell West (1999) calls “prophetic pragmatism,” inviting us to the struggle and martyrdom of savants such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement.

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  53 Spiritual pragmatism helps us to rethink self. In modernity, self is primarily conceived of and sought to be realized as a “techno-practitioner” (cf Faubion 1995). Rarely do we realize that self also has a transcendental dimension which is at work in the domains of our practice (cf. Giri 2006). A field of practice is not only a field of routine reproduction of existing habits, habitus and structures, doxa (cf. Bourdieu 1971) but also a field of creativity, critique, transformation and transcendence. This is not only a field of immanent transcendence but also a field of transcendental immanence (cf. Strydom 2009). Spiritual pragmatism invites us to rethink and realize self as a field of practical transcendence, immanent transcendence and transcendental immanence. Practice and pragmatics help us to be part of a flow of the practical and transcendental holding infinity in our palms and walking with the Infinite with our feet. Spiritual pragmatism thus calls us to realize the work of flow and border-crossing at work in practice as the poetic dimension of practice, or the poetics of practice (cf. Giri 2014a). The poetry of practice also challenges us to realize the performative dimension of practice and invites us to weave new words of life, regeneration and resurrection which then become a force for weaving new worlds (cf. Giri 2015). Here what Marcus Bussey (2014) writes deserves our careful consideration: The poet’s eye helps us approach the subject of spiritual pragmatics via the symmetry of head and heart. This chapter turns to poetic wisdom to explore spiritual pragmatic possibilities before our culture today. The aesthetic dimension of poetic expression is synthetic in nature and allows us to reflect on spiritual pragmatism and any attempt at synthesis. Such synthesis is understood poetically as a movement towards wholeness in a forever fractured world. The performative here is linked to our continued movement of unfoldment of potential, self as well as other, and is part of manifold processes of self-realization and co-realization.7 It is not only activistic but also meditative. The reconceptualization of self in spiritual pragmatism has implication for rethinking and transforming our conception, organization and functioning of culture and society. The socio-cultural field is not only a field of functional and mechanical practice, it is a space of life and regeneration; it also has a subjective and transcendental dimension.8 It is not only a field of action but also a circle and flow of meditation.

Spiritual Pragmatism: A New Eros and Transformation of Democracy Breath is the foundation of life and it is also the site of the work of the Spirit. But in Western tradition with the ideology of cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I exist), rarely do we realize that “I breathe therefore I exist.” Spirituality challenges us to be aware of the flow of our breath and to cultivate it further. Spiritual pragmatism is a way of working with our breath

54  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing individually as well as in manifold webs of togetherness. It helps and challenges us to share our breath in a way of mutual assurance and trust. Sharing our breath is the beginning of a spiritual community as Irigaray writes: “This proto-ethical plane of shared breath is the ethical germ of a spiritual community, i.e, a community of embodied individuals, caring for each other” (Irigaray 2002: 136). Spiritual pragmatism creates a new eros of sharing of our breath and also cross-fertilization of our dreams and practices. Here what Irigaray (2002: 115–117) writes deserves our careful consideration: Carnal sharing becomes then a spiritual path, a poetic and also a mystical path […] Love takes place in the opening to self that is the place of welcoming the transcendence of the other. […] The path of such an accomplishment of the flesh does not correspond to a solipsistic dream […] nor to a fin-de-siecle utopia, but to a new stage to be realized by humanity. […] Nature is then no longer subdued but it is adapted, in its rhythms and necessities, to the path of its becoming, of its growth. Caressing loses the sense of capturing, bewitching, appropriating […] The caress becomes a means of growing together toward a human maturity that is not confused with an intellectual competence, with the possession of property […] nor with the domination of the world. The new erotics of spiritual pragmatism also helps us to relate to ethics and aesthetics in a new way. It seeks to renew both ethics and aesthetics with spiritual pragmatism as well as to create flows and border-crossing between them. Spiritual pragmatism crates the emergent genre of aesthetic ethics which helps transform our existing conception of practice. It also strives to realize responsibility as a manifold process of self-cultivation and care of the other. Spiritual pragmatism cultivates responsibility as a pragmatics of holding our hands, walking and looking up to the face of each other with courage and compassion. It strives to cultivate responsibility as a manifold verb of activistic and meditative co-realization of the ethical and the aesthetic as a quest for realization of Truth, Goodness and Bliss (Satchidananda) in self, culture, society and the world. Spiritual pragmatism also helps us to rethink and transform democracy. Pragmatism has had a deep impact in rethinking democracy, for example, as evident in the vision and work of seekers such as John Dewey. Dewey’s pragmatism not only challenged the technocratic reduction of democracy to expert control but also brought the challenge of the cultivation of art to democracy and the public sphere. Dewey inspired the formation of what can be called an “aesthetic ecology of public intelligence” (cf. Reid and Taylor 2010). Dewey’s pragmatism not only inspired philosophers such as Jurgen Habermas but also political pioneers such as B.R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar built upon Dewey for whom the conception of democracy and liberty are based upon “communication” (Skof 2011: 126). But Ambedkar also added

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  55 to Dewey’s pragmatism the vision and practice of dhamma, righteous conduct from the Buddhist path (cf. Ambedkar 2011). For Skokf, “Ambedkar’s ‘pragmatist’ vision of democracy rests on his views about dharma, religion and social ethics with related reconstruction of social (and ‘political’) habits” (ibid: 128). For Ambedkar, following Dewey’s argumentation, use of force is allowed, while the use of violence is not permitted. As Ambedkar argues: “Buddha was against violence. But he was also in favor of justice and where justice required he permitted the use of force” (quoted in Skof 2011: 131).

Walking with Spiritual Pragmatism as a Way of a Continued Adventure of Consciousness and Posthuman Transformations The border-crossing between pragmatism and spirituality thus brings us to these inter-linked themes and challenges of life, self, culture, society, history, future, and the world. It challenges us to go beyond one-sided absolutism of closure and violence of either the practical or transcendental, material or spiritual; and write poems, paint rainbows and dance across dualisms of many kinds taking inspiration not only from the dance of Shiva and Parvati, Purusha and Prakriti, but also the dance of Christ on the cross and the dervish in the streets and deserts. It challenges us to realize the violence of one-sided absolutism and find our paths of weaving threads of connections and integration amidst the continued violence of closure and fragmentation. Spiritual pragmatic visions and pathways of the posthuman contributes to healing pathological dimensions of self, society, science and technology. Violence and non-violence are eternal and epochal challenges of life and today in the midst of growing violence, spiritual pragmatism challenges us to continue to strive for paths of non-violence in thought, action, organization of life and imagination. Here Buddha, Gandhi, Habermas and Sri Aurobindo dance with Irigaray, Dewey, Pierce and Ambedkar and challenge us for a new pragmatics, politics and poetics of life in self, culture, society and the world. As our posthuman future also faces the danger of a one-sided technological determinism and singularity which can inflict unimaginable violence on the humanness of humanity and as human beings continue to inflict violence on the non-human, cultivation of a non-violent relation and non-injury in our modes of thinking is an epochal challenge before us. Spiritual pragmatism can contribute to this epochal transformation and a different realization of the posthuman. As Habermas challenges us, which has an echo of Gandhi: Only when philosophy discovers in the dialectical course of history the trace of violence that deform repeated attempts at dialogue and recurrently closes off the path to undistorted communication does it further the process whose suspension it otherwise legitimates: mankind’s evolution towards autonomy and responsibility. (Habermas 1971: 315)

56  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing

Notes 1 Here we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts: American pragmatism is characterized by its understanding of human action as a creative action. The understanding of creativity contained in pragmatism is specific in the sense that pragmatism focuses on the fact that creativity is always embedded in a situation; i.e. on human being’s “situated freedom.” It is precisely this interconnection of creativity and situation that has given rise to the repeated charge that pragmatists merely process a theory that is a philosophy of adaptation to given circumstances. This accusation fails to perceive the antideterministic thrust of the pragmatists. […] It is perhaps best to trace the importance of situated creativity for pragmatism in the works of all four major representatives of pragmatism. The decisive innovation in Charles Peirce’s logic of science—namely, the idea of abduction—is aimed precisely at generating new hypotheses and pioneering their role in scientific progress. Peirce’s speculative philosophy of nature is built around the question of under which conditions the New can arise in nature. His philosophy also endeavours to find a niche for artistic creativity in an age characterized by both the dominance of science and Darwinism, a way of thinking that brought the Romantic philosophy of nature to an end. Of William James it can be concluded from his biography that for him a conflict between a belief in free will with religious justification and naturalistic determination was not simply an intellectual problem, but rather one that actually paralyzed all his mental powers. Accordingly, his attempt to find a way out of this dilemma by regarding the ability to choose as itself a function crucial to the survival of human organism in its environment not only signaled the beginning of functionalist psychology, but was also a step which unleashed his lifelong productivity. John Dewey’s work was colored by his theory of art, or, rather his theory on the aesthetic dimension of all human experience. Far from being geared exclusively to solving problems of instrumental action, the unifying element running through Dewey’s work, with the numerous areas it covers, takes the shape of an inquiry into the meaningfulness to be experienced in action itself. As for George Herbert Mead, his famous theory of the emergence of the self is primarily directed against the assumption of substantive self; his concept of the human individual and the individual’s actions is radically ‘constructive.’ In all four cases the pragmatists’ ideas are not devoted to the creative generation of innovation as such, but to the creative solution of problems. Despite all the pathos associated with creativity, the pragmatists endeavoured to link it to the dimension of everyday experience and everyday action. (Joas 1993: 4–5) We are not exhausted by the social and cultural worlds we inhabit and build. They are finite. We, in comparison to them, are not. We can see, think, feel, build, and connect in more ways than they can allow. That is why we are required to rebel against them: to advance our interests and ideals as we now understand them, but also to become ourselves, affirming the polarity that constitutes the law-breaking law of our being. (Unger 2007: 40) At the horizon line of the near future toward which we gaze, pragmatically assessing the utility of truth, there lies a more distant future that we can never really forget. Rorty alludes to this with the term solidarity, which I propose to read directly in the sense of charity, and not just as the means of achieving

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  57 consensus but as an end in itself. Christian dogma teaches that Deus Caritas est, charity is God himself. From a Hegelian viewpoint, we may take the horizon to be that absolute spirit which never allows itself to be entirely set aside but becomes the final horizon of history that legitimates all our near-term choices. (Vattimo 2011: 139–140) 2 In this context, Dallmayr (2007) talks about an “Other Humanism” beyond a “high tide of old-style humanism” and embodying a “tentative resurgence of subdued, self-critical and non-Eurocentric (that is, non-hegemonic) view of human.” 3 Here we must note that such a cutting off, as Des Gasper comments, was true of Descartes and his followers rather than Wordsworth and Goethe (personal communication). 4 As Brier tells us, “Abduction is a concept Peirce invented as a supplement to induction and deduction. It is an advanced form of guessing at possible regularities that can explain surprising phenomena.” 5 The following poem of the author also presents the work of tears in our lives for generation of commonalty and solidarity: Tear, Soul and Solidarity Let me cry My tear is For soul and solidarity My tear washes away my ego Into an ocean of aspiration An aspiration for mutualization Gathering together for a soulful sociality Evolution of a new humanity Co-breathing and co-birthing a new divinity (Giri 2019: 150) 6 Jan Peter Schouten tells us that once Ramakrishna saw a picture of Madonna in one Jadu Mallick’s country house and he was immediately moved by it. After this he also realized the presence of Jesus. Ramakrishna was also deeply moved by the Biblical story of Peter walking on water: “A picture of this scene was later hung on the wall of his quarters in the temple; it was the only image that was borrowed from the Christian tradition” (Schouten 2012: 87). 7 Here we can link to the creative work of Lois Holzman and her work on social therapy, which builds upon Vygotsky’s concept of “zones of proximal development.” In Holzman’s work on social therapy where participants speak and work with each other, being together constitutes a pragmatic field which also is a field of realization of each other’s potential. See (Holzman 2008). 8 In Ken Wilber’s following quadrant model of the integral, it seems as if society does not have a subjective dimension. Interior

Exterior

Individual

Interior/Individual Upper Left (UL) Quadrant I Intentional – “I”

Exterior/Individual Upper Right (UR) Quadrant II Behavioral – “it”

Collective

Interior/Collective Lower Left (LL) Quadrant III Cultural – “We”

Exterior/Collective Lower Right (LR) Quadrant IV Social – “it”

58  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing

Bibliography Ambedkar, B.R. 1962 Human Cycle. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ———. 1970. Life Divine. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ———. 1972. Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram ———. 2011. The Buddha and His Dhamma, Critical Edition, (ed.) Aakash Singh Rathore & Ajay Verma. Delhi: Oxford U. Press. Bartolf, Christian. 2014. “Tolstoy and Practical Spirituality.” Gandhi Marg 36 (2&3): 431–438. Beck, Ulrich. 2000. The Brave New World of Work, Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2002. “The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies”, Theory, Culture and Society 19 (1–2): 17–44. Beck, Ulrich & Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim. 1995. The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity Press Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. The Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge U. Press. Brier, Soren. 2016. “C.S. Pierce’s Semiotic Conception of Science and Religion.” In Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Primus Books. Bussey, Marcus. 2014. “Towards Spiritual Pragmatics: Reflections from the Graveyards of Culture.” Special Issue on Pragmatism and Spirituality 3D: IBA Journal of Management and Leadership, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Carrette, Jeremy R. 1999. Foucault and Religion: Spiritual Corporeality and Political Spirituality. London: Routledge. Cavell, Stanley. 1981. Pursuits of Happiness: The Holywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clammer, John. 2009. “Deep Sociology.” Special issue on “Beyond Sociology”, Asian Journal of Social Sciences 37 (3): 332–345. Cousins, Ewert H. 1992. Christ of the 21st Century. New York: Continuum. Coward, Harold. 1989. “Language in Sri Aurobindo.” Journal of South Asian Literature 24 (1): 141–153. Dallmayr, F. 2007. “Liberal Democracy and its Critics: Some Voices from East and West.” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research XXIV (4): 1–24. Das, Chitta Ranjan. 2004. Mahimandalara Gita, Sri Arakhita Das, EKa Adhyana [The Gita of the World, A Study of Sri Arakhita Das]. Bhubaneswar: Odisha Sahitya Akademi. Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ———. 2011. “Moral and Spiritual Striving in the Everyday: To Be a Muslim in Contemporary India.” In Ethical Life in South Asia, (eds.) Anand Pandian & Daud Ali. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 2008. The Animal That Therefore I Am. New York: Fordham University Press. Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ezzat, Hebba. 2005. “Beyond Methodological Modernism: Towards a Multicultural Paradigm Shift in the Social Sciences.” In Global Civil Society 2004/2005, Helmut Anhelier et al. (eds.), London: Sage. Faubion, James D. (ed.) 1995. Rethinking the Subject: An Anthology of Contemporary European Thought. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society  59 Gasper, Des et al. 2008. Human Security and Social Quality: Contrasts and Complementarities. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, Working Paper. Ghosh, Raghunath. 2008. Humanity, Truth and Freedom: Essays in Modern Indian Philosophy. New Delhi: Northern Book Centre. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2006. “Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods and the Calling of an Ontological Epistemology of Participation.” Dialectical Anthropology 30: 227–271. ———. 2012. Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2013. Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London: Anthem Press. ———. 2014a. “Poetics of Development.” Lecture presented at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. ———. 2014b “The Multiverse of Hindu Engagement with Christianity: Plural Streams of Creative Co-Walking, Contradictions and Confrontations.” In The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, (ed.) Felix Wilfred. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2015. “Life World and Life Words.” Manuscript of an essay later published and included in this volume. ———. 2019. Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays. Delhi: Studera Press. Habermas, Jurgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interest. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ———. 2002. “Postscript: Some Concluding Remarks.” In Habermas and Pragmatism, (ed.) Myra B. Aboulfia & Catherine Kemp. London: Routledge. Hague, Paul. 2014. “Mystical Pragmatics.” Special Issue on Pragmatism and Spirituality. 3D: IBA Journal of Management and Leadership, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Haraway, Donna. 1985. ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s.’ Socialist Review 80, 65–108. Hartz, Richard. 2016. “Spiritual Pragmatism: William James, Sri Aurobindo and Global Philosophy.” Paper presented at the International Conference on “Pragmatism and Spirituality.” Bangalore. February 8–9. This has been later published in Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Boder Crossings, Transfomations and Planetary Realizations, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri, p. 2021, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Heidegger, Martin. 2004. “The Way to Language.” In idem, Basic Writings. London: Routledge. Holzman, Lois. 2008. Vygotsky at Work and Play: Social Therapeutics. New York: Routledge. Irigaray, Luc. 2002. Between East and West: From Singularity to Community. New York: Columbia University Press. Joas, Hans. 1993. Pragmatism and Social Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Luchte, James. 2009. “Under the Aspect of Time: Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the Place of Nothing.” Philosophy Today 53(1), 70–84. Melucci, Alberto. 2002. The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in Planetary Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mieth, Dietmar. 2009. “Meister Eckhart: The Power of Inner Liberation.” In Modern Prince and the Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri, pp. 405–428. New Delhi: Sage.

60  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Nussbaum, Martha.1990. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. Panikkar, Raimundo. 2010. The Rhythm of Being. New York: Orbis Books. Pradhan, Ramesh Chandra. 2007. The Great Mirror: An Essay on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Delhi: Kalki Prakashan. Reid, Herbert & Betsy Taylor. 2010. Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place and Global Justice. Urbana Champagne: University of Illinois Press. Rolland, Romain. 1954 [1929]. The Life of Ramakrishna. Mayavati, Almora: Advaita Ashram. Schouten, Jan Peter. 2012. Jesus as Guru: The Image of Christ Among Hindus and Christians in India. Delhi: Overseas Press India. Skof, Lenart. 2011. “Pragmatism and Deepened Democracy: Ambedkar Between Dewey and Unger,” In Democratic Culture: Historical and Philosophical Essays, (ed.) Akeel Bilgrami, pp. 122–142. London: Routledge. Sri Aurobindo. 1962. Human Cycles. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ———. 1970. Life Divine. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ———. 1997. Future Poetry. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Steiner, Rudolf. 1985. The Renewal of Social Organism. Steiner Books. Strydom, Piet. 2009. New Horizons of Critical Theory: Collective Learning and Triple Contingency. Delhi: Shipra. Swami Vivekananda. 2011. The Collected Works of Swami Vivekananda. Advaita Ashram. Taylor, Charles. 2011. “Celan and the Recovery of Language.” In Dilemmas and Connections. Cambridge: Harvard U. Press. Unger, Roberto M. 2007. The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vandenberg, Frederique. 2014. What’s Critical About Critical Theory? London: Routledge. Vattimo, Gianni. 2011. A Farewell to Truth. New York: Columbia U. Press. West, Cornell. 1999. “On Prophetic Pragmatism.” The Cornell West Reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Wilfred, Felix. 2008. “Play of Power and Struggle for Freedom in Renaissance Humanism: Erasmus Between Scylla and Charybdis.” In The Modern Prince and the Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom, Ananta Kumar Giri (ed.), Delhi: Sage Publications.

5 Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity Transforming the Subjective and the Objective and the Calling of Transpositional Subjectobjectivity Introduction and Invitation Objectivity in social sciences has been much discussed and much water has flown in our rivers of understanding from Max Weber to Michel Foucault. To this complex field of critique and reflections, Amartya Sen has offered his perspective of what he calls positional objectivity: positionally dependent observations, beliefs, and actions are central to our knowledge and practical reason. The nature of objectivity in epistemology, decision theory and ethics has to take note of the parametric dependence of observation and observation on the position of the observer. (1993: 126) But the objectivity here is that of an observer but agents in a field of life as well as subjects and objects of understanding are not only observers but also participants. There is a privileging of the observer here that is similar to other positions such as that of Andre Beteille (1998, 2009) who also privileges the standpoint of an observer rather than explores pathways of emergent objectivity beginning with the experiential perspective of participants. Sen talks about the need for transpositional scrutiny but transpositional scrutiny is not adequate for the challenges at hand, we need to cultivate transpositional movements. Sen talks about the need for positional objectivity, but once the agents are not only observers but also participants the objectivity that emerges is not only objective but also subjective, intersubjective and transsubjective. So we need to explore transpositional subjectobjectivity—one that emerges out of pluralization of the subjects, border-crossing transmutations among positions and transformative cultivation of the objective and the subjective including intersubjective and transubjective. It calls for transformation of the subjectivity and objectivity as we know including transformation of these from nouns to verbs and realize that as verbs they are not only activistic but also meditative. The subjective and the objective as meditative verbs embody and aspire for what can be called meditative verbs of pluralization (Giri 2012). It also involves DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-6

62  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing rethinking and transforming the dualism between the epistemic and the ontological, which resonates with the dualism of the subjective and the objective and the primacy of the epistemic to the neglect of the ontological in modernity. It also calls for transformation of the epistemological and the ontological and cultivating non-dual visions and practices of what I have elsewhere called ontological epistemology of participation and what Bruno Latour calls post-epistemological moves (Giri 2006, 2017; Latour 2013). But transpositional subjectobjectivity also calls for a new pragmatics of self and social communication, social dialogues and contestations. For example, it involves communication of contested positions and the emergent subjectobjectivity that emerges from such sharing and struggles. It helps us to overcome the dualism between subjectivity and objectivity. Unreflective dualism between subjectivity and objectivity has contributed to illness in self, science, thinking and modes of knowing. Transpositional subjectobjectivity can heal this.1

Transforming the Subjective We usually take for granted that objectivity can stand on its own without being nurtured by an appropriate subjectivity. We also think that subjectivity is a hindrance to objectivity as we look at subjectivity in terms of subjective biases. But if philosopher Hans-George Gadamer had said, our initial cultural prejudices cannot be wished away, similarly our initial subjective biases are with us and for a journey to objective understanding we need to work with these as well as cultivate subjective as a multi-dimensional reality and possibility. With and beyond Gadamer, some creative philosophers of science and thinkers such as Fred Dallmayr have developed methodologies of critical hermeneutics that challenge us to be reflective of our initial prejudices and cultivate critical subjectivity at the levels of self and culture which help us in our journey with aspired for objectivity.2 Subjectivity has a dimension of ego as well as self. It is probably for this reason that even Jurgen Habermas (1990), a critical philosopher and sociologist, and not a New Age spiritual teacher, makes a distinction between ego-identity and self-identity. In both critical theory and spiritual traditions, there is a distinction between ego and self which is nurtured by thinkers such as Lawrence Kohlberg and Jurgen Habermas who challenge us to understand the post-conventional stage of development of self which just does not reproduce conventions of either ego or society (Habermas 1990). Our subjective has also a reality and possibility of post-conventional which is not bound to existing conventions of ego, self, culture and science and this becomes a helpful companion in our striving for objectivity. In a related way, Sri Aurobindo also challenges us to understand that subjective is neither only the reproduction of the typal conventions of society nor is it a case of reproduction of one’s egotistic standpoint. In his Human Cycles, Sri Aurobindo (1962) characterizes the modern age as the rise of the subjective which goes beyond the typal conventions of society, not only of traditional

Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity  63 social order but also of the modern ones which is dominated by conventions of science and society as discussed by critical scholars of modern self, society and knowledge systems such as Michel Foucault, Ashish Nandy and J.P.S. Uberoi (Foucault 2005; Nandy 1983; Uberoi 1978, 1984, 2002, 2019). The subjective in both Sri Aurobindo and Habermas is animated by a post-typal and post-conventional movement which also finds a creative resonance in the work of sociologist and social theorist Alain Touraine who looks at the subjective in terms of a process of critique, creativity and transformation what he calls subjectivation (Touraine 2000). Subjectivation in Touraine is different from looking at subjects as just subjected to regimes of subjection as it seems to happen in certain aspects of works of critical thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler and is characterized by the desire, aspiration, capacity and creativity to say no to existing conventions of self, science and society which hinders fuller self-realization. Thus the subjective as subjectivation of saying no to taken-for-granted idols of ego, self, science, method, society and state is crucial for our striving towards objectivity that is not a fixed a priori formula but also a dynamic formation.3 Both objectivity and subjectivity are multi-dimensional formations and verbs of co-realizations and as verbs they are not only activistic but also meditative; they embody what I have elsewhere called meditative verbs of co-realizations (Giri 2012, 2013).

Transforming the Objective Objectivity is also being rethought now in fundamental ways. For example, Pierre Bourdieu (2003) here talks about participant objectivation where the key question is how does an observer observes himself or herself. Though Bourdieu asks this question he does not really address this as he does not cultivate an appropriate subjectivity where one can simultaneously take part in an activity and observe with some kind of needed detachment.4 Adam Smith long ago spoke about the need for developing capacity to be an impartial spectator, but we need to understand the limits of being a spectator itself, which corresponds to the limits of being an observer without simultaneously being a participant in modernist epistemic practices.5 Indian spiritual traditions here challenge us to link this to developing a witnessing consciousness which while taking part in life nonetheless has a capacity to witness with detachment as evident in the metaphor and realization of two birds sitting on a tree, one eating fruits and the other witnessing. Bourdieu is silent about these issues as he is primarily within a valorized epistemological mode and does not feel the need to cultivate appropriate ontological modes (see Bourdieu 1991). Bourdieu, like Habermas, does not cultivate appropriate ontological modes as both of them look at ontology primarily from the point of view of limitations of political ontology of Martin Heidegger. They challenge us to realize and not fall prey to dangers of Heidegger’s political ontology with its initial collusion with Nazi annihilation and Heidegger’s silence about this though Dallmayr (1993) here also

64  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing invites us to understand Heidegger’s silence in a more connected way and not to forget the other Heidegger who also talked about if only mainly in philosophy about care and friendship. Dallmayr himself speaks about visions and practices of practical ontology which is animated by love and labor working and meditating with our human finitude and vulnerability. This resonates with what Gianni Vattimo (1999) calls weak ontology, which is animated once again by working with modalities of being self in a relationship of mutual vulnerability which Heidegger might call pathos of shakenness rather than reproducing early Heideggerian thrust of mastery. It is perhaps for this reason Foucault (1984) talks about an ontology of the present,6 which resonates with what Vattimo (2011) talks about an ontology of actuality. Here what Vattimo writes deserves our careful consideration: I will use ontology in a sense I take from Heidegger for whom it denotes the thought of Being in both senses, subjective and objective, of the genitive. This is different from most ontologists, who reduce ontology to a theory of objects. As for actuality, I use the term to refer to the common condition of our life at present. Vattimo also links ontology of actuality to a quest for charity and solidarity7 which calls us to realize ontology of actualization, which is an ontology of mutualization and co-realizations. Ontology of actuality as a shared ontology of actualization and mutualization. This involves both action and meditation embodying meditative verbs of co-realizations and pluralization. Thus ontology is not confined to Bourdieu’s critique of political ontology and is a multi-dimensional journey of reality and realization, and we need to cultivate it further drawing inspiration from both critical philosophy and spiritual traditions. The ontological here is not part of the modernistic dualism of the epistemic and ontological and practical ontology here resonates with varieties of moves of practical epistemology, which also involves border crossing between art and epistemology as in the works of Leo Vygotsky and John Dewey and weak ontology here resonates with weak epistemology in transformational trajectories in modernistic epistemology. Both the ontological and the epistemic are part of efforts to overcome the dualism between the epistemic and the ontological and are part of multi-dimensional movements of ontological epistemology of participation (Giri 2006; Giri 2017). Rethinking subjective and objective is related to contemporary post-epistemological moves which go beyond conventional epistemology and links epistemology to hermeneutics (Capurro 2000). Post-epistemological movements are accompanied by transformations of conventional epistemology through moves such as practical epistemology in which aesthetics play an important role and virtue epistemology. In the last half century we have witnessed important moves beyond positivism and these post-positivist moves are discernible in turns such as linguistic, feminist and ecological turns (cf. Sundara Rajan 1998). To these we can also three other turns—onto-decolonial,

Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity  65 integral and spiritual. But these post-positivist turns are not necessarily aware of the limits of the modernistic primacy of the epistemic and they need to acknowledge the link between epistemology and violence more head on, as Heikki Patomaki, would challenge us (Patomaki & Wight 2000). Post-epistemological movements are also accompanied by post-ontological movements which take ontology beyond the dualism of subjectivism and objectivity and make it part of a journey of love, care, labor and learning. In moves such as practical ontology characterized by love, labor and learning (Dallmayr 1987) and practical epistemology we find nurturing support for the interlinked movement of ontological epistemology of participation. Ontological epistemology of participation calls for a multi-valued logic of autonomy and interpenetration and an aesthetics of discovering threads of connections which helps us in our needed journey of the transpositional, for example moving beyond our fixed positions of ontology and epistemology.8 Thus transforming the subjective and objective is related to limits and possibilities of epistemological and ontological. It challenges us to go beyond both valorized epistemologies of modernity and ontologies of certainty and mastery. But before we proceed further it is helpful to take note of Martha Nussbaum’s concept of political objectivity where building upon John Rawls, Nussbaum is pointing to the way we can achieve objectivity in politics through a process of overlapping consensus (Nussbaum 2001). But in the prevalent and dominant form we have rarely realized overlapping consensus as a process of co-realizations, as meditative verbs of co-realizations involving ontological epistemology of participation. Political objectivity as Rawlsian overlapping consensus also needs to realize the limits of the primacy of the nation-state in Rawls thus not reducing political objectivity to statist or state-centric objectivity. For realizing overlapping consensus we also need to overcome the dualism between the self and other taking part in processes of consensus building about which Nussbaum seems not be aware. For realization of agreement and overlapping consensus among concerned parties as part of realization of political objectivity, we need to overcome dualistic logic of self and other and cultivate non-dual ways of interacting and arguing with each other, which would help us realize objectivity. Thus the journey of realization of political objectivity is related to our efforts to overcome dualistic logic and relations as part of a continued effort of what can be multi-valued logic and ways of being and relations (Giri 2012; Mohanty 2000). In a related way, Hilary Putnam’s (1995) and Satya Mohanty’s (1997) engagement with objectivity in morality and literary understanding is helpful to think together further with as they challenge us to realize that there is certain amount of objectivity in moral considerations and literary critical reflections.

Transpositional Movements Transpositional movements build upon movements with and beyond positions and call for multi-dimensional transformative moves in both theory and practice. It calls for a new pragmatics of transpositionality and social

66  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing communication where subjects from different positions come together and communicate with each other in a spirit of compassion and confrontation. It calls for a new poetics and aesthetics of transpositionality where poetics and aesthetics help us in border crossing between different positions. It also needs a new pragmatics of transpositionality as part of a new aesthetic ethics of responsibility that involves both ethical and aesthetic works, imaginations and meditations. It also calls for a new politics of transpositionality. Boaventuara de Sousa Santos (2008), for example, talks about trans-conflictual moves while in forums such as World Social Forum participating organizations and individuals move beyond their positions with agreement, disagreement and an emergent trans-conflictual move. The politics of transpositionality need to be accompanied by poetics and spirituality of transpositionality, which involves critical and creative border crossing.

Multi-topial Hermeneutics Transpositional movements involve a new phenomenology and hermeneutics which can be called transpositional phenomenology where phenomenological experiencing is accompanied by moving across positions. It involves what J.N Mohanty (2002) building upon Husserl calls “appreceptive attribution” where the challenge is to experience as Husserl calls us to realize, far as near and near as far.9 It calls for new initiatives in hermeneutics, a transpositional hermeneutics that can be called multi-topial hermeneutics where hermeneutics moves and meditates with multiple topoi and terrains of self, culture and the world (more on this in the next chapter). It is also accompanied by a multi-temporal hermeneutics where we move across multiple epochs and temporality such as modern, tradition, postmodern and transmodern (see Giri 2021 & Dussel 2017). Multi-topial hermeneutics is accompanied by cultivation of a new logic which can be called multi-valued logic. It goes beyond the binary logic of either or and cultivates a new logic of both and. This helps us in creative translation and communication across borders. Philosopher J.N. Mohanty (2000) tells us how multi-valued logic can build upon creative dialogues across philosophical traditions such as the Jaina tradition of Anekantavada,10 which emphasizes many paths of Truth realization, the Gandhian tradition of non-violence and the Husserlian phenomenology of overlapping contents. In the pregnant thought of Mohanty, which he crafts like a jewel: The ethic of non-injury applied to philosophical thinking requires that one does not reject outright the other point of view without first recognizing the element of truth in it; it is based on the belief that every point of view is partly true, partly false, and partly undecidable. A simple two-valued logic requiring that a proposition must either be true or false is thereby rejected, and what the Jaina philosopher proposes is a multi-valued logic. To this multi-valued logic, I add the Husserlian idea of overlapping contents. The different perspectives on a thing are not

Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity  67 mutually exclusive, but share some contents with each other. The different “worlds2 have shared contents, contrary to the total relativism. If you represent them by circles, they are intersecting circles, not incommensurable, [and it is this model of] intersecting circles which can get us out of relativism on the one hand and absolutism on the other. (Mohanty 2000: 24; emphases added) Such a pathway of multi-valued logic as it emerges from such diverse sources of seeking is a helpful companion to de Sousa Santos’s quest for alternatives. Multi-topial hermeneutics does involve transpositional movements including dancing with threads amidst threats across positions thus becoming what Molz and Edwards (2017) call integral hermeneutics.11 We can here bring multi-topial hermeneutics, transpositional dancing and transpositional subjectobjectivity together and realize how all these also involve sacrifice and transformation of our clinging to our own ego and ideological standpoints and one-sided absolutist epistemology, ontology and metaphysics.

Transpositional Subjectobjectivity The post-conventional subjective is a companion to an emergent subjecitivity which in turn helps us realize an emergent objectivity. We realize transpositional subjectobjetivity moving through move such as emergent subjectivation and emergent objectivation. We also cultivate vision and practices of transpositional subjectivation and objectivation leading to visions, practices, movements, flows, circles and spirals of transpositional subjectobjectivity. Transpositional subjectobjectivity emerges from transformation in the subjective and the objective as well as overcoming the dualism between the two. It also contributes to healing our modes of thinking and being as it is conventionally imprisoned in such a dualism.

Notes 1 Here we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts: An attitude of moral indifference has no connection with scientific “objectivity.” (Weber 1949: 82) Objectivity does not mean detachment, it means respect; that is, the ability not to distort and to falsify things, persons and oneself. […] To be objective is possible only if we respect the things we observe; that is, if we are capable of seeing them in their uniqueness and interconnectedness. (Fromm 1950: 105–104) Observations are unavoidably position-based, but scientific reasoning need not, of course, be based on observational information from one specific position only. There is need for what may be called “trans-positional”

68  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing assessment—drawing on but going beyond different positional observations. The constructed “view from no where” would then be based on synthesizing different views from distinct positions. The positional objectivity of the respective observations would still remain important but not in itself adequate. A trans-positional scrutiny would also demand some kind of coherence between different positional views. (Sen 1993: 130) If there is indeed, as the Indian tradition claims, a knowledge that can be apprehended directly from within without the necessary mediation by the senses, then this has major consequences for the choice of optimum methodology in Psychological. There where such direct inner knowledge refers to phenomena in the external world, one can indeed decide on the accuracy of the inner knowledge ‘objectively’ by comparing the symbolic rendering of that inner knowledge with the symbolic rendering of sense information about the external events. But where the inner knowledge refers to inner states or processes, this may not be the appropriate way of verifying such knowledge. What we need there is not objectivity, but reliable subjectivity. In our study of outer world, progress is to a large extent made by using better and better instruments […] In the inner domain the instruments of choice is self-observation, which includes knowledge by intimate direct contact, knowledge by identity, and the pure witness consciousness (sakshi). Just as in the physical domain, the quality of the results in the inner domain can be ascertained on the one hand through corroboration by equally or better qualified observers, and on the other hand by the intrinsic quality of the instrument. The latter can in its turn be ascertained by what that specific instrument delivers in comparatively well-established fields of inquiry. The only difference is that in the inner domain, the instrument is not some physical instrument, but the inner instrument of knowledge, the antakarana, of the researcher. The quality of this instrument depends on things like the amount of immixture and improper functioning; its freedom from ego, vital desires, mental preferences and physical limitations; its sensitivity, flexibility and ability to move at will through different inner worlds and centers of consciousness; etc. Yoga, in its widest sense of spiritual discipline, is the method of choice to perfect the inner instrument of knowledge. It leads to a more comprehensive, impartial and harmony enhancing understanding of reality not only through its purification of the inner instrument, but also by raising the observing consciousness above its ordinary, corrupting and limiting involvement in the processes and entities that psychology is supposed to study. That it can indeed deliver is attested to by the incredibly rich Indian heritage in the psychological field. (Cornelissen 2013: 105) 2 Here what Dallmayr writes deserves our careful consideration: Theory in the Greek sense requires a combination of interest and disinterest. The theorist needs to be fully engaged and completely, even urgently interested in the quest for truth, goodness, and beauty; but at the same time, the theorist needs to bracket selfishness and to be disinterested in the pursuit of his/her own particular “good” or advantage. (Dallmayr 2013: 8) In his autobiographical reflections Dallmayr also shares with us his path of philosophical quest which challenges us to link theorizing with a quest for Goodness and Wisdom:

Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity  69 my starting point is phenomenological: the buzzling diversity of the “lifeworld.” For phenomenological I might also say “ethnomethodological.” I do not begin by rigidly pitting scientific medicine against folk medicine nor systematic (epistemic) knowledge against insight or experiential wisdom. My assumption is that in pursuing their questions, philosophers not only gain knowledge but also undergo a kind of seasoning, a transformative experience, which enables them to live their lives differently: soberly or wisely not rashly, thoughtfully not thoughtlessly, “reckfully” not recklessly. Wisdom here is “Sophia” not “episteme,” and it counts among the Aristotelian virtues. (Dallmayr 2017b: 108) In this journey, Dallmayr invites us to realize that we need to prepare ourselves for two preconditions: the primary precondition is a certain existential and intellectual openness, that is, a willingness to open oneself to the “non-self” manifest in other customs, other idioms, other practices. This openness is not easy to come by, given the ego-centrism endemic to much of Western modernity. […] A second precondition of comparative inquiry follows from the first: namely, the willingness of the open self to become seriously engaged with the encountered “non-self”— which means to forego the temptation either to abscond into detached neutrality or to plunge into an empty abyss (of “incommensurable” otherness). (Dallmayr 2017d: 241) 3 This resonates with Foucault’s (2005) hermeneutics of the subject where to be a subject means to be critically reflective upon the models of individualization offered by the state. 4 Strydom (2011) also draws our attention to foundational limitations of Bourdieu’s approach to objectivity as he seems not to question dominant models and methods of science. 5 In the introduction, I have already referred to limits of the primacy of observational in Amartya Sen and Andre Beteille. 6 For Foucault (1984), a critical and historical ontology of the present entails a genealogy of what constituted us and made us recognizable as subjects of what we say, do and think. It must be considered not as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it must be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them. The overcoming of the foundational character of the transcendental perspective consists in not deducing from the form of what we are what we can do and know, but in catching from the contingency, that makes us be what we are, the possibility of not being, not doing and not thinking what we are, do and think. In this context, what Michel North writes in his What is the Present? deserves our careful consideration: As Vincent Descombes points out, it is not at all clear why Foucault insists on calling this project an ontology when everything he says about it seems historical in nature. But the difference between the historical and the properly philosophical seems to be marked for Foucault by the necessarily critical nature of the latter. Talking about the present in a merely descriptive way means accepting what people have had to say about it, which a more

70  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing fundamental account of the present would have to take a step away to some critical distance from existing ideas about it. (North 2018: 16) 7 As Vattimo (2011: 139–140) writes: At the horizon line of the near future toward which we gaze, pragmatically assessing the utility of truth, there lies a more distant future that we can never really forget. Rorty alludes to this with the term solidarity, which I propose to read directly in the sense of charity, and not just as the means of achieving consensus but as an end in itself. Christian dogma teaches that Deus Caritas est, charity is God himself. From a Hegelian viewpoint, we may take the horizon to be that absolute spirit which never allows itself to be entirely set aside but becomes the final horizon of history that legitimates all our nearterm choices. 8 We find glimpses of transpositional subjectojectivity in the following discussion of the insightful historian and philosopher F.R. Ankersmit (2002). In his Political Representation, Ankersmit (2002) presents the example of epistemology and politics in 17th century France. For Ankersmit, “at first sight seventeenth-century rationalist philosophy and absolutism will have nothing in common for us. But then the historian may suggest the point of view of the transcendental ego [or it may emerge from any self-initiated historical engagement, not just from historian as a professional expert], of a self that withdraws from the world but in order to get a firmer hold of it” Ankersmit (2002). “And this point of view makes us aware of what the Cartesian self, doubting all knowledge in order to gain access to absolute certain knowledge, has in common with Louis XIV withdrawing from the bustle of Paris to Versailles in order to confirm his absolutist mastery of France” (ibid). Thus the perspective of transcendental ego born of historical inquiry and representation, an engagement in which all of us seeking souls can participate, not only professional historians, helps us understand the connection between epistemology and politics in seventeenth century France. For Ankersmit, one may not totally identify with such a perspective which emerges from our work of historical representation but nonetheless it shapes our personality and what we are. From the perspective of the calling of an ontological epistemology of participation, what Ankersmit writes deserves our careful considerations: “Nevertheless, becoming acquainted with the possibility of many such points of view will, add each time, a new, though tiny stone to the mosaic of our personality. And in the end this cannot fail to have its effect on the kind of person that we are” (ibid: 235). 9 Mohanty tells us that here we need to take part in what he calls “apperceptive attribution” and “analogizing apperception”: “The gap between the far and the near is closed by analogizing apperception of the far, ‘as if’ it were near (for example, apperception of the earth as a star and of star as earth” (Mohanty 2000: 92). 10 Jaina tradition refers to Anekantavada, multiple perspectives of Truth. Building on this, I talk about Anekantapatha, multiple paths of Truth. 11 As Molz and Edwards (2017: 84) write: an integral meta-hermeneutics has much to offer in studying different interpretive frameworks from a meta-perspective. Traditionally, this has been the territory of all those, especially postmodern approaches that took an “interpretive turn” towards treating the task of explanation and understanding as a function of epistemology rather than ontology, including the psychological, sociological, socio-historical, economic and geopolitical conditions, contexts,

Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity  71 positions and interests of the researcher and respective communities. However, rather than simply focusing on the deconstructive analysis of epistemologies an integral meta-hermeneutics would also move on towards the constructive task of finding connections and developing integrative frameworks for the plurality of interpretive positions.

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72  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Foucault, Michel 1984. “What is Enligtenment?” Foucault Reader. London: Penguin. Fromm, Eric. 2005. Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France, 1981-82. New York: Palgrave. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2006. “Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods and the Calling of an Ontological Epistemology of Participation.” Dialectical Anthropology ———. 2012. Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2013. Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London and Delhi: Anthem Press. ———. 2017. (Ed.) Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues. Delhi: Primus. ———. 2021 “Evolutionity and the Calling of Evolutionary Suffering and Evolutionary Flourishing: Dialogues Among Epochs and Cultivating New Pathways of Planetary Realizations.” International Journal of Philosophy 9(3): 154–161. Guttierez, Antonio Grace. n.d. “Declassification in Knowledge Organization: A Post-Epistemological Essay.” Habermas, Jurgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Latour, Bruno. 2013. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mohanty, J.N. 2000. Self and Other: Philosophical Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press Mohanty, Satya P. 1997. Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Molz, Markus & Mark Edwards. 2017. “Crossing Boundaries, Stimulating Creativity: The Horizon of Integral Meta-Studies.” In Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues (ed.), Ananta Kumar Giri, pp. 65–98. Delhi: Primus Books. Nandy, Ashish. 1983. The Intimate Enemy: The Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press. North, Michael. 2018. What Is the Present? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. “Political Objectivity.” New Literary History 32: 883–906. Patomaki, H. & Wight, C. 2000. “After Postpositivism? The Promises of Critical Realism,” International Studies Quarterly 44(2): 13–237. Putnam, Hilary. 1995. “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity.” In Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, (eds.) Martha C. Nussbaum & Jonathan Glover, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sen, Amartya. 1993. “Positional Objectivity.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 22(2): 126–145. Strydom, Piet. 2011. Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology. London: Routledge. Sri Aurobindo. 1962. Human Cycles. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Sundara Rajan, R. 1998. Beyond the Crises of European Sciences: New Beginnings. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.

Healing the Dualism between Subjectivity and Objectivity  73 Touraine, Alain. 2000. Can We Live Together?: Equality and Difference. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Uberoi, J.P.S. 1978. Science and Culture. Delhi: Oxford U. Press. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1984. The Other Mind of Europe: Goethe as a Scientist. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2002. The European Modernity: Truth, Science and Method. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2019. Mind and Society: From Indian Studies to General Sociology. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Vattimo, Gianni. 1999. Belief. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2011. A Farewell to Truth. New York: Columbia University Press. Weber, Max. 1949. “Objectivity of Social Science and Social Policy.” In idem, Methodology of the Social Sciences. New York: Free Press.

6 Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South, Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Contemporary Challenges of Planetary Realizations* Introduction and Invitation Our contemporary moment is a moment of crises of epistemology as part of the wider and deeper crises of modernity and the human condition which leads to the pathology of being and knowing, which calls for new epistemologies and ontologies which can heal us.1 The crises of epistemology emerges from the limits of the epistemic as it is tied to epistemology of procedural certainty and closure. Works such as Theodore Adorno’s (1983) Against Epistemology helps us realize the limits of the epistemic as it is imprisoned within a dualism between mental and manual labor and divorce of the epistemic from the lived experiences of the world. But this limit is “rooted to a great extent in ignoring the need for the mutually necessary tasks of epistemology, ontology and metaphysics” (Valone 1988: 96). The limits of the epistemic needs to be understood in the context of crises of positivism as well as emergence of post-positivist turns and movements which help us go beyond crises of science, especially European sciences, and society. In his Beyond the Crises of European Sciences: New Beginnings, R. Sundara Rajan (1988) draws our attention to movements and turns such as ecological, linguistic and feminist turns, which represent post-positivist moves but critique of positivism in these movements do not necessarily realize the limits of the primacy of the epistemic in modernity and the link between unreflective epistemology and violence (Patomaki & Wright 2000). This is similar to the limits of Jurgen Habermas’ (1972) critique of positivism, which does not realize the limits of the modernist primacy of the epistemic and its neglect of the ontological and its Euorcentric closure. Against this background of the wider and deeper crises of epistemology, modernity and the human condition, we can appreciate the significance of *  I am grateful to Professor Boaventuara de Sousa Santos and friends in the ALICE project at University of Coimbra, Portugal especially Maria, for their kind invitation to join in this dialogue with Professor de Sousa Santosand for their comments and reflections. An abridged version of it has come out in Sociological Bulletin in July 2021 and for this I am grateful to Professor B.B. Mohanty, its Managing Editor, and the anonymous reviwer for their kind interest and suggestions.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-7

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  75 critique of modernist epistemology in Boaventuara de Sousa Santos’ Epistemologies from the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. de Sousa Santos is a friend of the world, and he collaborates with many seeking souls and social movements for a giving birth to a new world, a different world of beauty, dignity and dialogues. His work on alternative knowledge is a deep invitation for us to explore new methods and ways of living which contribute to realization of a good life. As he writes in his preface to Epistemologies from the South: “Critical theory is therefore meaningless without a search for truth and healing, even in the end there is no final truth or definitive cure” (de Sousa Santos 2014: viii). In this quest for Truth and healing, de Sousa Santos here pleads for not only a new epistemology, which “contrary to hegemonic epistemologies in the West, does not grant apriori supremacy to scientific knowledge” but calls for a new politics of not only revolutionary change but also of everyday resistance and creativity. As de Sousa Santos tells us, Radicalization consists of searching for the subversive and creative aspects of the everyday, which may occur in the most basic struggle for survival. The changes in the everyday have thus a double valence: concrete improvement in the every day and the signals they give for larger possibilities. (ibid: 114) de Sousa Santos also calls for a “new relationship between epistemology and politics” (ibid: 72). An important aspect of this new epistemology and politics is a practice of limits and realization of one’s own limitations as a creative impetus for a new ecology of knowledge and self-critical political action which, unlike the dominant, is not just an act of valorization of a priori certainty—ideological or otherwise. de Sousa Santos here challenges to cultivate a sociology of absence and destabilizing subjectivity which has a spiritual dimension: The knowledge that does not know is the knowledge that fails to know other ways of knowing that shares with the infinite task of accounting for experiences of the world. […] One of the main dimensions of the sociology of absences is the sociology of absent ways of knowing, that is to say, the act of identifying the ways of knowing that hegemonic epistemology reduces to non-existence. (2014: 111) de Sousa Santos urges us to realize ecology of knowledges in our present-day world going beyond the epistemicide of modern scientific knowledge where modern scientific knowledge annihilates other kinds of knowledges such as spiritual knowledge.2 As against modernist epistemology of procedural certainty and mastery, de Sousa Santos drawing inspiration from Nicolas of Cusa’s inspiring sadhana of learned ignorance where

76  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing to know is to know that one does not know, tells us how to be engaged in epistemic work is to be a “learned ignorant” and to realize that “the epistemological diversity of the world is potentially infinite and each way of knowing grasps it in a limited manner” (ibid: 111). But the “impossibility of grasping the infinite epistemological diversity of the world does not release us from trying to know it; on the contrary it demands that we do” (ibid). This demand which is different from construction of Truth only as a product of existing discourse and configuration of knowledge and power is what de Sousa Santos calls “ecology of knowledges.” In a Gandhian spirit par excellence, de Sousa Santos thus writes: “if the truth exists only in the search for truth, knowledge exists as an ecology of knowledges” (ibid: 111). To be engaged with knowledge is to be ever wakeful to this demand and practice of attentiveness and responsibility to other knowledges in a relational mode of co-learning and mutual questioning going beyond the familiar prisons of Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism, universalism and relativism. Translation, especially inter-cultural translation, becomes a companion in this path of engagement. In his Epistemologies From the South, de Sousa Santos thus presents us two inter-linked visions and practices of ecology of knowledges and inter-cultural translation as pathways with the present towards a different future of knowledge, human liberation and world transformations. de Sousa Santos’ pathways of engagement in Epistemologies From the South invite us to walk and meditate with him as well as the themes he has so patiently cultivated in a life time of love, labor and struggle for emancipation. At the same time, his book as well as his wider oeuvre raise important questions that call for deeper co-walking and transformative planetary dialogues. In my essay, I engage myself with some of these issues. The first issue deals with the language of global South that de Sousa Santos uses, which can be used to uncritically reproduce, despite de Sousa Santos’ inspiring nuanced and non-dual handling of it, the current discourse of the global South, which is a production of the so-called North itself. de Sousa Santos’ engagement with epistemology also does not explore the limits of the epistemic itself when it is not accompanied by appropriate ontological engagement. The limits of the epistemological are not overcome by proliferating epistemologies themselves such as from North to South but by transforming epistemologies which include simultaneously epistemic and ontological engagement, which I call ontological epistemology of participation (Giri 2006; 2017a). de Sousa Santos’ engagement with epistemology needs to be part of an ontological epistemology of participation which involves not only epistemic and ontological engagement but also cross-cultural and planetary realizations of these themes, modalities of being and understanding. Ontological epistemology of participation also involves transformation of subjectivity and objectivity as we know and a cultivation of what I call transpositional subjectobjectivity (see Chapter 5 of this book). While de Sousa Santos challenges us to realize a new epistemology and a new politics and a new relationship between the two, I, sharing this concern, bring the challenge of a new ontology and spirituality and strive to cultivate a new

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  77 relationship not only between epistemology and politics but also between epistemology and ontology, epistemology and aesthetics,3 epistemology and spirituality and epistemology and deeper cross-cultural and philosophical dialogues, which is part of what can be called planetary conversations and planetary realizations (Giri 2013). Planetary realizations challenge us to realize that we are children of Mother Earth and as children we have an inborn debt and responsibility to learn about each other, and our cultures. Planetary conversations across borders help us in this planetary realization. This is a process of meditative verb of co-realization which involves both action and meditation. I suggest that at this stage, de Sousa Santos’ project of alternative epistemology and politics does not include meditation as part of an integral sadhana (strivings) and struggle for transformation.

With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South: Transcending Dualism and Transforming Area Studies into Zones of Pregnant Thinking and Becoming Neither North and South in de Sousa Santos are mere geographical locations nor are they fixed, impermeable boundaries. They are multi-dimensional complex interpenetrating realities in our world historically and contemporaneously and they raise important issues of facts and norms of life. de Sousa Santos tells us how these, as language and realities, also raise fundamental and profound normative questions. In de Sousa Santos, while the Global North becomes associated with production of suffering and reductive and killing epistemologies such as positivistic science in modernity, Global South is a multi-dimensional spring of alternative ways of living, thinking and being. But there are thinkers and movements in the so-called Global North who also embody such alternative modes of living and thinking. de Sousa Santos himself writes about this and urges us to go beyond the dualism of North and South. For example, de Sousa Santos talks about Lucian of Samasota, Nicholas of Cusa and Blaise Pascal as cultivating alternative pathways of thinking and being from Western tradition. But realizing this calls for creative memory work and recovery of forgotten traditions. For example, de Sousa Santos tells us how Cusa’s mode and method of learned ignorance is of crucial significance in going beyond the pathology of epistemology and method in modern West where both the epistemic and the methodological are imbued with so much certainty. For de Sousa Santos, “In Nicholas of Cusa there are two kinds of ignorance: ignorant ignorance, which is not aware that it does not know, and learned ignorance, which knows it does not know what it does not know” (2014: 110). Cusa’s method of learned ignorance may seem just like an elaboration of the Socratic method of knowing that one does not know with one crucial distinction that Socrates “is not aware of the idea of the infinitude […] but in Nicholas of Cusa infinitude is accepted as such, as consciousness of a radical ignorance” (ibid: 110). Thus Cusa cultivates knowing and being with a consciousness of

78  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing integral infinitude which is different from the way hegemonic rationality of modernity and its accompanying epistemology treats the infinite with a spirit of conquest and triumphalism. Similarly, for de Sousa Santos, Pascal helps us wage battles against predominant forms of rationality. Thus de Sousa Santos writes: The traditions created by Nicholas of Cusa and Pascal are South of the North as it were, and are thus better prepared than any other to learn from the global South and collaborate with it towards building epistemologies capable of offering credible alternatives to orthopedic thinking. (ibid: 109) Thus in de Sousa Santos, the discourse of Global South is already part of an effort to go beyond a facile dualism between South and North. To fully appreciate de Sousa Santos’ project, we need to situate such a striving in the context of limits and transformation of an earlier mode of area studies. After the Second World War, area studies approach continued the geopolitical division of the world. It became subservient to geopolitical production of the world and became an uncritical and often times a slavish bearer of Northern Epistemologies and North Atlantic theoretical imperialism and universalism while considering areas in area studies as tabula rasa (Dirks 2015; Trouillot 2004). But now we need to transform area studies into study of creative global studies where areas are not empty plates for application and testing of so-called epistemologies and theories coming from the North but are zones of thinking, being and becoming. Each of our areas, whether in the North or South, are loci of thinking as well as regions of connections and disjunctions with the world. These are pregnant cosmopolitan zones of thinking as they embody communication across boundaries in life worlds and worlds of thoughts (Bose & Manjapra 2010). Areas as locations of life and thinking are zones of inheritance, communication, emergence and divergence; they bear the brunt of colonization as well as processes of resistance and transformation. de Sousa Santos’ project calls for transformation of area studies into ­creative global studies bordering on study of our world as multi-dimensional visions and processes of planetary realizations. Our engagement with the world, South or North, is part of a dynamics of planetary realizations where our locations are invitations for us to realize that we are children of Mother Earth as well as local cultures and societies which goes beyond the dominant logic of ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism, nation-state centered rationality and anthropocentrism. As children of Mother Earth, we have an inborn responsibility to other children of Mother Earth, non-human forms of life such as animals, plants and Nature. Planetary realizations also challenge us to realize that our loci of living are also zones of thinking and our different zones of living and thinking are interconnected in a complex dynamics of communication and disjunction. In this context, to realize

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  79 ourselves—both our reality as well as potential—taking part in rooted planetary conversations across borders in a spectrum of human finitude and infinitude is an imperative of life. But relating our engagement with the world with this imperative of planetary realizations as rooted planetary conversations across borders also needs to understand limits of the existing language such as Global South. The Global South has become a fashionable word in the last decades and interestingly it is used much more in the Global North by scholars and activists in a missionary and self-valorizing way rather than in other parts of the world. There is an epochal need to go beyond this word and create a new language of our identity and aspiration as part of transformation of our world. This is a challenge for de Sousa Santos and all of us concerned to realize the foundational limits of a word such as Global South and to create a new language and reality of our zones of living and thinking, resistance and struggles in our world.

With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South: The Calling of Ontological Epistemology of Participation de Sousa Santos in his writings talks about the need for a new epistemology. He also calls for creative epistemological pragmatics where one pragmatically grapples with an existing hierarchy of knowledge and strives to transform this in the direction of liberation. However, de Sousa Santos never talks about the accompanying need for appropriate ontological transformation though ontology as self-change is also at the heart of de Sousa Santos’ project as he himself writes with so much passion and commitment: “We know that the first of our struggles is against ourselves. [..] there is no change without self-change” (2014: 10). It needs to be borne in mind that modernity privileges the epistemic to the complete neglect of the ontological. de Sousa Santos’ silence on the ontological is part of a long neglect of this in dominant traditions of critique. For example, in the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas as well as critical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, there is a neglect of the ontological, which is justified because of the political ontology of Heidegger, namely Heidegger’s early association with Nazism and his continued baffling silence on this after the Holocaust. Bourdieu, like Habermas, does not cultivate an appropriate ontological mode as both of them look at ontology primarily from the point of view of limitations of political ontology of Heidegger. But ontology is a multi-dimensional journey of reality and realization, and we need to cultivate it further drawing inspiration from both critical philosophy and spiritual traditions. The ontological is not exhausted in Heidegger though in Heidegger himself ontology is not only an ontology of mastery as in early Heidegger, there is an ontology of wandering, wondering and pathos of shakenness in the later phase of Heidegger (cf. Dallmayr 1993; Heidegger 1995). In a related way, the ontological is cultivated creatively as manifold paths of self-expansion, deepening and world transformation in another savant of our times, Roy

80  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Bhaskar (2002), the proponent of movement of critical realism who in his later life elevated to a spiritual mode of critique, creativity and world realizations. de Sousa Santos’ epistemic break needs to cultivate the ontological as part of a move to go beyond the limits of both the epistemological as well as ontological. It needs to be part of a movement of what may be called an ontological epistemology of participation (see Giri 2004, 2006). Ontolocial epistemology of participation involves both epistemological and ontolgoical engagement in a mutually implicated and transformative way where epistemic engagement is nurtured by appropriate ontological cultivation such as ontological commitment to understanding reality and not be deluded by illusions and delusions and where ontology itself emerges out of complex and creative epistemic practices of learning. Epistemology here becomes practical with an aesthetic dimension that resonates with practical turn in ontology animated by love, labor and learning (cf. Dallmayr 1987, 1991; Schenk 2006; Wickman 2006) and both transform themselves from a logic of mastery to one of seeking, servanthood and mutual blossoming.4 Practical epistemology and practical ontology dance together in ontological epistemology of participation, but they also bring the mystical dimension of both epistemology and ontology to this dance. Thus ontological epistemology of participation is simultaneously practical as well as mystical—the mystical dimension pointing to the dimension of beyond which is at work in the world of practice but, at the same time, is beyond it. Ontological epistemology of participation is a movement and is a multi-dimensional meditative verb of co-realization in which the epistemic and the ontological realize together in an act of learning, collaboration, contestation, confrontation and compassion (more about the theme of meditative verb of co-realization in the later section of the chapter). This resonates with what Foucault (1986) talks about as an ontology of the present5 and Vattimo (2011) an ontology of actuality which can also be realized as an ontology of actualization, mutualization and meditative verbs of co-realizations where we move not only towards solidarity but with and towards charity and karuna (compassion).6

Realities and Realizations In his work, de Sousa Santos challenges us to go beyond realism as an apology of status quo of domination and falsification: “we have lost the capacity for rage and amazement vis-à-vis the grotesque realism of what is accepted only because it exists” (de Sousa Santos 2014: 89). de Sousa Santos also challenges us to go beyond facile opposition between realism and constructivism: The ecology of knowledges is constructivist as concerns representation and realist as concerns intervention. We do not have direct access to reality since we do not know reality save through the concepts, theories, values, and language we use. On the other hand, the knowledge we

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  81 construct upon reality intervenes in it and has consequences. Knowledge is not representation; it is intervention. Pragmatic realism focuses on intervention rather than on representation. The credibility of the cognitive construction is measured by the kind of intervention in the world it provides, assists, or hinders. As the evaluation of such intervention always combines the cognitive and the ethicopolitical, the ecology of knowledges starts from the compatibility between cognitive and ethicopolitical values. Therein resides the distinction between objectivity and neutrality. 7 (2014: 207) To appreciate de Sousa Santos’ journey, we can here cultivate the accompanying path of thinking and being.8 Reality is multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it is simultaneously existence as well as potential. Ontological epistemology of participation, as a movement of transformation in knowledge, self, culture and society plays a role in realization of potential of reality. Knowledge emerging from critical realism as well as constructivism also plays a role in realizing the existing structures of bondage of reality and its accompanying transformative realizations. For example, critical and creative research on reality can help us realize many structures of exploitation and domination which obstruct realization of potential of reality, for example the self-realization and co-realization of reality itself and people who inhabit such reality. Ontological epistemology of participation can help us realize many structures of domination and illusion such as caste, class, gender and absolutism, which turn our institutions into what Habermas (1990: 108) calls “instances of problematic justice.” Reality as realization helps us not only realize these structures of social and epistemic domination but also transform these so that reality becomes a companion in the self-realization and co-realization of individuals and social institutions. The movement of critical realism as initiated by Roy Bhaskar does capture some of these approaches to reality and realization where approaches to reality do involve both science and spirituality and de Sousa Santos’ project can build alliance with this creative movement of thought of our times. Similarly creative literature also does help us go beyond a naive empirical construction of reality and suggest radical possibilities in the real by exploring alternative realities with creative and critical imagination9 as in movements such as magic realism.10 de Sousa Santos does refer to the mode of clinamen as a way of knowing and being which brings a poetic approach to reality. A poetic approach to reality can contribute to realization of potential in reality which is usually constructed through the epistemology of modernist prose and social sciences devoid of the spark of the poetic.11 Realization has multiple connotations and challenges as the language of reality itself. It also refers to both realizing the reality of reality as well as realizing its potential. The first task of realization is to understand and uncover the nature or our reality, self as well as social, and ask the primordial and perennial question, who am I? Who are we? It is also to ask the

82  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing question whether the reality that we have deludes or covers our true reality or presents us a false view or a false consciousness. Realization thus involves processes of realizing our self, other selves and the world as a part of corealizations. Co-realizations involve working with both appearance and reality, Maya and beyond.12 Self-realization, realization of the other and realization of the world, are here part of a multiplex process of co-realizations, which includes both action and meditation which I have elsewhere called meditative verbs of co-realizations (Giri 2012). Co-realization involves realization of the fact that reality is simultaneously real and constructed embodying a dynamic interpenetration of realism and constructivism in an open and spiraling way. In this context, co-realization also involves the realization that reality as well as self and society have both an objective and subjective dimension. Objectivity is not just objectivity, it also involves the subjective as the subjective also has an objective dimension and an aspiration for objectivity. Co-realization with simultaneous work of transforming the subjective and the objective thus helps us in realizing what can be called transpositional subjectobjectivity (see Chapter 5 of this volume). de Sousa Santos’ alternative knowledge creation can relate to this vision, practice and challenge of meditative verbs of co-realizations and pathways of transpositional subjectobjectivity. Co-realization here also means realizing different aspects and gunas or qualities of self, science and society, for example the sattvic, rajasik and tamasic dimensions (cf. Nadkarni 2017). While the sattvic self helps us search for Truth as a perennial journey and not compromise with many illusions and constructions of it, rajasik self can easily be satisfied with visible worlds of division and the tamasik self can easily live in a world of darkness, for example taking part to be whole without proper selfunderstanding, understanding of reality as well as ecology of knowledge which permeates it. Finally, co-realization means realizing that language and reality have simultaneously a noun and verb dimension. Co-realization here involves realizing the noun-verb dynamics of language and reality13 and cultivate meditative verbs of pluralization (cf. Giri 2012, 2013). Co-realization as part of ontological epistemology of participation, among others, calls for collaborative imagination, improvisation and imagination as it also involves what de Sousa Santos calls “epistemological direct action.” This epistemological direct action can be linked to a creative epistemological and ontological Satyagraha. Satyagraha is not only a political action but also an epistemic action as any epistemic engagement can benefit by embodying a Satyagrahic mode of knowing and being. Satyagraha is a quest for Truth, but Truth here is neither merely epistemological nor ontological. It exceeds both epistemology and ontology and, as mentioned before, has a demand quality to it. Truth is not only a product of the existing discourse and constellation of knowledge and power. Truth is not only a point but part of a landscape of reality and realization. In fact, de Sousa Santos’ idea of ecology of knowledge needs to be linked to an ecological view of Truth where it is a landscape of reality and realizations and multiple

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  83 locations of viewing and engagement and multiple perspectives on Truth reflect different dimensions of it rather than necessarily contradict each other. An ecological perspective and realization of Truth is related to a multi-valued logic of Truth and life as different from the dualistic logic of an either or approach (more on this later). Thus both epistemological Satyagraha as part of an ontological epistemology of participation and ecology of knowledges challenge us to realize Truth and cultivate knowledge as ecological, which is different from Truth as egological and one-dimensional.14 Satyagraha as quest for Truth faces the challenges internal as well as external. Following earlier discussion about trigunas—three qualities of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, in Indic tradition, there is a complex understanding of Truth existing in dynamic relation with what are called Rajas (power) and Tamas (darkness). Epistemological direct action as Satyagraha, quest for Truth, needs to work and mediate with both Rajas (power) and Tamas (darkness) and in the way transform these.

Multi-topial Hermeneutics In de Sousa Santos’ pathways of alternatives, ecology of knowledge integrally dances with the related movement of what he calls inter-cultural translation to go beyond epistemic closures such as Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism. But translation here does not happen in homes of certainty of one’s culture, it involves the pathos and joy of walking and meditating with other cultures. Inter-cultural translation in de Sousa Santos is a part of a new hermeneutics of dialogue that he calls diatopical hermeneutics. Building upon the seminal work of Raimundo Panikkar, de Sousa Santos thus tells us: The aim of diatopical hermeneutics is to maximize the awareness of the reciprocal incompleteness of cultures by engaging in a dialogue, as it were, with one foot in one culture and the other in another—hence its diatopical character. Diatopical hermeneutics is an exercise in reciprocity among cultures that consists in transforming the premises of argumentation in a given culture into intelligible and credible arguments in another. (2014: 92) de Sousa Santos here tells us about putting our feet in cultures, which res­ onates with my idea of footwork, footwork in landscapes of self, culture and society as part of creative research (cf. Giri 2012). Hermeneutics does not mean only reading of texts and cultures as texts but also foot-walking with texts and cultures as foot walks and foot works resonating with Heidegger calls a hermeneutics of facticity (cf. Mehta 2004).15 It also means walking and meditating with cultures and texts as foot-working meditation while, as Thoreau (1947) would suggest, we walk like camels and ruminate while walking. This transforms hermeneutics itself into a manifold act of

84  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing democratic and spiritual transformation which involves related processes of root works, route walks, root meditations, route meditations, memory work and cultural work. de Sousa Santos urges us to realize “inter-cultural translation” as a living process. He refers to Gramsci’s concept of “living philology.” Inter-cultural translation as a living process can be linked to a creative work of nurturing life worlds and living words. Life words are not relativistic, they are relational. Translation as a “living process” also involves the work of living words which reflects the creative movements of souls, co-souls and peoples across boundaries of cultures. Intercultural translation as a creative communication among life worlds through living words embody what Heidegger (2004) may call the way-making dimension of language, self, culture and society. Such living words through way-making and trans-positional movements bring the far nearer and the nearer far. Translation, at the same time, is a work of a trigonometry of creativity consisting of travel, truth and translation.16 Translation is facilitated by travel, especially modality of being such as walking where one travels and translates lightly. Inter-cultural translation thus can be linked to creative foot work as part of a cross-cultural memory work. This is also a truth work and meditation where one walks and meditates with Truth. This truth work is an aspect of Satyagraha and it has both an epistemic and ontological dimension. Translation as satyagraha is thus part of an alternative epistemology and ontology which is a creative dynamics in the work of ontological epistemology of participation in our lives. de Sousa Santos talks about diatopical hermeneutics, but this need not be confined to our feet only in two cultures; it needs to move beyond two cultures and embrace many cultures. Spiritual traditions also can help us realize that though we have physically two feet, we can realize that we have many feet. In the Vedas it is considered that the Divine has million feet and similarly we can realize that humans also have million feet and with our million feet we can engage ourselves with not only creative foot work but also heart work (herzwerk as it is called in German) in our acts of gathering of knowledge, self and the world. Supplementing de Sousa Santos’ diatopical hermeneutics, one can cultivate multi-topial hermeneutics which is accompanied by a multi-valued logic of autonomy and interpenetration going beyond either-or logic, for example between North and South. We can then relate this to deeper planetary conversations and planetary realizations (Giri 2013) such as transforming the limits of the epistemic by taking part in dialogues with traditions such as Tantra, Buddism and Vedanta, which are understandably absent in de Sousa Santos’ quest at this stage. Multi-topial hermeneutics is accompanied by cultivation a new logic that can be called multi-valued logic and living. It goes beyond the binary logic of either or and cultivates a new logic of both and. This helps us in creative translation and communication across borders. Philosopher J.N. Mohanty (2000) tells us how multi-valued logic can build upon creative dialogues across philosophical traditions such as the Jaina tradition of Anekantavada,17

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  85 which emphasizes many paths of Truth realization, the Gandhian tradition of non-violence and the Husserlian phenomenology of overlapping contents. In the pregnant thought of Mohanty which he crafts like a jewel: The ethic of non-injury applied to philosophical thinking requires that one does not reject outright the other point of view without first recognizing the element of truth in it; it is based on the belief that every point of view is partly true, partly false, and partly undecidable. A simple two-valued logic requiring that a proposition must either be true or false is thereby rejected, and what the Jaina philosopher proposes is a multi-valued logic. To this multi-valued logic, I add the Husserlian idea of overlapping contents. The different perspectives on a thing are not mutually exclusive, but share some contents with each other. The different “worlds2 have shared contents, contrary to the total relativism. If you represent them by circles, they are intersecting circles, not incommensurable, [and it is this model of] intersecting circles which can get us out of relativism on the one hand and absolutism on the other. (Mohanty 2000: 24; emphases added) Such a pathway of multi-valued logic as it emerges from such diverse sources of seeking is a helpful companion to de Sousa Santos’ quest for alternatives. Multi-topial hermeneutics does involve transpositional movements including dancing with threads amidst threats across positions thus becoming what Molz and Edwards (2017) call integral hermeneutics.18 We can here bring multi-topial hermeneutics, transpositional dancing and transpositional subjectobjectivity together and realize how all these also involve sacrifice and transformation of our clinging to our own ego and ideological standpoints and one-sided absolutist epistemology, ontology and metaphysics.19

Meditative Verbs of Co-Realizations: Disjunctions, Emergence and Compassionate Confrontation Ontological epistemology of participation, transpositional subjectobjectivity as well as multi-topial hermeneutics involve both action and meditation. Building upon our earlier discussion, we can conceptualize and realize these as meditative verbs of co-realizations. While de Sousa Santos talks about critical social action in terms of not only politics of movements but also politics of inter-movements, there is little attention to meditation in his journey though his engagement with critical reflections and his deep openness to traditions of indigenous spirituality in Latin America has the potential of embracing meditation as part of an integral journey of transformation. In his work, de Sousa Santos discusses the problem of nouns. He tells us how in our world critical thinking grapples with the problem of loss of critical nouns such as socialism. It is now reduced only to an adjectival mode such as alternative development. But an important challenge here is

86  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing to realize the limits of nouns themselves as they embody a structure of fixity. Both the so-called critical nouns as well as nouns as personal names and collective names suggest a fixed form, but in reality they embody flows of change through time. For alternative thinking, we need to transform nouns into verbs. In fact, we need to go beyond the dualism between noun and verbs and realize our language and action as simultaneously having a noun as well as verb dimension. And verbs embody simultaneously action and meditation. Meditative verbs of co-realizations bring nouns and verbs, action and meditation together in our language and life.20 Meditative verbs of co-realizations embody contestation and struggles. These involve both disjunctions as well as conjunctions as well as emergent convergence. This resonates with de Sousa Santos’ emphasis on emergence in life and knowledge. We can link de Sousa Santos’ project of a sociology of absence and emergence to a sociology and spirituality of meditative verbs of co-realizations. For de Sousa Santos, “The sociology of emergences is the inquiry into the alternatives that are contained the horizons of concrete possibilities” (de Sousa Santos 2014: 184). We can realize emergent alternatives as meditative verbs of co-realization, not just nouns, and also as emerging from processes of meditative verbs of co-realizations involving different co-creators of transformations as well as the subjective and the objective, epistemic and ontological, political and spiritual. This process involves both compassion and confrontation. de Sousa Santos has drawn our attention to the significance of confrontation, especially creative confrontation, in giving birth to a different world. But we also need to cultivate compassion which has the courage to confront and confrontation which has integral compassion to self, other and the world in its task of confrontation. We need to give birth to creative emergences as meditative verbs of co-realizations as works and meditations of compassionate confrontation.

With and Beyond Reason: Intuition, Imagination and Supramental Transformation de Sousa Santos tells us about the limits of reason what he calls functionalist reason and lazy reason. Building upon Leibnitz, de Sousa Santos tells us how lazy reason is incapable of thinking beyond the order of conformity. It is linked to what he calls metonymic reason which is “obsessed by the idea of totality in the form of order” (de Sousa Santos 2014: 167). Lazy reason becomes “proleptic” when “future is conceived from the vantage point of the monoculture of linear time” (ibid: 181). de Sousa Santos tells us how we need to overcome the lazy reason of Western modernity by learning from other traditions, especially from the traditional of anti-colonial and post-­ colonial struggles against this as well as from contemporary movements of subaltern cosmopolitanism. In his reflections, de Sousa Santos also draws our attention to the significance of intuition in our modes of knowing. Speaking of alternative and resistant epistemologies from the South, de Sousa Santos tells us: “Our

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  87 knowledge is intuitive; it goes straight to what is urgent and necessary” (ibid: 12). This then invites us to cultivate further intuition in our practices of knowing and being not only in our personal lives but also as part of a wider cultural work. We need to develop cultures of intuition. For example, institutions of knowledge can help us in developing cultures of intuition. This can be done, for example, by creative training of senses, by yoga, tantra, integral education and development. In his work, Sri Aurobindo talks about the significance of both reason and intuition in human life which also resonates with simultaneous attention to it in Edmund Husserl. For example, in his reflections, Husserl tells us how our life world is a world not only of reason but also of intuitions (Husserl 2002). Science as part of our life world is not only a world of reason but also of intuitions. In fact, Mohanty, building upon Husserl, invites us to realize the work of living intuitions, which can creatively supplement de Sousa Santos’ project of inter-cultural translation as a living process and Gramsci’s view of living philology on which de Sousa Santos builds. So alternative epistemologies as part of ontological epistemology of participation ought to cultivate cultures of living intuition21 as part of life worlds and living words (see Chapter 3 of this volume). In his work, Husserl talks about crisis of European sciences. To go beyond this we need a new vocation as Husserl himself calls for “a complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion, which then, however, over and above this, bears within itself the significance of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind as such” (2002: 173). Sri Aurobindo here also challenges us for spiritual transformation and goes much further. Sri Aurobindo challenges us to overcome the limits of reason by cultivating the supramental dimension in mind, self and society where we are not limited by divisive work of the mind and go beyond it. de Sousa Santos’ critique of reason and cultivation of creative alternatives can have dialogues with Sri Aurobindo’s project of supramental transformation of reason, self and society (cf. Sri Aurobindo 1962). It must be noted that de Sousa Santos, unlike many other contemporary critical thinkers, is not dismissive of spirituality but rather wants to transform it as a companion of human liberation (cf. de Sousa Santos 2015). de Sousa Santos looks at God though Pascal’s wager: Although we cannot determine rationally that God exists, we can at least find a way rational way to determine that to wager on his existence is more advantageous than to believe in his non-existence. […] To wager on God’s existence compels us to be honest and virtuous. And, of course, it also compels us to renounce noxious pleasures and worldly glories. […] If God does not exist, we will have lost the wager but gained in turn a virtuous life. […] By the same token, if he does exist, our gain will be infinite: eternal salvation. (de Sousa Santos 2015: 112)

88  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing In his related work, If God Were a Human Rights Activist, de Sousa Santos (2015) talks mainly about political theology, but he does not realize the distinction between political theology and practical spirituality. While political theology strives for the place of religion in public life, practical spirituality is not confined to only issues of religions and power, rather it strives for realization of beauty, dignity and dialogues. While traditions of political theology in Western tradition as in the work of Carl Schmidt has promoted models of human social and political life characterized by enmity, practical spirituality strives for realization of friendship across borders including friendship among human, Nature and Divine (Giri 2013). Inspired by cross-cultural and cross-religious realizations, practical spirituality invites us to be a Bhikhu in the world. Walking and meditating with Buddha, it invites us to a beggar in the world with bowls, ploughs22 and computers in our hands for new knowledge, enlightenment and liberation. Practical spirituality as a mode of being a Bhikhu fulfills Cusa’s model of learned ignorance that de Sousa Santos presents in new ways. A learned ignorant becomes a Bhikhu and epistemic work as part of an ontological epistemology of participation becomes a work of a Bhikhu—seeking enrichment and enlightenment holding Infinite in one’s palm but also sharing it with others with courage and love. Practical spirituality thus makes epistemological work a gift work reviving this tradition from Marcel Mauss to Gandhi and beyond.

Planetary Realizations Planetary realizations embody realizations of ourselves as children of our Mother Earth which goes beyond ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism, nationstate centered rationality and anthropocentrism. It also embodies planetary conversations across borders. de Sousa Santos himself takes part in planetary conversations with some of the streams of thinking from Latin America. de Sousa Santos presents Cuban thinker Jose Marti’s project of Nuestra America, which is not the America of dominance. It “carries a strong epistemological component. Rather than importing foreign ideas,” and this project challenges us to “find out the specific realities of the continent from a Latin American perspective” (de Sousa Santos 2014: 53). Extending this to the contemporary, de Sousa Santos brings contemporary Latin American reflections including insights from indigenous spiritual traditions into planetary conversations. We can here bring some deeper philosophical insights from India. Speaking of alternative epistemologies, we can here refer to traditions and paths of knowing in Upanishadic-Veda-Vedanta tradition, Tantra and Buddhism. Here we can have a glimpse of practices of knowing and being in these traditions as plural and not monolithic. The methods of argumentation and conversation in the Upanishads23 have a potential for participatory discussion and learning which can transform our ways of knowledge creation. As Godavarish Mishra tells us:

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  89 The most important method is the method of inquiry where certain simple but critical questions are raised and answered. […] In the Upanishads we repeatedly find that the questions are asked in different ways and answers are given till the students are […] satisfied. […] The underlying intention is to provide clarity of the concepts and create a corresponding experiential base in the interlocutor […] This method of questioning is adopted in many systems of Indian philosophy to ensure that no view was accepted without being examined for its experiential validity. (2004: 278–279) In Epistemologies of the South, de Sousa Santos does bring to the center the problem of questions and answers which calls for a new pedagogy of living with questions and answers as meditative verbs of co-realizations and here Upanishadic modes and paths can help us.24 Sruti or listening is an important method in ways of thinking in Vedas but it is also accompanied by pramanas, evidence that gives us “objective knowledge” (Mishra 2004: 275). These pramanas make methods empirical thus having a possibility for building bridges with methods in social sciences such as participant observation and survey research. “Sankara does not dogmatically follow Sruti. He says that there should be experiential domain for Sruti, as ‘even a hundred scriptural texts declaring fire to be cold or non-luminous, will not be authoritative’” (ibid: 287). To this method of pramanas the Mimanshakas developed hermeneutical methods “for the understanding and the interpretation of the Vedas” while at the same time acknowledging the limitations of hermeneutical method and the need for it to be open to revelation (ibid: 279–280). In order to resolve the seeming contradictions of the text, Mimamsaka proposes that the subject matter (visaya) has to be identified first. This has to be followed by statement of possible doubts (samsaya). Then comes the prima facie view (purvapaksha) which postulates a set of meanings […] based on which the doubt is answered. This is followed by the suggested view (uttara-paksha), which refutes the meaning proffered by the prima facie view, through rational arguments and offers an alternative set of meanings. Then comes nirnaya, the definitive judgment on the meaning of the text. The chief aim of this hermeneutic method is to identify the proper context in which the Vedic passages could be related to human needs in a more meaningful way and to show its all time applicability beyond the temporal justification. (2004: 280) Advaita Vedanta has a method of what is called Adhyaropa-apapada (superimposition and de-superimposition). While Adhyaropa points to the fact that many of our concepts and languages are superimposition upon reality, apapada reiterates the need for de-superimposition. Languages and

90  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing concepts we use are many a time a superimposition upon reality which needs to be accompanied by a process of de-superimposition. Language not only helps us communicate, it also creates illusion and distortion of reality. In this context, Shankara emphasizes de-superimposition as an inevitable part of understanding reality. As Ramakrishna Puligandla helps us understand: “advancing an argument and rescinding it at the end; one advances an argument in order to inspire and orient the listener; and one finally rescinds the argument” in order to enable one understand reality in an open-ended way (Puligandla 1996 quoted in Giri 2004: 354). Methods like de-superimposition help us overcome illusions and not to be bound to the prisons that we ourselves create through the use of language and concepts. “It is part of movement from adhyasa—illusion (which is a very important concept in the Indic epistemology) to ever greater approximation to truth” (Wilfred 2004: 167). It also urges for purification of methods and consciousness in its stages of sense-perception, rational and theoretical understanding, and at the stage of wisdom. Methodology in these systems of thinking is not only confined to sense perception and rationalization but also includes movement towards the “third stage of prajna or wisdom” (ibid: 168). In Buddhist epistemology, anatta or no-self is an important aspect of reality as well as inquirer of reality. For example, the inquirer of reality does not have a fixed self nor does reality. de Sousa Santos’ alternative epistemological work can also draw inspiration from the Buddhist notion of sunyata. In this view, what characterizes reality is not an essential and determinate structure but a “dynamic sunyata,” a vacuum to put it in the language of quantum physics (cf. Dallmayr 1996a; Zohar & Marshall 1994). The significance of dynamic sunyata or the vacuum is not merely genealogical, i.e., reality has emerged out of the vacuum but its role as a permanent destabilizer of any stabilized form. As Dallmayr interprets, sunyata or emptiness denotes not simply a vacuum or empty space; nor does it coincide with logical negation. Far from serving as a vacuum preamble to conceptual determination, the term signals an absent-present matrix allowing conceptual distinctions to arise in the first place (while simultaneously placing them in jeopardy). (Dallmayr 1996a: 177) Reality has a sunyata aspect or a vacuum aspect as an integral part of it and our methods of study must be sensitive to this aspect of reality. As a mode of engagement, taking emptiness or sunyata seriously means that we are not totally and arrogantly certain about our methods, objects and subjects of study and we have the courage to take part in a “self-emptying process”— to be free from the privileges, securities, and the power of essential categories. Another important aspect of Buddhist reflections on reality is co-dependent origination which resonates with complex system thinking today with which de Sousa Santos is sympathetic.

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  91 From Vedanta and Buddhism, we briefly embrace Tantra which has been much more transgressive of boundaries for example being open to women and low-caste as contributions to enriching planetary conversations which await us here.25 As Marcus Bussey helps us understand, “Being deeply rooted in the indigenous experience of reality Tantra has a broad metaphysical base which allows for ways of knowing, feeling and processing that go far beyond the limited rationality that informs the Western Enlightenment project” (1998: 5). For Bussey, Tantra challenges us to understand the meaning of life in the graveyards which can bring new realization of the relationship between home and homelessness (Bussey 2014). Tantra brings us not only to the graveyards but also to the forest. So do paths of Buddha, Vedas and Upanishads. As Tagore tells us, Indian civilization is a civilization of forest that challenges us to realize the significance of forest in religion, culture and society, which helps us go beyond imprisonment in systems. Epistemologies from the South should help us realize the significance of forest and wider reality and vision of commons in nurturing a new ecology of knowledge and life which helps us go beyond the violence of civilization (see Taylor 2011). As de Sousa Santos himself so passionately tells us, at issue is the birth of a new civilization, which also challenges us to go beyond civilization as barbarism, as Walter Benjamin urges us to realize. In Epistemologies of the South, de Sousa Santos raises many themes and here we can briefly touch some of these as part of our continued cross-cultural conversations and planetary realizations. One of these deals with the problem of roots and options. For him, in modernity, “roots do not hold; options are blind” (de Sousa Santos 2014: 75). But de Sousa Santos quite wisely tells us: But the explosion of roots and options does not occur merely by means of endless multiplication of both. It also occurs in the process of searching for particularly deep and strong roots capable of sustaining particularly democratic and radical options. (ibid: 84) As a companion to this, we can also cultivate path of cross-fertilization of roots and routes. We need to realize roots themselves have routes and this cross-fertilization has been a fact of history and creative memory work of this as well as transformative action based upon this in the present can give birth to creative cosmopolitan future (Dallmayr 2016). In his manifesto for a good life, de Sousa Santos gives important role to intellectual activists who are concerned with life and not only with thought. As he writes: The concern of intellectuals is the life of thought, and that has little to do with life of life. Lived life—as much as Spinoza’s natura naturana— is supposed to be less than thought, but living life and natura naturans are more than thought. (de Sousa Santos 2014: 6–7)

92  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Intellectuals must strive to understand this surplus of life but should not activists also learn the sadhana and discipline of thinking itself? Intellectual work and activist work needs to be connected, but they may still demand differential though related practice and dedication. We need to understand their dynamic autonomies as we continuously strive to transcend fixation and boundaries. Intellectual activists thus need to strive to realize without falling prey to a logic of self-justification, self-valorization, reproduction of populist clichés and slogans, quick satisfaction and pronouncement of final solutions. For this they need to be part of love and labor of learning as well as work on self-transformation and mutual transformation. In a related work, I talk about the vocation of scholar activists who strive to embody ontological epistemology of participation in their vision and practice. They also embody a multi-valued logic of autonomy and interpenetration and aesthetics of establishing threads of connection across borders. They have mutual respect for their differential starting point. One who begins as a scholar does not continue to reproduce the logic of scholastic exclusivism and walks, works and meditates with the activists without sacrificing her continued love and labor critical and creative learning. One who begins as an activist also does not continue to construct the world only from the activist point of view a priori absolutist model of human salvation; they also learn to question their own faith without debilitating their force of action and they also continue to learn the discipline of being with the world in a spirit of inquiry of a scholar, an intellectual. We need to embody such a multi-valued logic of autonomy and interpenetration as our world is bleeding and weeping from the self-certain closure of the scholars on the one hand and activists on the other. Scholar activists deal with the finitude of human existence, especially suffering of soul and society but they do so holding infinite on their palms. In his work, de Sousa Santos tells us about the challenge of the infinite in our contemporary societies. de Sousa Santos writes, “The infinite we face is not transcendental, resulting, rather, from the inexhaustible diversity of human experience and the limits to knowing it” (de Sousa Santos 2014: 110). But in our times, why the infinite is also not transcendental? Here de Sousa Santos seems to be unconsciously within the limits of contemporary critical thinking such as that of Habermas which can only realize transcendental as immanent. Here we need to be open to both immanent transcendence as well as transcendental immanence (Strydom 2009, Giri 2013). de Sousa Santos talks about pragmatics of social communication and epistemological pragmatics. This pragmatics can be related to an interlinked vision and practice of spiritual pragmatism and pragmatics. In spiritual pragmatism new languages and practices are born of multi-dimensional sadhana, strivings and struggles involving both the social and spiritual bases of life and society. Spiritual pragmatism involves interpenetration of spiritual and material, immanence and transcendence, capability and transcendence. Spiritual pragmatism involves practical discourse as suggested in the critical theory and practice of Jurgen Habermas and practical

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  93 spirituality suggested in the works and meditations of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi as well as in many transformative spiritual movements in societies and histories. Spiritual pragmatism thus contributes to strivings for realization of non-duality as an ongoing sadhana and struggle in life, culture and society. It must be noted that there is an important legacy of overcoming dualism in American pragmatism as well which we notice in the work of social philosophers such as George Herbert Mead who urge us to go beyond the dualism of subject and object (Giri 2012). Spiritual pragmatism in its more social manifestation of critique, creativity, struggle and emancipation resonates with also tradition of American pragmatism what Cornell West (1999) calls “prophetic pragmatism” inviting us to the struggle and martyrdom of savants such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement (also see Unger 2007). Scholar activists can be bearers of spiritual pragmatism and transformative communication. They can also embody a new art of renunciation which combines world engagement with renunciation. Both engagement and renunciation are not only outward and external but also inner. In Epistemologies of the South, de Sousa Santos talks about the need for cultivating a spirit of sacrifice which needs to be followed up not only in politics but also in epistemology. But the discourse and practice of sacrifice in JudeoChristian tradition on which much of modern discourse builds involves mainly the sacrifice of the other, and here we need to open the logic of sacrifice to a deeper cross-cultural realization where sacrifice also means sacrifice of self as it is in Vedic tradition and in Vedic hermeneutics (see Murthy 1993). There is also a subtle distinction between sacrifice and renunciation where renunciation becomes a manifold process of practical and spiritual renunciation of binding and slavish attachments to our worlds of method, science and comforts thus freeing us to be seekers of knowledge, creativity and emergent worlds of beauty, dignity and dialogues beyond the existing structures and prisons of domination and annihilation. We need to embody practical renunciation in epistemology and politics which challenges us to beyond our methods and ideologies of certainty and practice a mode of permanent emptiness and seeking. This resonates with what Gianni Vattimo (1999) may call modality of weak thought and weak ontology, which is also accompanied by a weak epistemology. Ontological epistemology of participation is a dance of weak ontology and weak epistemology through movements of practical renunciation where one is not seized by the goal of victory but by quest for Truth and relationships in which our practical renunciation of will to mastery and certainty in life and method help us in our journey. de Sousa Santos tells us how we need to cultivate different temporalities in self, culture and society. For example, living in the present we should not be a prisoner of the logic of the present or what can be called “presentism.” We should cultivate creative non-contemporaneity of various kinds. We can also relate to time in a different way, for example time as pregnant temporality. A realization of pregnant space and time helps us in going beyond determinism and facilitate emergence in our lives. Time has been turned

94  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing into a machine of production of social suffering and one of the source of suffering is being imprisoned in a logic of monological presentism without creative memory of work of alternatives lying buried in the layers of the present. Time as part of our contemporary capitalist order forces us to run, run and run and here we can learn to breathe and live slowly as part of a creative epistemic, ontological, self and collective process. We can realize Time not only as a machine but also as our nurturing Mother. In his reflections, de Sousa Santos builds upon his participation in World Social Forum (WSF). For de Sousa Santos, WSF represents the maximum possible consciousness of our times. […] It has created a meeting ground for most diverse movements and organizations, coming from the most diverse location in the planet. […] Some are anchored in non-Western philosophies and knowledges that sponsor different conceptions of human dignity and call for a variety of other worlds that should be possible. (de Sousa Santos 2008: 12, 11) Here we can also bring insights from the related movement of Parliament of the World’s Religions which raise new possibilities of rethinking our basic terms of discourse such as religion, politics and spirituality. The 2015 meeting of the Parliament of World Religions was held at Salt Lake City, Utah, from October 15 to 21, 2015 in which I had taken part. This time the President of the Parliament was a Muslim Imam, Imam Malik Mujahid from Chicago. Along with Imam Mujahid, many Muslim leaders and lay people brought their struggle for peace, justice and dialogue to this yearning humanity of around 10,000 people. Not only Muslims were conspicuous by their presence in this Parliament in the traditional land of the Mormons, which in the process also has become more dialogical and open to interfaith work. There was also almost the sweeping presence of the women religious leaders and indigenous spiritual leaders from the US and around the world. In fact, before the formal opening of the Parliament, there was an assembly of women spiritual leaders on revitalizing the tradition and work of Divine Mother in religions, societies, self and cosmos. This work on activating and regenerating the Divine Mother in all religious traditions and beyond may help humanity to overcome the spiral of logic of violence unleashed by rise of world religions in history which were primarily patriarchal. These world religions whom philosopher and historian Karl Jaspers and many of his uncritical followers celebrate as the rise of Axial Age and turning point of human consciousness began with killing of the Mother Goddesses. This killing is continuing unabated as forces such as ISIS, Boko Haram and the Taliban are killing women and girl children and their fellow killers from other traditions continue the project of killing girls, children and women in the name of religion. The new spring of solidarity which has started blossoming in the recent Parliament of World Religions is a silent turning over this patriarchal Axial Age to one of giving birth to life and

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  95 nurturing it for fullest development of all. The same spirt has been witnessed in the subsequent Parliaments of the World’s Religions in 2018 and 2021 which was held in Toronto and virtually respectively.

In Lieu of a Conclusion In their work Theory from the South, Jean and John Comaroff (2012: 48) call for a new mode of theoretical engagement which involves a “respect for the real that does not conflate the empirical with empiricism. And a respect for the abstract that does not mistake theory-work for theoreticism.” de Sousa Santos’ journey with theory and practice involves such creative engagement with the empirical and theoretical in the process brining an emergent dimension of transformation to both as a companion to a loving and courageous act of world transformation.26 In another context, Fred Dallmayr (1999) who has patiently cultivated a different mode of planetary epistemic engagement born out of ontological work and meditation and deeper cross-cultural realizations had said: the reflective theorist in the global village must shun spectatorial allures and adopt the more modest stance of participant in the search for truth: by opening mind and heart to the puzzling diversity of human experiences and traditions—and also to the possibility of jeopardizing cherished preoccupations or beliefs” (1999). de Sousa Santos’ journey is part of such a quest which challenges all of us for more courageous transpositional movements and multi-topial hermeneutics across boundaries and settled foundations. This is part of our contemporary creative memory work and work and meditation with future as part of an integral struggle and sadhana of transformation which is simultaneously epistemic, ontological, ethical, aesthetic and spiritual where future is not only a cultural fact but also a collaborative political and spiritual co-creation.27 Such political and spiritual co-creations contribute to creation of healing epistemologies and ontologies in our times.

Notes 1 Here we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts: Epistemology is normative. It concerns what people ought to think and why. So recognizing the normativeness of central epistemological notions is crucial. (Elgin 1996: 5) On close examination, mainstream sociology turns out to be an ethno-sociology of metropolitan society. (Connell 2011: 226) For all the fact that “the global south” has replaced “the third world” as a more or less popular term of use, the label itself is inherently slippery, inchoate, unfixed. […] In the upshot, “the south,” technically speaking, has more complex connotations than did the World formerly known as Third. It describes a polythetic category, its members sharing one or more—but not

96  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing all, nor even most—of a diverse set of features. The closest thing to a common denominator among them is that many were once colonies […] “Postcolonial,” therefore, is something of a synonym, but only an inexact one. What is more, like all indexical signs, “the global south” assumes meaning by virtue not of its content but of its context, the way in which it points to some other things. Of these, the most significant, obviously, is its antimony with “the global north,” an opposition that carries a great deal of imaginative baggage congealed around the contrast between centrality and marginality, capitalist modernity and its absence. […] But it obscures as much it describes. (Comaroff & Comaroff 2012: 45) There is no way of knowing the world better than by anticipating a better world. Such anticipation provides both the intellectual instruments to unmask the institutionalized, harmful lies that sustain and legitimate social injustice and the political impulse to struggle against them. (de Sousa Santos 2014: viii) 2 As de Sousa Santos writes: “By discarding all alternative knowledges, modern science has revealed itself as a wastemaker, a condition that we, the few privileged inhabitants of consumer society, share as well” (2014: 151). 3 This means realizing, as John Clammer (2017) argues, that aesthetics is a mode of knowing. I also argue how aesthetics helps us realize both threads of connections as well as dynamics of disjunctions across different domains of knowledge and life (cf. Giri 2006). Gregory Bateson also helps us understand the link between epistemology and aesthetics as he writes: “Our loss of the sense of aesthetic unity was, quite simply, an epistemological mistake. […] more serious than all those minor insanities that characterize older cosmologies which agreed upon fundamental unity” (1973: 19). For Bateson, “Mere purpose rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dream, and the like, is necessarily pathogenic and destructive of life.” Building upon Bateson and Plato’s idea of paideia William Ophuls argues how we now need to restore beauty not only to epistemology but in the “pantheon of human values” (Ophuls 2011: 101). 4 Fred Dallmayr (1987) cultivates a mode of looking at ontology as practical ontology where ontology is not foundational and essential and does not suffer from “ontic objectivism.” It is engaged with practical activities such as love, labor and learning. Practical ontology also has an aesthetic dimension and Wickman (2006) also argues how practical epistemology has an aesthetic dimension as in the works of thinkers such as John Dewey and Leo Vygotsky. 5 As Foucault (1986) ask us: “What is the contemporary field of possible experience? Here it is not a question of an analytic of truth, but of what one might call an ontology of the present, an ontology of ourselves.” 6 Vattimo (2011) writes: I will use ontology in a sense I take from Heidegger for whom it denotes the thought of Being in both senses, subjective and objective, of the genitive. This is different from “most ontologists, who reduce ontology to a theory of objects. As for actuality, I use the term to refer to the common condition of our life at present. Vattimo (2011: 139–140) also links ontology of actuality to a quest for charity and solidarity: At the horizon line of the near future toward which we gaze, pragmatically assessing the utility of truth, there lies a more distant future that we can never really forget. Rorty alludes to this with the term solidarity, which I propose to

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  97 read directly in the sense of charity, and not just as the means of achieving consensus but as an end in itself. Christian dogma teaches that Deus Caritas est, charity is God himself. From a Hegelian viewpoint, we may take the horizon to be that absolute spirit which never allows itself to be entirely set aside but becomes the final horizon of history that legitimates all our near-term choices. This work and meditation of charity in ontology of actuality reminds us not about karuna or compassion from other paths such as Buddhism but also what Heiddgger called Ereignis. As Dallmayr helps us realize: Far removed from Macht and Machenschaft, Ereignis discloses in Being an immense and uncanny potency (beyond hard and soft power): namely, the potency to “give,” nurture and sustain beings everywhere without coercion. The question is how the power-free potency can happen or proceed. (Dallmayr 2016: 95) Ontology of actuality as ontology of actualization and mutualisation and as part of ontological epistemology of participation creates a condition for this realization of power-free potency, giving and generosity. 7 In his work, Piet Strydom (2013) also urges us to go beyond the opposition between realism and constructivism. In a related way, the work of Ali Mazrui presents a different variant of constructivism in which there is creative dialogue with the real. Aden Saifudeen calls Mazrui’s approach postcolonial constructivism and the following note about this can be enriching to all of us concerned: Mazrui downplays the Europeanism of ideas, even if he also takes issues with their (sometimes presumed) universality. He Africanizes those ideas. By doing so, Mazrui offers not only an alternative reading of Africa that is fresh but also enriches the borrowed ideas by adding a new dimension to them, and without adulterating the Africanism of his perspective, in the process. […] Postcolonial constructivism is thus what emerges from the cross-fertilization of Mazrui’s postcolonialism and his social constructivism. Postcolonial constructivism can be simply defined as an articulation of postcolonial concerns, with a social constructivist accent; it is a systematic interrogation of power and modernity. Methodologically, postcolonial constructivism represents a form of analysis which accommodates ethical considerations by integrating questions of justice, legitimacy and moral credibility into its concepts. In other words, empirical theory (observation) and value theory (moral judgment) are fused in postcolonial social constructivism. (Saifudeen 2015: 5) 8 This paragraph draws upon my introduction to Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony, which is volume three in a trilogy on creative research and is dedicated, among others, to Boaventuara de sousa Santos (cf Giri 2017b). 9 Such imaginations as in the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin then becomes a source of inspiration for transforming the social reality of slavery. 10 Here we may take note of the way movements in literature such as magic realism interrogates a naïve realist sense of the real and creates radical possibilities (see Chandra 2009). Literary critics such as Meenakshi Mukherjee (1985: 167) tell us how in creative experimenters and novelists such as U.R. Ananthamurthy engagement with reality also brings us to its mystical and mythical dimension. 11 What Santos here writes also deserves our careful attention: “A destabilizing subjectivity is a subjectivity endowed with a special capacity, energy and will to act with clinamen. Bearing Bloom’s use of the term in mind, we might say that a

98  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing destabilizing subjectivity is a poetic subjectivity” (2014: 98). I am exploring the poetic dimension of action, development and human condition further in my related work on poetics of development (see Giri 2016c). 12 It may be noted here that in Vedanta and other traditions, Maya is not illusion but manifestation of the Real. As Coomaraswamy tells us: “I understand the true and original meaning of maya to be natura naturans, as the ‘means whereby’ the essence is manifested” (Coomaraswamy in Moore & Coomaraswamy 1988: 239). 13 In our conventional engagement with language and reality the noun form plays a determinant role which sometimes neglect the verb dimension. As physicist and philosopher David Bohm who urges us realize the dimension of wholeness in reality tells us: “the dominant form of subject-verb-object tends continually to lead to fragmentation” (Bohm 2012: 40). Bohm tells us that in some ancient languages such as Hebrew, “the verb was in fact taken as primary. […] Thus the root of almost words in Hebrew was a certain verbal form […] However, in modern Hebrew, the actual usage is similar to that of English, in that the noun is in fact given a primary role in its meaning even though in formal grammar all is still built from the verb as a root” (ibid: 38). This emphasis on verb and the verbal formation of words in Hebrew that Bohm talks about finds a resonance in Sanskrit and the world view of Vedanta. As Brian Hodgkinson tells us: In his Astadhyayi, Panini tells us how words in a sentence are related grammatically to the verb. This emphasis on the verb implies that sentences essentially denote actions […] and is keeping with the Vedantic standpoint that the world is made of processes, rather than of analogically independent things. Plato similarly believed that the world is in a state of becoming rather than being. (Hodgkinson 2006: 185) The above discussion urges us to realize how many cultures “have developed complex improvisation verbal forms” (Sawyer 2003: 86). It also challenges us not to imprison language and reality only in the dominant noun form and it is important to realize the verb dimension of all nouns. But the verb dimension not only includes action as suggested above, it also includes meditation. Co-realization thus involves co-realizing the meditative verbs of language and reality. But here Santos (2014) challenges us a further critical work. For Santos, it is important to realize that our battle is over nouns as well and just making nouns verbs is not enough. 14 There are many critiques of dominant politics of knowledge around the world but one wonders whether the epistemological direct action it involves embodies Satyagraha. For example, we can explore if both post-colonialism and postmodernism as critique of knowledge embody Satyagraha. Similarly we can explore if the critique of knowledge coming from such scholars as Ashish Nandy and Shiv Visvanathan who present themselves as intellectual street fighters involve a vision and practice of Satyagraha. Many a time their critique of science and West is self-certain and one-dimensional. As Connell writes: “There are some troubling limits to Nandy’s thought. In The Intimate Enemy, this cast list was almost entirely male, the only woman to play a significant role was the sneaky French woman” (Connell 2011: 190). Connell here refers to Nandy’s critique of Sri Aurobindo but Connell herself does not bother even to name the woman referred to here who is called The Mother whose original name is Mira Richards who is a spiritual co-traveler of Sri Aurobindo. We can find similar one-sidedness in the work of Ramachandra Guha. We can explore if Guha’s critique of knowledge and other thinkers involves a dimension of Satyagraha. In Guha, one witnesses sometimes a self-confident

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  99 construction of the other. For example, in his introduction to Makers of India, Guha justifies his exclusion of Swami Vivekanada and Sri Aurobindo from the canon of Makers of India on the ground, among others, that both of them seems not to have contemporary following and their following is limited to middle classes. Again such a critique raises the issue of Satyagraha. One wonders whether Guha cares to take part in many-sided movements of consciousness taking place around India and the world drawing inspiration from Sri Aurobindo, for example integral education movement in Odisha and the international city of Auroville. If contemporary following is a criterion of selection to be part of Guha’s pantheon of makers of modern India, how does he include both Jinnha and Nehru who by his own admission have limited contemporary following in both Pakistan and India (see Guha 2014). 15 It is helpful to explore further the link between my proposed path of foot working and foot-meditating hermeneutics with Heidegger’s pointer to a hermeneutics of facticity. Here we J.L. Mehta’s following creative interpretation of Heidegger is helpful: Even in his earliest lectures, long before Being and Time, Heidegger conceived the main task of phenomenology [as understanding] how our factual life as actually experienced hides depth which its spontaneous self-explicating activity must bring to light […] [For Heidegger, for this] a way must be found to eliminate the baggage of traditional ontology and to interpret factual life afresh by means of a “hermeneutics of facticity,” as Heidegger called it […]. (Mehta 2004: 239–240) 16 I explore this trigonometry of creativity in my following poem: Three T and More Travel, Truth and Translation Travelling with Truth Translating Truth in Travel In Between the Relative and the Relational Absolute and Approximate Translating While Travelling Self, Culture and Divine Beyond the Annihilating Tyranny of the Singular A New Trinity of Prayer A New Multiple of Sadhana and Surrender [Written at Lake Putra, Putra Jaya, Capital of Malyasia, May 15, 2015: 530 PM and in Giri 2022: 48) 17 Jaina tradition refers to Anekantavada, multiple perspectives of Truth. Building on this, I talk about Anekantapatha, multiple paths of Truth. 18 As Molz and Edwards (2016) write: an integral meta-hermeneutics has much to offer in studying different interpretive frameworks from a meta-perspective. Traditionally, this has been the territory of all those, especially postmodern approaches that took an “interpretive turn” towards treating the task of explanation and understanding as a function of epistemology rather than ontology, including the psychological, sociological, socio-historical, economic and geopolitical conditions, contexts, positions and interests of the researcher and respective communities. However, rather than simply focusing on the deconstructive analysis of epistemologies an integral meta-hermeneutics would also move on towards the constructive task of finding connections and developing integrative frameworks for the plurality of interpretive positions.

100  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing 19 Multi-topial hermeneutics based upon for example the idea of hermeneutics in the Vedas calls self-sacrifice but sacrifice here is self-sacrifice, sacrifice of one’s ego and the will to power, rather than sacrificing the meaning of others (cf. Murthy 1993). Transpositional movements help us in one’s transformation of ego. We need to explore the links between self-sacrifice, renunciation and hermeneutics. 20 Speaking of meditation, we should not forget that meditation is not just a practice of repetition and reproduction of rites but is an alternative to it. As K. Satchidananda Murthy tells us about Shankara’s approach to meditation: “In his Bhasya on Brahadarnyaka, Sankara makes it clear that meditation is not part of a rite, but an alternative to it. It produces a greater result than mere ritual” (Murthy 1993: 96). 21 Here I draw inspiration from the work of my friend Marcus Bussey who in his essay, “Intuition, Rationality and Imagination” writes: Intuition is a form of reasoning based upon the capacity to connect the dots in ways that disrupt the present and allow for it to become remarkable. Deleuze coined the term transcendental empiricism as he sought to make sense of the patterns and ruptures that challenge all readings of culture and the conceptual experiments undertaken by cultural agents. I want to emphasize that intuition is a cultural tool—it is shaped by our experience of culture and can be harnessed when we are considering questions that lie beyond the contemporary horizon of the sensible and rational. (Bussey 2015: 2) 22 Buddha as Bhikhu walked with a bowl in his hand. But there was no plough in his hand. We now need a new modality of Bhikhu which goes beyond this division of hand and head. 23 Upanishad means to seat near by and discuss. 24 Santos terms it the problem of strong questions and weak answers in the dominant fields of life and epistemology. Here he argues that the presence of religion and spirituality in the contemporary field raises a strong question to which “Western critical tradition” has only a weak answer (Cf. Santos 2014: 22). But reading this I am inspired to go beyond the logic of question and answers as familiar ways of responding and cultivate these open ways of mutual explorations and co-realization. 25 As M.P. Pandit, a great scholar of Tantra and follower of Sri Aurobindo, writes: “Unlike the Vedas […] the Tantras [take] pride [in the fact that] their teaching is open to the Shudras” (Pandit 2010–2011: 52). 26 As de Sousa Santos tells us in his recent interview with Steve Brett of Third Space: So, the Epistemologies of the South is the alternative against war, in my view, against the destruction of life, the waste of social experience. What moves me more than anything, is when I meet such wise people and receive such wisdom from our conversations. But society blocks their flourishing. It allows them to survive, but not to flourish. That’s why I’ve always been so involved in social struggles. So that’s the idea behind the Epistemologies of the South. (see https://3rd-space.org/a-process-of-learning-and-unlearning-adialogue-with-boaventura-de-sousa-santos/) 27 Here we can walk and meditate with Arjun Appadurai’s engagement with future in his The Future as a Cultural Fact (Appaduarai, 2013). Appadurai here could undertake a far deeper cross-cultural interrogation of the epistemology of the present as well as disciplines of modernity. Future as a cultural fact also could be far more hermeneutic facilitated by multi-topial hermeneutics suggested in

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  101 this essay which also resonates with some of the movements that activists of his transnational movements make across borders. It is part of an ethics of possibility as Appadurai aruges but this also has an aesthetic and spiritual dimension which is understandably little explored in Appadurai even in his related reflection on capacity to aspire. We can here walk and meditate simultaneously with Santos and Appadurai and make them part of the needed emergent movement of planetary conversations and planetary realizations going beyond the limits of Euro-American epistemology in deeper and foundational ways.

Bibliography Adorno, Theodore. 1983. Against Epistemology: A Metacritique. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Appaduarai, Arjun. 2013. The Future as a Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso. Sri Aurobindo. 1962. Human Cycles. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Bateson, Gregory. 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Beteille, Andre. 2009. “Sociology and Ideology.” Sociological Bulletin 58 (2): 196–211. Bhaskar, Roy. 2002. MetaReality. Delhi: Sage. Bohm, David. 2012 [1980]. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Delhi: Atlantic Books. Bose, Sugata & Kris Manjapra (eds.) 2010. Cosmopolitan Zones of Thought: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2003.“Participant Objectivation.” Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S) 9: 281–294. Bussey, Marcus. 1998. “Tantra as Episteme: A Pedagogy of the Future.” Futures 30 (7): 705–716. ———. 2014. “Towards Spiritual Pragmatics: Reflections from the Graveyards of Culture.” Special Issue on Spiritual Pragmatism, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. 3D: IBA Journal of Management and Leadership 5 (2): 37–49. ———. 2015. “Intuition, Rationality and Imagination.” University of Sunshine Coast, Australia: Paper. Chandra, Giti. 2009. Narrating Violence, Constructing Collective Identities: To Witness These Wrongs Unspeakable. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chatterjee, Margaret. 2005. Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity: Religious Pluralism Revisited. New Delhi & Chicago: Promilla & Co. Clammer, John. 2017. “Art and Social Transformations.” In Cultivating Pathways of Creative Research: New Horizons of Transformative Practice and Collaborative Imagination, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Primus Books. Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff. 2012. Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Connell, Raewyn. 2011 [2007]. Southern Theory. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Dallmayr, Fred.1987. Critical Encounters: Between Philosophy and Politics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 1991. Life-World, Modernity and Critique. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. ———. 1993 The Other Heidegger. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1996a “Sunyata East and West: Emptiness and Global Democracy.” In Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter, (ed.) F. Dallmayr. Albany: SUNY Press.

102  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing ———. 1996b “Satyagraha: Gandhi’s Truth Revisited.” Paper presented at the International Congress of Vedanta. University of Madras. Dallmayr, Fred. 1999 (ed.) Border Crossing: Toward a Comparative Political Theory. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ———. 2011 Return to Nature? An Ecological Counterhistory. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. ———. 2016. “Earth and World: Ananta Giri’s ‘Roots and Routes.” In idem, Against Apocalypse: Recovering Humanity’s Wholeness, pp. 113–116. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Das, Chitta Ranjan. 2006 [1989]. Shukara o Socrates. Bhubaneswar: Pathika Prakashani. Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2008. “The World Social Forum and the Global Left.” Politics and Society (2). ———. 2014. Epistemologies from the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. ———. 2015. If God Were a Human Rights Activist. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dirks, Nicholas B. 2015. Autobiography of An Archive: A Scholar’s Passage to India. New York: Columbia University Press. Elgin, Catherine Z. 1996. Considered Judgment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1986. “Kant on Enlightenment and Revolution.” Economy and Society 15(1): 88–96. ———. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France, 1981–82. New York: Palgrave. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2004. “The Calling of a Creative Transdisciplinarity.” In Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ———. 2006. “Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods and the Calling of an Ontological Epistemology of Participation.” Dialectical Anthropology 30 (3): 227–271. ———. 2012 Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2013. Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London: Anthem Press. ———. 2017a (ed.) Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues. Delhi: Primus. ———. 2017b. Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony. Delhi: Primus. ———. 2022. Alphabets of Creation: Taking God to Bed. Delhi: Authors Press. Guha, Ramachandra. (ed.) 2010. Makers of Modern India. Delhi: Penguin. ———. (ed.) 2014. Makers of Modern Asia. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard U. Press. Habermas, Jurgen. 1972 Knowledge and Human Interest. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ———. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: THE MIT Press.

Social Healing and Healing Epistemologies  103 Heidegger, Martin. 1995. Country Path Conversations. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ———. 2004. “The Way to Language.” In idem, Basic Writings. London: Routledge. Hodgkinson, Brian. 2006. The Essence of Vedanta. Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, Inc. Husserl, Edmund. 1970 [1962]. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2002. “The Way into Phenomenological Transcendental Philosophy by Inquiring Back from the Pre-Given Life-World,” The Phenomenological Reader, (ed.) Dermot Moran & Timothy Mooney, pp. 151–174. London: Routledge. Madan, T.N. 2003. “The Householder Tradition in Hindu Society.” In The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, (ed.) Gavin Flood, pp. 288–305. Oxford: Blackwell. Mehta, J.L. 2004 [1990]. “Life-Worlds, Sacrality and Interpretive Thinking.” In idem, Philosophy and Religion: Essays in Interpretation, pp. 236–253. Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Mishra, Godavarish. 2004. “Trans-disciplinary Methods and Tools of Experiment: Insights from the Philosophical Traditions of Buddhism and Vedanta.” In Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods, edited by Ananta Kumar Giri. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Mohanty, J.N. 1974. “Life-World” and “A Priori” in Husserl’s Later Thought.” In Analetica Husserliana, ed., Anna-Teresa Tymie Mieka, pp. 46–65. D. Riedel Publishing Co. ———. 2000. Self and Other: Philosophical Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2002. Explorations in Philosophy: Western Philosophy. vol 2, (ed.) Bina Gupta. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Molz, Markus & Mark Edwards. 2017. “Crossing Boundaries, Stimulating Creativity: The Horizon of Integral Mega-Studies.” In Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Primus. Mooney, Edward I. 2011–2012. “Thoreau’s World Ethics.” The Concord Saunterer. 105–124. Moore, Alvin Jr. & Rama P. Coomaraswamy. (eds.) 1988. Selected Letters of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. 1985. Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Murthy, K. Satchidananda. 1993. Vedic Hermeneutics. Delhi: Shri Lal Bahadur Sastri Rashtriya Vidyapeetha in association with Motilal Banarasidass. Nadkarni, M.V. 2017. “Beyond the Analytical Method: Insights from Bhagvad Gita for Holistic Social Science Research.” In Research As Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Primus. Ophuls, William. 2011. Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Pandit, M.P. 2010–2011. “On Tantras.” Indian Journal of Philosophy, Religion and Culture [published by Pondicherry University] 11: 49–69. Pantham, Thomas. 1996. “Post-Relativism in Emancipatory Thought: Gandhi’s Swaraj and Satyagraha.” In The Multiverse of Democracy, (eds.) D.L. Sheth and Asish Nandy. Delhi: Sage. Patomaki, Heikki & Colin Wright. 2000. “After Postpositivism: The Promise of Critical Realism.” International Studies Quarterly 44: 213–237.

104  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Rao, K. Ramakrishna et al. 2014. Cultivating Consciousness: An East-West Odyssey. Delhi: D.K. Printworld. Reid, Herbert & Betsy Taylor. 2010. Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place, and Global Justice. Urbana-Champagne: University of Illinois Press. Saifudeen, Aden. 2015. “Postcolonial Constructivism: Ali Mazrui’s Theory of International Relations.” Africa Review of Books 11 (1): 4–6. Sawyer, R. Keith. 2003. Group Creativity: Music, Theatre, Collaboration. New York: Routledge. Schenk, Stephen (ed.) 2006. Letting Be: Fred Dallmayr’s Cosmopolitan Vision. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Sen, Amartya. 1993. “Positional Objectivity.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 22 (2): 126–145. Strydom, Piet. 2009. New Horizons of Critical Theory: Triple Contingency and Collective Learning. Delhi: Shipra. ———. 2013. Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology. London: Routledge. Sundara Rajan, R. 1998. Beyond the Crisis of European Sciences: New Beginnings. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. Taylor, Charles. 2011. Dilemmas and Connections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thoreau, Henry David. 1947. “Walking.” In Portable Thoreau. New York: Viking. Touraine, Alain. 2000. How Can We Live Together? Identity and Difference. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2004. Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Unger, Roberto M. 2007. The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Valone, James J. 1988. “Against Epistemology: A Constructive Look at Adorno’s Deconstruction.” Human Studies 11: 87–97. Vattimo, Giani. 1999. Belief. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. ———. 2011. Farewell to Truth. New York City: Columbia University Press. West, Cornell. 1999. “On Prophetic Pragmatism.” The Cornell West Reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Wickman, P.-O. 2006. Aesthetic Experience in Science Education: Learning and Meaning-Making as Situated Talk and Action. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Wilfred, Felix. 2004. “Indian Theologies, Retrospect and Prospects: A Socio-Political Perspective.” In Encounters with the World: Essays to Honor Alosius Pieris on his 70th Birthday, Robert Crusz, Marshall Fernando & Asanga Tilakaratna (eds.), pp. 145–176. Colombo: Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue. Zohar, Donah & Ian Marshall.1994. Quantum Society: Mind, Physics and the New Social Vision. London: Flemingo.

7 Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism Social Theory and Asian Dialogues and Planetary Conversations*

Introduction and Invitation There is a theoretical pathology of Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism in our modes of thinking, being and theorizing, and we can cultivate social healing as a way of healing such pathologies. In this chapter, I explore this in terms of theorizing Asian conditions going beyond the pathological dualism between Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism.1 Asia is not a predefined fixity; Asia is a journey of co-realizations and pluralizations. Similarly social theory is not unitary; it is a plural process of reflection on the dynamics of self, culture and society. But much of social theory as it rules in the academic corridors of Europe, Asia and the world is Eurocentric. But now there is an epochal need for realizing social theories as parts of planetary conversations. While some may look at it in terms of rise of Asia and decline of Euro-America, our challenge here is not to replace one ethnocentrism and exclusivism with another but make social theory a field of mutual learning and dialogue of presuppositions. Dominant social theories coming from the West have their own presuppositions, for example, the presupposition about the centrality of power in Weber and Foucault and justification and application in varieties of critical theory such as that of Jurgen Habermas. But these presuppositions are not universally shared as reigning presuppositions of self, culture and society. For example, in Srimad Bhagavadgita, a text in spiritual traditions of India, it is written, “Sradhha Maya Ayam Purusha Jo Jat Sraddha Sa Ebasa: This Purusha [the human person] is characterized by sraddha—capacity for love and reverence—; one is what one who loves or reveres.” These lines also offer some presuppositions about self, culture and society and urge us to realize that it is not only power but also sraddha (reverence or love) which characterizes being human in the fields of self, culture and society. For a fuller realization of social theory there needs to be dialogues between presuppositions of power and sraddha as important elements in the dynamic of self, culture and society rather than one-sided assertion and exclusion. *  This is part of a continued work for the last many years and a related version of this work has come out in Barry Rodrigue et al. (ed.) book on Big History from Primus Books, Delhi as well as in Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations from Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-8

106  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing

Rethinking Theory Theory is not a noun but a multiplex verb and it is not only activistic but also meditative. The practical turns in social theory through turns such as linguistic, feminist and ecological do help us realize that theory is not only a noun but also a verb. But these turns do not sufficiently cultivate theory as fields of meditative verbs as their notion of practice is mostly activistic and is not related to processes of meditative co-realizations (see Giri 2012). In Asian countries the majority of people are still walking on foot and we can cultivate the notion of theory as walking meditations. Many people in Asian societies such as our indigenous peoples have a propensity to dance and we can also cultivate theory as dancing meditations. Theory is not just an unconditional system; it is a conditional journey. We are invited to reflect upon and realize theories as walking and dancing meditations starting from our own locations and dialogue with insights from our homes and the worlds.

Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations We need to open classical and contemporary social theories which are predominantly Euro-American to multiple dialogues such as Asian dialogues which then become part of planetary conversations (see Connell 2007; Comaroff & Comaroff 2012). In planetary conversations, we take part in dialogues without privileging our apriori ethnocentric points of view and open ourselves, our locational insights and presuppositions, to mutual interpenetration, sharing, questioning and transformations. While much of the East–West dialogue is still imprisoned within the existing logic of a priori fixation and unconscious colonial constitution of our globe, planetary conversations seek to transform these to conditions of mutual dialogues and interpenetration of presuppositions. With this brief prelude, we can begin this dialogue with the concept of the self. In Asian countries, there is a notion of self as a field (cf. Clammer 2008). This field is not static but dynamic. It is a field of flows, of many rivers and streams. Our self is like the rice field. It is a field where chi, dynamic energy, flows. From both the Confucian traditions as well as Kashmiri Saivism we get a view of dynamic energy and consciousness. Recent social theory coming from scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu also emphasize the significance of field in understanding society. At the same time, Srimad Bhagavad Gita also talks about the yoga of the field and the knower of the field. While Bourdieu’s conception of field is primarily socio-political in Gita the concept of the field as well as the knower of the field is socio-psychological as well as socio-spiritual. It is enriching here to have mutually transforming dialogues between these conceptions of the field and thus deepen our conceptions and realizations of self, culture and society as fields (see Das 2010).2

Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism  107 Self is neither a peak nor a cliff.3 In individualism self is looked at as a cliff. But in Asian traditions and cultures there is a relational view of self which is, at the same time, ecological and transcendental. Self is the meeting point of the horizontal and the vertical. Individualism is at the root of modern social theory and society. But dialogues with Asian traditions help us realize the transindividual dimension of individual as also transocial dimension of society. In his discussion of the work of Thai social thinker and Buddhist social theorist Sulak Sivaraksha John Clammer (2008) tells us that Sivaraksha helps us in understanding that individuals have a transindividual dimension. In the words of Clammer: In much the same way that Louis Dumont has argued that Western individualism has its roots in Christianity and that the consequences of this individualism are profound for the arrangement of society and assumptions about how relationships within it work, so Sulak is arguing for a “trans-individualism” that arises from Buddhist roots, and which has profound implications for the ordering of society. (2008: 190) In modern Western society and modern sociology both individuals and society are conceptualized and realized in isolation of Nature and transcendence, they are imprisoned in isolated black boxes what Dallmayr (1998) calls “Enlightenment black boxes.” Dialogues with Asian traditions enable social theory to conceptualize and realize individuals and societies as at the same time part of Nature and transcendence. There are also streams in Western traditions which look at individuals and societies in relationship with Nature and Transcendence, but modern social theory has not nurtured itself with such streams of vision and practice. For example, in Goethe, we would find ways of going beyond modern Enlightenment black box and realize self and society as part of Nature and Transcendence, but modern sociology has followed Newton rather than Goethe (cf. Uberoi 1984). But border-crossing dialogues can contribute to memory work, for example, dialogue between modern social theory and Asian traditions of practices and reflections can contribute to creative memory work and retrieval of traditions of non-dualistic relationship between individual/society and nature and transcendence.

Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Beyond the Two Predicaments of Socio-Centrism and Self-Centrism Daya Krishna, the pre-eminent philosopher from India, tells us: Society need not be considered the last term of human thought. The centrality may be restored to the human individual who, then, may be viewed as the nucleus of the social cell from what all creativity emanates or originates. In this perspective, then, society would be conceived

108  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing as a facilitating mechanism so that the individual may pursue his trans-social ends. Instead of art, or religion, friendship or love being seen as the lubricating oil for the functioning of the social machine, the machine itself would be seen as facilitating the emergence and pursuit of various values. (Krishna 1993: 11) In many cultures, including Indian, the social does not have the same ultimate status as it has in modern Western society and socio-religious thought. The social in Indian thought does not have a primal significance and it is considered an intermediate field and an ideal society is one which facilitates our realization of potential as Atman, soul. Daya Krishna calls it the Atmancentric approach and contrasts this with the socio-centric approach in not only modern West but also in religious traditions such as Christianity. But one also finds socio-centric approach in certain aspects of Confucianism, which accords primary significance to social relations and not, to the same extent, to processes of self-realization. Both Atman-centric and socio-centric approaches have their own limitations what Daya Krishna calls the “two predicaments”—the Atman-centric predicament and the socio-centric predicament. The socio-centric predicament does not give enough space to self-realization while “Atman centricity leads a people’s attention away from an active concern with society and its betterment” (ibid: 23). In order to overcome the one-sidedness of an Atman-centric approach and sociocentric approach Daya Krishna links it to a new realization of freedom and Sri Aurobindo (1962) to evolutionary transformations, transforming the very constitution of the individual and the social beyond their present day dualistic constitutions.4 From the point of view of this aspiration to overcome Atman-centeredness or self-centrality and socio-centeredness we can look at Asian traditions in new ways. We can here take, for example, the case of Buddhism and Confucianism—two major traditions of discourse and practice from Asia. In its reflections on humanity while Confucianism focuses on webs of relationships Buddhism emphasizes the need to transcend the limits of social relationships, particularly anthropocentrism. But both the traditions have gone through many inner debates as well as contestations among them giving rise to movements such as Neo-Confucianism, which urges us to pay simultaneous attention to webs of relationships as well as nurturance of self-realization in our quest of human realization (cf. Dallmayr 2004: 152– 171). According to Tu Wei-ming, Neo-Confucianism involves a “continuous deepening of one´s subjectivity and an uninterrupted broadening of one’s sensitivity” (quoted in Dallmayr ibid). It also involves a dynamic interplay between contextualization and decontextualization. Hence, the self as a “center of relationships” finds itself simultaneously in the grip of an ongoing deecentering or displacement […] Just as self-cultivation requires self-overcoming, so cultivation of family and

Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism  109 other relationships demands a transgression of parochial attachments such as “nepotism, racism and chauvinism” and ultimately a transgression of narrow “anthropocentrism” in the direction of the ´mutuality of Heaven and man and the unity of all things. (ibid: 164) Thus in Neo-Confucianism there is a simultaneous attention to social relationship as well as deepening of subjectivity which helps us go beyond the one-sided emphasis on either society or self. We find a similar emphasis on emergent sociality and self-realizations in neo-Vedantins such as Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who urge us to cultivate creative relationships between self and society with additional cultivation of the divine along with and in between. We can also find the resonance of similar concerns in Gandhi and Tagore. So it is helpful to cultivate further dialogues between Neo-Confucianism and neo-Vedanta. This, in turn, calls for dialogues between Confucianism and Vedanta and not only between Confucianism and Buddhism. The dialogue between Confucianism and Vedanta has not yet been undertaken and for the making of a new world order it is helpful for us to undertake this. For example, Confucianism is concerned with harmony but in the conventional manifestation of harmony in traditional China this can be hierarchical and anthropocentric. In the conventional articulation of harmony in Confucianism there may not be enough realization of the challenge of establishing harmony between humans and non-humans and society and Nature. Vedanta with its concern of unity of all life can help Confucianism to realize this as Confucianism with its emphasis on proper social relationships can make Vedanta more social and here Confucianism vision and practice of Tian-Xia—All Under Heaven—can help us. For example, the Vedantic concern with unity of life should practice in the realms of social relationships which in the traditional social order are dominated by caste and gender exclusion. Both Confucian harmony and Vedantic unity face the challenge of transformation of hierarchy, monological domination and authoritarian construction of unity. Harmony and unity help us in coming together with and beyond the traps of domination and exclusion (see Bellah 1985). This is suggested in the vision and practice of loka-samgraha from the Indic tradition, which has a Vedantic root in a very open and cosmopolitan sense. Lokasamgraha is spoken about in Bhagabad Gita which challenges us to realize gathering of people and this gathering is not only a public gathering but also a soulful gathering. In modern social and political thought and practice, we are used to the vision and practice of public sphere and we can realize and transform this also as a field and practice of lokasamgraha which is simultaneously public and soulful. Lokasamgraha is a field of mutual care and responsibility and it is a challenge at all levels of human gathering—from dyadic associations, institutions and movements to the triadic and beyond such as family, community, nation and the global order. In our present phase of globalization and the challenges of global responsibility via such challenges

110  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing as climate change and terrorism, we need to talk about global lokasamgraha. This global lokasamgraha becomes a field of a new cosmopolitan realization where to be cosmopolitan is not only to be a citizen of the world but also to be a member of the human family (Giri 2006). It is not only epistemological and political as the dominant discourse of cosmopolitanism is but also ontological and spiritual. Global lokasamgraha is also a way of realizing the Chinese vision and aspiration of All-Under Heaven Tian-Xia.5 Coming back to Daya Krishna’s two predicaments in terms of thinking of society, here we need to realize that our mode of being in the world as participant in lokasamgraha and Tian-Xia requires both socio-centeredness and Atman-centered attention. It also requires decentering both in a spirit of Anatta or no-self as it comes from paths of Buddhist vision and practice. We can realize both self and society as not only social and Atman but also no-self which is not fixed and closed within itself. This can then help us realize webs of interdependence which is suggested in another Buddhist vision and practice of patipadasamucchaya—dependent co-origination. For realizing self and society as fields and circles of lokasamgraha and Tian-Xia we need to realize them as simultaneously fields and circles of sociality, self-engagement and nurturance of no-self helping us to realize them as not only webs of what Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hahn calls inter-being but also trans-being. In terms of sociological theory we can relate lokasamgraha, Tian-Xia and patipadasamucchaya to a creative systems thinking and chaos theory where systems are just reproductions of mechanical system of a priori ordering but unfolding configurations of communication and co-ordination (Giri 2002).

Confucianism and the Calling of Planetary Conversations Confucianism is a major influence in Asia, especially in China, Japan, Korea and many parts of South East Asia. Confucianism has been used in various ways in South East Asia as it is in China in histories and contemporary societies. Many a time it has been used to justify authoritarianism. But there is a new democratic consciousness brewing in South East Asia as well as in China which calls for rethinking Confucianism beyond the prism of authoritarian justification (Han 1998). Another issue is the issue of pluralism. Confucianism has existed in societies which have not valued pluralism as a way of life. Most of the societies where Confucianism is present is monological characterized by the dominance of one ethnic group, for example that of Han Chinese in China, Japanese in Japan and Korean in Korea. In this context we have to link Confucianism to pluralism. This in turn calls for dialogues across borders and making Confucianism part of varieties of planetary conversations.6 Such planetary conversations can begin at home, for example, with now already noted pluralities in China by some creative interpreters. For example, Tu Wei-ming, the creative interpreter of Confucianism now talks about five teachings of China—Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam and

Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism  111 Christianity. In Chinese histories and intellectual streams there have been visible and invisible dialogues among these teachings. During a visit to a Muslim town, Nagu Town, in Yunnan province (in July 2009), I asked an interpreter what has been the mutual influence between Islam and Confucianism. She said while Confucianism has made Islam much more this worldly Islam has made Confucianism have new understanding of the meaning of Heaven. Though scholars such as Tu Wei-ming have carried out dialogue between Confucianism and Christianity and not with Islam there is an urgent need for further dialogues in this field now. This is especially needed when the preset day Chinese government is promoting Confucian Institutes all over the world. Such Institutes should give rise to mutually transforming dialogues in China, India, Middle East and the world rather than be a center of promotion of official Chinese nationalism.

Meditative Verbs of Pluralizations Dialogues help us realize pluralities in our singularly conceptualized and constructed identities. There are pluralities in Europe as there are in Asia, and each of the countries, cultures and civilizations in both these spheres. We need to build our understanding upon these pluralities. But in order to understand this we need to have a dynamic view of pluralism by contributing to the process of creating a more plural understanding as well as society. But here our activities of pluralizations are not only activistic but also meditative. There is a need to cultivate meditative pluralizations in thinking about and realizing our identities as well as reflecting upon themes in social theories.

Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: From Judgmental Comparison to Generous Comparison of Comparisons When we think about any two units together it is easy to be engaged in judgmental comparison. This is much more so in thinking about valorized units such as modernity and traditions, Asia and Europe, India and the West, East and West, etc. Here a challenge before us is to acknowledge our propensity for judgmental comparison and through labor and love of learning move towards generous and more capacious understanding and realization. While we talk about Europe and India it is easy to state that Europe is material and India is spiritual but there are vibrant streams of spiritualities in Europe as materialism in India. So a more worthwhile comparison is between materialism of Europe and materialism of India as well as between spiritualism of Europe as well as spiritualism of India. Another aspect of this comparative engagement is that instead of comparing systems and units in a totalizing way we are engaged in partial comparisons. This builds upon plural understanding of each of these systems and exploring partial connections in between and across and be engaged in partial comparisons rather than wholesale comparison of systems. Here we

112  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing have to move beyond systemic comparisons and attend to complexities that lie in between and beyond. As Beteille (1983) tells us, the whole scale comparison of civilizations such as India as “Homo Hierarchicus” and West as “Homo Equalis” as it happens in the comparative sociology of Louis Dumont is not only unhelpful but perpetuates Western ethnocentrism (see also Giri 1998). Similar is also the perspective of Touraine who argues that the distinction between modernity and tradition in terms of individualism and hierarchy—à la Louis Dumont—is not helpful to understand either of them. As he (Touraine 2000: 86; emphasis added) writes: The distinction between social and non-social definitions of the individual seems to me to be even more important than that between the holistic societies of old and modern individualistic societies. Both types of society are Janus-faced, because there is no fundamental difference between an individual who is trapped in the roles imposed on him by the community and an individual whose actions are determined by his social situation and the highly effective blandishments of the market. At the same time, there is a similarity between the renouncer and the modern individual who appeals to the universal rights of man and in particular the dissident or resister who risks his life by challenging a social order which, in his view, is an affront to human dignity. Thus we need a comparative global and even planetary engagement that is interested to explore pathways of partial connections rather than whole sale comparison of civilizations and systems: “Partial connections require images other than those taxonomies or configurations that compel one to look for overarching principles or for some core or central features” (Strathern 1994: xviii). Based on her work in New Guinea, Marilyn Strathern writes: attempts to produce a typology of societies from the application of constant principles may also evaporate. For instance, principles of reciprocity as they affect the organization of transactions and the role of leaders as Great Men or Big Men may well appear to discriminate effectively between a handful of cases; but the discrimination cannot be necessarily sustained at that level—an expanded version reveals that principles radically distinguishing whole cluster of societies are also replicated within them. 7 (Strathern 1994: xviii; also see Strathern 2002)

Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Genealogy, Generosity and the Calling of a Post-colonial Cosmopolis Many Asian societies were subjected to colonial domination and struggle for liberation and freedom constitutes an important part of the historical experience of Asian societies. Social theories in Asia build upon such

Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism  113 anti-colonial and post-colonial struggles for freedom (Mohanty 1994). Post-colonialism has been an important intellectual movement in our recent past. Post-colonial critics and social theorists, however, very rarely take part in continued liberation struggles in their own societies. Most of them write only in English and teach in elite academic institutions in the Euro-American world. They very rarely write in the mother languages of the people in a country such as India. Their theoretical discourse is very much part of global metropolitan discourse. These critics very rarely enter into dialogues with traditions of thinking and reflections in their cultures and societies. Though they operate in the Euro-American world they have a monolithic view of Europe and Asia. Moreover they very rarely pluralize the colonial experience itself. Post-colonial critics from Asia mostly work within the framework of British colonialism in India and there is very little work on comparison between Japanese colonialism in Korea and China and British colonialism in India. Post-colonial criticism itself needs to be part of planetary conversations doing comparative historical work on varieties of colonialism and struggles for liberation in these conditions. In this context, it is enriching here to think about Partha Chatterjee’s recent genealogical investigation of modern normative political theory what he calls “Lineages of Political Society” (2009). Chatterjee uses lineage as a method in Foucault’s genealogical sense but like Foucault presents a unitary view of modern knowledge, in this case, modern normative political theory without exploring the plurality of streams of contestation within this constructed single field of normative theory. For example, in this normative space everybody did not justify colonialism as exception to the norm of normative political theory. Chatterjee seems to have a singular notion of norm such as representative democracy, but this single theme itself hides a plurality of streams, not to speak of well-known tension among equality, liberty and fraternity. In modern Europe the Scandinavian experiments with people’s enlightenment and democratic transformations are not just a variation of the Anglo-Saxon experience and here there has been much more attention to education, participatory democracy and people’s enlightenment (cf. Das 2007). Chatterjee uses lineage as an approach supposedly to go beyond linearity, but this is deployed much more to tell multiples stories from “most of the world” rather than multiple streams of normative struggles, social mobilizations and contestations from the Euro-American world. The language of lineage is used to construct a linear and one-dimensional object of critique, in this case the “mythical space of” normative political theory, but the object of critique has also a lineage of plurality as the historical experience of “most of the world” from which such a critique is being launched. Probably we need a new genealogical method that is equally generous to the lineages of plurality in all parts of the world and not only in colonized and post-colonial societies. For Chatterjee, the challenge before “post-colonial political theory” is “to break the abstract homogeneity of the mythical time-space of Western normative theory.”

114  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing “The second is the even greater challenge to redefine the normative standards of modern politics in the light of the considerable accumulation of new practices [from colonial, post-colonial societies as well as from EuroAmerican world]” (2009: 23). But this project does not explicitly realize the need for cross-cultural dialogue. Furthermore, this does not include the challenge of understanding and learning languages of normative thinking in traditions such as India. For example it is said that King Janaka, father of Sita, nurtured his people as a mother. Learning much more about such languages of governance would bring new enrichment and imagination to post-colonial political and social theorizing. But how is it possible when our post-colonial advocates mostly interact with knowledge emerging from the Euro-American world and rarely go inside other traditions of thinking and realizations? The possible significance of nurturing one’s subjects as a mother is explored in the following poem: King Janaka nurtured His People as a mother And Could not our Janakas— Our fathers in politics, family and religion Nurture us as mothers? Could not God and His arrogant servants Be a Manifestation of Creative Motherhood And our state and society A Flow of Motherhood. (a poem originally written by the author in Oriya)

Theorizing as Walking and Dancing Meditations: The Calling of Cultivating New Words and Worlds Cultivating social theory and Asian dialogues calls for us to be engaged in varieties of creative learning, memory works, going deeper in our multiple traditions and border-crossing conversations. It calls for us to learn across borders and create a new fields of mutual learning and responsibility. We learn by walking and dancing together not only sitting in libraries and looking at the old manuscripts as documents of truth or doing field work in an alienated way (Thoreau 1947). Theorizing is not only an abstract, deductive and discursive activity; it is a multidimensional practice involving dancing and walking together, cultivating dialogues across borders and taking part in planetary conversations. Such practices of theorizing call for new languages of learning, inquiry and communities of seeking. We are invited to go beyond the available discourses and practices of theory, Asia, Europe, West, East, India and the world and contribute to new journeys of self, social and planetary realizations.

Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism  115

Cultivating Planetary Conversations Theorizing is a multi-dimensional process of being and becoming as it involves multi-valued logic and transpositional dancing with reality and possibility. It is a movement with and beyond what Arjun Appadurai (2013) calls an ethics of probability towards not only what Appadurai calls an ethics of possibility but towards an aesthetics and spirituality of possibility as unfoldment of potential. It involves meditative verbs of co-realizations across borders going beyond the limits of Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism and entrenched dualisms of various kinds such as between the epistemic and ontological, and political and spiritual. Social theory and Asian dialogues strive to cultivate rooted planetary conversations across going beyond the violence of existing exclusion of Eurocentric theorizing as well as ethnocentric certitude and absolutism.

Notes 1 Here the following thought help us in moving ahead in our exploration in this chapter: Theory in the Greek sense requires a combination of interest and disinterest. The theorist needs to be fully engaged and completely, even urgently interested in the quest for truth, goodness, and beauty; but at the same time, the theorist needs to bracket selfishness and to be disinterested in the pursuit of his/her own particular “good” or advantage. (Dallmayr 2013: 8) I propose the planet to underwrite the globe. Globalization is the imposition of the same system of exchange everywhere […] The planet is the species of alterity. (Spivak 2004: 72) My tendency to idealize Western civilization arises from my nationalistic desire to use the West in order to reform China. But this has led me to overlook the flaws of Western culture. I now realize that Western civilization, while it can be useful in reforming China in its present stage [is no panacea] I have no choice but to carry out two critiques simultaneously. I must:



1 Use Western civilization as a tool to critique China 2 Use my own creativity to critique the West (Liu 2013). the current usage of “Asia” as a continental unity is a combination of two factors—the Western habit of naming the “other” and the Asian strategy of invoking Asian values to withstand Western materialism. (Sugirtharajah 2013: 3) A chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of human race. In the present age, the world has been united on a material plane by Western technology. But this Western skill has not only “annihilated distance,” it has armed the people of the world with weapons of devastating power at a time when they have been brought to point-blank range of each other without yet having learnt to know and love each other. At this supremely dangerous moment in human

116  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing history, the only way of salvation for mankind is an Indian way. The Emperor Ashoka’s and the Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violence and Sri Ramakrishna’s testimony to the harmony of religions: here we have the attitude and the spirit that it can make it possible for the human race to grow into a single family—and, in the atomic Age, this is the only alternative to destroying ourselves. (Toynbee 1969: xv) 2 Self is a process and here it is possible to make a dialogue between semiotic traditions and Buddhist traditions. As Bakker (2017) writes: In the combined Peirce-Mead model of the “semiotic self” the Neo-Darwinian ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce and George Herbert Mead are synthesized to establish a kind of Global adaptation of the Buddhist notion of the flow of the self. The self is not a static thing. The self is not like an apple or a billiard ball. The self is process. The process consists of one’s “mind” continually sifting through experiences and making plans. At any one stage of our lives we are “me-I-thou.” Then, only a few seconds later, we are again a new “me-I-thou.” 3 Here the following poem about peak and peak experience may be of interest: I am a peak I am not only a peak I am also a plane A plane seeking embrace Experience of the peak Is not confined only to the peak It is there in all planes of life Circles of relationships (extracts of a poem written by the author originally in Odia. Cf. Giri 2022) 4 For Sri Aurobindo: In the relations between the individual and the group, this constant tendency of Nature appears as the strife between two equally deep-rooted human tendencies, individualism and collectivism. On one side is the engrossing authority, perfection and development of the State, on the other the distinctive freedom, perfection and development of individual man. The State idea, the small or the vast living machine, and the human idea, the more and more distinct and luminous Person, the increasing God, stand in perpetual opposition. The size of the State makes no difference to the essence of the struggle and need make none to its characteristic circumstances. It was the family, the tribe or the city, the polis; it became the clan, the caste and the class, the kula, the gens. It is now the nation. Tomorrow or day after it may be all mankind. But even then the question will remain poised between man and humanity, between self-liberating Person and the engrossing collectivity. (1962: 272–273) 5 Here what Fred Dallmayr writes bringing Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger and the idea of loka-samgraha from Bhagvad Gita deserves our careful consideration: As an antidote to the spread of “worldlessness” in our time, Hannah Arendt recommended the restoration of a “public realm” in which people would actively participate and be mutually connected. Digging beneath this public

Healing the Theoretical Pathology of Eurocentrism and Ethnocentrism  117 forum, Heidegger unearthed the deeper source of connectedness in the experience of “care” (Sorge, c ura) in its different dimensions. From the angle of human “being-in-the world,” care penetrates into all dimensions of this correlation—in the sense that existence is called upon to care about “world” and its constituent features (fellow-beings, nature, cosmos). Differently put: There cannot be, for Heidegger, an isolated “self-care” (c ura sui) without care for the world—that includes care for world maintenance (without which Dasein cannot exist). In this latter concern, is work does not stand alone. In the Indian tradition, especially the Bhagavad Gita, we find an emphasis on a basic ethical and ontological obligation: the caring attention to “world maintenance” or loka-samgraha. According to the Gita, such attention needs to be cultivated, nurtured and practiced in order for human life to be sustainable and meaningful. (Dallmayr 2016: 51–52) 6 In this context the work of Dallmayr is enriching. He tells us about the affinity among these different streams of thought and practice—pragmatism, Confucianism, Gandhi’s experiment with truth and paths of Swaraj. First Dallmayr (2007) writes the following about Gandhi and the pragmatists like William James and John Dewey: In speaking of interconnectedness and the “play of mutual forces” Gandhi displays an affinity with the spirit of Jamesian and Deweyan pragmatism. But the parallel can be carried further. Like William James and Dewey, and perhaps even more emphatically, Gandhi was an ethical and spiritual pragmatist, in the great tradition of Indian spirituality. […] Gandhi deliberately chose the path of action or praxis (karma yoga) demanding continuous ethical engagement in the affairs of the world. Again like Dewey he did not assume that human beings are free and equal by nature (or in an original “state of nature”); rather freedom and equality for him were achievements requiring steady practice—a practice involving not only change of outward conditions but primarily self-transformation. (2007: 10) Then Dallmayr writes the following about Confucius, Dewey and Gandhi: Despite his deep modesty, Confucius himself can be seen and was seen, as an “exemplar” or “exemplary person” (chun-tzu) who taught the “way” not through abstract doctrines but through the testimony of daily living. At this point, the affinity with the Deweyan philosophy comes clearly into view—a fact perhaps not surprising given Dewey’s extended visit to China after World War 1. As in the case of Gandhian swaraj, leading a responsible life in society involves self-restraint and the abandonment of domineering impulses. In Confucius’s own words, humanness or to be properly human (jen) means to ‘conquer oneself (ke-chi) and to return to propriety (fu-li). (Dallmayr 2007: 15) The above reflections of Dallmayr can help us to probe further the affinities among paths of Confucius, Gandhi and the pragmatists like Dewey as part of planetary conversations. 7 In their recent following reflections on Tocqueville’s method, Parth Chatterjee and Ira Katznelson also help us to understand how Tocqueville also followed a creative historical comparative method of partial comparisons: Tocqueville followed a method that strove for a theoretically grounded comparative analysis of political formations, but one in which each formation also had to be situated within deep and complex structures of their own

118  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing historical evolution. He did not think of historically constituted political formations as mere cases of comparative theoretical types, or of variants within a type, as though one formation might just as easily be exchanged for another of the same type. Consequently his study of democratic institutions in the United States, as well as his comparative reflections on political institutions in France, is marked by detailed empirical observations that were drawn, as we would say today, from long and arduous fieldwork using a variety of textual and oral methods, followed by theoretical work seeking to draw sustainable formulations belonging to a general comparative order while respecting the historical specificities of each institutional form […] The great attraction of a Tocqueville-inspired method for us is that it offers the possibility of partial and contingent normative theories based on the configurative study of specific political institutions in two or more countries without resorting to totalizing notions of “stages of civilization” or “levels of development.” We believe it is possible to engage in comparisons of political formations that do not assume any particular form of democratic modernity, either existent or hypothetical, as the telos of development. Even if Tocqueville believed that democracy was being driven by an irresistible historical force, his analytical method makes it clear that its particular forms were the result of specific historical configurations of causes. (Chatterjee & Katznelson 2012: 2, 4)

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120  The Visions, Calling and Challenges of Social Healing Loy, David. 1988. Non-Duality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. New York: Humanity Press. Mehta, J.L. 2004 [1990]. “Life-Worlds, Sacrality and Interpretive Thinking.” In idem, Philosophy and Religion: Essays in Interpretation, pp. 236–253. Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Mishra, Pankaj. 2012. From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia. London: Allen Lane. Mohanty, Manoranjan. 1994. “Swaraj and Jiefang: Freedom Discourse in India and China.” In Understanding the Post-Colonial World: Theory and Method, (ed.), Neera Chandhoke. Delhi: Sterling. ———. 1998. “Towards a Creative Theory of Social Transformation.” In People's Rights: Social Movements and the State in the Third World, (eds.), Manoranjan Mohanty & Partha N. Mukherjje. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 9–26. Qi, Xiayoing. 2014. Globalized Knowledge and Chinese Social Theory. London: Routledge. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty. 2004. Death of a Discipline. Kolkata: Seagull. Sri Aurobindo. 1962. The Human Cycles. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Strathern, Marilyn. 1994. Partial Connections. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ———. 2002. “Foreword”, in Gingrich & Fox: Anthropology, By Comparison, London: Routledge, pp. xi–xvii. Sugirtharajah, R.S. 2013. The Bible and Asia: From Pre-Christian Era to PostColonial Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press. Thoreau, Henry David. 1947. “Walking.” In Portable Thoreau. New York: Viking. Touraine, Alain. 2000. Can We Live Together? Equality and Difference. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Toynbee, Arnold J. 1969. “Foreword.” India’s Contribution to World Thought and Culture. Chennai: Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan. Uberoi, JPS. 1984. The Other Mind of Europe: Goethe as a Scientist. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Part II

Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha

8 Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement and a New Politics, Poetics and Spirituality of Dwelling The Ethics, Aesthetics and Responsibility of Home and the World* Introduction and Invitation Displacement, especially involuntary displacement, creates enormous pain and suffering in the displaced and the wider culture and society. The vision and practices of social healing need to address this. It also needs to understand the way the displaced cope with it? Our fellow beings in this field many a time show courage, creativity, resistance and resilience, and they write their experiences and through this derive strength. Along with the writings by the displaced, other creative writers also write about the experience of the displaced by narrating how they cope with their pain, vulnerability and suffering. They not only try to survive but strive to thrive. They cultivate new practices and vocations of dwelling which contributes to healing. Here we can draw upon the idea of dwelling from philosopher Martin Heidegger and explore the poetics of dwelling that emerges in conditions of displacement as well as in subsequent movements of relocation and resettlement. In this chapter, I refer to the Satyagraha launched by people in the Narmada valley when their villages were being submerged at the final stage of the Narmada Bachao Andolan where people stood in water for days. It was called Jal Satyagraha. This Satyagraha did succeed in stopping the raising of the height of the Narmada dam in some places such as Omkarshwar dam area in Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh. It is an important story of courage, confrontation and resistance. I also discuss the struggle in Baliapal, Odisha, against the establishment of a missile station there that would have led to displacement of many villages. This movement succeeded in stopping the construction of the missile base and the subsequent displacement. This was possible because of grass-roots resistance in which local people came together. In this both politics and poetry of resistance as *  I am grateful to Professors Meera Chakravorty and John Clammer for his invitation to write on this theme. I am grateful to Professor Paul Routledge of University of Leeds, Professor Rajkishore Meher, formerly of NKC Center for Development Studies, Bhubaneswar and Dr. Arun Kumar Nayak of Government Degree College, Tripura for sharing with me their works on this theme. I am grateful to Maanya Rao of New York University and Vishnu Varatharajan of Graduate Institute, Geneva for their help with this work. I thank the reviewer of this chapter for their meticulous reading of this work and comments and suggestions.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-10

124  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha well as a new reconstitution came together to confront the discourse and practice of displacement and reconstitute new spaces and imaginations. Here the role of departed politician Gadadhara Giri and the poet Brajanath Rath played an important role. In this chapter, I discuss their works based upon sociological and literary works on this movement. In this chapter, I discuss these social and political movements against displacement and the poetry and literature of resistance and reconstitution it created.1 I also discuss the novella, Mahapru Munda Tekileni [The Great Lord Has Raised His Head] by Yashodhara Mishra, a creative writer from Odisha who in her work has written about the experience of displacement as well as quest for roots and regeneration of soil, soul and the Divine after more than 60 years of establishment of Hirakud dam in Sambalpur, Odisha. The building of the Hirakud dam led to large-scale displacement and even after 60 years the people are not yet rehabilitated.2 3 I therefore bring the ethical problems of displacement and relate to the ethical problems of development. But displacement itself is only part of the story. Even the discourse of displacement is so powerful that it does not realize that it is only part of the story. Displacement is followed by various imaginations and practices of re-homing, resettlement and reconstitution. By interrogating this one-dimensional discourse of displacement, I suggest how we need to bring the vision and practice of re-homing and reconstitution that is at work in processes of displacement. Re-homing creates beauty in places of ugliness generated by displacement and this invites us to engage with the complex aesthetic issues in displacement and replacement. While ugliness of displacement is a product of what David Harvey (1989) calls “aesthetics of empowerment” where power is used to create death, displacement and ugliness, re-settlement and creation of new homes creates conditions of a new aesthetics of home, imagination and a new possibility. Thus in my chapter I link ethics and aesthetics together. I also link both to the challenges of responsibility. If displacement becomes inevitable then it is the responsibility of all parties especially State, market, social movements/ voluntary organizations/civil society and self/individual to come together and respond to the challenge and to create new spaces of hope and homes. Finally I take up the issues of home and the world. Displacement is painful and unsettles our settled notions of home. This unsettling, even when forced upon us, can be realized as an occasion for rethinking our settled foundations and to create new experiences of home, homelessness and the world. In my essay, I also discuss this challenge of a new vocation of dwelling, homelessness and realization of meaning and relationship in our fragile worlds.

Interrogating and Confronting Displacement In post-independent India, involuntary displacement due to the construction of mega projects such as dams and mining has been a source of great suffering. Hirakud dam in Odisha is one of the first which led to

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  125 displacement of thousands of people. Even after more than 60 years many of the displaced have not been rehabilitated. In her novella, Mahapru Uthileni, Yashodhara Mishra provides a literary rendering of the protest against such displacement as well as pain, suffering and persistence shown by the displaced (Mishra n.d.). Mishra narrates how the protest against this dam came in the wake of struggle for Indian freedom and protest against colonial rule. Through one of her characters Kunjabana, Mishra tells us how people of the region read about the story of protest against colonial rule and freedom of India in textbooks but they do not read about the movement against the building of Hirakud dam against which his childhood hero, Biranchi Narayan and many people in the village had taken part. Mishra writes: Throughout the childhood the story of the freedom movement has been taught, we have written about it in our examination papers. But the movement in which his own home people and his kin had taken part and which he has experienced in his own body, nothing is taught about this movement. But this movement is no less compared to those who had joined the movement at the call of Gandhi and Nehru. In the novella Kunjabana tells us that in 1956 “Villagers were driven away from the villages like cattle. They were called people from the submerged areas.” In the novella, Kunjaban tells her grandmother: “Listen Grandma! Our Prime Minister Nehru has said Hirakud dam is the first temple in free India”. Hearing this Grandma started weeping and then started wiping her tears with her cloth. She told, “Why! Why did he not build a temple in his village? Had he to drown our village?” From then started her wailings which resonated with the slogans of the movement. In these lines we hear a critique of the dam building project and the accompanying process of displacement. But these critiques and movements could not stop the construction of the dam and many got displaced. Though they were given compensations to purchase land in new locations, many destroyed themselves by drinking and nostalgically pining for their homes. Mishra writes: “Chinta Panigrahi of Saragada drank and drank and the whole family got destroyed.” Kunjabana and his family were driven away from his native village on the banks of Mahanadi. His grandfather and father got settled in Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha. His grandfather used to pine for the left village in the submerged Mahanadi valley and especially the Shiva temple which was submerged. His father also used to pine to the submerged village. They used to say that this flood one day would subside. His son is now working in the US and he also feels nostalgic for his home. Through all these ravages of time, water level in the submerged areas in Hirakud has come down and as

126  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha a result some of the submerged villages now are visible. One day Kunjabana received a call from Kurti, a childhood friend of his, that the village Shiva temple has now come up from submerged water. Mahapru [The Great God] has come up and he should come and see. In the novella Kunjabana comes to see the village temple. He takes a train journey from Bhubaneswar to Sambalpur and on the way the memory of his village, temple and the deity gets ignited. He also remembers his grandfather telling him that a bag of treasure trove was left in the village temple. He has brought a small digging instrument from his home in Bhubaneswar and has kept this in his bag so that when he comes to the risen temple, he can dig this treasure trove. On reaching Sambalpur station, Kunjaban meets Biranchi Narayan, his childhood hero. It is midnight and slowly both of them go down the memory lane. Biranchi was a brilliant student during his college days. He led the anti-dam movement, he was jailed and after coming out of jail, he did not continue his studies. He remained confined to his study room. There was a blossoming romance between him and a girl from the weaving ward of the village but as Biranchi had no stability in his life he could not say yes to the girl who had fled from an early marriage to be with Biranchi. As a result, Biranchi has remained single and has sometimes taken to bottles in the night. His life narrated in the novella is a story of courage, resistance and suffering which is related to his fight against the construction of the Hirakud dam. Kunjabana goes next day with Kurti in a steamer to see the risen temple in his village. He finally reaches the temple premise. Kurti leaves him and he is on his own. He goes inside the temple and with great difficulty finds some of the idols and also the bag of treasure. He opens it with great difficulty and finds a few coins that were presented to the deity. These are old coins. He seems to have lost his sense of time inside the temple and when he comes out it has become dark. He does not find his way. And suddenly it rains and the whole area gets flooded. He has faith that Kurti would come to take him. And after some time, he hears the call of Kurti who has come with a boat to take Kunjabana home. Mishra’s is a moving rendering of the process of displacement—resistance, displacement as well as a quest for roots, recovery and regeneration. Mishra also shows us how while many lives and villages got submerged some resettled themselves in new locations. But even while resettling they could not forget their old homes, villages, temples and the river, which continue to live a living presence in their lives, and they long to go back. They inhabit, in the words of literary theorist John Kinsella (2017), a kind of “poly-situatedness” where we inhabit different places and situations together.4 Kunjaban’s return and discovery of the leftover treasure in the risen temple is a symbol of a new possibility of recovery and reconstitution, albeit a painful and difficult one. After the Hirakud dam, the Sardar Sarovar dam on Narmada River has been another mega project in India. It is a multi-purpose project and the largest dam of the Narmada Valley Development Project (NVDP). It comprises 30 large, 135 medium and 3,000 smaller dams on the river Narmada

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  127 and its 41 tributaries (see Baviskar 1995). There was a movement against this. Narmada Bachao Andolan [Save Narmada Movement called NBA] was the principal movement against it which was led by Medha Patkar. Although this movement organized people and resisted the building of the dam, it could not stop the construction of the dam. Finally the movement appealed against the raising of the height of the Narmada dam to the Supreme Court of India. But the Court could not hear the pain and suffering of the people. Finally some people whose villages were to be submerged, observed Jal Satyagraha—Water Satyagraha. Standing in water for days, their feet got water tattered and with their water tattered feet they were still trying to trample on the unjust government and systems which were trying to submerge them. In Sri Aurobindo’s words, they became Savitri trampling upon the unjust laws of death and destruction with their tattered but living feet. But even with the Jal Satyagraha they could not stop the ensuing submergence of their villages. In one instance of Jal Satyagraha in Ghogalgaon village, they succeeded in stopping the Government to raise the height of the dam than permitted by the Supreme Court. Many people in the Sardar Sarovar dam area had to leave their submerged villages and relocate themselves to new places. Displacement was accompanied by a painful process of resettlement, a rebuilding of home and a new world view. This was creatively helped by the work of NBA who in the resettled places started schools for children called Jeevan Shalas— schools of life. NBA also established and managed two micro hydel projects which got submerged due to the Sardar Sarovar dam project. If the two micro hydro projects that the NBA managed had not been submerged and such a model of small scale dam building, irrigation and electricity generation had been followed in post-independent India then the disaster of displacement and subsequent social suffering and social death could been avoided (see Omvedt 1993; Meher 2011). These big dams destroyed so many homes, villages and lives because the planners were imprisoned within a model of big-dam based development and could not imagine alternative development based upon small dams and irrigation projects. This shows us that the plight of displacement, plight of dwelling and the plight of industrial capitalism are conjoined. In our discussion about dwelling and regeneration of home and the world in the later sections of this chapter, we find this echoed in the inspiring and epochal works of Henry David Thoreau. An alternative to large-scale displacement as a result of large-scale dam building needed alternative imaginations of economy, society, production, consumption and self as envisioned and experimented, for example by Thoreau, Gandhi and J.C. Kumarappa. Tragically in post-Independent India, the ruling government and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s project of construction of big dams and industrialization where dams became temples of modern India did not provide space to such experiments to inter-link thousands and millions of projects.5

128  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha While people from the Hirakud and Sardar Sarovar areas were forced from their locality, in Baliapal where a National Test Range was to be established, people of the locality protested against it and were successful to stop this project. It is a remarkable story of resistance against a project of displacement in which poetry, politics and alternative imaginations of place and the world played an important role.

Resisting Displacement: The Poetics and Politics of the Baliapal Struggle In 1985, the government of India decided to build a National Test Range (NTR) in Baliapal block of the District of Balasore in Odisha. This would have led to the displacement of many people and villages. But people of the locality organized themselves as a group called Khepanastra Birodha Samiti (The Committee Resisting Against NTR). In this, the local leaders such as late Gadadhara Giri of erstwhile Janata Dal and late Gananath Patra, a Maoist leader, had played an important role. In the movement, noted Odia poet Brajanath Rath, the local poet Samarendra Baya and the local singer and poet Purushottama Behera also had played an important role. Purushottam Behera’s songs mobilized people as seen in the following song: Blow upon you conches mothers, aunts and sisters To shake the parliament with your sound Destroy the evildoers and their descendants In Mother Durga’s form (quoted in Routledge 2020) About Baliapal, Behera writes in one of his other poems: It is not barren, our soil of Baliapal. In Orissa a more fertile paddy land you will not find. Herein grows rice, betelvine, cashew, and coconuts of unimaginable amount, banana, guava, mango, palm and jamun and various other new fruits abound. In each house there is a garden where vegetables are grown. We fish in the sea What else is our want? (ibid) Paul Routledge (2000), insightfully reminds us of how in this movement political, social and cultural mobilization helped the movement to stop the project. Routledge begins by establishing that the intention of the locals was to protect their land and homes that they identified with. The sources of self-recognition and autonomous organization for Baliapalis was their locality. “They practiced resistance, at least in part, as a defensive articulation of identity to protect the known against the unpredictability of the

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  129 unknown and the uncontrollable” (Routledge 2000: 377). Routledge tells us that the movement’s identity stemmed from the cultural and economic dimensions of their everyday reality. The familiar cultural sentiment towards the land that gave them a sense of place was employed as a political demand of absolute right of their land. Stories from the Puranas (sacred Hindu texts) and the Mahabharata (one of the most famous Hindu epics), as well as tales about Hindu deities (Shiva, Kali, Durga) were intertwined with political action against the State (ibid: 378). Echoing Indian independence struggle, Routledge highlights the use of non-cooperation strategy by the villagers in their protests. They refused to pay loans and taxes to the government authorities. In 1985–1996 land revenues totaling Rs.100 000 (780 USD) were withheld, while in the following year only 2–3% of government dues were collected from the region. The movement collectively organized strikes of local shops, refusal of appointed officials such as the District Collector to the local area, conducted Hartals and single-day voluntary strikes that led to suspension of regular economic life. These tactics fundamentally conveyed moral and religious dissatisfaction regarding the NTR (Routledge 1992: 600). Even when faced with threats from the government, the movement ensured to hold onto its non-violent ways. Instead, it appealed to the cultural and religious ties of the community in relation to the history of the land. This was extended to all members of the community including the police as they all belonged to the same lineage as brothers and sisters of the village Goddess (ibid). Here Routledge narrates a story that an activist of the movement had shared with Routledge: In December 1986, 45 armed personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force attempted to enter the area: They [the police] were armed with halogen lamps, water cannons, tear gas and petrol to ignite the villages. As they attempted to enter the area they were met by hundreds of women who said: “Sons, you have mothers like us, if you are ready to kill your mother, then fire at our hearts”. The women were followed by children of 10 to 15 years old, who addressed the police: “Father, you have sons like us, if you kill our parents, how will we live? If you kill our parents, then take us with you”. At this, the children began to cry. Incredibly, the police also began to cry and lower their guns. They embraced the children as the local people began to applaud and shout; ‘The police are our brothers’. (Interview; Baliapal 1990) (ibid: 604) The unity and dedication of the villagers are highlighted in the system created around their homes. Routledge describes that villagers built barricades, which were staffed around the clock, they declared a Janata curfew (peoples’ curfew) thus barring Government entry to conduct project work, they formed Marana Sena (death squad) which was prepared to lay down their lives as well as a demolition squad which had demolish a model village that

130  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha the government had built for resettlement. In case government vehicles were sighted, they blew conch shells and beat thalis (metal plates) to summon villagers to the barricades (ibid: 598). Despite this, Routledge tells us that the government’s response to the movement was along the coercion-seduction mediation spectrum but short of prolonged systematic violence. He attributes this to five major factors. First, the non-violent nature of the movement added legitimacy to the struggle owing to the political and social memory of the Indian state. This made it difficult for the government to justify violent responsive action. Second, the movement was constantly in the public eye owing to support from the media, oppositional parties and voluntary organizations. Third, some political parties were in fact supporters of the movement which in turn reduced the distance between the movement and the government. Fourth, the movement was not a threat to the government as it did not challenge its legitimacy. Finally, the existing limitations of the defense budget owing to succession struggles in Kashmir, Assam and Punjab, did not place the NTR protests as the government’s primary national security priority (Routledge 1992: 600). In this movement against displacement, songs, dramas and folk theatres played an important role. The following songs of energized the movement: Ο Badshahi Sarkar, Don’t you dare tamper with our democracy. Ο warmongers listen, Don't ravage this country after buying vote. (quoted in Routledge 2000: 383) Listen brothers and sisters, This monstrous missile base will devour Baliapal […]. (quoted in Routledge 2000: 384) The earth of our birth Is our demand For this I shall die if I have to […]. (quoted in Routledge 2000: 382) Along with these songs, the poems of Brajanatha Rath also galvanized the movement. Rath was a creative and critical poet of the people who questioned the powers that be and supported the movement. His poem, “Oh Baliapal!” was a source of inspiration. To understand the poetics of resistance and creation of new imagination, we can read the following extracts from his long poem, “O Baliapal!” (Rath & Nayak n.d.). 1 In geographical maps And government records O Baliapal! You are not Just a name

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  131 Or a hamlet, You are the Emboldened fiery challenge, An eternal protest You are a nest-of-peace Of countless life-birds You are the culmination Of a sweet, and cheerful life You are a bright Beautiful picture In the sparkling eyes Of hundreds of peace-loving labour. In this grey dusty earth You are a placid oasis For countless blooming lives You, a soul-stirring raga, ‘Purabi’ Heralding many a Bright, fragrant mornings […] 6 But, today, at whose Ominous, damned maneuver Suddenly, covetous eyes of a Power-mad hunter Like the evil-eyes of “Sani” Has fallen on your green body?? To cut to pieces Your delicate body To drink to heart’s content Fresh red blood A damned hunter Has indiscreetly taken aim At your heart To launch a fiery missile Defying human conscience With a demonic laugh Born anew in life after Today, that hunter Of prehistoric age Has silenced your Heart-rending notes. 7 But you are not That innocent, helpless “Krauncha” Of by-gone days In the moth-eaten pages of mythology

132  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha To kiss the dust Silently and noiselessly And resigning to your fate Accept death so easily. The earth and water Sky and wind Always at your shrill cry You A mighty, fighting “Jatayu.” You, too, have a Zest for life, A free bird A Dove of Peace Have taken shelter Without fear Under the sky Of myriad caring eyes Have raised a stormy song of protest Resounding all over Therefore, today, for you Innumerable “Valmikis” Give voice to slokas; You are a symbol Of powerful and irrepressible spirit. 8 So in today’s map of the country You are not an ordinary village, In government records Yours is not A mere, ordinary name: It is a name to conjure with. You are a bold Vociferous challenge Of humanity’s conscience You are a swift, spirited Horse-of-life. You are on your own A conscientious objector, A synonym of protest, Hope of hundreds of War-stricken peace-loving citizens. You are a well-defined Image of bold life, You represent a Collective warning Of millions of forefingers

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  133 For the next century. You symbolize a clear Unmistakable utterance of “Om Shanti” In chorus by thousands of men. You also symbolize Holy utterance of “Omkar” Of divine and happy life. You embody A red-hot Sparkling, sharpened Sword of steel (Originally written by Brajanath Ratha; Translated by Ashok Kumar Das) In the above paragraphs of his poem, Ratha challenges all concerned to transcend other identity tags and to see and realize Baliapal as an “emboldened fiery challenge /an eternal protest” that culminates into a “sweet, and cheerful life.” He also tells us how Baliapal is not a symbol of helplessness and militarism but of peace. Ratha’s poems played a role in creating a new awareness and awakening among the people of Baliapal as those of Samarendra Nayak, another local poet of Baliapal. His poem, “Flowers bloom here throughout the year,” also inspired the Baliapal movement. His poem challenges all concerned: Look at the sky And then down to earth Crops, everywhere Around and beneath; Dare drive me homeless From such a rich place!! […] Dare you make Me a destitute? Drive me out? Throw me out in the street? Make me homeless? Whither, whither, whither? They come from a region Where I will be resettled With a message: There grass doesn’t grow During the rains, Flowers wither in the bud, Love loses its ardour On the honeymoon night, That barren land

134  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Decaying hillock Awaits me? […] Opening my eyes, today I find, I will be Displaced from my native-land, A suckling child Wrenched from her mother’s lap In his native-land. But yet, remember I am a laboring man A peace-loving man I don’t disturb Even a fly, If my dream is shattered! None would be spared. Keep in mind? Keep in mind Flowers bloom here, Throughout the year And the spring smiles. In the above poem, Nayak is celebrating the beauty and abundant gifts of Baliapal and is refusing to leave this place. Songs, poems and folk theatres played an important role in the Baliapal movement. This makes Routledge look at this movement through the perspective of what he calls “geopoetics of resistance” (Routledge 2000). Routledge writes: Interweaving the concepts of poetics of resistance and poetics of space […], a geopoetics of resistance refers to those cultural expressions that can be interpreted through the conceptual interweaving of material space, imagined space, and spatial practice. This spatial sensibility attempts to be attentive to those relations of gender, caste, and politics that may be either ignored or even entrenched by the poetic articulations of dissent. (Routledge 2000: 385) In this poetics of resistance, songs and poems played an important role and it made resistance also much more poetic going beyond the mere issues of struggle and fight against powers that be. This poetics of resistance nonetheless had limitations in challenging and transcending existing structures of hierarchy. The movement tried to mobilize all sections of the local society but the leadership lay predominantly with the high-caste and rich local leaders and with the male. There were songs about women and women’s role in the movement but women had little leadership in this

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  135 anti-displacement struggle.6 It also seems few women wrote songs of protest just as few of them have written about their experience of displacement and alternative visions of home, dwelling, cultural habitation and the world. The poetics of resistance in Baliapal is echoed in other anti-displacement struggles in Odisha. In an essay on displacement in Odia entitled “Bisthapana,” meaning “Displacement,” Bijayalaxmi Dash (2018) is concerned with the many stories, poems and novels written about displacement in Odia literature and give us many examples of poems that deal with resistance to displacement. Particularly noteworthy is the following poem of Ashutosh Parida: It is like Taking the child from the lap of the mother And throwing her into the road To uproot trees from the soil And be the sand of the desert […] It is known How in the name of many plans Food and Hearth have been destroyed Man’s fate was thrown Into a cruel darkness Only whatever paper notes of money Flew away here and there. (Originally written in Odia and quoted in Dash’s 2018 essay and translated by the author) In the above poem, Parida is challenging us to realize the uprooting and devastation that happens with displacement. But movements of resistance as in the Baliapal struggle do not accept this as fate and they are able to stop this. In their resistance, poems and songs play an important role. Such a poetics and politics of resistance is a counter to the uprooting and violence in displacement.

Displacement, Resettlement and the Vocation of Dwelling While the Baliapal movement succeeded in stopping the Missile Test Range, the movement against Hirakud and Sardar Sarovar dam could not stop these. People were displaced from their original homes and got relocated while some resettled. In new places of resettlement, people try to build their homes, hearths and hearts and try to dwell there despite challenges. In his important essay, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” Martin Heidegger (1973) tells us how human beings want to dwell not only in buildings but dwell in their Beings, homes and habitat. Human beings build to dwell. Though building can lose the aspiration and ethos of dwelling but it need not be. So

136  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha when in resettlement colonies homes are constructed for the newly settled people coming from zones of displacement they need to ask themselves whether such buildings also can be places for dwelling. For creating habitations of dwelling, we need an integral sensibility and ways of building and living where resettled people can also bring their cultures, soil, soul and the Divine to the places of their resettlement as they are confronted with the challenges of adapting to the new spaces. From the novella of Mishra, Kunjaban’s grandfather should have been enabled to bring his deity to the place of resettlement in Bhubaneswar. He could not because the oustees were not provided any compensation for the lost and submerged temples and schools (Nayak 2013). In his essay, Heidegger looks at bridge as a place of dwelling which “gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals” (1973: 355). Heidegger continues: “In saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in awaiting the divinities, in initiating mortals, dwelling propitiates as the four-fold preservation of the four-fold” (ibid: 353). Heidegger tells us further: Mortals dwell in that they save the earth—taking the word in the old sense still known to Lessing. Saving does not only snatch something from a danger. To save properly means to set something free into its own essence. To save the earth is more than to exploit it or even wear it out. Saving the earth does not master the earth and does not subjugate it, which is merely one stop from boundless spoliation. (ibid: 352) If the planners and policy makers of big dams and the consequent models of development were animated by concerns of dwelling and saving the earth, such large scale displacement could have been avoided, or minimized. In Mishra’s novella we have read how Kunjaban runs from his resettled place in the capital city of Bhubaneswar to his emerged God from his submerged village. Heidegger’s following lines help us understand this: “Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. In hope they hold up to divinities what is unhoped for” (ibid: 352). The crisis of dwelling is not solely due to crises of displacement. There is a problem of dwelling in earlier places of location as well which however is not a justification for avoidable projects of displacement. In Heiedegger and Thoreau, dwelling means to gather and this gathering also reminds us of the Indic concept of loka samgraha—gathering of people—as discussed in Bhagavad Gita. But this gathering of people is also linked to atma samgraha—gathering of souls (Giri 2020a). For Heidegger, dwelling is a place of beings and in a spirit of gathering it is also a place of co-beings. To dwell calls for a different way of being with being, building, society and the world which may not have existed in earlier places of settlement as well. In his work on Baliapal, Routledge (2000) comments on the problem of caste and gender inequality and domination in existing locales of habitation which the anti-displacement protest did not addressed. In this context what

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  137 Heidegger writes about post-War Germany and Europe could be helpful in understanding the plight of dwelling before and after displacement: However, hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening the lack of house remains, the proper plight of dwelling does not lie merely in a lack of houses. The proper plight of dwelling is indeed older than the world wars with their destruction, older also than the increase in earth’s population and the condition of industrial workers. The proper dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the essence of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell. What if man’s homelessness consisted in this, that man still doesn’t even think of the proper plight of dwelling as the plight? Yet as soon as man gives thought to his homelessness, it is a misery no longer. Rightly considered and kept well in mind, it is the sole summons that calls mortals into their dwelling. But how else can mortals answer this summons than by trying on their part, on their own, to bring dwelling to the fullness of its essence? This they accomplish when they build out of dwelling, and think for the sake of dwelling. (Heidegger 1973: 363) Anthropologist Tim Ingold building upon Heidegger’s thoughts urges us to realize that dwelling is not isolated from the question of how we ought to live which is related to ethics and aesthetics of living (Ingold 2019). For Ingold, “dwelling gathers places into thick, relational constellations” (quoted in O’Malley 2014: 16) and it is bound up with the question: “How we ought to live so that there can be life for those who come after us?” (Ingold 2019: 630). Like Heidegger, Ingold is concerned about “the triumph of technology over cosmology”(ibid: 17). At the same time, Ingold urges us to realize the significance of proper techniques of dwelling which is “akin to the Maussian gift insofar as it loses its meaning, its significance, when disembodied from its thick, durative meshwork of sociality” (ibid: 19). For Ingold, “dwelling” and “technique” now lie before us as possible orientations to realize ourselves and inhabit. Technique here is more than technique; it includes a rethinking of technology of power, technology of self, technology of building and dwelling as well as techniques of gathering and living together. Before Heidegger and Ingold, Henry David Thoreau had touched upon some of these issues and challenges of living in his experiment of living and dwelling in Walden. Thoreau linked the issue of dwelling to the issues of economy, which is “the building of his own home, his experiment in habitation” (quoted in O’Malley 2014: 71). Here we can understand the plight of the displaced and their ability to build a home and economic life in their places of resettlement. In his essay on displacement and the Hirakud dam, Arun Kumar Nayak writes:

138  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha The absence of land for land compensation was a great blow to the oustees and it was very difficult to buy a piece of cultivable land elsewhere with the meager compensations they received. Therefore, the forest reclamation activities were conducted by the oustees themselves to convert the forest land. The government did not even provide the expenditure for land reclamation activities and therefore it was a huge burden on the resettled, who were already undergoing severe hardships. It is ironic that many of them were not given the legal ownership of those lands by the government. Now, the government is claiming that these lands are forest lands, coming under the public purpose of roads, drainage and water tanks, etc. (Nayak 2013: 412) Nayak tells us how the government was not at all concerned about the land question of the displaced people without which they could not start their economic and spiritual dwelling. Rajkishor Meher, a creative and critical sociologist of Odisha, also helps us put the issues of dwelling, economy and displacement in connected perspectives: Years ago, with a view to making India a large economic power, the planners and policy-makers of Independent India under the leadership of the country’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, started promoting many large capital-intensive and mega-development projects. Such a model of mega development was in fact based on the premise of removing all forms of inequality – social, economic and political – from the traditionally ascriptive and hierarchical society while working within the democratic framework of the Constitution of India. However, for a largely populated country with an abundant labour supply, the alternative ideal course of development could have been a system of labour-intensive production, using intermediate technology. The latter model could have provided a sustainable livelihood for all, including the excluded and marginalized poor at the decentralized village level. It is now being realized that the capital-intensive mega-production system is causing the rapid exhaustion of both the renewable and nonrenewable resources of the earth and is pushing mankind to an uncertain future due to the resultant environmental disorder. (Meher 2011: 1) Thus living, dwelling and economies are inter-related. Thoreau also urges us to realize that not only a proper economy is important but also a proper language and poetry of life. For Thoreau, we need to interrogate the existing language of life and economy and create a new language. Thus a critique as well as consequence of displacement needs to be accompanied by efforts to create new words and worlds and not only build homes in a spirit of mechanical building devoid of an effort of multi-dimensional dwelling,

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  139 thinking, being and becoming (cf. Giri 2020b). Reflecting on Thoreau’s pathways, philosopher Stanley Cavell writes: “To put things differently would demand their recollecting” (quoted in O’Malley 2014: 96). It is like Kunjaban in Mishra’s novella recollecting the presence of the submerged temple and the deity. It calls for memory works—alternative memory works and possible futures. To be able to dwell with and beyond displacement caused by mega-projects of development we need to imagine and inhabit new words and worlds, language and possibilities of a more livable world with less cruelty and less violence (see Das 2007).

Dwelling Livable Lives Ethics, Aesthetics and Responsibility Jawaharlal Nehru considered dams the temples of modern India. When one visits the dam site in Hirakud one is sometimes struck by its beauty when not overtaken by the submergence and destruction of lives that it stands. But one does not hear the pangs of many avoidable lives, villages and temples which are merged and submerged there. The water from Sardar Sarovar dam has been used to create beautiful waterfront in the city of Ahmedabad but while appreciating its beauty and enjoying it and thanking then Gujarat Chief Minister and now Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, one does not feel the pain and suffering of the displaced whose lives, cultures and villages have been submerged and if only the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam could not have been raised many villages could have been spared submergence, displacement and destruction of their homes, habitat and cultures. Such dams are considered beautiful as temples, but these embody what David Harvey (1989) calls “aesthetics of empowerment,” which also can be called as “aesthetics of domination and annihilation” which leads to the collateral destruction of lives, villages and cultures. Harvey had coined the term “aesthetics of empowerment” to tell us about the way the Nazis in Germany used power to kill and annihilate many and create a narrow beauty for some. This narrow beauty is different from the social aesthetics of the Bauhaus movement and Joseph Buyes. (The Bauhaus movement created beautiful homes for the working class and Buyes tried to create a wider social art). The destruction and pain and suffering we witness in displacement is a product of such an aesthetics of empowerment, domination and annihilation. And such an aesthetics of empowerment has raised major ethical issues to development as displacement which has been one of the major concerns of development ethics (Gasper 2004; Goulet 1995; Quarles van Ufford & Giri 2003). But there is also the accompanying theme and challenge of development aesthetics and aesthetics of development where we use both ethics and aesthetics for creative and integral development and not one-sided modernist mega-development projects which give rise to painful and avoidable displacement (see Clammer 2012; Clammer & Giri 2017).

140  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha In rethinking and reconstituting displacement, resettlement and dwelling we have to rethink and transform both ethics and aesthetics. In his book Aesthetic Politics, historian and philosopher F.R. Ankersmit (1996) tells us that aesthetic politics calls for leaders who plan and represent people, concerns and constituency not only as architects but as maintenance persons. Architects of mega dams and development think and plan as architects and they live under an illusion and arrogance that they have the power to represent the represented. In the case of the Hirakud dam, a majority of the displaced were tribal people and then Chief Minister of Odisha Nabakrushna Choudhury seems to have been more open to the plights of the poor and the tribal people. But one wonders if this sympathetic hearted person wept at the submergence of villages and temples and if at all he and Nehru had discussed this plan with the affected people. From Nehru to Modi and beyond, this is an instance of the aesthetics of empowerment and annihilation which is different from an aesthetic politics where leaders think and work as maintenance persons, maintaining and creating new social spaces of dignity and development for all, especially taking into consideration the possibility of minimum and avoidable harm to the helpless and least privileged. Ankersmit’s pathway of maintenance person as a more modest approach to politics and planning rather than the grand architect’s ambition of allpowerful designing and redesigning resonates with the vision and practice of Loka-samgraha which the great political philosopher Fred Dallmayr (2016) interprets as world maintenance at the heart of which is the vision and practice of care (Giri 2020a). The path of aesthetic politics here also becomes a path of aesthetic spirituality where a maintenance person becomes a servant of people in a spirit of Gandhi but to serve people the leader has to first listen to both one’s soul as well as many voices including the unspoken, unheard and submerged voices of people. In this context, Ankersmit challenges us to understand the distinction between mimetic representation and aesthetic representation. In mimetic representation, leaders as architects assume that they can unproblematically represent people and plan for them without listening to their voices and visions of alternative development. Aesthetic representation which has a spiritual dimension, represents and understands the integral problem of representability, that is one cannot represent another person or a whole constituency and at the same time try to represent another person and constituency as best one can. For this one becomes an artist and tries to draw a picture and pathway of representation and development as best one can in dialogue with people concerned and resist the temptation to plan for others through mega projects of development and destruction. Such an aesthetic politics which goes beyond the dualism between ethics and aesthetics, and politics and spirituality is part of multi-dimensional movement of responsibility. For overcoming the destruction of displacement and for cultivating new spaces of resettlement and dwelling we need multi-dimensional movements of responsibility in which all concerned take part. For example, the field of development in post-independent, post-colonial societies began with a primacy of the State, where State began to see

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  141 everything like a State only from a Statist perspective (cf. Scott 1999). It failed to identify with people. For the last 40 years or so there has been a turn towards the market and in our contemporary neo-liberal turn there is a marketization of State too. But the field of development is a multidimensional field that consists of State, markets, social movements/voluntary organizations and self (Giri 2005). To overcome the ravages of development and displacement we need the work and meditations of all the actors in a spirit of autonomy, interpretation, border-crossing and transformations. Involuntary displacement makes our lives precarious as Judith Butler would put it and the challenge before us is to create livable lives (Butler 2004; McNeily 2016). Livable lives are not lives of helpless adjustment and accommodation but lives which are worth living and which are livable not in a minimalist sense of surviving but in an abundant relation and consciousness of thriving. Livable lives consist of dignity, beauty and dialogues and are animated by visions and practices of minimum harm and no-harm. Precariousness, as Butler (2004) tells us, is not just an aspect of human nature and our existential condition but a part of our “social condition.” Livable lives call for a “new ontology, a new way of thinking about our lives together” (McNeil 2016). Engaging with precariousness as an ineradicable condition of life requires an ontological move away from a focus on individualism and the protection of life in and of itself and directs attention to the conditions which maintain life, which either enhance or reduce its precariousness in a particular location at a particular time. (McNeily 2016) For Butler (2004), “there is no life without the conditions of life that sustain life” (ibid). This is the spirit of Loka samgraha discussed above which is different from Loka vinasha—destruction people. Displacement has led to both destruction of soul and people—Loka vinasha and Atma vinasha (destruction of soul) and the challenge before us is to create conditions for Loka samgraha and flourishing of livable lives from the ravages of displacement and development as destruction and reconstitute and re-create new co-habitats of dwelling. As Yousif M. Quasmiyeh (2016) tells us: Refugees ask other refugees, who are we to come to you and who are you to come to us? Nobody answers. Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Kurds share the camp, the same-different camp, the camp of a camp. They have all come to re-originate the beginning with their own hands and feet.

With and Beyond Displacement and the Calling of Social Healing In this chapter, we have discussed the destruction of lives, people and cultures that involuntary displacement brings about. But despite

142  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha challenges, people also resist such displacement and strive to create new conditions of living and dwelling. In many cases they are not able to stop the projects of displacement such the Hirakud and Sardar Sarovar dams and in some cases such as Baliapal they are able to stop this. In such resistance, poetics, politics and imagination of alternative livable lives play an important role. Displacement raises both ethical and aesthetic issues and challenges us to cultivate new visions and practices of responsibility. Displacement also calls for a new vocation of dwelling where we can dwell meaningfully in our home and the world. New visions and practices of dwelling and responsibility contribute to healing wounds of self and society as a result of violent processes of development and displacement.

Notes 1 As we move ahead in our exploration, the following thoughts are helpful: A place owes its character to the experiences it affords to those who spend time there – to the sights, sounds and indeed smells that constitute its specific ambience. And these in turn, depend on the kinds of activities in which its inhabitants engage. It is from this relational context of people’s engagement with the world, in the business of dwelling, that each place draws its unique significance. (Ingold 2000: 192) The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather, the river is dammed up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely, a water-power supplier, derives from the essence of the power station … [L]et us ponder for a moment the contrast that is spoken by the two titles: ‘The Rhine,’ as dammed up into the power works, and “The Rhine,” as uttered by the artwork, in Hölderlin’s hymn by that name. (Heidegger 1973: 321) Economy. The law of the house. Whose house? Whose law? The house is the form of its transmission, but if the house is broken, if in my dreams I no longer know where I live, how do we proceed, from what do we gather the sqigns from which we’re made down here to knit our fucking hearts? Brazil. (2013). To compose a verse has meaning only when the word heals Steffen. (1987: 67) 2 Sri Aurobindo (1950) says this in the voice of Savitri: “I trample on thy law with living feet; For to arise in freedom I was born.” 3 An internet resource on this writes: In 2010, the Economic and Political Weekly reported that, “In the process of rehabilitation, the government resettled 2,243 families in 18 different rehabilitation camps, which is only 8.46% of the total displaced people.” In 2014, out of 26,561 displaced families approximately 10,000 families have still not received compensation. 4 In his “Poly-Situatedness: A Poetics of Displacement,” Kinsella (2017) writes: “I am never in one place. A composite.” 5 Here what Mathew O’Malley (2014: 68) deserves our careful consideration:

Interrogating, Confronting and Reconstituting Displacement  143 For Thoreau, like Heidegger and Ingold, both the plight of dwelling and the plight of industrial capitalism’s modes of production are joined. Interestingly, the two plights find themselves brought together under the rubric of Walden’s first chapter: that of “Economy.” 6 Here what Routledge (2000) writes deserves our careful consideration: Although the song also speaks of women - indeed, of all Baliapalis—it remains silent about the structural inequalities within the movement. For example, the leadership of the movement consisted of upper-caste, male, educated, paan (beetle leaf) traders and leaders of the pan-chayat (village council), many of whom belonged to local political parties such as the Congress (I) and Janata Dal. Their leadership reflected the economic, caste, and gender dominance within local society. Unlike the poorer and landless peasants, upper-caste men had spare time and resources to attend meetings and organize. Being better-educated than lower castes and women, they possessed advantages when it came to movement organizing (e.g., writing press releases and contacting government officials). Moreover, these men were already the primary representatives of the communities in their roles as panchayat leaders.

Bibliography Ankersmit, A.R. 1996. Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Baviskar, Amita. 1995. In the Belly of the River. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Brazil, David. 2013. The Ordinary. Oakland, CA: Compline. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Clammer, John. 2012. Culture, Development and Social Theory: Towards Integrated Development. London: Zed Books. Clammer, John & Ananta Kumar Giri. 2017. (eds.) The Aesthetics of Development: Art, Culture and Social Transformation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dallmayr, Fred. 2016. Against the Apocalypse: Recovering Humanity’s Wholeness. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dash, Bijalaxmi. 2018. “Bisthapana [Displacement].” Paper presented in the Annual Meetings of Odisha Gabeshana Parishad. Cuttack: Ravenshaw University. Gasper, Des. 2004. The Ethics of Development. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2005. Reflections and Mobilizations: Dialogues with Movements and Organizations. Delhi: Sage. ———. 2020a “Upholding Our World and Regenerating Our Earth: Calling for a Planetary Lokasamgraha.” In Cosmopolitan Civility: Global-Local Reflections with Fred Dallmayr, (ed.), Ruth Abbey. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 161–172. ———. 2020b “Cultivating New Movements and Circles of Meaning: Upholding Our World, Regenerating Our Earth and the Calling of a Planetary Lokasamgraha.” Journal of Human Values 26 (2): 146–166. Goulet, Denis. 1995. Development Ethics: A Guide to Theory and Practice. London: Apex Press.

144  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Harvey, David. 1989. The Conditions of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Heidegger, Martin. 1973. “Building, Dwelling, Thinking.” In idem, Basic Writings of Martin Heidegger. New York: Basic Books. Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perceptions of Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Psychology Press. ———. 2019. “Art and Anthropology for a Sustainable World.” Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 25 (4): 659–674. Kinsella, John. 2017. Poly-Situatedness: A Poetics of Displacement. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McNeilly, Kathryn. 2016. “Livability: Notes on the Thoughts of Judith Butler.” Critical Legal Thinking. 26 May. Retrieved from the internet on 2nd July 2020. Meher, Rajkishor. 2011. “Big Dam, Big Failures: A Study of Canal Irrigation and the Deprived Tail-End Farmers in the Hirakud Command Area of Orissa, India.” Journal of Asian and African Studies: 1–17. Mishra, Yashodhara. 2016. Mahapru Munda Tekileni [The Great Lord Has Raised His Head]. Kadambini October. Nayak, Arun Kumar. 2013. “Development, Displacement and Justice in India: Study of Hirakud Dam.” Social Change 43 (3): 397–419. O’Malley. 2014. Such Building Only Takes Care: A Study of Dwelling in the Work of Heidegger, Ingrid, Malinowski and Thoreau. Ohio State University: Masters Theses. Omvedt, Gail. 1993. Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India. Quarles Van Ufford, Philip & Ananta Kumar Giri (eds.) 2003. A Moral Critique of God: In Search of Global Responsibilities. London: Routledge. Quasmiyeh, Yousif M. 2016. Writing the Camp: Vis-à-vis or a Camp. A Poem retrieved from the internet on 5 July, 2020. Rath, Brajanath & Samarendra Nayak. n.d. Two Poems on Baliapal. Balasore: Ganamukti Lekhak o Shilpi Sangha. Routledge, Paul. 1992. “Putting Politics in its Place: Baliapal, India, as a Terrain of Resistance.” Political Geography 11 (6): 588–611. ———. 2000. “Geopoetics of Resistance: India’s Baliapal Movement.” Alternatives: 375–389. Scott, James C. 1999. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sri Aurobindo. 1950. Savitri. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Steffen, Albert. 1987. From a Notebook. Ghent, New York: Adonis Press. 2nd Edition.

9 Healing Identities Identity and Ahimsa

Introduction and Invitation Identities can kill, but we need identities that can heal. Identity is a multi-dimensional journey in self, culture, society and the world. Identity refers to dynamic relationship between self and non-self, self and no-self, other within self, self within other and many related fields of existence, reality, realizations, aspirations and transformations (see Mohanty 2000; Ricouer 1992).1 Identity has a dimension of identity as well as non-identity, fixity as well as non-determination.2 Identity can be positioned or positional or it can be a critical and creative movement across positions embodying transpositional border-crossing. Identity can be part of an existing hermeneutics of self echoing a fixed grammar and interpretation of texts, traditions or State or it can be part of a new hermeneutics of self (Foucault 2005).3 As a fixed hermeneutics of self and as defenders of existing identitarian positions emerging, for example, from one’s position in privileged hierarchies of class, caste, gender, race, religion and ethnicity identity can be entangled in violence. This is the perspective of Amartya Sen (2006) who challenges us to understand the link between identity and violence. But Sen does not sufficiently explore how we can also cultivate relationship between identity and non-violence, identity and ahimsa. In a related context, Sen (1993) has spoken about the need for developing positional objectivity which can help us overcome the limitations of a one-dimensional concept of objectivity (also see Qizilbash 2016), which also sometimes leads to fixed identities and epistemic and social violence. But positional objectivity can valorize positional identity as well which also leads to violence. To transform violence, epistemic and relational, we need to transform positional and positioned identities to transpositional identities. We also need to transform our experience and discourse of subjectivity and objectivity to multi-dimensional movements of transpositional subjectobjectivity, which helps us go beyond fields of violence, identity and a closed and closure producing view of objectivity. For cultivating new relationships among identity and non-violence, we need to make our identities transpositional and hermeneutics movemental across different topoi and positions which can be called multi-topial hermeneutics (more on it later). Transpositional subjectobjectivity and multi-topial DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-11

146  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha hermeneutics help us in moving beyond identity and violence and realize new visions and pathways of relationships between identity and non-violence, identity and ahimsa.

Identity As mentioned, identity is a multi-dimensional journey in self, society, culture, world and cosmos. Identity is part of manifold fields of relationships with complex logics of boundary making and border-crossing, conjunction and disjunction. Identity and differences are related and both constitute a field and sometimes a moving circle and spiral animated by both processes of conjunction and disjunction, communication as well as closure. Identities have a dimension of non-identity as they are always in a process of ever fuller realization working and meditating in between emptiness and fullness. Identity is related to difference (Connolly 2002). Both identities and differences have parts of self and no-self—they are not fully determined and have dimensions of ever emergent realization of potential emerging both from trajectories of self-development and no-self realization as well as mutual and multi-lateral interactions. Identities are parts of relational fields and they are part of what can called a dynamic movement of co-dependent and co-creative origination. This is called paticchasamupadda in Buddhist paths of thinking and realization. Co-dependent origination is not just genealogical in the sense that identities and differences have originated from a process of co-dependent origination, but they are also constituted and animated by an ever-present process of co-dependent origination (see Bhikhu 1992). This process and awakening can be further creatively cultivated by creating facilitative institutions in society as well as by works on transformation of consciousness. This is also related to systems thinking where both identities and differences are part of systems of co-creation where systems are not just structural and functional embodying structural and functional logics of society but also open configurational and creative evolutionary embodying critical and creative journey of being and becoming. Identities and differences are parts of relational fields of co-dependent origination but as fields they are not only animated by the logic of power but also sraddha, which means agape, love and respect (see Giri 2018a). Our discourse, construction and dynamics of fields in social theory and social practice is mainly political as suggested for example in Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the field, which also corresponds to some extent to Michel Foucault and Judith Butler’s primacy of the political in construction of power and subjectivity where subjectivity is mainly produced by the logic of power (see Giri 2018b). But fields are not only fields of power but are also fields of sraddha and agape where they are characterized by ability to love and care beyond the categorical and fixed boundaries of identities and differences (Taylor 2007; also see Forst 2017; Ballantyne 2007; de Sousa Santos 2014; Giri 2018c, Panikkar 2010; Sri Aurobindo 1962; Touraine 2000).4 As relational fields identities and differences are not only

Healing Identities  147 socio-political but also socio-psychic and socio-spiritual. As psychic fields they are animated by both processes of will to love, will to hate, will to meaning and will to power. Identities as socio-political, socio-psychic and socio-spiritual fields are constituted by varieties of forces—forces of both love as well as hatred and identity fields contains varieties of identity struggles—both inner and outer. When identity fields are mainly dominated by forces of power as domination and interlinked emotional forces of hatred, anger and jealousy it leads to violence (Appadurai 2006). Dominant discourses and processes of identity politics contain such production and work of identity. But even when identity is entangled in violence, it is not a fate and participants in such fields of living are not devoid of the challenge and responsibility of finding ways out of such destructive violence. They learn how to plant seeds of new identities which help us go beyond violence.5

Transpositional Identity Formation Identities when they are closed within fixed positions lead to closure, which in turn is prone to violence. But identities do and can move across positions and become transpositional. For example, one is born into a particular biological identity such as male and female but in terms of experience one can become transpositional capable of embodying both male and female dimensions of one’s identity.6 The same thing is true for other identities as well. Transpositional identity formation is a multi-dimensional reality and possibility in self, culture and society, which helps us go beyond positional and positioned identity construction and fixation. Identity has both an epistemic and ontological dimension and creative identity formation involves both in transformative ways. Transpositional identity formation involves work of a new pragmatics of social and ensouled communication, social dialogues and contestations. Identity formation can embody movements of transpositional subjectivation as well as objectivation. Uncritical and unreflective positional and positioned subjectivity as well as positional and positioned objectivity can be entangled in violence. It also movement across multiple topoi and multiple temporality involving different interpretations, subject formation and hermeneutics across spaces and times which can be called multi-topial and multi-temporal hermeneutics (see Chapter 5). But transpositional identity formation with accompanying processes of transpositional subjectivation and objectivation can help us overcome violence and closure and cultivate and move towards non-violence in our journey as well in our stations of living.

Overcoming Identitarian Violence: Cultivating Pathways of Identity and Ahimsa Identities when closed within positions of fixity and unreflective consciousness can be prone to violence becoming slaves of violent desires and forces

148  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha within, across and around. But transpositional identity formation and multi-topial hermeneutics cuts asunder such linkages and creates new fates and possibilities of non-violence in social relations as well as non-injury in modes of thinking. Non-violence is a continued sadhana and struggle that is dependent not only on the quality of individuals but also quality of institutions (Heinrichs 2021). Realization of Ahimsa calls for new realizations of new democratic awakening animated by both practical discourse and practical spirituality. Practical discourse, as articulated by Jurgen Habermas (1990), helps us engage in processes of mutually transforming moral argumentations help us in realization of democratic identity formation. Practical spirituality involves multi-dimensional quest for beauty, dignity and dialogues, which also helps in realization of democracy and creative identity formation as it helps us to go beyond a power logic in striving for democracy (also see Habermas 1971). It also helps in transforming power as a mechanics of exercising domination and dominion over others and as a way of working and meditating in concert together for realization of beauty, dignity and dialogues in self, culture, society and the world (Giri 2009, 2019; Dallmayr 2005). Cultivating identities as a journey with non-violence calls for continued work with Satyagraha. Conventional and dominant Identities can be engrossed in varieties of errors, illusions and falsehoods but the dimension of Truth understood and realized in its multiple manifestations— Truth as both life nurturing Absolute Truth as well as contingent and relational Truth in both T and t dimensions—is not totally absent from the construction, production and work of identities in our lives.7 Identity work needs to be related to Truth works and Truth meditations which is the name of Satyagraha. Satyagraha is not only a political concept and tool, it is also an epistemological and ontological work, and it constantly calls us to relate our identity works to the calling of Truth, which is not just a product of discourse of power but also demands us to find Truth in our lives. Identities work in our lives and our lives are fields consisting of different qualities of life such as Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. While the sattvic dimension of life helps us search for Truth as a perennial journey and not compromise with many illusions and constructions of it, rajasik dimension of our identities can easily be satisfied with visible worlds of division and the tamasik self can easily live in a world of darkness, for example be a slave of antagonism between identity and difference, self and other as it is in the dominant formulations of society. Our identity fields are dominated by the discourses, forces and orientations of Rajas and Tamas and the challenge for us is to struggle for Sattva as we are entangled in varieties of Rajasik and Tamasik dimensions in our production, construction and work of identities—both self identities and social identities. This is a work of Satyagraha— struggle for Truth—which helps us realize the links between identity and non-violence and overcome and transcend prevalent and conventional linkages between identities and violence.8

Healing Identities  149 To cultivate identity and Ahimsa at present we have to confront the challenges of the so-called post Truth in our contemporary times. As a product of media, especially social media when false information is spread without Truth element, which in turn leads to creation, perpetuation and reproduction of anger, hatred and violence, identity work and identity meditation has to confront the challenges of discourse and production of post Truth and do work and meditation of Satyagraha in a world of production of post Truth as legitimation of varieties of killing errors and falsehood. The stake before us is none other than the very existence of possibility of our living as our journey with identity is related to our ever-awakened and ever-awakening calling of responsibility, which is simultaneously ethical, aesthetic, political and spiritual.

Notes 1 This is explored in the following poem of the author: Just Identity Non-identity identity What is this? Does it not destroy our identity? Should not we have a just identity? Yes it is a new invitation for Rethinking and a new blossoming Just is a journey A journey of dialogue and responsibility (Ananta Kumar Giri 2022: 35, “Just Identity: A Journey of Dialogue and Responsibility.”) 2 In a related but from a different standpoint, Fukuyama (2018) writes: “Identity grows, in the first place, out of a distinction between one’s true inner self and an outer world of social rules and norms that does not adequately recognize that inner self’s worth or dignity.” Fukuyama also writes: According to Hegel, human history was driven by a struggle for recognition. He argued that the only rational solution for the desire for recognition was universal recognition, in which dignity of every human being was recognized. Universal recognition has been challenged ever since by other partial forms of recognition based upon nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, or by individuals wanting to be recognized as superior. The rise of identity politics in modern liberal democracies is one of the chief threats they face, and unless we can work our way back to more universal understandings of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuous conflicts, (2018) Here we can also read the following thoughts of Gandhi: My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all-embracing and I should reject that patriotism which sought to mount upon the distress or exploitation of other nationalities. The conception of my patriotism is nothing it is not always, in every case without exception, consistent with the broadest good of humanity at large. Not only that, but my religion and my derived from my religion embrace all life. I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even

150  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha with such things as crawl upon earth. I want, if I don’t give you a shock, to realize identity with even the crawling things upon earth, because we claim descent from the same God, and that being so, all life in whatever form it appears must be essentially one. (Gandhi 1947: 14) 3 In his posthumously published work, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault urges us to realize: “The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our day is not try to liberate the individual from the state and its institutions but to liberate us both from the state and the type of individualisation linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity” (Foucault 2005: 544). 4 Rainer Forst (2017) develops a multi-dimensional vision and practice of power which includes domination as well as emancipation. 5 Wangai Maathai (2007) gives us examples of such planting of new identities by planting trees together in which conflicts groups are involved. 6 Here what Vijaya Ramaswamy writes below about males and females from a Buddhist story where Sariputra, born a male, becomes a female, is significant: The Vimala Kirtinidesa Sutra, a Mahayana text belonging roughly to the fifth century A.D., makes the point that maleness or femaleness is immaterial in the attainment of salvation. The goddess, by her supernatural powers, changes the spiritual seeker Sariputra into a likeness of herself, that is, she herself takes on the form of Sariputra. She tells him: Sariputra, if you can change only into a female form then all men can also change into women. Just as you are not really a woman but only appear to be female in form, they are not fundamentally not women. Hence the Buddha said, “All things are neither male nor female” (Ramaswamy 2014: 6) 7 It is to be noted that K. Anthony Appiah titles his book on identity as Lies That Bind (see Appiah 2018). 8 It is to be noted that Fukuyama (in his work on identity and struggle for recognition relates to parts or our soul building Plato’s discussion of this in his Republic. For Fukuyama, “The third part of the soul, thymos, is the seat of today’s identity politics” (2018). Fukuyama also writes Thymotic dimension in aristocratic societies were characterized by anger: Socrates suggests that the thymotic guardians are typically angry and compares them to dogs who are vicious towards strangers and loyal to their masters This is an apt description of many of the proponents of identity politics and hatred of the other as in the politics of politicians such as President Donald Trump of the USA and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. What is helpful here to realize that the thymotic dimension of struggle for recognition as animated by anger has a dimension of Tamas or darkness from Indian guna theory which calls for its acknowledgment, overcoming and transcendence through works of Sattva and transformation of both Rajas (power) and Tamas (darkness).

Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham: Duke University Press. Appiah, K. Anthony. 2018. The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. London: Profile Books.

Healing Identities  151 Ballantyne, Glenda. 2007. Creativity and Critique: Subjectivity and Agency in Touraine and Ricouer. Leiden: Brill. Bhikhu, Buddhadasa. 1992. Paticcha Samuppada: Practical Dependent Origination. Connolly, William. 2002. Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiation of Political Paradox. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Dallmayr, Fred. 2005. Small Wonders: Global Power and Its Discontents. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. de Sousa Santos, Boaventuara. 2008. “The World Social Forum and the Global Left.” Politics and Society. ———. 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Forst, Rainer. 2017. Normativity and Power: Anyalyzing Social Orders of Justification. Tr. Cianan Cronin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France, 1981-82. New York: Palgrave. Fukuyama, Francis. 2018. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Gandhi, M.K. 1947. India of My Dreams. Ahmedabad: Navajivan. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2009 (ed.) The Modern Prince and the Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom. Delhi: Sage. ———. 2018a Beyond Sociology: Trans-civilizational Dialogues and Planetary Conversations. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2018b (ed.) Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2018c Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Transformation in Religions and Societies. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2019 “Transforming the Subjective and the Objective: The Calling of Transpositional Subjectobjectivity.” Draft Paper. ———. 2022. “Just Identity: A Journey of Dialogue and Responsibility.” In Alphabets of Creation: Taking God to Bed, p. 35. Delhi: Authors Press. Habermas, Jurgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interest. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ———. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Heinrichs, Johannes. 2021. “Action, Language, Art and Mystics as Reflection-Levels of an Alternative Semiotics and the Spiritual Perspective of a Value-LevelsDemocracy.” In Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: New Pathways of Consciousness, Freedom and Soliarity.Border, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri, pp. 219– 248. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Maathai, Wangai. 2007. Unbowed: A Memoir. New York: Anchor. Mohanty, J.N. 2000. Self and Other: Philosophical Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Panikkar, Raimundo. 2010. The Rhythm of Being: The Gifford Lectures. New York: Orbis Books. Qizilbash, Mozaffar. 2016. “Capability, Objectivity and ‘False Consciousness.’: On Sen, Marx and J.S. Mill.” International Journal of Social Economics 43 (12): 1207–1218. Ramaswamy, Vijaya. 2014. “Introduction.” In Devotion and Dissent in Indian History, (ed.) Vijaya Ramaswamy. New Delhi: Foundation Books. Ricouer, Paul. 1992. Oneself as Another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

152  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Sen, Amartya. 1993. “Positional Objectivity.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (2): 126–145. ———. 2006. Identity and Violence: The Destiny of an Illusion. Penguin. Sri, Auobindo. 1962. The Human Cycles. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Touraine, Alain. 2000. Can We Live Together? Equality and Difference. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

10 Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation*

Introduction and Invitation Social healing calls for new visions and practices of gender relations and gender liberation. Gender is an important fact and challenge of human existence, and it calls for creative efforts in understanding its reality, constitution and liberative transformation as much of humankind suffers from varieties of structures, discourses and practices of gender domination which inhibit fuller self-realization and co-realization of constitutive beings of gender such as male, female and trans-genders. Gender identities have complex relationships to biology, societies, cultures and histories (Irigaray 1985). Though gender identities are related to biological categories such as male and female, they are not necessarily fixed. One may be born into a male body, but that does not mean that one cannot experience what it means to be a woman which is not just dependent upon sex change. Even as biological categories males and females exhibit hermaphrodite characteristics as there are aspects of female biological characteristics in a male body as there are aspects of male biological characteristics in female bodies.1 Though males and females are not just social and cultural constructs, the biological boundaries between them are fluid (see Paglia 2017).2 But even though our biological identities are fluid, our gender identities become fixed and essentialized through the workings of society, culture and power. Power and cultural constructions of meaning play an important role in the constitution, structuration and ongoing dynamics of gender identities. Our gender identities become part of varieties of structures of gender domination and in most of the cases in societies and histories it becomes one of masculine domination (Bourdieu 2001). Masculine domination in gender identities and gender relations leads to subordination of woman but it also leads to suppression and annihilation of feminine aspects within males themselves. This is sometimes reinforced by a bio-cultural logic that men

*  This builds on earlier versions of this text published in a book Gender Matters edited by Poornima Jain and in Practical Spirituality and Human Development edited by Ananta Kumar Giri.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-12

154  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha are more rational and aggressive and women are more passive and emotional. Masculine domination in gender relations leads to such an erroneous construction and self-making that men should be more rational and aggressive and women should be more submissive and emotional. Such a logic of masculine domination does not challenge men to discover their own soft and emotional dimensions including the vulnerability, inevitability and necessity to weep.3 Similarly such a logic of masculine domination does not allow women to realize their own strength and capacity to reason.

With and Beyond Power and Empowerment Power and existing cultural logics constitute gender identities and gender relations. Most of the time it leads to inequality, subordination and domination. The discourse of empowerment, especially women’s empowerment, is a response to inequality of power in gender relations. But while struggle for empowerment is important and crucial for transforming gender domination and for creating transformational gender relations based upon beauty, dignity and dialogues, it nonetheless challenges us to rethink, reconstitute and realize power itself differently in self, society and the world. Usually we look at power, as articulated by Max Weber, as one’s ability to exercise one’s power over the will of the others. This leads to a zero-sum approach to and reality of power. In this place we can have a different approach to and realization of power. As Hannah Arendt suggests, to have power is to have the ability to work in concert with each other. Such an approach to power is also reflected in Gandhian approach to power where power is characterized not only by domination but by the desire for communication and suffering in spite of closed walls and stones falling from all sides (Miri 2009).4 Habermasian approach to power and discourse in his project of discourse ethics also shares aspects of such an approach to power (Habermas 1990). In discourses and practices of women’s empowerment we can embody such approaches to power as the ability to work in concert with each other with love, co-suffering, joy and communication with a spirit of both resistance and co-creation. There have been varieties of ways of realizing empowerment in human history including in gender relations and it has included both violent and non-violent struggles. In these struggles changes in law and consciousness have also played an important role. In transforming gender domination, we can have varieties of creative resistance and movements of co-creation. Here we can bring a spirit of creative and critical resistance to power and a performative approach to transforming gender domination as suggested by Judith Butler (1996, 2015). We can perform gender relations differently as relations of beauty, dignity and dialogues instead of relations of domination and annihilation. The performative here creates conditions of realization of potential—suppressed and unrealized—for all.5

Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation  155

Resisting and Transforming Domination: The Calling and Challenges of Satyagraha Satyagraha is one such method, practice and approach of resistance and engagement with performative as creation of new possibilities. Gandhi had envisioned it and put it in practice, but some of the basic aspects of Satyagraha have much deeper genealogies sometimes as old as humanity. In Satyagraha, we do not construct the other as an enemy. Because of centuries of burdens of gender domination, it is easy to perceive men as permanent enemies on the part of those who are suppressed, oppressed and annihilated (Giri 2017b). But at the same time there is a challenge for us to go beyond a construction of any gender whether male or female as a permanent enemy to cultivate vision and practices of friendship. Satyagraha against gender domination and for creative gender relations embodying beauty, dignity and dialogues moves towards this. Satyagraha works and meditates with love and ahimsa—non-violence—but when necessary it is not afraid to follow the course of violence if pushed to a limit and against the wall. A true spirit of Satyagraha would understand the violence that becomes indispensable to protect one’s beauty, dignity and dialogue if necessary. Selfless suffering is one of the important ways of Satyagraha but it is different from masochism and inflicting injury on oneself. If needs be for example if a woman is subjected to violence in struggling for gender liberation then satyagraha understands the limits of non-violence in specific circumstance and the need for violent resistance as well (Datta-Ray 2015).6 But while engaged in violent resistance, one can still not construct the other as a permanent enemy and move towards reconciliation and construction of an emergent wholeness and oneness. bell hooks reflects this spirit of Satyagraha when she writes: The truth we do not tell is that men are longing for love. This is the longing feminist thinkers must dare to examine, explore and talk about. Only a revolution of values in our nation will end male violence, and that revolution will necessarily be based on a love ethic. To create loving men, we must love males. Loving males is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined relations of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. (hooks 2004: 11) Satyagraha is a process and works in the field of self, culture and society consisting of three qualities of Life which are called Trigunas-Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. We can conceptualize fields of gender relations as consisting of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Sattva refers to dimension of Truth, Rajas power and Tamas darkness. So far we look at fields of gender relations mainly through the lenses of power and forces of darkness consisting of destructive

156  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha desire such as a desire to enjoy others sexually or otherwise without mutual agreement and dignity. But beings and fields of gender relations also have a dimension of Truth or truthfulness. This is an ideal in friendship and other circles of intimate relations such as marriage and relations of love.7 For realizing creative gender relations consisting of beauty, dignity and dialogues we need to mobilize the dimension of Truth hidden in all of us that we are part of a larger whole and we are all connected through multiplex relations of non-duality or Advaita. An Advaitic consciousness of non-duality would help us realize the truth that the other in gender relations is not totally different from the self and as part of a relationship we should not do anything that would harm the other physically, mentally and spiritually. This Truth about our connected self is hidden from us and varieties of creative processes of self and social development can help us realize this Truth. Truth work and truth meditation as aspect of Satyagraha can help us transform the ravages done by forces of Rajas and Tamas. With creative works and meditation we can also transform Rajas—the field of power—to one of sahashakti or mutual power. We can transform the fields of Tamas—darkness—to fields of light. This requires creative efforts in walking, meditating and dancing with our desire through art and spirituality. For example, with deep friendship and sharing of creative pursuits such as poetry and drama, we can transform our rapacious desire which constitutes Tamas to a desire of light and joy of mutual presence and dance.

Movements of Gender Liberation and the Calling of Transforming Dance Transforming gender domination calls for multi-dimensional creative movements. If we continue to be bound to fixed positions of gender identity then we become prisoners of a logic of domination. The mutual dance of Radha and Krishna constitutes here an inspiring way of dancing with our gender identities.8 As gifted to us in the immortal poetry of Jayadev’s Gita Govinda, while dancing together Krishna touches the feet of Radha going beyond the logic of masculine domination. Radha here embodies eternal Shakti, feminine energy and realizing this calls for creative works of mutual love and care which is practiced in traditions of Tantra. In the Bible one woman washed the feet of Lord Jesus Christ, but in a spirit of mutual movement Lord Jesus Christ now can wash the feet of this waiting woman. This can fully realize the creative feminine in Lord Jesus Christ who embodied kindness and compassion and related to women with respect, care and love going beyond the logic of patriarchal masculine domination existing in Jewish religion and society of his times.9 Movements of gender liberation calls for creative movements of travel. Transcending gender domination calls for moving from fixed positions. In societies of masculine domination, women have limited access to travel. But while travelling from positions to positions, places to places, we need to learn new languages of bodies and cultures. It is said that female bodies

Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation  157 speak in a different language compared to male bodies. So for realization of beauty of our bodies and our desires we need to feel and understand the languages of our bodies including the integral sacredness of our bodies even when engaged in relations of desires. Translation of language of our bodies including bodily desires is also accompanied by learning and translation of other languages of our life world. Most of the time the languages of our life world are dominated by power and desire and both of these are often colonized by the language of a colonized life world. Here we can go beyond the colonization of the language of our life world by languages and forces of market, money, power and state and bring other languages such as languages of Truth, Love and Ahimsa to interact with colonized languages of our life world which many a time is a language of violence. Travel across life worlds from one position to other helps us go beyond the traps of fixed and sometimes inconsiderate and exclusionary positionality and creates possibilities of trans-positional movements. Travel and translation helps us in going beyond the traps of subjectivity and objectivity in our fixed positionality and create possibility for transpositional subjectobjectivity. Such transpositional subjectobjectivity which goes beyond the opposition between subjectivity and objectivity helps us in realizing gender liberation (see Giri 2017; see Chapter 5 of the volume).10 Many a time positions of both men and women become locked in fixity and this is not helpful for realizing creative gender relations characterized by beauty, dignity and dialogues. This is true of women’s positions including feminist standpoints or feminist epistemological standpoint (Giri 2012). Travel, translation and accompanying transpositional subjectobjectivity can help us overcome such limitations and be part of border-crossing transmutation of positions and identities.11 Here feminist reading of texts and traditions can embody a moving and dancing engagement which would help us go beyond limits of linear engagement and interpretation and create new possibilities of self and co-realizations in texts and traditions. Elizabeth S. Fiorenza (2001) helps us understand this in her alternative feminist reading of the Bible: However, the metaphor of dance seems best to express the method of feminist biblical interpretation. Dancing involves body and spirit, it involves feeling and emotions, and it takes us beyond our limits and creates community […]. Moving in spirals and circles, critical feminist biblical interpretation is ongoing; it cannot be done once and for all but must be repeated differently in different situations and different perspectives.

Circles of Gender Liberation and the Calling of Lokasamgraha Movements for gender liberation is a multi-dimensional movement for realization of wholeness out of our existence of fragments including broken fragments. This wholeness—aspired for and realized to the extent

158  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha possible—embodies a spirit of lokasamgraha. Lokasamgraha is a very important invitation for self, social and cosmic transformation from the Indic tradition and it appears in Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, a key text in spiritual quest of humanity from India. It is usually translated as well-being of all but it also refers to the process of gathering—gathering or collecting of loka—people. It is creative gathering of people and the accompanying process of mutual care that leads to well-being of people. As a process of gathering it is not just confined to the public, the public sphere—or public political processes. It also involves in an integrally inter-linked manner gathering of soul—atmasamgraha. Lokasamgraha and atmasamgraha— gathering of soul and people—leads to a creative gathering of society not just as a mechanical entity but also as a living process of critique, creativity and transformation. It also leads to creative regeneration of commons and a cosmic mobilization of energy. Lokasamgraha challenges us to realize that our life, self, society and the world have a cosmic dimension and our cosmos is not just a dead entity but a living evolving process. Lokasamgraha challenges us for a transformation of our cosmology from a mechanical one to a living and a spiritual one. Lokasamgraha challenges us to realize well-being and happiness for all but for this we are all invited to be creative in our strivings and struggles and it cannot be left to the others, society and state. At the heart of Lokasamgraha is care and responsibility which connects the vision and practice to Lokasamgraha in the Western political traditions such as in the works of Hannah Arendt and in the Chinese philosophy of Tian-Xia—All Under Heaven.12 We can bring the vision and practice of Lokasamgraha to our fields and circles of gender relations and make it an integral part of struggle for gender liberation. Lokasamgraha is related to generation of well-being and thus is at the root of this heart- touching aspiration and prayer: Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu which means let all people and be happy. But how can we be happy? What is the meaning of happiness when it becomes a slave of quick satisfaction and consumption Lokasamgraha and when we are chained by gender domination. Can we be happy without being creative? And can we be creative when we are chained to structures and discourses of domination? Creativity may be the foundation of well-being, creative self and creative society. Thus along with the familiar prayer Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu we can strive and pray new prayers: Lokah Samastah Srujana Bhavantu—let all people be creativity, Lokah Samastah SrastaBhavantu—let all people be creators, Lokah Samastah Saha Srasta Bhavantu—let all people be co-creators. For creating circles of gender liberation we need to bring this prayer and practice of self and co-creation which challenge us to realize that we are primarily beings of creativity and not just salves of routine practices of gender domination.13 Our fields of gender relations also can be circles of gender liberation. We need to create circles of gender liberation in various domains of our individual and collective lives such as family, friendship circles and institutional

Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation  159 domains such as schools, colleges, universities and offices. These fields today are characterized by varieties of threats of violence. Sexual harassment and violence is a challenge in India, the US and many parts of the world. To face this challenge we have sexual harassment laws in many places. But just having sexual harassment law in place is not enough. We need creative inter-gender relations of care, communication and sharing. When we become swayed by dark desires such relations of care, communication and sharing can help us overcome this to some extent.

Circles of Gender Liberation: Love, Learning and Labor There have been varieties of efforts in our contemporary world for gender liberation. Self-help groups and micro-finance groups are hailed as harbingers of women’s economic empowerment. But there is a foundational problem in the language of self-help. We need to transform this into mutual help groups. And help here lies not only in earning profit but being co-travelers in fields of creativity. Our SHG groups are mostly and exclusively busy in only giving and receiving loans. Nothing much happens outside this logic of stock taking. Even in the much celebrated case of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh the meetings of women do not have other related activities such as reading some life-elevating books together. So in meetings of self-help groups with a spirit of gender liberation we can have varieties of learning and creative activities involving both the genders. Some of the books to be read here can involve new ways of envisioning and creating gender just relations drawing on the best practices and possibilities both from tradition and modernity. Our self-help groups as mutual help groups can be circles of co-learning and creativity where not only women but men and women together can read together and also do artistic works together. They can also sing and dance together. Learning involves love and labor. It is an epistemic work and meditation. Learning involves self, other and the world in complex ways as it is not confined only to the double contingency of self and other. Learning as involving self, other and the world involves what social theorist Piet Strydom (2009) calls triple contingency learning. Triple contingency learning involves ethics, aesthetics and responsibility. We need to bring this trigonometry of ethics, aesthetics and responsibility to our circles of gender liberation. Learning involves epistemic works and meditations, but it also involves ontological works and meditations. As participants in circles of gender liberation, we are engaged in creative epistemological works and meditations. One aspect of this work and meditation is to realize how struggle for gender liberation is related to other challenges of liberation such as caste, race and class. Knowing about such interlinked constitution of our gender identity and struggle for liberation calls for creative knowledge works. But our epistemological work also involves going beyond dominant epistemology of the modern world what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) calls epistemology of the North. We need to learn from multiple epistemological traditions of

160  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha gender liberation, for example, simultaneously from modern struggles of feminism as well as traditions such as Tantra, which challenge us for new ways of realizing gender emancipation including the beauty and dignity of our bodies (see Giri 2018b, 2018c, 2018d). Feminist movement has been an important movement in our modern world, which has helped us to go beyond the limits of modern construction of knowledge especially positivism. According to the great Indian philosopher R. Sundara Rajan (1998), feminist turn has helped us realize post-positivist modes of knowing but feminist movement has been primarily epistemic. Feminist knowledge has been primarily epistemological and despite its critique of male exclusion and domination is still within the limits of the modernist primacy of the epistemic. Modernity gives primacy to epistemology to the neglect of the ontological. Feminism unfortunately suffers from this modernist limits of the epistemic and neglect of the ontological. But today we need to relate the epistemological and ontological together in creative and transformative ways. Transformational feminist knowledge can involve both epistemology and ontology in creative ways embodying what can be called ontological epistemology of participation (Giri 2017). It can also become a part of an ontological epistemology of transmutation.

By the Way of Conclusion Our conventional models of emancipation including gender emancipation suffers from a logic of linearity. One aspect of linearity is a binary approach—either you are on our side or the other side of line. But gender relations defy this logic of linearity as the logic of entwinement of Ying and Yang from the Chinese tradition and aspects of Tantra from Indic traditions suggest. For realizing gender liberation we need to go beyond a lines and cultivate circles of creative gathering of self, other, society, world and cosmos. Circles of gender liberation as part of inter-linked other circles of liberation such as caste, class, race and liberation from one’s ego thus becomes part of spirals of liberation dancing with love, care, courage, chung (right mind) and karuna (compassion) in the midst of violence and communication gaps of many kinds.

Notes 1 This is also true of the so-called most characteristic index of one’s biological identity such as male and female sex organs which have aspects of both male and female biological characteristics. From a related different perspective, what Vijaya Ramaswamy writes below about males and females from a Buddhist story where Sariputra, born a male, becomes a female, is significant: The Vimala Kirtinidesa Sutra, a Mahayana text belonging roughly to the fifth century A.D., makes the point that maleness or femaleness is immaterial in the attainment of salvation. The goddess, by her supernatural powers, changes the spiritual seeker Sariputra into a likeness of herself, that is, she herself takes on the form of Sariputra. She tells him:

Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation  161 Sariputra, if you can change only into a female form then all men can also change into women. Just as you are not really a woman but only appear to be female in form, they are not fundamentally not women. Hence the Buddha said, “All things are neither male nor female.” (Ramaswamy 2014: 6) 2 Camille Paglia critiques constructivist approaches to gender identity but we must not fall prey to a reverse biological determinism. Paglia writes: We must remedy social injustice whenever we can. But there are something we can not change. There are sexual differences that are based in biology. Academic feminism is lost in a fog of social constructivism. It believes that we are totally the product of our environment. […] Neither militant feminism, which is obsessed with politically correct language, nor academic feminism, which believes that knowledge and experience are constituted by language, can understand pre-verbal or non-verbal communication. Feminism, focusing on sexual politics, cannot see that sex exists in and through the body. Sexual desire and arousal cannot be fully translated into verbal terms. This is why men and women misunderstand each other. (Paglia 2017: 55) But what Paglia may consider that even though sex exists with our body but our body itself is much more an open journey then a fixed and essentialized either or identity. Men and women misunderstand their bodily desires including facts and experiences of orgasm but they also understand each other through evolving communication which is a journey. 3 The link between weeping and being human is explored in my following poem: I Is I an Eye Alone Or is I also an Ear? Is I an We? An Ear of the Soul and the Other Eye of the Heart! (Giri 2019: 74) In a related note, philosopher Jacques Derrida (1993) urges us to realize how our eye is not just a means to observe but to weep as he writes: And Nietzsche wept a lot. We all know about the episode in Turin, for example, where his compassion for a horse led him to take his head into his hands, sobbing. As for Confessions […] it is the book of tears. At each step, on each page, Augustine describes his experience of tears, those that inundate him. […] Now if tears come to the eyes, if they well up in them, and if they can veil sight, perhaps they reveal, in the very course of this experience, in this courting of water, an essence of the eye. […] the eye understood in the anthropo-theological space of sacred allegory. Deep down, deep down inside, the eye would be destined not to see but to weep. So men and women can come together in expressing their vulnerabilities and their emotions including in their capacity to weep and cry together. But dominant constructions of men as rational does not allow them to express nor women, even liberation-seeking women, want to identify with men who express their emotional vulnerability. What bell hooks writes here deserves our careful consideration:

162  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Despite all the expressed feminist longing for men of feeling, when men worked to get in touch with feelings, no one really wanted to reward them. In feminist circles men who wanted to change were often labeled narcissistic or needy. Individual men who expressed feelings were often seen as attention seekers, patriarchal manipulators trying to steal the stage with their drama. When I was in my twenties, I would go to couples therapy, and my partner of more than ten years would explain how I asked him to talk about his feelings and when he did, I would freak out. He was right. It was hard to me to face that I did not want to hear about his feelings when they were painful or negative, that I did not want my image of the strong man truly challenged by learning of his weakness and vulnerabilities. (hooks 2004: 7) 4 Mrinal Miri (2009) suggests that this is different from Foucauldian approach to power. 5 In our explorations here the following thoughts are helpful: Tahirih [a heroine of Bahai faith from 19th century Persia] “rushed out of her tent brandishing a sword. Now is not the time for prayers and prostrations.” She declared, “rather on the battlefield of love and sacrifice.” She was taken to a garden and strangled to death. Her last words (perhaps apocryphal) are reported to be: You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women. (Maneck 2002: 241) “I grew up staring at a wall in my face,” Merkel [Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany] told Orban [in an EU meeting, Orban the current Prime Minister of Hungary], with emotion running in her voice: “And I am determined not to see any more barriers being erected in Europe during the remainder or my lifetime.” The other heads of government sat back in stunned silence as they absorbed her message and realized how Merkel’s fierce determination to maintain open borders for the refugees had become for her a personal test of humanitarian morality. (Drozdiak 2017: 3–4) What is the role for men? Some men are sitting in the corner They are the new untouchables Waiting for Embrace (Giri 2019: 84) We were the feminists who could not be trusted because we cared about the fate of men. We were the feminists who did not believe in female superiority any more than we believe in male superiority. […] In turning away from my dad, I turned away from a part of myself. It is a fiction of false feminism that we women can find our power in a world without men, in a world where we deny our connections to men. We claim our power fully only when we can speak the truth that we need men in our lives, that men are in our lives whether we want to be or not, that we need men to challenge patriarchy, that we need men to change. While feminist thinking enabled me to reach beyond the boundaries set by patriarchy, it was the search for wholeness for self-recovery, that led me back to my dad. (hooks 2004: xiii, xix)

Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation  163 6 Datta-Ray (2015) argues that in case of Kashmir, Gandhi’s support for military response to aggression from outside forces is within the framework of non-violence. 7 In their works Anthony Giddens (1992) and Luce Irigaray (2002) point to the challenge of honesty and integrity in sexual relations in the midst of dishonesty of many kinds. 8 With Elizabeth S. Fiorenza (2001), we can bring dance to bear upon critical and creative practices of reading such as feminist biblical interpretation. 9 Here the relationship between Maria Magdelana, the inspiring spiritual co-traveler of Lord Jesus Christ, and Lord Jesus Christ calls for deeper realization. For many their relationship was one of deep love and respect. According to some sources, Maria Magdelan was a priestess in a temple which imparted deep feminine knowledge like Tantra and she imparted such knowledge to Lord Jesus Christ. 10 I have explored this in my paper on transpositional subjectobjectivity (Giri 2018a). 11 Nivedita Menon suggests limitations of such essential standpoints in her Seeing Like a Feminist (Menon 2010). 12 As Fred Dallmyar, the deep seeker and thinker of our times, writes: As an antidote to the spread of “worldlessness” in our time, Hannah Arendt recommended the restoration of a “public realm” in which people would actively participate and be mutually connected. Digging beneath this public forum, Heidegger unearthed the deeper source of connectedness in the experience of “care” (Sorge, c ura) in its different dimensions. From the angle of human “being-in-the world,” care penetrates into all dimensions of this correlation—in the sense that existence is called upon to care about “world” and its constituent features (fellow-beings, nature, cosmos). Differently put: There cannot be, for Heidegger, an isolated “self-care” (c ura sui) without care for the world—that includes care for world maintenance (without which Dasein cannot exist). In this latter concern, is work does not stand alone. In the Indian tradition, especially the Bhagavad Gita, we find an emphasis on a basic ethical and ontological obligation: the caring attention to “world maintenance” or loka-samgraha. According to the Gita, such attention needs to be cultivated, nurtured and practiced in order for human life to be sustainable and meaningful. (Dallmayr 2015: 51–52) It may be noted here that we find similar concerns of upholding our world in other religious and philosophical traditions such as Judaism. 13 In his work on Indian society and tradition, philosopher and historian G.C. Pande (1994) challenges us to realize that society consists of not only bidhi but also sadhana. Sadhana is a field of creative works and meditations. Sadhana also involves struggles. Sankar Singh Niyogi, the inspiring leader of Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha who was brutally gunned down during his sleep used to link this to sangharsha aur nirman—struggle and creation.

Bibliography Butler, Judith. 1996. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” In Twentieth Century Performance Reader. London: Routledge. ———. 2015. Senses of the Subject. New York: Fordham University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2001. Masculine Domination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

164  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Dallmayr, Fred. 2015. Against Apocalypse: Recovering Humanity’s Wholeness. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Datta-Ray, Deep K. 2015. The Making of Indian Diplomacy: A Critique of Eurocentrism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2012 “With and Beyond Plurality of Standpoints.” In idem, Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. Giri, Ananta Kumar (ed.) 2017. Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues. Delhi: Primus. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2018a. “Transforming the Subjective and Objective: Transpositional Subjectobjectivity.” Chennai: Madras Institute of Development Studies, Paper. ———. 2018b “Swaraj as Blossoming and Satyagraha as Co-Realizations.” In Gandhi and the World, (ed.) Debidatta Aurobindo Mahapatra & Yashwant Pathak. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ———. 2018c. “With and Beyond Epistemologies of the South: Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Challenges of Planetary Realizations.” Madras Institute of Development Studies: Working Paper. ———. 2018d “Walking and Meditating with Sri Vidya: Towards a New Yoga and Tantra of Human Development.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Tantra, Sanchi Buddhist Indic University, December 17–19, 2018. Derrida, Jacques. 1993. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Drozdiak, William. 2017. Fractured Continent: Europe’s Crises and the Fate of the West. New York: W.W. Norton. Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 2001. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. New York: Orbis Books. Giddens, Anthony. 1992. TheTransformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2019. “I and Eye.” In Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays, p.74. Delhi: Studera. Habermas, Jurgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. hooks, bell. 2004. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love. New York: Simon & Schuster. Irigaray, Luce. 1985 This Sex Which is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 2002. Between East and West: From Singularity to Community. New York: Columbia University Press. Maneck, Susan S. 2002. “Women Within the Bahai Community.” In Women in Indian Religions, (ed.) Arvind Sharma, pp. 236–253. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Miri, Mrinal. 2009. “Gandhi and Empowerment.” In The Modern Prince and Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Sage. Menon, Nivedita. 2010. Seeing Like a Feminist. Delhi: Penguin. Paglia, Camille. 2017. Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism. New York: Pantheon. Pande, G.C. 1994. Bharatiya Samaj Eitihasik Aur Tattwik Bibechan. Delhi.

Social Healing and Circles of Gender Liberation  165 Ramaswamy, Vijaya. 2014. “Introduction.” In Devotion and Dissent in Indian History, (ed.) Vijaya Ramaswamy. New Delhi: Foundation Books. de Sousa Santos, Boaventuara. 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Strydom, Piet. 2009. New Horizons of Critical Theory: Collective Learning and Triple Contingency. Delhi: Shipra. Sundara Rajan, R. 1998. Beyond the Crises of European Sciences: New Beginnings. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.

11 Social Healing and the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination and the Challenges of Structural Transformations and Transformation of Consciousness Ambedkar, Shankara and Beyond* Introduction and Invitation Caste domination has created pain and pathology in self and society and social healing calls for transformation of caste domination, which in turn calls for both transformation of structures as well as consciousness. Caste is a multi-dimensional reality in history and society and it has manifested itself through varieties of structures of domination, which is simultaneously cultural, economic, political and ideological as it has also been related in complex ways with structures of class and gender domination where structures refer both to modes of social and collective organization as well as modes of thinking, categorization and classification (Beteille 1990; Dumont 1981; Mohanty 2004). The vertical aspect of caste domination, especially caste hierarchy, has nullified the significance of caste as a space of community and belonging. Caste as a structure of domination has caused death of soul, self, individual and society as it has blocked the realization of their full potential.1 Critics and transformers before and after Buddha such as Kabir and Nanak have striven to transform this system of domination.2 To this in the last two hundred years many movements and socio-religious reformers have also contributed. This includes Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Dayananda Saraswati, Sri Narayana Guru, Bhima Bhoi, Jyotiba Phule, Pandita Ramabai, Swami Vivekananda,3 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar, among others. Constitution of India has also made caste discrimination illegal and challenges us to build a casteless, classless society and a society of gender

* This was first presented in a seminar on Caste at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in January 2014. It was then presented in the international seminar on Ambedkar organized in Bangalore in August 2017 and then in a workshop at University of Madras in August 2019. I am grateful to Dr. Parthasarathi Mondal of TISS for his kind invitation to the TISS conference, to Professor Aakash Singh Rathore for his kind invitation to the Bangalore conference and to participants in all these, especially to Professor John Clammer. I am grateful to Professors Manoranjan Mohanty, Riaz Ahmad and Gurmeet Kaur of Social Change and two anonymous reviewers of Social Change for their comments and suggestions though finally this did not come out in this journal. I am grateful to Vishnu Varadharajan now at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, for his help with editing and references for this text.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-13

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  167 equality and dignity. In our social imagination today both this Constitutional injunction and aspiration and Ambedkar’s struggle for annihilation of caste has a special place in helping us move beyond the prison and prism of caste domination. But this struggle for transformation can be creatively and critically related to the vision of Adi Shankara and the streams of Vedanta which challenge us for manifold paths of non-dual realizations in self, culture, society and the world. While the historical Adi Shankara operated within a Brahminical framework, Shankara also strove for the radical dignity of soul, self and individuals irrespective of caste and gender. In Atmastakam, a pregnant formulation of Shankara, Shankara invites us to realize our souls as neither body nor caste but chidanandarupa, a manifestation of consciousness and bliss. Chidanandarupa is not chaturvanyarupa—form of chaturvanya—which “pigeon men into holes” as Ambedkar writes in his Annihilation of Caste (Ambedkar 2002: 279). Each one of us as chidanandarupa—manifestation of consciousness and bliss—is also accompanied by realization of unique worth of each individual, which again is emphasized by Ambedkar. But realization of unique worth of each individual also calls for realizing each one of us as chidanandarupa and not just holes of chaturvanya. Ambedkar takes up this theme in his Riddles of Hinduism and tells us how Advaita Vedanta which he terms as Brahmaism has great potential for generation of fraternity and social democracy which in turn help in annihilation of caste.4 In the same book Ambedkar also writes how this has been accompanied by caste inequity, hierarchy and degradation: Why then Brahmaism failed to produce a new society? This is a great riddle. It is not that the Brahmins did not recognize the doctrine of Brahmaism. They did. But they did not ask how they could support inequality between the Brahmin and the Shudra, between man and woman, between casteman and outcaste …The result is that we have on the one hand the most democratic principle of Brahmaism and on the other hand a society infested with castes, subcastes, outcastes, primitive tribes and criminal tribes…What is more ridiculous is the teaching of the Great Shankaracharya. For it was this Shankaracharya who taught that there is Brahma and this Brahma is real and that it pervades all and at the same time upheld all the inequities of the Brahmanic society. (Ambedkar 2008, quoted in Neelakandan 2016) Vedanta which found a creative manifestation in and draws inspiration from Shankara has manifested itself socially through Brahminical structures as none of the Sankaracharyas so far have come from non-Brahmin castes.5 Despite this, reformers such as Mahatma Gandhi have drawn inspiration from Advaita Vedanta, among others, and have striven to transform the caste system. We can also here draw inspiration from Ramanuja who cultivated paths of Visistadvaita and who fought against Brahminical exclusion

168  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha and domination and strove to make everybody part of a dignity of divine and social order though Ramanuja himself like Shankara supported the cruel and brutal injunctions of Manu to exclude the Shudras from reading the Vedas.6 It must be noted that there were attempts on Ramanuja’s life for undertaking such transformational discourses and activities. Our task of caste liberation can draw upon these multiple sources of transformations. It is helpful now to bring Ambedkar in conversation with these visions and practices of caste liberation as Ambedkar himself has done in his openness to the Upanishadic sources of inspiration for his project of annihilation of caste as manifest in the following paragraph from Ambedkar: Brahminism is the poison which has spoiled Hinduism. You will succeed in saving Hinduism if you will kill Bhrahminism. There should be no opposition to this reform from any quarter. It should be welcomed even by the Arya Samajists, because this is merely an application of their own doctrine of guna-karma. Whether you do that or you do not, you must give a new doctrinal basis to your religion—a basis that will be in consonance with liberty, equality and fraternity; in short, with democracy. I am no authority on the subject. But I am told that for such religious principles as will be in consonance with liberty, equality and fraternity, it may not be necessary for you to borrow from foreign sources, and that you could draw for such principles in the Upanishads. Whether you could do so without a complete remoulding, a considerable scraping and chipping off from the ore they contain, is more than I can say. This means a complete change in the fundamental notions of life. It means a complete change in the values of life. It means a complete change in outlook and in attitude towards men and things. It means conversion; but if you do not like the word, I will say it means new life. But a new life cannot enter a body that is dead. New life can enter only in a new body. The old body must die before a new body can come into existence and a new life can enter into it. To put it simply, the old must cease to be operative before the new can begin to enliven and to pulsate. This is what I meant when you I said you must discard the authority of the Shastras and destroy the religion of the Shastras. (Ambedkar 2002: 303) In this way, our vision and practice of annihilation and transformation of caste involves both structural changes as well as works of consciousness, conscience and what Ambedkar himself called “public conscience.”7

Annihilation of Caste: Ambedkar’s Challenge and the Calling of Transformations Ambedkar called for annihilation of caste.8 This calls for destruction of caste privileges, hierarchy and their legitimation by the Sastras which can

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  169 help individuals “to share and participate in a common activity so that the same emotions are aroused in him that animate the others” (Ambedkar 2002: 268). For Ambedkar, “The caste system prevents common activity and by preventing common activity it has prevented the Hindus from becoming a society with a unified life and consciousness of its own being” (ibid). Ambedkar critically engages himself with the ideology of Chaturvanya which puts human beings into four varnas—Brahmin, Khsatriya, Vaishya and Shudra. For Ambedkar, the system of Chaturvanya raises several difficulties […] The principle underlying caste is fundamentally different from the principle underlying Varna. Not only are they fundamentally different but they are also fundamentally opposed. The former is based upon worth. How are you going to compel people who have acquired a higher status based on birth without reference to their worth to vacate that status? How are you going to compel people to recognize the status due to a man in accordance with his worth, who is occupying a lower status based on his birth? For this you must break up the caste system, in order to be able to establish the Varna system. (2002: 279) In offering this critique and reconstruction, Ambedkar challenges us to understand the significance of worth—unique worth of individuals which Chatuvarnya cannot really realize. Here he appreciates the work of Arya Samaj which wants to emphasize guna (quality and worth) karma in the Chaturvanya system but he finds this wanting as he asks why “Arya Samajists insist upon labelling men as Brahmin, Khatriya, Vaishya and Shudra” (ibid: 278). For Ambedkar Chaturvanya presupposes that “you can classify people into four different classes. Is this possible?” For Ambedkar, the ideal of Chaturvanya has close “affinity to the Platonic ideal” (ibid). “To Plato, men fell by nature into three classes”—laboring and trading classes, defenders and guardians, and the law-givers. For Ambedkar, Plato had no perception of the uniqueness of every individual, of his incommensurability with others, of each individual forming a class of his own. He had no recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies and combination of tendencies of which an individual is capable. To him, there were types of faculties or powers in the individual constitution. All this is demonstrably wrong. Modern science has shown that lumping together of individuals into a few sharply marked off classes is a superficial view of man not worthy of serious consideration. Consequently, the utilization of the qualities of individuals is incompatible with their stratification by classes, since the qualities of individuals are so variable. Chatruvanya must fail for the same reason that for which Plato”s Republic must fail, namely that it is not possible to pigeon men into holes, according as he belongs to one class or the other.

170  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha That it is impossible to accurately classify people into four different classes is proved by that fact that the original four classes have now become four thousand castes”. (ibid: 279) In the above paragraph Ambedkar challenges us to realize the integral and inalienable unique and variable worth of individuals and to go beyond the “superficial view of man.” This calls for further deepening and widening of our conceptions and realizations of man and here Shankaras’ view of chidanandarupa can deepen Ambedkar’s critique of chaturvanya rupa (form of Chaturvanya) and it can also help us understand Ambedkar’s own transcendence of modernistic notion of individual through his openness to conceptions and realizations of individuals in the Upanishads, Vedanta, Buddhism and modern philosophies such as pragmatism.9 In his Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar offers many-sided critiques and reconstructions of caste and religions from which his distinction between religion of rules and religion of principles is particularly relevant here. For Ambedkar, “Rules are practical; they are habitual ways of doing things according to prescription. But principles are intellectual; they are useful methods of judging things” (ibid: 298). For Ambedkar, Doing what is said to be good by virtue of a rule and doing good in the light of a principle are two different things. The principle may be wrong but the act is conscious and responsible. The rule may be right but the act is mechanical. A religious act may not be a correct act but at least be a responsible act. To permit of this religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules it ceases to be Religious, as it kills responsibility which is essence of a truly religious act. (ibid: 28) But such a formulation calls for further critical probing. If enactment of rules become mechanical is there not the same challenge of inherent mechanical rendering of principles as well? Moreover, how can something that is not correct can be a responsible act as suggested in Habermas’s critique of taken for granted moral principles of a society which in fact are “instances of problematic justice” (Habermas 1990; see Mahadevan 2018). For Ambedkar, Hinduism is a religion of rules as contained in the “Vedas and Smritis” which provide scriptural legitimation for the discrimination of the caste system. At the same time, Ambedkar himself acknowledges that Hinduism is not just a religion of rules as in this mixed sentence of him: What is called religion by the Hindus is nothing but a multitude of commands and prohibitions. Religion, in the sense of spiritual principles, truly universal, applicable to all races, to all countries, to all times, is not to be found in them, and it is, it does not form the governing part of a Hindu’s life. (ibid: 298)

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  171 So, to overcome the limits of religion of rules in Hinduism, for that matter in any religion—Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—we need to realize universal principles with and beyond rules. But these principles themselves also become formulaic and rule-like. We need not only a critique of rules but also of principles, and principles themselves require transformation from their superficial constitution and dynamics into deeper formulation, realization and awakening. Religious principles need a spiritual deepening. For religion to be able to be responsible and to be able to critique what seems to be conventionally correct, it needs to make a critique of religious principles as well as religion of principles. In a foundational reading of Ambedkar, Ramashroy Roy (2006), a deep and border-crossing political theorist of our times, challenges us to realize this. For Roy, Ambedkar’s interpretation and practice of Buddhism seems to focus much more on following of external rituals rather than their spiritual realization. For example, for Roy, “the idea of nibbana gets directed at the hands of Ambedkar from its transcendental meaning that is the source of spiritual life and experience” (Roy 2006: 102). For Roy, when Ambedkar talks of “prajna, he means only scientific rationality” (ibid: 110), but principles of scientific rationality can also be as limiting and mechanical as religion of rules which call for creative visions, practices and movements of integration of science and spirituality. But Roy himself acknowledges that this turn from the transcendental basis of Buddhism becomes the basis, in modern times, for allowing liberty, equality and fraternity, the slogan of the French Revolution with meanings that are pregnant with revolutionary values to be used by the down-trodden everywhere, in general, and by the untouchables in India, in particular. (ibid: 103) The turn from the transcendental to goals of immanent emancipation in case of Ambedkar still calls for a transcendental realization and continuous spiritual awakening and here both Ambedkar’s own Buddhist spiritual practice as a Bhikhu and Shankara’s spiritual sadhana of realization of self as chidanandarupa can help us.10 In terms of limits of scriptural reasoning and its possible critique and transformation, Ambedkar discusses the in-built limits of the primacy of sadachar in Manu. For Ambedkar, If any one were to suppose that Sadachar means right or good acts, i.e. acts of good and righteous men he would find himself greatly mistaken. Sadachar does not mean good acts or acts of good men. It means ancient custom good or bad. (Ambedkar 2002: 297) But how do we critically engage with annihilationist rendering of Sadachar which denies realization of worth of self and society? With Shankaracharya, it means not following of rules and rituals but their deep meditation11 which can

172  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha help in critical discussion and reflections on these as suggested by Ambedkar critique and Habermas’s discourse ethics where moral argumentation helps us realize instances of problematic justice in our customary conceptions of Sadachar. Sankaras’ engagement with ritual is not one of customary reproduction but self-realizing meditation which can be brought together with modern critiques of such customs as well as Buddhist critiques and meditations.

Annihilation of Caste: Upanishads, Atma Shatakam and Rohit Vemula In his Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar (2004) refers to Upanishads as sources of thinking and action for realizing liberty, equality and fraternity, which can contribute to transformation of caste domination. But the dominant discourse of Annihilation of Caste as articulated by post-Ambedkar Dalit activists and thinkers including Gopal Guru who writes about fluidity of caste and gender in Upanishadic times rarely engage with the Upanishads as a source of critical thinking and action for questioning and transforming caste domination. In the Upanishads, one does not find many references to caste structures and it is a process of seeking of Truth and realization of meaning and significance of life seeking, learning and sitting together. Upanishads have been one of the important sources of Vedanta which challenge us to realize the Reality of self and the world beyond all illusive appearances caste and gender. Probably, drawing inspiration from this source, Adi Shankara challenges us to realize that the self is neither body, caste nor gender. The self is chidanandarupa—manifestation of bliss and consciousness. The challenge for transformation of caste is to realize that each one of us—Brahmin or Dalit—is chidanandarupa and it is not just a product of caste system. The self is simultaneously socio-historical and chidanandarupa—transcendental. The socio-historical production of self as caste-marked self is also confronted with the realization of chidanandarupa—the transcendental self of beauty, bliss and consciousness—that lies with and across the caste self. We find such a challenge of realization in many scholars and activists including in Rohit Vemula. In his letter before ending his life on January 17, 2016 Vemula challenges us to realize that each one of us is not just a caste or an identity, we are also a mind and we have a spark of star in us—“from shadow to stars” (Vemula 2016). We can read Shankara’s Atma Shatakam and Rohit Vemula’s letter together to realize that we are shadows, stars and chidanandarupa.12 In his Atmastakam, Shankara says na me mrutusanka, na me jativeda—I do not have fear of death, I do not have discrimination of caste. Shankara puts non-fear of death and lack of caste discrimination together which points to the reality of caste discrimination, fear of death and death going together. Vemula’s annihilation of his own life is a product of this conjunction, but Vemula’s letter is also a defiance of this and is a testimony of no fear of death. Another important aspect of Vemula’s life and letter here is the concluding line in his letter when he writes: “Do not trouble my friends and

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  173 enemies on this after I am gone.” This is an aspect of love and radical love of care for all without any sense of vindictiveness and revenge especially when he has been subjected to such humiliation and torture as the university where he studied had withheld his due scholarship amount. Vemula’s last line is a testament of radical love embodying the undying reality of love as embodied in seekers and martyrs such as Jesus Christ and Gandhi. It is also an embodiment of what Yengde (2019) calls Dalit love which embraces all and is not bounded by what Yendge calls Brahminical exclusion.

Annihilation of Caste: Limits of Annihilation, Socio-Political Mobilization and the Challenges of Transformation of Consciousness Ambedkar’s project of annihilation of caste has involved mobilization of people and social energy for questioning the caste system. It has been accompanied by both legal and social mobilization. But with and beyond Ambedkar annihilation of caste has mainly involved legal and social mobilization of transformation of structures of caste discrimination. In this Ambedkar has given primal significance to State and state apparatus and now we need to find an alternative realization of Ambedkar, as suggested by Kanchana Mahadevan (2018), which also realizes the limits of State and significance of civil society in this task.13 Social mobilization of annihilation of caste has mainly been anti-hierarchical and in many cases anti-Brahminical but those calling for annihilation of caste do not question their own caste identity, their own pigeon holes as Ambedkar might say. Understandably because of weight of centuries of oppression, the mobilization of annihilation of caste has been primarily structural and it has not involved the project of transformation of consciousness of those who are shouting slogans about annihilation of caste as well as fighting for it. To put it simply which may sound blunt, those speaking for annihilation of caste do not themselves try to transform their own casteist consciousness which is similar to problems of annihilation of class as those who are calling for class annihilation are themselves not often aware of and work towards embodiment of overcoming class privilege in their own lives.14 Many low-caste people themselves practice caste discrimination especially with regard to marriage with caste groups below their ranks thought Ambedkar himself has given primal significance to inter-caste marriage in his Annihilation of Caste. Even in landscapes of low-caste reality and struggles against caste, some groups such as Mahars in Maharashtra, Madigas in Andhra and Chamars in UP have fared much better and there is not necessarily any heightened consciousness and urgent attention to plights of less privileged groups in the anti-caste struggles of India today or in the dominant politics of Dalits.15 Reference to, acknowledgement of and realization of such caste discrimination is not a justification for existing caste hierarchy but the need for continued struggle for transformation of caste consciousness as well as organizational structures of existing caste discrimination and domination.

174  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha As we move ahead on this, a few lines of thought about consciousness are crucial here. For many thinkers and practitioners, consciousness is mainly determined by structures of societies and histories. This is an approach we find, for example, in Marx and many sociologists and historians. But there are some others who look at consciousness having an autonomy of its own though it is related to societies and histories in complex ways (Cohen 1994; Ingold 1986) while some others look at it as trans-social and trans-historical. We find the later in many streams of spiritual visions including in thinkers and seekers such as Buddha and Sri Aurobindo. But I take an approach to consciousness which is simultaneously social and trans-social, historical and trans-historical. That is, while consciousness is shaped and produced to some extent by structures of societies and histories is nonetheless not solely confined and limited to socio-historical determination and has an autonomous realm for engagement, movement and manifestation (see Unger 2001). Consciousness is a movement which is flowing across self, societies, cultures and histories and while being affected by these have the capacity also to interrogate, confront and transform these (see Ingold 1986; Cohen 1994; Giri 2013). For transforming caste domination and creating conditions of non-domination (Forst 2017),16 we also need these autonomous and inter-linked works of consciousness where all concerned work and meditate not to be bearers of caste discrimination and domination and embody a different, non-caste, and trans-caste modality of being, intersubjectivity, becoming and dynamics of new social co-realizations. These aspired for movements of social co-realizations embody beauty, dignity and dialogues across rather than graveyards of ugliness, violence and monological assertions and annihilation.17 Adi Shankara in his Atmastakam invites us to realize that self is neither body nor jati it is chidanandarupa. Realizing this is crucial for annihilation and transformation of caste. But Shankara himself had his own limitations in transcending caste domination. The story goes that when he was on his way to Benares, he saw a Chandala—a low-caste person—on his way. Coming from his Brahminical background, Shankara wanted to avoid him but suddenly the Chandala reappears as Siva in front of him thus helping him avoid the difficult situation of shaking his hands with a Chandala or even embracing him. But what if the Chandala does not want to reappear as Siva and appears as Ambedkar sticking to his own position and wants to embrace and be embraced by Shankara in a journey of mutual cognition, critique and recognition.18 This calls for transformation of the still persisting caste prejudice of Shankara. Here Ambedkar’s challenge is crucial which is also a frontal challenge to the patronizing attitude of many of the caste reformers. The Chandala does not want to turn into Siva now.19 The chandala is here to stay to question and confront for his and her rights, justice, dignity and responsibility, and also for an embrace of soul.20 But the project of transformation that is there in Shankara’s Atmastakam has been annihilated in the historical practices emanating from Shankara. Shankara was engaged in a fight with the Buddhists and following Shankara’s

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  175 victory, many of the Buddhists were annihilated in India. The digvijaya or victory of Shankara has been accompanied by ascendency of casteist Brahminical domination in societies and histories. Caste and gender domination and annihilation of the others such as Buddhists have been part of this structure of annihilation. Right from Adi Shankara, none of the Shankaracharyas in the four Maths (monasteries) established by him come from non-Brahmin castes as well neither of them are women. So gender and caste exclusion is part of the historical manifestation of the Shankarite system. Realization of each one of us as chidanandarupa calls for transformation of such a system of exclusion and here Ambedkar’s project of annihilation of caste is important. Ambedkar’s challenge can transform the patriarchal and Brahminical system of Shankaracharyas and make it open for all. Women and Dalits should also be Shankaracharyas, which is crucial for transforming Hinduism as well and its association with caste hierarchy and exclusion.21 It must be noted here that women becoming priests is a crucial challenge of realization of dignity in such hierarchical spaces as Roman Catholicism (Vattimo 2002). In his Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar (2004) argues at great length the need to destroy the hereditary priestly caste and make it open to all.

Buddhism, Vedanta and Tantra Historically and philosophically Shankara was in dialogue with Buddhism and some of the Buddhist challenges deeply influenced him. Ambedkar also embraced Buddhism, thus Buddhism becoming a thread of conversations between Shankara and Ambedkar. The Buddhist vision and practice of anatta—no self—is a significant challenge to essentialist caste self and casteist identity. Anatta is also part of the inter-linked vision and practice of paticcasamuppada—co-dependent origination which contributes to realizing self and society as part of commons (Ambedkar 2002: 268). This vision of paticcasamuppada has a practical and mystical dimension and challenges all concerned to realize that we are part of webs of interdependence (Bhikhu 2011). In India, the interdependence among castes has been historically manifested in a hierarchical and dominating Jajmani system. But now the challenge is to transform the caste-based system of inter-dependence to a dignified web of co-dependent origination, mutual flourishing and non-domination. Ambedkar emphasizes the need to create spaces of living and thinking in commons which caste system has not enabled in India. But Buddhism itself also drew from the spiritual sources of the Upanishads and Vedanta as Buddha also drew from the spiritual wisdom of the indigenous and tribal people of India. Thus, Buddhism and Vedanta have mutually challenged and nourished each other. But the dominant manifestation of Buddhism and Vedanta in Indic tradition has been patriarchal. But Tantra as a multi-dimensional journey and movement with the feminine in self, culture, nature, divine and the world has also influenced in varieties of ways Vedanta and Buddhism many a time revitalizing both these traditions.

176  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Shankaracharya himself wrote a deeply evocative prayer to the Divine Mother called Soundaryalahari. Many of the existing communities in India including Dalit communities are patriarchal and Dalit thinkers such as Kancha Ilaiah do not necessarily acknowledge the frontal significance of gender liberation for annihilation of caste. Anti-caste movements as part of struggle for both case and gender liberation can sing with Shankaracharya’s Soundaryalahari and realize beauty, dignity and radiant fire of Divine Mother in each of our soul as well as in self, culture and society (see Clooney 2015). They can also sing and cook together, which is a challenge for the male reformers of caste including Buddha and Ambedkar.22 Tantra has questioned practices of caste and gender hierarchy. Ram Manohar Roy drew inspiration from Mahanirvana Tantra, not only from Western ideals of liberty and equality (see Watanabe 2000).23 For transformation of caste and gender domination, we can now also draw upon Tantra (see Saxena 2021). In fact, Tantra has energized both Buddhism and Vedanta. The quest for gender equality in Ambedkar’s project of annihilation of caste has a Tantric dimension in reality and potential that many of the masculine Dalit activists need to realize (see Rege 2013). But unfortunately it is not realized by even women Dalit activists and feminist scholars working for Dalit emancipation and caste liberation. Ambedkar’s (2008) own essay on Tantra in his Riddles of Hinduism points to this but which needs further critical elaboration and realization. With such a multi-dimensional realization of dimensions and challenges of transformation, we can now revisit the Gandhi Ambedkar dialogue for transformation of caste. Gandhi learnt throughout his life and tried to realize the pain and sufferings of brothers and sisters belonging to the lowcaste. He initially began with an approach of Varnashramadharma as a way of division of labor without hierarchy and prejudice, but towards the end of his life he abandoned this approach and advocated inter-caste marriage, like Ambedkar, as a way of transforming caste system. Gandhi also advocated for abolition for dowry, which he thought is linked to caste-based marriage.24 This advocacy has a Tantric dimension as with the sharing of bodies and intimacy through marriage we can realize the beauty and warmth of human intimacy.25 After passing away of his first dear wife Ramabai, Ambedkar himself married Sabita from the Brahmin caste,26 as Gandhi himself solemnized many inter-caste marriages in Sevagram inspired by the life, dedication and commitment of his fellow co-traveler and fighter Gora from Andhra who married a person from the low-caste as well. In his approach, Gandhi was influenced, among others, by the Vedantic ideal of non-duality. His work for abolition of untouchability and later for transformation of caste was animated by the realization of non-duality and unity between the self and other. Gandhi here was influenced not only by Vaishnava tradition but also by the path of Pranami religious and spiritual movement which included books and inspiration from many religious traditions. He was also influenced by Narayana Guru who also drew on Vedantic visions of non-duality as well as Buddha’s critique of caste and put

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  177 in the service of eradication of caste discrimination and transformation of caste (Krishan 2018). Though born into low-caste Irava caste, Narayan Guru wrote in Sanskrit as well, and he engaged himself with the Vedantic tradition. He established an Advaita Ashram in Kalady, the birth place of Shankara which had no idol and which performed no puja. In 1921, Narayan Guru had said: “Whatever may be the difference in man’s creed, dress, and language etc. because they belong to the same kind of creation, there is no harm at all in dining together or having marital relations with one another.” It was in the background of Vaikkom Satyagraha that Gandhi visited the Guru in 1925 in which E.V. Ramaswami Naicker—Periyar—the leader of the Vaikom Satyagraha from Tamil Nadu was also present.27 This meeting had considerable impact on Gandhi which led him to include abolition of untouchability in the action programs of Indian National Congress though Periyar later on became a staunch critique of Gandhi and his approach to the caste question and started the self-respect movement in Tamil Nadu. Ambedkar was influenced by Buddhism and he was open to Upanishadic, Buddhist and Tantric ideas and ideals. We find similar cross-currents of influence and confluence in Gandhi as well.28 For a realization of non-duality and unity, we need to cultivate simultaneously Buddhist, Vedantic and Tantric dimensions, which in the case of Gandhi has also involved border-crossing dialogues with Jainism, Christianity and Islam. Vedanta in Gandhi has been multi-dimensional simultaneously focusing on self and social transformation as in Ambedkar, Buddhism has also simultaneously focused on self and social transformation. The neo-Vedanta of Gandhi as well as neo-Buddhism of Ambedkar are multi-dimensional and we now need to cultivate this multi-dimensionality further. Neo-Vedanta of Gandhi emerged out of his acceptance of challenges of equality both from Indian traditions as well Christianity and Islam as Gandhi walked and meditated deeply with Tolstoy as well as Islamic ideals of equality and dignity. Both Christianity and Islam had also influenced Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Swami Vivekananda who also challenged caste domination. The implication for Ambedkarite movement against caste domination is also to engage with a broader hermeneutics and social struggle of transformation engaging itself with Buddhism, Vedanta, Tantra, Christianity, Islam, indigenous and other contemporary visions and practices of liberation.

Transpositional Movements This calls for transpositional movements and practices—moving from our own inherited and ideologically accepted positions and move across positions with critique, creativity and transformations. Those of us who are born in Dalit life worlds need to move transpositionally to Brahmin life worlds and many other contemporary life worlds as well. This can draw inspiration from Gandhi’s transpositional wish that he wanted to be born as a Bhangi in his next life. In his own life, Gandhi also worked as a

178  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Bhangi—performing the manual labor of a cleaner. He also combined intellectual, manual and spiritual labor. With difficult struggles of education and social mobility, Ambedkar had mainly focused on intellectual labor in his life and work which was not necessarily linked to manual labor. At the same time, Ambedkar led the Labor Party of India in 1936, which did electorally well in the provincial elections of Bombay Presidency. Ambedkar had fought for rights and dignity of laboring classes in the Roundtable Conference and as Labor Minister in Vice Roy’s war cabinet, Ambedkar has enacted many pro-labor legislation. Building on both Gandhi and Ambedkar, the challenge for us is to create movements of integration of manual, intellectual and spiritual labor which can help us in transformation of caste domination (cf. Sohn-Rethel 1978). A transpositional movement across Dalit and Brahmin life worlds can help us realize the plurality in these life worlds, for example, some Brahmins as seekers of knowledge and not just mechanical reproducers of caste hierarchy and domination. Ambedkar’s emphasis on education for both transformation of caste as well as realization of individual worth and social democracy can learn from the habitus of learning in some Brahmin life worlds without reproducing the weight of caste hierarchy. Without essentializing Brahmins and Dalits and even without uttering these names and creating new names as Ambedkar challenges us (2002: 278), we can learn intellectual, spiritual and manual labor from each other. This calls for going beyond the dualism between Sanskritization and Dalitization (cf Illiah 1996), and realizing the significance of dialectic of self-realization and co-realization (Giri 2002). For transformation of caste domination, there is a need for simultaneous engagement with all the sources of self and social liberation as mentioned above and not only be confined to the historical legacy and thoughts of Ambedkar. The challenge of transformation is also not met by locking ourselves or enacting in a vicarious way the fight between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Gandhi and Ambedkar had their fights and also debates but what do we gain by reproducing these ad infinitum now? For all of us engaged in the struggle for transformation of caste, we have a necessity and responsibility to simultaneously engage ourselves with both Gandhi and Ambedkar and not construct and condemn one from an apriori identification with the one against the other.29 An either or politics or hermeneutics is not adequate. We need a politics and hermeneutics of simultaneous engagement, simultaneously engaging ourselves with the vision and struggles of both Gandhi and Ambedkar and in the process transcending their limitations and making them part of contemporary multi-dimensional struggles for liberation. One of the limitations of both Gandhi and Ambedkar is that both of them had an insufficient identification with the problems of the tribals of India. Ambedkar himself had a problematic construction of tribals in his Annihilation of Caste.30 In our life worlds, many a time tribals are exploited by the Dalits and contemporary Dalit politics is not sufficiently sensitive to the complicity with which Dalit groups are entangled in these webs of exploitation.31 It must be noted that some Gandhian movements

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  179 and leaders such as Ekta Parishad and P.V. Rajagopal are simultaneously working on caste and tribal questions by bringing them together for fighting against land alienation for realizing some minimum amount of land for all (see Reubke 2020). But none of the notable Dalit leaders and intellectuals seem to establish moral, political, intellectual and spiritual solidarity with the tribals and also work against the exploitation of tribals.

Multi-topial hermeneutics, the Question of Caste and the Challenges of Transformation of Consciousness: Ambedkar, Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and Beyond For transformation of caste domination, we need a new and critical hermeneutics of texts, cultures and traditions where we move transpositionally move across many topoi, terrains and landscapes of thinking and practice. Theologian Raimundo Panikkar and sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) tell us about the vision and practice of diatopical hermeneutics where we put our two feet in topoi—one in which we are born and one in which we are engaged with or we aspire to grow into. On the question of caste, so far we have practiced diatopical hermeneutics by engaging ourselves mainly with Ambedkar and Gandhi, that too mostly in a one-sided manner depending upon where one is coming from. We need to now open our diatopical hermeneutics into multi-topial hermeneutics where we move across multiple topoi of thinking and practice (Giri 2021a). Multi-topial hermeneutics also becomes multi-temporal hermeneutics where we move across multiple temporal formations such as tradition, modern and postmodern and find threads of conjunctive liberation as well as disjunctions and agonies of annihilation. It is in this sense, our engagement with Shankara and Ambedkar is part of a multi-temporal hermeneutics. To this multi-topical and multi-temporal hermeneutics, it is helpful to invite Sri Aurobindo who in his own life and works embodied multi-topial and multi-temporal hermeneutics by moving across multiple traditions and temporal formations such as classical India and modern Europe. In our discourse about caste in modern India, we are usually confined to the debates between Gandhi and Ambedkar about it but very rarely bring Sri Aurobindo to this conversation though Sri Aurobindo may have been an unacknowledged source of inspiration for Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste. Sri Aurobindo had worked with the Maharaja of Baroda who had also sponsored Ambedkar’s study at Columbia University. Sri Aurobindo, the Maharaja and Lala Lajpat Rai were critics of caste rigidity in Hinduism. As Neelakandan writes: Sri Aurobindo, who had condemned the undemocratic elements of the caste system in no uncertain terms, had written way back in 1907: The Nationalist does not quarrel with the past, but he insists on its transformation, the transformation of individual or class autocracy into the autocracy, self-rule or Swaraj, of the nation, and the fixed,

180  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha hereditary, anti-democratic caste-organisation into the pliable self-adapting, democratic distribution of function at which socialism aims. In the present absolutism in politics and the present narrow caste-organisation in society, he finds a negation of that equality that his religion enjoins. Both must be transformed. The historic problem that the present attitude of Indian Nationalism at once brings to the mind, as to how a caste-governed society could coexist with a democratic religion and philosophy, we do not propose to consider here today. We only point out that Indian Nationalism must by its inherent tendencies move towards the removal of unreasoning and arbitrary distinctions and inequalities. (The Unhindu Spirit of Caste Rigidity, Bande Mataram, 20 September 1907) Though Sri Aurobindo did not support the caste system, he challenged us to understand the psychological predilections in human beings, which he thought were implicit in the ancient system of four orders (varnas)—people preferring to do different works in life, some inclined to focus on knowledge acquisition while others on engaging themselves in service work. This psychological dimension of preference for different vocations, at the level of individuals still an unavoidable challenge in us even if we live in a casteless and classless society. Here it is important to bring Ambedkar to this conversation and enter into a tripartite dialogue—Ambedkar, Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo.32 For some critics, Sri Aurobindo’s project is a Kshatriya project33 but Sri Aurobindo has given the highest place to Shudra34 in his spiritual path. But despite this, the participation of Dalits in schools and Ashrams established by the co-walkers of Sri Aurobindo are miniscule though they are not necessarily excluded consciously by design in these spaces. It seems people coming from Brahmin and other high caste backgrounds are the main followers and interpreters of Sri Aurobindo. But in their interpretations and actions, do they interpret, perceive and relate to Brahma in Sri Aurobindo as mainly Brahminical? Do they realize the significance of caste hierarchy and caste domination as posed by Ambedkar and many others for realization of spiritual society that Sri Aurobindo envisioned and strove for? At the same time, what is the challenge of the psycho-spiritual question of different svabhaba (“own nature”) that Sri Aurobindo brings to Ambedkar’s project of annihilation of caste? Sri Aurobindo challenges us to realize that different individuals would like to adopt different vocations of life and even in a casteless society this would be a reality. This challenges critics of and activists against caste system to take into account this psychological dimension in preference for different vocations of life which however is not an excuse for justification of caste domination or reproduction of caste-based occupational structures even after the demise of the earlier jajmani system (see Srinivas 2003).

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  181 In his critique of caste, Ambedkar engaged himself not only with Dhamma teachings from Buddhism but also built upon the traditions of modern constitutional democracy and democratic pragmatism of thinkers such as John Dewey. In Ambedkar we find a border-crossing between pragmatism and spirituality which also we see in Sri Aurobindo (Giri 2021; Mahadevan 2021). We also find a resonant border-crossing between pragmatism and spirituality in Gandhi (Dallmayr 2007). For transformation of caste domination, we need to mobilize these manifold traditions of pragmatism and spirituality. Ambedkar finds problematic the idealization of Superman in Manu’s bhudeo and in Nietzsche (Guru 2017).35 If Ambedkar had engaged himself with Sri Aurobindo, especially Sri Aurobindo’s re-interpretation of texts such as Gita, Ambedkar could have realized that Superman need not be a slave to a logic of power, superman is a dimension—a higher self in each of us which is striving for Truth, beauty, dignity and Light.36 Sri Aurobindo also challenges us to be superman but not as Nietzschean superman of the cult of power but as a superman of service and knowledge. It seems contemporary interpreters of Ambedkar such as Gopal Guru who refers to Ambedkar’s critique of Manu’s Bhudeo and Nietzsche’s superman have missed this alternative reading, reality and possibility. Sri Aurobindo was also a critic of Shankara’s mayavada or doctrine of Maya and this should help us realize Ambedkar’s challenge that caste is not a maya, caste matters. But to transform caste consciousness matters as do structures and we need to go beyond dualism of structure and consciousness and work for intertwined and integral transformation. Ambedkar has challenged us to realize how sastras offer legitimation of caste domination and discrimination. This calls for critical examination and interpretation of the Sastras and strive to transform them as sources of legitimation of caste discrimination to sources of emancipation and liberation. In their own ways, Ambedkar, Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo offered critical hermeneutics of sastras and none of them were Brahmins. Ambedkar himself looked for unrealized transformative potential for democracy in Advaita Vedanta and the Upanishads. Gandhi, like Ambedkar, did not come from Brahminical castes and according to Karl-Juilus Reubke, a profound scholar of Indian journey, both Gandhi and Ambedkar shared the same fate of offering critical reading of texts which were supposed to be prerogative of the Brahmins.37 The same is also true of Sri Aurobindo. Their critical hermeneutics of scriptures can help us delegitimize scriptural justification of caste system and can contribute to its transformation. Self and Other and Creation of Non-Domineering and Evolutionary Solidarity In transforming structures of caste domination and consciousness, going beyond the dualism of the self and other is a continued challenge before us. This is a calling of permanent Satyagraha, which is a deeper challenge than

182  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha the logic of permanent revolution. Both Gandhi and Ambedkar offered themselves to the call of Satyagraha in life and politics for transforming existing systems of domination. But now this Satyagraha calls for continued sadhana and struggles to overcome the dualism between the self and the other. The project of Annihilation of Caste is still understandably imprisoned in a logic of dualism between Brahmin and Dalits and the challenge for all of us concerned is to struggle to transform caste domination without being totally being imprisoned in a dualism between Brahmins and Dalits though for contextual reasons we may have to live and struggle with the limits of the dual. Non-dual realization is a continued journey and here it is also linked with a permanent task of establishing maîtree or friendship across boundaries of entrenched dualism. Ambedkar’s constitutional and spiritual project in both his working with Indian constitution as well as his work as a Bhikhu is to help us create friendship in a world of enmity and hatred. Establishing friendship challenges us to go beyond a model of permanent enmity offered in both dominant movements of politics and theology and political theologies of modernity. For transformation of caste domination, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Sri Aurobindo in their own ways challenge us to realize the limits of political theology of enmity and violence and embody friendship, fraternity and ahimsa in our own lives, consciousness and social relationship. This is a journey of practical spirituality (Giri 2018). The sadhana and struggle of transformation of caste domination here is linked to creation of non-domineering solidarity. But this solidarity is not static but evolutionary preparing us for our inter-linked evolutionary consciousness which helps us transcend the limitations of both tradition and modernity. Presenting Ambedkar’s ideal, Gopal Guru writes; “The ultimate value is maître or friendship. In order to transform the existing condition one requires the political solidarity of those who have stake in creating a new social order” (Guru 2017: 746). And the stakes here involve all concerned going beyond the dualism of the high and the low, Brahmins and the Dalits though far more Dalits have far more life stakes involved in transforming caste domination. But solidarity here also calls for what Gianni Vattimo (2011) calls charity, which is not paternalistic sympathy but acts and meditation of compassionate identification.38 Compassion here is also not devoid of the ever-present processes of confrontation which are helpful if they are non-violent but in socio-historical processes violence does take place in transforming systems and consciousness which then is a challenge for continued movement of transformation from violence to non-violence. For transformation of caste domination and creating conditions and movements of non-domination, we need to work on both structural transformation and transformation of consciousness and here are challenges as well as possibilities of learning and courageous movements are manifold. Here we can never forget the challenges that a Isabel Wilkerson, a recent critic of caste, presents us in her Caste: The Lies That Divide Us:

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  183 We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today. We are, each of us, responsible for every decision we make that hurts or harms another human being. […] We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom. We are responsible for ourselves and our own deeds or misdeeds in our own time and in our own space and will be judged accordingly by succeeding generations. In a world without caste, instead of a false swagger over our own tribe or family or ascribed community, we would look upon all of humanity with wonderment […] In a world without caste, we would all be invested in the well-being of others in our species one another more than we have been led to believe. We would join as fires rage and glaciers melt. We would see that, when others suffer, the collective human boy is set back from the progression of our species. A world without caste would set everyone free. (Wilkerson 2020: 387–388)

Notes 1 Here I draw inspiration from the classic work of Orlando Patterson (1982) on Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. 2 In his Annihilation of Caste, Ambdekar writes: There have been many who have worked in the cause of the abolition of caste and untouchability. Of those, who can be mentioned, Ramanuja, Kabirs and others stand out prominently. Can you appeal to the acts of these reformers and exhort Hindus to follow them. (Ambedkar 2002: 296) 3 Regarding Swami Vivekananda and caste and its link with the current Dalit mobilization, Michael de Saint-Cheron writes deserves our careful consideration: However, the tidal wave that drove him made Vivekanada understand that the caste system, and the concept of the mleccha (the non-Hindu, or outsider) needed to be reformed into a Sanatana Dharma, a Universal order of Vedanta which believes that the Brahmin or Kshatriya, the caste of aristocrats to which he belonged himself are not superior to the genuine aristocracy that can only be acquired by an active resistance to evil, or by the intrinsic value of the soul. One can but conclude that the Swami’s optimistic vision failed. But the present day uprising of intellectual Dalits (untouchables), the poorest of whom remain outcast in India and the rest of the world, against oppression under the Brahmins [the author here refers to Kancha Illiah’s Why I am not a Hindu] is a continuation of battles he initiated, is it not? (Saint-Cheron 2016: 31–32) 4 Ambedkar (2008) writes: From this, it would appear that the doctrine of the fraternity was unknown to the Hindu Religious and Philosophic thought. But such a conclusion would not be warranted by the facts of history. The Hindu Religious and Philosophic thought gave rise to an idea that had greater potentialities for

184  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha producing social democracy than the idea of fraternity. It is the doctrine of Brahmaism. There are two criticisms which have been leveled against Brahmaism. It is said that Brahmaism is piece of impudence. For a man to say ‘I am Brahma’ is a kind of arrogance. The other criticism leveled against Brahmaism is the inability of man to know Brahma. (But) ‘I am Brahma’ … can also be an assertion of one’s own worth. In a world where humanity suffers so much from an inferiority complex, such an assertion on the part of man is to be welcomed. Democracy demands that each individual shall have every opportunity for realizing its worth. It also requires that each individual shall know that he is as good as everybody else. Those who sneer at Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahma) as an impudent utterance forget the other part of the MahaVakya, namely Tatvam Asi (Thou art also Brahma). If Aham Brahmasmi has stood alone without the conjunct of Tatvam Asi, it may have been possible to sneer at it. But with the conjunct of Tatvam Asi, the charge of selfish arrogance cannot stand against Brahmaism. It may well be that Brahma is unknowable. But all the same, this theory of Brahma has certain social implications which have a tremendous value as a foundation for Democracy. If all persons are parts of Brahma then all are equal and all must enjoy the same liberty, which is what Democracy means …Brahma may be unknowable. But there cannot be slightest doubt that no doctrine could furnish a stronger foundation for Democracy than the doctrine of Brahma. To support Democracy because we are all children of God is a very weak foundation for Democracy to rest on. That is why Democracy is so shaky wherever it is made to rest on such a foundation. But to recognize and realize that you and I are parts of the same cosmic principle leaves room for no other theory of associated life except democracy. It does not merely preach Democracy. It makes democracy an obligation of one and all. Western students of Democracy have spread the belief that Democracy has stemmed either from Christianity or from Plato and that there is no other source of inspiration for democracy. If they had known that India too had developed the doctrine of Brahmaism which furnishes a better foundation for Democracy, they would not have been so dogmatic. India too must be admitted to have a contribution towards a theoretical foundation for Democracy. (quoted in Neelakandan 2016) 5 For understanding Shankara and Advaita Vedanta, works of T.P. Mahadevan (1968), Govind Chandra Pande (1994) and Hirst (2005) are helpful. I do not engage with the details of their works in this chapter. 6 I am grateful to my dear and respected friend Professor Francis X. Clooney of Harvard University for sharing with me these contrary aspects of Ramanuja which we need work and mediate with in transformative ways. Regarding the exclusion of Shudras from reading the Vedas it is important to remember what Ambedkar (2002) writes about it: Some people seem to blame Rama because he wantonly and without reason killed Shambuka. But to blame Rama for killing Shambuka is to misunderstand the whole situation. Ram Raj was a raj based on chaturvarnya. As a king, Rama was bound to maintain chaturvarnya. It was his duty therefore to kill Shambuka, the Shudra who had transgressed his class and wanted to be a Brahmin. This is the reason why Rama killed Shambuka. But this also shows that penal sanction is necessary for the maintenance of chaturvarnya. Not only penal sanction is necessary, but the penalty of death is necessary. That is why Rama did not inflict on Shambuka a lesser punishment.

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  185 7 As Sunil Khilnani writes in his foreword to Anand Teltumbde’s Republic of Caste, As Ambedkar put it in 1952, the future of India’s democracy was dependent on what he called “public conscience”—a normative universalism. “Public conscience,” Ambedkar explained, “means conscience which becomes agitated at every wrong, no matter who is the sufferer and it means that everybody whether he suffers that particular wrong or not, is prepared to join him in order to get him relieved.” (Khilnani in Teltumbde 2018) But what we need to consider here that generation and mobilization of public conscience is not limited only to the public and public sphere. It also works on soul and self. It involves not only public conscience but also spiritual conscience. 8 Here we can engage with the following thoughts: Ambedkar challenges us about annihilation of caste and in the following paragraph Ramachandra Gandhi invites us also to meditate on the limits of annihilationism from another point of view: Sita’s Kitchen is the entire field of her self-imaging Shakti, powerfully represented by the earth. It is on earth, in the embrace of the Divine Mother, that all are born, all creatures great and small; all forms manifest, noble or evil; and all are nourished. […] The truth of Rama is the truth of advaita, non-duality, the truth of singular self-consciousness and its cinematic field of self-imaging Shakti which is Samsara. […] Annihilationism (the readiness to destroy all life and civilization on earth) is the highest stage of development of dualism […] Dualism is the conviction that self and not-self are everywhere pitted against one another. (Gandhi 1993: 16, 18, 20) In the following paragraph, Sebastian Painadath invites us to realize the simulataneous significance of the mystical and the historical in our fight against oppression: The Upanishads open to the Christian world the farther horizons of something of the mystery of the Divine. If one’s mind is open to the mystical quest of the Upanishads one cannot be fixated on the particular form of God’s revelation, nor can one be dogmatic about the concrete formulations in theology. […] In this unending spiritual pursuit the Christian theologian meets the Hindu Vedantin; the interpretation of the spiritual dynamics of the New Testament is deepened by the mystical insights of the Upanishads. The anthropocentric worldview of Christianity is balanced by the cosmic world-view of the Upanishadic sages; the emphasis on rituals is harmonized with the pursuit of contemplation; the social initiatives get integrated with ecological concerns. […] A similar encounter and deepening process takes place in the Hindu encounter with Christian faith. There are prophetic streams in Hindu scriptures and socio-critical initiatives in Hindu traditions. But under the weight of Brahmin domination and caste structure these have not been sufficiently articulated in the process of social transformation. The concerns of equanimity (samadarsana), solidarity (yajna), integral welfare (kshemam), justice (dharma), and good for all (sarvabhutahiteratah) have often been neglected or even suppressed. The prophetic literature of the Bible and the liberative message of Jesus could help Hindus discover this social transformative potential of God-experience. (Painadath 2007: 74–75)

186  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha And here Suraj Yengde urges us to realize the crucial urgency of Dalit exploitation: So, until the progressives can take a courageous stand by denouncing and renouncing self-privilege; until radicals make caste their primary project; until rationalists do not stop commuting to agraharas to educate; until Dalixploitation becomes a concern of the world; until Dalit scientists are able to organize; until Dalit cinema is successful in the project of creativity; until Dalit rap becomes the lingua franca of revolt and is accepted in the mainstream; until Dalit achievers are unafraid of revealing their identity for fear of losing their future; until #castemustgo is truly embraced and #DalitLivesMatter is in the list of priorities; until my mother can sleep with reassurance without worrying about her son’s returning home safely in the caste police regime; until then, caste matters. (Yengde 2019) 9 As Kanchana Mahadevan argues: “Besides the modern concept of justice, Ambedkar’s critique of Hinduism also appeals to the Buddhist critique of caste and its virtues of compassion and fellowship. This is buttressed by the Buddha’s non-essentialist approach to the self, as well as his stress on non-dogmatism, nonabsolutism and non-authoritarianism, as preconditions for religious conviction” (Mahadevan 2018: 115). 10 Ambedkar’s turn from the transcendental can be read together with what Habermas calls linguistification of the sacred where we make sacred part of our critical and transformative conversations. This linguistification of sacred makes religious issues including scriptural injunctions part of moral argumentation what Habermas calls discourse ethics (Habermas 1990). Making scriptural, religious and sacred issues part of moral argumentation and democratic deliberations helps us to be from their domination and realize dignity and freedom of thinking, being, action and co-realizations. Habermas also calls for weak transcendental idealization, which can be taken as a call for cultivating immanent transcendence or transcendental immanence. We can also read and walk and meditate further with Ambedkar and realize both transcendental and immanent in our acts of emancipatory reading of scriptures and our liberative actions. As we think together with Ambedkar and Habermas, in her insightful essay on Habermas and Ambedkar, Kanchana Mahadevan tells us that “Ambedkar goes beyond Habermas in working out a critique of liberty, equality and fraternity from a religious perspective, and critiquing religion through these modern ideals” (2018: 116). 11 For example, Shankara while interpreting Vedic rituals tells us that what is important is not the formal repetition of rituals but self-realization and sadhana. Swami Vivekananda writes about this: If you will kindly look into the introduction to the Shariraka-Bhasya of Shri Shankaracharya, you will find there the Nirapekhata (transcendence) of Jnana is thoroughly discussed, and the conclusion is that realization of Brahman or the attainment of Moksha do not depend upon ceremonial, creed, caste, color, or doctrine. It will come to any being who has the four sadhanas, which are the most perfect moral culture. (Swami Vivekananda 2009: 341) The meditative approach to rituals in Vedanta finds a correspondence in meta-knowing in Confucianism which is usually look at as consisting of ritual actions. According to Youngmin Kim, the subject in Confucius is an agent of meta-knowing and is not a mere reproduction of existing modes of knowing and conventions. As Kim writes:

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  187 Meta-knowing provides an important change in the agency involved in the process of knowing […] Confucius’ concern with meta-knowing shows that performance of rituals is understood as actions undertaken by agents who are fully self-conscious of what they are doing. Seen in this way, Confucius’ notion of zhi [translated usually as knowledge and wisdom] is neither merely a matter of external world, nor of mere cognitive access to it. Instead, the notion turns out to be part of the self-cultivation project. Instead, meta-knowing facilitates the attainment of higher forms of self-consciousness. The self-consciousness prompts one to raise and answer ethical questions, and sustains self-control until it arrives at the ultimate goal of closing the gap between “ought” and “is.” In fact, meta-knowing and virtue are mutually constitutive in Confucius’ vision. For knowledge to be genuine knowledge, it has to come with a certain cultivation of mind. In the Analects, [meta-knowing] infuses the subject with new depths. Confucius constructs the subject not as one who is passively shaped by the power of supernatural being but as an active agent whose subjectivity is continuously shaped through his or her engagements with multiple and complex spaces that meta-consciousness creates. (Kim 2018: 35) Thus from both Vedantic and Confucian perspectives, we find practices of mediation and meta-knowing which can help us in relating to our scriptures and ritual actions in meditative and critical reflective ways. 12 Here what Rohit Vemula writes deserves our careful consideration: Good morning, I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt. The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living. I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past. May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past. I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this. People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories,

188  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds. If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that. Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive. “From shadows to the stars.” Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing. To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future. For one last time, Jai Bheem I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself. No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act. This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this. Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone

In my poem below I pay my humble tribute to the challenge of awakening and transformation of consciousness that Vemula poses to each one of us: Oh Rohita Rohitashwa Horse of Consciousness Horse of Compassion Protest and Confrontation Courage and Affection In your absence tears flow down my eyes And sparks of fire You get born in our Sadhana and Struggles Forts of indignity fall down Birthing New Systems Transformation of Consciousness. [This is the translation of a poem originally written in Odia by the author in 2017] 13 For Mahadevan: [Ambedkar’s] radical egalitarian critique of religion reveals that Ambedkar did not restrict himself to statist secularism. The law cannot transform the mental domain of beliefs or the social one of practice, though it could be a catalyst for these domains. Such transformation can only be initiated by society. As a bond between society and politics, religious inequality impacted social life and political participation. Underprivileged Hindu castes were hindered from political participation due to centuries of social alienation. Hence, the sphere of religion in civil society needed transformation to act as a constructive catalyst. Ambedkar was apprehensive about inserting the terms “secular, federal and socialist” in the Preamble to the Indian constitution. He believed that the constitution could not give a blueprint for social specificities; in a democracy, people would organize their lives in the way they see fit. For Ambedkar, civic culture would have to be compatible with modern ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity or fundamental constitutional rights without state interference. India’s exposure to modern ideals neglected both

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  189 equality and solidarity […]; it had to redefine them in its own way through syncretic social practice. Hence, for Ambedkar the formalization of concepts such secularism that is integral to everyday beliefs in India was redundant; rather than the state, it was society which had the onus of defining itself as secular. He argued that society could be held together through either the sanction of law or morality (Ambedkar 1990). Morality is enforced through religion at the level of mass. (2018: 113) Realization of the limits of State and Statism in realizing secularism in Ambedkar can also help us realize the limits of State in realizing annihilation of caste. 14 In a seminar on caste in 2011 in Chennai, Anand Teltumbde, himself a noted and devoted scholar and activist, pointed to the contradiction in the project of annihilation of caste without a foundational critique of caste and casteist consciousness (see Yengde & Teltumbde 2018). In the field of class solidarity and realizing the ideals of egalitarianism, G.A. Cohen (2000) raises the same challenge of disjunction between theory and practice in his If You are an Egalitarian How Come You are So Rich? 15 In his study of Dalit Bahujan politics and policies in UP Bardri Narayan (2016: 19) points to this unfortunate and tragic reality: “The marginalized communities that have gained power do not want to share it with less fortunate brothers, thus creating a dominant community.” 16 Political philosopher Rainer Forst (2017) reconstitutes justice as transforming domination to non-domination and this has relevance for our visions and projects of transforming caste domination. 17 Consciousness work and mediation resonates with Amartya Sen’s approach to justice as reflective comparative historical awakening and movements for improvement even if we are not able to turn around the existing situation totally which Sen calls an attitude of transcendental institutionalism (Sen 2009). But even comparative historical work on justice in the present does have a transcendental dimension which Sen seems not to acknowledge and realize. This transcendence refers to the ability to go beyond what Unger (2001) calls social sacredness. It involves our ability to transcend our context and many limitations and related to many webs of beyond—our mutuality, Nature and Divine. This includes what Habermas calls immanent transcendence as well as what I call transcendental immanence (see Giri 2013). 18 On the need to link cognition and recognition together please see Strydom’s (2012) formulation of this in his discussion of the work of Axel Honneth. 19 In this context what philosopher Daniel Raveh (2020) writes deserves our careful attention: Here Śaṅkara – protagonist, not commentator – on his way to a midday bath in the Gaṅgā with his disciples, comes across a caṇ ḍāla with four dogs (SDV 6.25). To make sure that their party is not “polluted” by the dogs and their master, the disciples ask the latter to step aside and give way. But surprisingly, the caṇ ḍāla addresses Śaṅkara and points out the discrepancy between his advaitic teaching and his current dualistic approach, which makes a distinction not just between “purity” and “pollution”, personalized in this narrative by brāhmaṇ a and caṇ ḍāla, but even between (the knowledgeable caṇ ḍāla argues) body and ātman. “Is the sun changed in the least, if it reflects in a liquor pot or in the Gaṅgā?”, he asks sharply. A few lines down the road, the reader discovers that the caṇ ḍāla is no other than god Śiva, and that the four dogs are in fact the four Vedas. Śiva takes the form of an outcaste, and gives Śaṅkara, his disciples and us a lesson in advaita, including “social advaita” which applies to the phenomenal realm. Śiva’s presence in the narrative

190  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha (Bader highlights the trajectory of Śiva bhakti in the hagiographies, 2000, 12), as also the mention of the Vedas, grant authority to the demand for bringing Śaṅkara's advaita down to earth. But what if the caṇ ḍāla in the narrative was not a divinity in disguise, but an “ordinary” caṇ ḍāla, and his dogs just dogs, not the Vedas? Would his words, about advaita as social equality, still count? 20 Socio-spiritual movements such as Swadhyaya in Western India tried to bring an approach of fraternity and a bit of soul dimension to the caste question but it still got trapped in entrenched caste system. Many of the leaders of Swadhyaya come from upper caste backgrounds like the integral education movement of Sri Aurobindo in Odisha and they do not necessarily realize the limitations of their own caste backgrounds for dignified inter-caste communication and transcendence. See Giri 2008 and 2018a. 21 MV Nadkarni (2006) argues how caste hierarchy is not integral to Hinduism as a religion. 22 This is explored in the following poem by the author Crocodile and Sabari Sukta: Shankara, Buddha and Ambedkar Oh Crocodile Pull my leg As you had pulled The tiny legs of Shankara If you pull my legs Towards the other shore Across deep waters My Sannyasi soul Would surrender I would be a Sannyasi With the ways, with light With home and the world With self and non-self A new blossoming of relationship And the world A new Sannyasa Transformation of Life! 2 New Encounters With Soul, with the Chandala But the Chandala Does not turn into Shiva Chandala Becomes Buddha and Ambedkar A new Constitution in the hands of the Chandala Meditating he asks: Oh Shankara You had said We are neither body nor intellect ChidanadaRupa But where is here The festival of soul In the sacrificial pyre Of Caste systems So many souls get killed and burnt Shnakara embraces Chandala Holding hands together Buddha, Shankara and Ambedkar

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  191 Walk together A new Sannyasa of begging of life 3 Walking together They feel hungry Says Shankara: I am supposed to have only my own cooked food But I do not know how to cook Would you know? Buddha the Enlightened says no Says Ambedkar: I had coordinated the writing of the Constitution But forgot to learn how to cook In hungry stomachs They meet Sabari But Sabari does not give them fruits Brings the three Greats to The kitchen By the fire Blowing the rods of Sabari Shankara, Buddha and Ambedkar Learn to make rice and dal 4 Cooking and eating Rice and dal Around the kitchen A new Sannyasa Singing Saundraya Lahari and reading Tripitaka Sutra and Constitution We join them in This path of tapasya We learn the sadhana of cooking We transform the tears of history A new garden of creativity Holding the hands of crocodile And around the kitchen of Sabari A new sannyasa of Life. (A poem originally written in Odia and translated by the author as “Crocodile and Sabari Sukta: Shankara, Buddha and Ambedkar,” appears in Giri 2019). 23 As Watanabe writes: “It was one of Roy’s most important goals to circumvent and ultimately abolish the restrictions of adhikara, namely, the caste-based hereditary qualification especially for studying the Vedas. Moreover he tried to promote religious and soteriological egalitarianism and sought sanction for it in the authoritative texts of Hinduism in Mnt [Mahanirvana Tantra]” (Watanabe 2000: 1139). 24 Here what Gandhi writes about dowry and caste deserves our consideration: The system has to go. Marriage must cease to be a matter of arrangement made by the parents for money. The system is intimately connected with caste. So long as the choice is restricted to a few hundred young men or young women of a particular caste, they system will persist no matter what is said against it. The girls or boys or their parents will have to break the bonds of caste if the evil is to be eradicated. (Gandhi 1947: 233)

192  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha 25 Gandhi’s grandson Ramchandra Gandhi speaks about the Tantric dimension of Gandhi’s sadhana and struggles. As he tells us in a conversation with U.R. Ananthamurthy: “Perhaps the world has never seen a bigger tantrik than Gandhiji” (Ananthamurthy 2018: 324). Ananthamruthy then writes: “He [Ramachandra Gandhi] believed Gandhi’s acts—from spinning the charkha, through the salt satyagraha, to the march in cleaning the latrines, and streets lined with stones and thorns—were like the rituals the tantriks deployed to achieve their heart’s desire” (Ananthamurthy 2018). 26 Sabita came from a Brahmin family which followed Kabirpanthis as Ambedkar himself. One of the readers of this essay has suggested that Ambedkar did not marry inter-caste for the sake of abolition of caste. It may be but the fact remains that Ambedkar married inter-caster which is significant itself. 27 It must be noted that Tagore had also met and had written the following about Guru: “I will not forget those yoga powered eyes stretching their looks in the unknown faraway, and that refulgent face which exuded divinity.” 28 In their dialogue, Lokesh Chandra and Daisaku Ikeda explore Buddhist influence on Gandhi (Ikeda and Chandra 2009). 29 In his latest book on Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha (2018) challenges us to understand the limitation of Arun Shourie’s critique of Ambedkar and Arundhati Roy’s critique of Gandhi. 30 In his Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar (2002: 270) uses the word savage to characterize the tribals as he writes: “Caste is, therefore, the real explanation as to why the Hindu has let the savage remain a savage in the midst of his civilization without blushing or without feeling.” 31 During my fieldwork among Dalit and tribal communities in G. Udayagiri and Rayagara in Odisha I had raised these issues some Dalit men I had met who mainly bring goods and services to tribal communities. They told me that they are just the middle men and the real exploiters are the capitalists and the highcaste money lenders, business people and landlords in the tribal areas (see Giri 2005). 32 Here what Reubke writes helps us: Gandhi experienced often painfully that men are born with different abilities. He was convinced that all abilities had to be gained through exercise and pain and of necessity should evolve throughout life. But he became painfully aware that desirable personal qualities and faculties cannot be enforced in others—even through love, as with his son Harilal. Therefore, the different dispositions of man to acquire abilities seemed to him a natural foundation for a humane division of labour. He thought that these varnas, defined as four principal dispositions to contribute to the general welfare of the whole, should be redefined by modern man. One of these varnas should be followed out of one’s own self-awareness, so everyone should decide freely on his or her varna-path. There should be no discrimination because of that choice and varna should not be hereditary and cause the status and privilege of families. The danger of crating new identities, which might end up politically fighting each other in stead of organically working together, lurked in the back of this vision. Ambedkar through his background and learning was very far from being able to even comprehend this kind of reasoning expressed in an experimental and tentative way by a man he could not love. (Reubke 2020: 107) 33 Rajesh Pradhan (2014) portrays Sri Aurobindo as a Kshatriya carrying the spirit of a warrior. Pradhan writes that Sri Aurobindo brings his Kshatriya spirit when he critiques Gandhi as a dictator. But it seems to be a very quick and shallow typification.

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  193 34 Note here what Sri Aurobindo writes about Sudrashakti in his Record of Yoga and we, of course, should not mix with the sociological reality and construction of either Shudra, Harijans or Dalits: The Shudra is God descending entirely into the lower world and its nature, giving himself up entirely for the working out of and God’s lila in Matter & in the material world. From this standpoint he is the greatest of the four shaktis, because his nature goes direct towards complete atmasamarpana [self-surrender]; but the Shudra bound has cut himself off from knowledge, power and skill & lost himself in tamoguna. He has to recover the Brahmana, Kshatriya & Vaishya in himself and give them up to the service of God, of man, of all beings. The principle of kamaha or desire in him must change from the seeking after physical well-being, and self-indulgence to the joy of God manifest in matter. The principle of prema must find itself and fulfil itself in dasyalipsa and atmasamarpana, in the surrender of himself to God and to God in man and the selfless service of God and of God in man. (Sri Aurobindo 2001: 10–11) In another place, Sri Aurobindo writes about Indian mind: If it was obliged to stereotype caste as the symbol of is social order, it never quite forgot, as the caste-spirit is apt to forget, that the human soul and human mind are beyond caste. For it had seen in the lowest human being the Godhead, Narayana. It emphasized distinctions only to turn upon them and deny all distinctions. (Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo Vol 20: 11) 35 For Gopal Guru (2017: 743–744): Ambedkar offers a radical critique of the slave ideal. The slave morality treats the ideal of superman as the only moral source from which one can draw one’s own relative worth. The source of one’s own worth is not in authentic self but located in the master. The slave mentality therefore suggests that any kind of transgression is immoral. Traditional moral idealism gets defined in terms of moral dominance of the ideal and the dependence of the lower caste. Manu’s efforts to raise a bhudeo to the highest level by associating with moral qualities such as benevolence are paralyzing for the slave. To strengthen his critique of the traditional conception of a moral ideal, Ambedkar draws sources of critique from the intellectual tradition that he seeks to criticize. In an historical sense, he argues, even the Upanishadic renouncer become as an ideal not to perfect it but to strategically lay bare the male-dominated content of the Brahmanical patriarchy as it evolved in the post-Upanishadic era. He argues that Brahmanical patriarchy did not allow women to achieve this ideal, which promised women both intellectual and metaphysical progress. He further argues that the ideal of renouncer, that was something available to women from the upper layers of society in Upanishadic times, was also available to women during the Buddhist period. Women could aspire to become an arahat. The idea of the arahat embodies women’s intellectual freedom and recognizes their intellectual capacity to debate with male bhikkus within the Buddhist sangham. In the post-Buddhist period, Ambedkar observes, the intervention of Manu, who converted the flexible ideal into a rigid one denied this ideal to women: he categorically states that it is the code of Manu that is singularly responsible in putting women into a dark ghetto.

194  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha 36 William Connolly (1991) offers an Aurobindo-like re-interpretation of the Nietzschean cult of superman when he suggests that the superman is a higher being within oneself rather than dominating over others. 37 It may be noted that Gandhi was excommunicated by his caste community for breaking caste rule of crossing the sea to travel to foreign land. So he like Ambedkar felt the oppressive structure of caste rules and domination. On the issue of reading of scriptures, here what Reubke writes deserves our careful consideration: The typically Indian problem is that Ambedkar’s very profound knowledge of the Indian scriptures is not taken seriously by any caste-Hindu. This reflects, as Ambedkar himself felt with greatest pain, the upper castes’ firm belief that even today only Brahmins can understand and interpret theses texts. […] With his “knowledge of Sanskrit being very limited,” Gandhi passed his translation of the Gita “before the eyes of Vionba, Kaka Kalelkar, Mahadev Desai and Kishorelal Mashurwala.” Gratefully admitting the help, Gandhi added a polite comment: “As Vionba’s style is very lively, he wins our interest. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is possible to put more than one interpretation on the words of the Gita and all of them may be right.” The advice of the Brahmins was necessary; Gandhi not being a Brahmin was not supposed to be able to understand the holy texts. In this respect he shared the fate of Ambedkar. (Reubke 2020: 123, 136) 38 Here what Vattimo (2011: 139–140) writes deserves careful consideration: At the horizon line of the near future toward which we gaze, pragmatically assessing the utility of truth, there lies a more distant future that we can never really forget. Rorty alludes to this with the term solidarity, which I propose to read directly in the sense of charity, and not just as the means of achieving consensus but as an end in itself. Christian dogma teaches that Deus Caritas est, charity is God himself. From a Hegelian viewpoint, we may take the horizon to be that absolute spirit which never allows itself to be entirely set aside but becomes the final horizon of history that legitimates all our nearterm choices.

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196  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Guru, Gopal & Sundar Sarukkai. 2019. Experience, Caste and the Everyday Social. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Habermas, Jurgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hirst, Jacqueline Suther. 2005. Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta: A Way of Teaching. London: Routledge. Ikeda, Daisaku & Lokesh Chandra. 2009. Buddhism: A Way of Life. Delhi: Eternal Ganges Press. Illiah, Kancha. 1996. Why I am not a Hindu? Kolkata: Samya. Ingold, Tim. 1986. Evolution and Social Life. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Kim, Youngmin. 2018. A History of Chinese Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Krishan, Ashoka V. 2018. Sree Narayana Guru: The Perfect Union of Buddha and Sankara. Delhi: Konark. Lindlely, Mark. “Changes in Mahatma Gandhi’s Views on Caste and Intermarriage.” Mahadevan, Kanchana. 2018. “Rethinking the Post-Secular and Secular with Habermas and Ambedkar.” Cahiers d’Edtudes Germaniques 74: 103–118. ———. 2021 “Pragmatism, Spirituality and the Calling of a New Democracy: The Populist Challenge and Ambedkar’s integration of Buddhism and Dewey.” In Pragmatism, Spirituality and Society: Border Crossings, Transformations and Planetary Realizations. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Mahadevan, T.P. 1968. Philosophy of Shankara. Mohanty, Manoranjan (ed.) 2004. Caste, Class, Gender. Delhi: Sage. Nadkarni, M.V. 2006. Hinduism: A Gandhian Perspective. Delhi: Anne Books. Narayan, Badri. 2016. Fractured Tales: Invisibles in Indian Democracy. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Neelakandan, Arabindan. 2016. “Ambedkar, Democracy and Upanishads.” Swarajya. Painadath, Sebastian. 2007. We are Co-Pilgrims. Delhi: ISPCK. Pande, G.C. 1994. Life and Thought of Sankaracharya. Delhi: Motilal Banrasidass. Patterson, Orlando. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pradhan, Rajesh. 2014. “When the Saints Go Marching In”: The Curious Ambivalence of Religious Sadhus in Recent Politics in India. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. Raveh, Daniel. 2020. “Philosophical Prelude to Social Theorizing in Contemporary India: Daya Krishna.” Indian Anthropologist 50(1): 11–26. Rege, Sharmila. (ed.) 2013. Against the Madness of Manu: B.R. Ambedkar’s Writings on Brahmanical Patriarchy. Delhi: Navayana. Reubke, Karl-Julius. 2020. Struggles for Justice and Peace: India, Ekta Parishad and the Globalization of Solidarity. Delhi: Studera. Roy, Ramashroy. 2006. Gandhi and Ambedkar: A Study in Contrast. Delhi: Shipra. Saxena, Neela Bhattacharya. 2021. “Women, goddesses and trantric praxis: a liberatory antidote to ‘Hindutva’ nationalist politics.” Contemporary South Asia 29 (2): 288–295. Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Delhi: Penguin. Sohn-Rethel, Alfred. 1978. Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology. Tr. Martin Sohn-Rethel. Humanities Press. Sri Aurobindo. 2001. Record of Yoga-1. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Caste Domination  197 Srinivas, M.N. 2003. “An Obituary on Caste as a System.” Economic and Political Weekly 38 (5). Strydom, Piet. 2012. “Cognition and Recognition: On the Problem of the Cognitive in Honneth.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 38 (6): 591–607. Teltumbde, Anand. 2018. Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva. Delhi: Navayana. Unger, Roberto M. 2001. False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy. London: Verso. Vattimo, Gianni. 2002. After Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2011. A Farewell To Truth. New York: Columbia University Press. Vemula, Rohit. 2016. “Letter of Rohit Vemula.” Retrieved from the Web. Vivekananda, Swami. 2009. The Collected Works of Swami Vivekananda. Vol 1V. Mayawati: Advaita Ashram. Watanabe, H. 2000. “The Influence of Hindu Tantrism on Rammohan Roy’s Ideas.” Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies 48 (2): 1136–1140s. Wilkerson, Isabel. 2020. Caste: The Lies That Divide Us. London: Allen Lane. Yengde, Suraj. 2019. Caste Matters. Delhi: Penguin. Yengde, Suraj & Anand Teltumbde (eds.) 2018. The Radical in Ambedkar. Delhi: Penguin Random House.

12 Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity Learning Across Borders and the Calling of Planetary Realizations

Introduction and Invitation Social healing calls for networks of love and creativity and here networks in Education can help us. Education helps us realize our potential as well as that of our cultures, societies and the world when it moves from narrow confines within closed walls of class room and given boundaries of many kinds and embraces the joy of learning with the wider and uncharted paths and rivers of life in this vast world of ours. From the dawn of humanity, seekers have been animated by this quest for learning beyond the boundaries and across. This has led to travels and seeking across the roads and rivers of life. Seeking souls and institutions have moved in this world with a passion for meeting, learning together and embracing each other for the light of knowledge, mutual illumination, shared enlightenment and co-realizations. The present discourse of international education as well as internationalization of education is part of this deep yearning of humanity. Such a yearning is realized with facilitating institutions as well as networks. We need creative institutions that foster learning across borders and creative networks that bring new energy to institutions which many times become imprisoned within a logic of self-justification, self-valorization and closure.1 We need creative institutions and networks for fostering learning across borders. Our networks are not just mechanical extensions of existing institutional logic but become networks of agape and love where the seekers build bridges by being bridges. Learning across borders is facilitated by seeking institutions and networks where leaders and participants become students of life and friends of the world.2

Networks of Agape and Creativity: Being Students of Life with Life and the World Threads that connect and weave us together are threads of agape. Agape is love as it is understood in Christian tradition. It is not passive, it is love in action and infused with eros.3 Agape is also understanding.4 Recently secular philosophers such as Jurgen Habermas as well as religiously inspired DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-14

Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity  199 thinkers such as Charles Taylor are urging us understand the significance of agape in our lives, especially when we are devoted to mutual moral argumentation, co-learning and flourishing.5 Agape has a dimension that overflows acceptable boundaries and helps us meet each other and the world unconditionally.6 Agape facilitates genuine and pregnant meetings, meetings which mother new possibilities in self, other and the world. These meetings and encounters start with creative selves and then overflows into existing institutions.7 These institutions despite their logic of closure feel the breeze of opening and create new institutional spaces for facilitating such creative encounters. We need to cultivate agape in our act of networking among institutions as well as individuals. This is particularly relevant for the Grundtvig-Kold tradition of learning and international education from Denmark (cf. Das 2007).8 In this journey of learning across borders, we become students of life with life and the world. In Denmark in the middle of the nineteenth century, Grundtvig and Kold had striven to build schools of life in place of dead Latin schools. One significant aspect of this school of life was the opportunity to build friendship across social division and boundaries. Over the years, folk high schools of Denmark have become international and one meets students from all across the world not only in international folk high schools such as International People’s College in Helsingor but also in other schools in remote corners of Denmark. In such schools there is an ideal of being students of life a flame of which we find burning in some teachers and students.9 “Who am I?,” “Who are you?” are perennial questions of life. Now for a long time, when I am asked, “Who are you?” I say: “I am a student of life.” Then immediately, the questionnaire comes back: “Oh I am also a student of life.” Out of our many identities of life, an identity such as “student of life” is a broad, seeking, and embracing one where one chooses in solidarity with Nature, others and Divine to be with the roads and rivers of life and continuously learn. Love and labor of learning becomes a part of our vision and practice as students of life. Networking for learning across borders calls for such vocations of being students of and with life. In the roads and rivers of life as students of life we meet others who, many a time, come to us as a God without a name. Such meetings transform our lives. In his poem Morte d’ Arthur, Tennyson has written, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” Holding the hands of Tennyson, we can also sing: “Many things are wrought by meetings than the world can dream of.” Networks emerge out of such pure meetings of souls and are not just extensions of existing institutional programs. Even when we are part of existing programs of networking, we need to bring our own soul, self and the very being of passion, prayer and imagination to these networks. Highlander is a place of meeting in Tennessee. It was started by Myles Horton in the highlands of Appalachian mountains in the 1930s who was inspired by the way seeking souls meet in the folk high schools of Denmark

200  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha (cf. Horton and Friere 1990). From its birth, Highlander has been a mothering place where people involved in social change can meet. In the small auditorium of Highlander there are rocking chairs. Participants of social movements come and sit in such chairs, share their experiences with each other and learn together. In the 1930s, participants of workers’ movements met in Highlander. In the 1940s and 1950s, it was the fighters of civil rights movements who met together in Highlander. Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks joined these meetings and sat in those chairs of sharing, which then inspired them to take a different walk in their paths of lives. Rosa Parks tells us that in taking part in such meetings she could overcome her fear which then planted the seed of saying no in her. This then emboldened her to refuse to give up her seat in a bus in Montgomery. If saying “no” is an important part of becoming a subject as Alain Touraine, the heart-touching sociologist of our times, tells us, taking part in such meetings as organized in Highlander, provides a momentum to the process of subjectivation of the participants (cf. Touraine 2007). While creating networks for learning, we can learn with such stories of meetings, encounters and transformations. For this we would have to transform our existing institutions as well as methods and modes of networking. While making our institutions sites of experimental creativity, we would have to make networks more creative by ourselves being engaged in creative border-crossing of body, self and language.10 Our networks then become networks of agape and creativity. Here we can walk with many inspiring co-walkers of life and history. Here we can walk with two students of life, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466– 1536) and Chitta Ranjan Das (1923–2011). Erasmus was not only an incorrigible traveler but also a passionate letter writer. He met princes as well as commoners walking on foot and wrote letters to many sharing with them the challenge of building peace and reconciliation in a world of hatred and propensity to war. Erasmus’s networks of agape and creativity created a republic of letters as a counter and alternative to the existing republics of hatred and war.11 Similar is also the seeking and striving of Chita Ranjan Das who like Erasmus travelled far and wide and wrote letters to countless radiant souls he met on the way (cf. Giri 2011). Chitta Ranjan became a living thread of energy bringing many aspiring souls and institutions together.12 Chitta Ranjan also worked with folk high school movement in Denmark as well as built folk high schools in Finland. In his own experiments in co-learning in the schools he established at Champattimunda, Osidha, as well as in the subsequent integral education movement, he brought different streams of transforming learning together—Gandhi, Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Grundtvig and others (see Das 2013).13 In networking for learning across borders we can walk with fellow co-walkers such as Eramsus and Chitta Ranjan who made their own lives threads of agape and creativity. We can also thread with each other and weave together by being networks of agape and creativity.

Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity  201

Internationalization of Education: Institutional Creativity and Networks of Creativity In recent times, there is much talk about and some concrete moves towards internationalization of education. This is happening through exchange of students and teachers. In European Union, there is a program of exchange of students quite aptly named after Erasmus. But in internationalization of education, most of the time, the flow is usually from South to North. There are many scholars from India who are teaching in Europe and North America. For American and European students, such teachers bring a new cross-cultural experience of learning and mutual challenging. But compared to this, we hardly see teachers from other countries in Indian institutions. This impoverishes the capacity for learning across borders on the part of Indian students. There are now some creative experiments in international education. One such is a program in master education in Sociology led by Institute of Sociology, University of Freiburg in Germany. In this learning program, participants spend a semester at Freiburg and then at partner institutions in India (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Thailand (Chulalongkorn University), South Africa (University of Cape Town) and Argentina (FLASCO). In these moves of teachers and students across boundaries, there is possibly a network of agape and creativity at work, or participants can self-consciously cultivate these more.

Education for Creativity and the Calling of a New Enlightenment: Learning Across Borders and the Calling of Planetary Realizations Education is linked to enlightenment in many ways. European ideas of Enlightenment have influenced modern conceptions of self-formation that is called Bildung as well as models and pathways of education in modern world. To this early European models of Enlightenment Grundtvig and Kold brought the vision and practice of people’s enlightenment which also resonates with the discourse of vernacular Enlightenment suggested by Foucault (cf. Korsgaard 2008).14 Through learning across borders and creative international education we now can bring people’s enlightenment at world level beyond national borders. This calls for more labor and love of learning through intercultural and transcultural dialogues and planetary conversations. As part of such planetary conversations, we also rethink enlightenment as simultaneously rational and spiritual, self as well as collective in which not only rationalist philosophers such as Kant but Buddha, Spinoza, Grundtvig, Erasmus and Chitta Ranjan hold our hands and help us in new realizations of both creative solitude and soulful togetherness in a world of alienation and fragmentation. Such education just does not aim at in creating global citizenship in a conventional sense; rather it interrogates available understanding of both globality and citizenship. Learning across borders is not just an extension of

202  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha our identity as citizens of nation-state; rather it is an unfolding of our vision and practice as students of life. It contributes to planetary realizations which mean that all of us, including non-human, not only human beings, realize that we are children of our Mother Earth (cf. Giri 2013). We are children of our Mother Earth and we are also called upon to be mothers of our Mother Earth. Networks of agape and creativity and manifold learning across borders help us in planetary realizations and embody our responsibility as mothers of self, other and our Mother Earth.

Notes 1 In his essay “Institutions and Networks,” Andre Beteille shares with us: “Networks of interpersonal relations play an important part in the linkage of different institutions with each other” (Beteille 2010: 116). Furthermore, “Many persons now find networks better adapted to the demands of a rapidly changing world than institutions whose adaptive capacities are constricted by bureaucratic and political pressures. Networks provide greater flexibility to individuals, but they also demand greater individual initiative” (ibid: 125). 2 Here we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts in our explorations of issues in this chapter: You long to wander far and wide and are preparing for a speedy flight; be true to yourself and true to others, then even narrow confines will be wide enough. (Goethe) The network of agape involves a kind of fidelity to the new relations; and because we can all too easily fall away from this […], we are led to shore up these relations; we institutionalize them, introduce rules, divide responsibilities. (Taylor 2007: 739) “Learning to be2 is also a permanent apprenticeship in which teachers inform students as students inform teachers. The shaping of a person inevitably passes through a transpersonal dimension. (Nicolescu 2002: 136) 3 As Sudhir Kakar writes: “Agape is neither worth receiving nor worth giving if it is without eros. Real agape must be infused with the passion of the eros” (Kakar in Kakar & Jahanbegloo 2009: 85). 4 In a recent essay, Mihir Shah (2010) presents us such an understanding of Agape coming from Martin Luther King Jr. 5 In his work on moral consciousness and communicative action, Jurgen Habermas (1990) urges us to realize the significance of agape for both and calls for integration of “cognition, empathy and agape” (1990: 182). Charles Taylor (2007) talks about networks of agape where networks are different from categorical grouping: “ it is a skein of relations which link particular, unique, enfleshed people to each other, rather than a grouping of people together on the grounds of their sharing some important property (as in modern nations, we are all Canadians, Americans, French people; or universally, we are all rights-bearers etc.)” (Taylor 2007: 739). 6 In this context, what Neera K. Bhadwar writes (2003: 49) deserves our careful consideration: “Agape is ‘spontaneous’ and ‘unmotivated’ given not as a response to the value of the loved object, but rather out of its own creative force. Agape is a love that bestows value on the object of loving.”

Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity  203 7 What Jean-Luc Nancy (2008: 5) writes about processes of overflowing can help us understand overflowing accompanying genuine encounters and meetings: Politics assume[s] a dimension that it cannot integrate for all that, a dimension that overflows it, one concerning an ontology or an ethology of “being with,” attached to that absolute experience of sense and passion for sense for which the word sacred was but the designation. 8 As is well known, Grundtvig was a creative pastor, poet and father of modern Danish renaissance. Kold himself had a life-changing turning point in his life when he heard his teacher Peter Larsson Skrappenberg at the Teacher’s Training College that God loves us unconditionally (see Das 2007). 9 During a visit to Testrup folk high school near Aarhus, I saw such flames of aspiration in some students and teachers, especially in the inspiring Principal Jorgen Karlsson. I sat in a philosophy class and after this I had composed the following poem: A Student of Life I am There is a dance of colors in my eyes But I have questions, not only kisses, in my lips Questions flow In my wings and flowing hairs Towards the Sky and Ocean Questions of Life, Questions of Relationships Mediating Between And meditating With Moments and Eternity (Translation of part of a poem originally written in Odia, Jeevanara Chatri. Cf. Giri 2017) 10 Here I wish to share my experience of travelling across the world. When I meet people, I request my fellow beings to share a poem or a song, which then opens up many realities and possibilities. I spent a month in China in August–September 2009. I began with Kunming, the capital of the Yunan province in Southern China. I learnt four words (nihaho for saying hello, sese for thank you, piolian for you are beautiful and changama for singing). The last two words created new sharing and possibilities. When I met people I invariably requested them to changama, to sing. Initially there was always a lot of reluctance but it slowly gave way to sharing, singing and loosening of boundaries. 11 Erasmus s, in his Complaints of Peace, Erasmus writes: Peace speaks: If it were to their advantage for men to shun, spurn and reject me, although I have done nothing to deserve it, I would only lament the wrong done to me and their injustice; but since in rejecting me they deny themselves the source of all human happiness and bring on themselves a sea of disasters of every kind, I must shed tears rather for the misery they suffer than for any wrong they do me. I should have liked simply to be angry with them, but I am driven to feel pity and sorrow for their plight. s (Erasmus 1516: 293) 12 Chitta Ranjan is a friend of the world. But the world to him was not impersonal, he cultivated deep personal friendships with innumerable souls around the world—Odisha, Kerala, Denmark, Finland, Germany, USA. Ramesh Ghode taught Sociology at Hislop College, Nagpur, and in the preface to the collection of letters that Chitta Ranjan had written to him and he has edited, Rameshda tells us:

204  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha We “discovered” each other in the All India Conference of Sociology Teachers from Rural Institutes all over India. […] The conference was held in the last week of November, 1960 in Rural Institute, Amravati […] I was then a student of 2nd year […] I had a chance to speak on a sociological concept of social disorganization in that conference. After having delivered my lecture on the concept all the eminent scholars of Sociology cross-examined me by asking pertinent questions, including Professor Chitta Ranjan Das. I could feel the depth of empathy in his eyes. During that short encounter with him, he asked me several questions to glean my personal profile, family background and interest in academic pursuits. I frankly shared all the personal information with him. I perceived in him a Guru, a preceptor and an elder brother who would guide me in academic pursuits. As luck would have it, he immediately said in a soft tone, “Ramesh, do not call me Sir, you can call me ‘Dada,’ and I mean it in real sense of thought and action.” Hearing his words I was spellbound and could not believe myself. I saw in him a Guru, elder brother, a friend, philosopher and a guide. I was convinced within that he would help me not only to tide over all the obstacles in my academic ventures but direct me in the right path of life too. Our camaraderie and kinship commenced and it was to be a sincere and life-long commitment. (Ghode 2010: iii–iv) K. Viswanathan, the founder of Mitraniketan, Vellanad, Kerala and a great Gandhian and social activist of India shares with us the following: Chittada is a genius in many fields of human development. My acquaintance with him goes back to 1940s, when I joined Shantiniketan as a young student […] We got to know each other better and from this time stems our friendship. He, too, was a habitual wearer of Khadi and he also took up spinning. Living in the hostel himself, he also looked after the newcomers, helping them wherever he could to adjust themselves to the routine of life in Shantiniketan. He was very gentle, simple, friendly and soft-spoken and even at that age he had a scholarly look. […] In the formative period of my work in the village of Vellanad, he was kind enough to spend some time with our group. Later, some of his students, who were fortunate to study under his guidance, also visited me in Mitraniketan (the name of my Centre) and from the impression I gained of them, I could judge how valuable his influence on them was as a guide, a friend and philosopher and how it moulded their lives and outlook. When I started my programme of integrated development education in Mitraniketan, I longed very much to have Chittada associated with this work. He has, no doubt, all this time been associated with it and continues to influence us with his thinking and even with his presence, whenever I ask for it and the advice of this silent worker, profound thinker and prolific writer has always been invaluable. I also know him as an excellent letter writer, always very prompt and regular in his correspondence. (Das 2020: 204, 206) Eaghor G. Kostesky who lives in Germany and to whose Ukrainian translation of Gitanjali Chitta Ranjan had written a foreword tells us: He was not only interested in Europe as an alien country […] He came to a deeper contact […] he sometimes even idealized the Europe of his friends, once feeling at Christmas as if he were with them “trying to revive the everlive inspirations of the birth of Christ, singing round and meditating upon the Christmas tree”, as he wrote to my wife and me (probably in 1966—the date of that aerogramme is no longer identifiable):

Social Healing and Networks of Agape and Creativity  205 Though the practical and the logical in me induces me to be pessimist about how we face in our world and with one another, my heart persuades me to believe in it and heartens me up to encouragement. This heartening gives me hope, the energy required to live one’s life as a dedication, as an act of supreme and all-embracing identification. And apart from all the institutional gloss and glamour, is not the life of Christ an example of a life offered, a life regained by offering? And can we eliminate hate from the world as long as we do not accept life as an offering? Of course, I do not mean that we have to be fanatics to do that. (Das 2020: 208–209) 13 Chitta Ranjan founded Jeevana Vidyalaya (School of Life) at Champattimunda, Anugul, Odisha in 1954 (see Das 2021). Then in the 1970s, he joined the emerging integral education movement in Odisha and played a pioneering role in the building and nurturance of such schools. These schools strive to follow the educational vision and practice of Sri Aurobindo and Mother and impart a holistic education. 14 People’s enlightenment in Denmark was accompanied by struggle of people for freedom from state control and creation of free and responsible associations, movements and institutions. Thus it helps us to break the link between Statist projects and projects of Enlightenment. For Grundtvig and his followers: It was not enough to change old state institutions into people’s institutions; rather new people’s institutions had to be founded, as for instance “open” or “free” schools, “free” congregations, and “free” associations. […] Freedom cannot ultimately be guaranteed by the state; only the people can secure freedom. And that can happen only with a foundation in ‘popular’ and ‘civil’ society. Open associations [such as free schools, Folk High Schools] were seen as a sign of a voluntary social solidarity, which in turn was seen as the ideal for a grander popular and national society. Willingness to render voluntary and unpaid assistance was thus regarded as the ultimate test one’s civil virtues. (Korsgaard 2008: 63) In order to understand the last point about voluntary sharing of labor, yes this is what happens in Grundtvig-Kold free schools and folk high schools. These schools do get state support but not fully and the participants do share their labor in building and maintaining such schools. Thus voluntary sharing of labor is an important part of Grundtvigian tradition of people’s enlightenment which also resonates with the tradition of Gandhi in as much Gandhi also emphasized on voluntary sharing of labor and building on people’s associations, movements and institutions not dependent on or controlled by the State.

Bibliography Badhwar, Neera K. 2003. “Love.” The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, (ed.) Hugh LaFolette, pp. 42–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beteille, Andre. 2010. Universities at the Crossroads. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Das, Chitta Ranjan. 2007. Kristen Kold: The Pioneer of Folk High School Movement of Denmark and a Revolutionary in Education. Delhi: Shipra. ———. 2013 Adventure in Education: Vistas and Variations. Delhi: Daanish. ———. 2020 The Essays of Chitta Ranjan Das on Literature, Culture and Society: On the Side of Life In Spite Of, (eds.) Ananta Kumar Giri & Ivan Marquez. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.

206  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha ———. 2021 [1965]. Jeevana Vidyalaya [School of Life]. Bhubaneswar: Sikshasandhan. Erasmus, Desiderius. 1986 [1516]. Querila Pacis: A Complaint of Peace Spurned and Rejected by the whole world. The Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ghode, Ramesh (ed.) 2010. Masterstroke: Letters of Professor Chitta Ranjan Das (Chittada). Nagpur: Nistha Publications. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2011. “Chitta Ranjan Das: A Creative Thinker.” Social Change 41 (3): 359–380. ———. 2013 Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London: Anthem Press. ———. 2017. Alingana [Embrace]. Bhubaneswar: Viswalekha. Habermas, Jurgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Horton, Myles & Paulo Friere. 1990. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, (eds.) Brenda Bell, John Gaventa and John Peters. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kakar, Sudhir & Ramin Jahanbegloo. 2009. India Analysed: Sudhir Kakar in Conversation with Ramin Jahanbegloo. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Korsgaard, Ove. 2008. The Struggle for the People: Five Hundred Years of Danish History in Short. Copenhagen: Danish School of Education Press. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2008. Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity. New York: Fordham University Press. Nicolescu, Basarab. 2002. Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity. Albany, NY: State of University of New York Press. Shah, Mihir. 2010. “The Power of Uncertainty: Reflections on the Nature of Transformational Initiatives.” Founder’s Day Lecture. Chennai: Madras Institute of Development Studies. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Touraine, Alain. 2007. A New Paradigm for Understanding Today’s World. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

13 Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning Universities at the Cross-Roads and the Challenges of Experimental Creativity and the Challenges of Alternative Planetary Futures* Introduction and Invitation Existing institutions of learning have created pain and suffering in self and society in as much as they perpetuate outdated modes of learning and being in the world. Social healing calls for new institutions of learning such as universities which can contribute to healing our wounds of fragmentation and alienation. It calls for transformation of institutions of learning such as universities as sites of experimental creativity.1 Our universities are at a crossroads now.2 Contemporary universities emerged in the modern world embodying the limitations and possibilities of modern world view as well as socio-political organization though some notable ones such as Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna and Heidelberg date back to an earlier time. But contemporary universities everywhere are going through a lot of crises. One foundational crisis is the language and idea of university itself.3 Universities are linked to a dream of universality. Modern university claimed itself to be a place of universality with an emphasis on teaching and research of knowledge which is universal. But its concept of universality was and is deeply parochial and imperial such as Euro-American parochialism being paraded as universal. As an institution of knowledge, modern university wanted to embrace all branches of knowledge and slowly different areas of study became disciplines within university. But now there are limits to the project of universalization as well as disciplinarization as a mode of dealing with challenges of knowing and knowledge generation.4 Now it is being realized, as Andre Beteille (2010) tells us in his Universities at the Crossroads, that a university trying to encompass everything becomes

*  This builds on my presentation at a seminar on Higher Education at Asian Center for CrossCultural Studies, Chennai, March 2011. I thank Professor Felix Wilfred, the Director of the Center, for his kind invitation and to participants for their comments. I thank Professor Dr. Gaudenz Assenza of University of Olomouc for his comments on this essay. I am grateful to Dr. Jorgen L. Nielsen of Roskilde University for helping me with some of his papers on learning pathways at Roskilde university. I thank Drs Marcus Bussey and Eddy Nehls for their kind invitation to join their book project on universities and for their encouragement and comments.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-15

208  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha a victim of unthoughtful, unreflective, uncritical expansion and ceases to be a space of meaningful community of scholars and seekers. The related crisis is the crisis of disciplinarity. The story of the rise of modern university and modern disciplines are intimately connected. Universities have been homes of pursuit of disciplinary modes of knowledge transmission and creation. A university is organized in terms of disciplinary departments. Though there are some moves towards establishing interdisciplinary centers in some universities still the foundation of modern university is disciplinarity which now needs to be transcended. Transdisciplinarity not just in rhetorics and shallow structures but in true spirit, institutional practice and creativity needs to be the foundation of contemporary universities (see Nicolescu 2002). Transdisciplinarity calls for a new pragmatics of border crossing as well as a new hermeneutics of self, discipline, knowledge and society where we go beyond given and fixed definitions and interpretations and arrive at emergent new interpretation and realization of disciplines, universities, societies and the world (see Giri 2023). Universities are now at cross roads because of another critical challenge, i.e. the challenge of commodification and corporatization. Not only are universities being increasingly controlled by corporations, in varieties of ways universities themselves are behaving as corporations, mostly as private corporations, forgetting their wider social purpose and responsibility. This affects not only access to education but the content of the curriculum. Most of the universities are now putting their emphasis and energy on courses such as engineering and management, often to the neglect of courses in humanities and social sciences.5 Universities are also now shortening the time of learning. For example, in many countries such as Germany and The Netherlands university education was rather a long process giving enough time for the students to find themselves, each other and the world. But now this has been shortened with both countries introducing American and British style undergraduate and postgraduate programs. This puts strain on the Humboldtian vision of university as a place for Bildung (self-formation) (cf. Beteille 2010). It seems, at present, the Humboldtian vision of university as a place of self-formation is being replaced by the contrasting Napolean model with its emphasis on acquisition of practical skill.6 It may be noted here that in the Humboldtian vision not only was there emphasis on self-formation instead of just mere acquisition of skills, there was also emphasis, as Beteille reminds us, on unity of teaching and research. This is also under severe strain. There is a bifurcation between teaching and research in many so-called successful universities. The evaluation system of contemporary universities and the accompanying audit cultures gives emphasis on research to the woeful neglect of teaching (cf. Strathern 2000).7 But realizing the goal of unity of teaching and research in universities also challenges us to fundamentally rethink each of these themes and practices such as teaching, research and unity. The existing model of teaching is too top down and teacher-centered which needs to be transformed by co-learning. The double contingency of the teacher and the student has to be transformed

Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning  209 by the triple contingency of student, teacher and the world (cf. Strydom 2009). We need to transform universities into places of co-learning. For this we need to transform the very architecture of space and time. We need much spatial creativity and aesthetics in the design of our university buildings. Instead of classrooms with hierarchical and top-down podiums, we need to create spaces where all participants can seat and learn together. While it is easily done for small groups, it is a challenge for skill and imagination to do it in on a larger scale. Our spaces of co-learning also need to be much more open in terms of flow of air and energy between outside and inside and cultivate deep communion with Nature rather than be concrete jungles. Similarly going beyond the dualism of the subjective and objective, we need to rethink the method, telos and practice of research linking them to processes of self-realizations as well as world-realizations. Insofar as the goal of realizing the unity of teaching and research is concerned, we also have to rethink the very concept of unity, making it a verb, in fact a meditative verb, a process, an emergence (cf. Giri 2012). Some would like to excel in research while others in teaching.8 But all are encouraged and required to be engaged in both even though one chooses to excel in one. For Beteille, we would have to strive to realize unity of teaching and research without nostalgia. At the same time, this striving does call for more foundational rethinking of teaching and research as well as creative realizations of these in our present times. Both teaching and research are subjected to a new politics and commodification of time. Science, scholarship as well as institutions of learning have been subjected to a logic of breathless speed. There is no time now to stand and seat together and ruminate while walking and giving birth to our ideas and relationships. But for learning as well as creating knowledge universities have to learn to counter such a speedy chrono politics and chronoeconomics which are creating pain, illness, illusion and suffering. Time of science and scholarship are not the same time as the time of movement of capital and production of goods (cf. Strydom 2004).9 Cultivating a new relationship with time where time is neither our master nor slave but is our mother is a great political and spiritual challenge of our time and this is nowhere more urgent than in case of individuals and institutions involved with learning and generation of knowledge.10

Universities at Crossroads: Contemporary Reflections There are many reflections on crises of universities of our times but there are very little foundational interrogation of the very concept of university. Here, Eddy Nehls and Marcus Bussey invite us to walk with them in a foundational rethinking of universities and new practices of creativity (Nehls & Bussey 2012). Instead of university, they invite us to think about and move towards multiversity which is “more a kind of process, that to be fruitful must be allowed to operate over time” (ibid: 4). For them a multiversity is not concerned only with matters of fact but also with matters of concern, a distinction of Bruno Latour that they work with. For Nehls, a

210  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha multiversity is concerned with creating a sustainable society. Furthermore, “A multiversity is more like a context that is built of smaller parts (and not just humans) which all can and should be regarded as actors with the ability to make difference.” For him, in creating new universities, we need to create structures that “so to speak, are self-learning” (ibid: 6). For Bussey, this calls for “critical imaginative engagement with structure” and “working the between that lies within and around structure yet is invisible to it” (ibid: 7). Bussey shares with us an experience of him: An example is a recent meeting I was at where we were asked about how we thought our faculty and school could be restructured. There was a kind of silence in the room as no one really could imagine the humanities and social sciences as anything but just that—what they were traditionally configured as. I felt the same at first but then started to play around a bit with other possibilities such as how about a School of Imaginative Studies?, or a Faculty of Hope Sciences? Or Empowerment Sciences? Or may be, really pushing things the School of Pragmatics and Spirituality? The renaming immediately gave me a way of playing about outside the paralysis of imagination. It opened the door on new stories in which new civilizational possibilities arise.11 Nehls and Bussey challenge our existing ways of thinking about universities. Beteille (2010) also helps us in this contemporary task of rethinking and reconstituting universities. In his reflections on universities at the crossroads, Beteille brings sociological issues of functioning and institutional crisis. His reflections address issues in contemporary Indian context. Beteille discusses the enormous pressure on contemporary universities from extraneous sources such as political authorities which would like to make university accommodate diverse claims of inclusion from the excluded sections of society so far. In the Indian context, there is a greater challenge to make the base of university education widespread and the logic of affirmative action is now being implemented in the universities. Universities are expanding and are being expanded without creating appropriate institutional structures: “Rapid expansion of universities in response to social and political pressures has led to a relaxation of academic standards in many if not most of them” (Beteille 2010: 36). Universities must open their gates to all without discrimination but it cannot abandon its responsibility to discriminate between what is academically acceptable and what is not: “We can hardly discuss the responsibilities of universities as public institutions in a serious way if we fail to distinguish between unwarranted exclusion on social grounds and justifiable discrimination on academic grounds” (Beteille 2010: 28).12 Along with reflections on the Indian context, Beteille’s reflections have wider relevance as well. As has been discussed before, his reflection on the challenge of the Humboldtian vision of university is relevant for rethinking the idea of university everywhere and thinking of appropriate institutional space for it. As Beteille writes:

Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning  211 With the twenty-first century we have entered the era of the mass university. But the nostalgia for a different kind of university in which teaching and research are combined at the most advanced level in all significant branches of knowledge survive in the minds of many. […] We must see that this nostalgia does not become an impediment to the creation of more purposeful though perhaps less ambitious institution of teaching and research in the university. Beteille here also cautions us: “If the new universities seek to be all encompassing, like the old ones, they are not likely to be met with much success in the twenty-first century” (ibid: 193).13 Beteille reflects upon the challenges before contemporary universities and in this he builds on his experience as a participant. But Beteille himself has not yet done sustained empirical work including fieldwork with universities. Beteille is a passionate votary of empirical work on the discourses one talks about and one wonders why Beteille himself has not done any fieldwork with universities. Beteille’s story of university is also a bit formulaic. He has not told us about creative experiments with universities in societies and histories. He tells us about the Radhakrishnan Commission on University Education but in the Commission Arthur Morgan, a member, had argued that universities in India should be based in rural areas. Morgan had proposed the concept of rural universities which was along the Gandhian lines. Later on, a chain of institutions in higher education was created in India such as Rural Institute in Bichpuri, Agra, which gave opportunity for higher education to students coming from schools following Gandhian scheme of education such as basic and post-basic education (see Dave 2009). Morgan himself founded an inspiring college named Antioch College, which later became Antioch University, which has followed a different path of university education. There is much more integration of head and hand in Antioch. The same spirit of integration with the added cultivation of aesthetics and cosmopolitanism animated another great experiment in university making, namely Tagore’s Visvabharati. Morgan himself worked closely with K. Visvanathan of Mitraniketan, Vellanad, Kerala who strove to create to create an alternative center of development education for the people of the locality bringing the experimental creativity of Gandhi, Tagore and Morgan together (see Biggers 1996). Apart from the Humboldtian and Napolean visions of university that Beteille talks about we need to bring such plural visions and histories of thinking about and experimenting with universities. Here we can also learn with two experimenting universities in Denmark, which started out of both the crisis of universities as well as the student movement of the 1960s. These are Universities of Aalborg and Roskilde. In both the universities, there is emphasis on project work, especially collaborative project work. For example, in the master’s program in development studies, only first two semesters have one moth of teaching and the rest of the time is devoted to completing a group project as students together form themselves into a group and work

212  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha on a project. Such group projects works are occasions for co-learning not only for students of an emerging group but for students and teachers together as co-learners.14 The same culture of project work animates Roskilde University, which is not far from Aalborg.15 Jorgen Nielsen, a teacher at Roskilde, tells us that it draws inspiration from John Dewey, among others (personal communication).16 Its pedagogy is experiential which, however, is a “further sharpening of Dewey’s concept of experiencing as it is a group and collective cultural process” (Nielsen and Webb 1996: 98). Nielsen further tells us in a joint essay with his colleague Tie Ou: When working and learning cooperatively and collaboratively, the students need a context or platform for interaction. Roskilde University has good facilities—building like houses with rooms for group work and supervision, and also kitchens and sitting rooms for social interactions and activities. (Ou & Nielsen 2012: 5) The existing tradition of project work is also creatively supported by appropriate information technology: BSCW is a net based system for Computer Supported Collaborative Work, which has been recently provided at Roskilde University for the problem-oriented project studies. […] The students and teachers can build a special platform for their own group work in BSCW. On this platform, they can compare notes and brainstorm for their discussion, write and report together, keep an eye on the group work, keep in contact with the supervisor, collect useful links and share documents with other groups. (ibid) Technology here enables new possibilities which sometimes fail to be realized in face-to-face conversations in group meetings. As Ou and Nielsen tell us: When learning together students may encounter some problems in faceto-face collaboration. We observed that some students looked very passive sometimes in the face-to-face group work when they had not prepared well for the discussion. Their passive behavior seemed to have an effect on the other members of the group. We also noticed that the students sometimes had difficulty in organizing the information and messages from others. When using email and BSCW, the students were more self-directed and thus more positive to participate in group work and collaborative learning. They were also capable of organizing the information and messages from other group members more effectively and efficiently. (ibid)

Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning  213 While telling us about the positive impact of information technology on group work, Ou and Nielsen, at the same time, draw our attention to the risk of information overload and the need for students to be trained to skillfully assess the relevance and veracity of available information.

Creative Experiments and Pathways with our Futures So there have been some creative experimenting with universities and in charting our pathways with futures, we need to brings these histories, visions and practices of institutional configuration into our discourse and practice. Learning with such experiments, we need to make our universities spaces of experimental creativity. For this we need to go beyond a rigid institutional logic and make universities a space of institution, network and creative self-formation and co-realizations (cf. Beteille 2010, Giri 2012a, 2012b). Here we can embrace some inviting contemporary visions. Gaudenz Assenza, Gary Hampson, Markus Molz and others are now part of an initiative for developing alternative, more integral forms of higher education. In their project of “Regenerating Higher Education and Community for Humanity and Biosphere,” they hope to regenerate a “Humboldtian and even Renaissance-inspired approach to education—one which the term higher in its fullest sense.” This involves a foundational rethinking of human beyond what can be called homo disciplinicus: “Our identification of the individuals (e.g. students and teachers) moves well beyond homo economicus to include the myriad of other modes involved in what might be termed homo complexicus.” Universities have to prepare us for the complexities of self, society, Nature and the world with a much more integral approach and modes of practice.17 In his concept note, “The University for the Future: A Blueprint,” Assenza writes: The University for the Future promotes an approach that fosters [all the six Aristotelian faculties] science (episteme), art (techne), experience (emperia), practical wisdom (phronesis), theoretical wisdom (Sophia), and intuition (nous). […] The University of the Future promotes an approach that fosters all these ways towards including a “personal way” in line with ideas of developing “personal knowledge” (Michel Polanyi) and a personal “epistemic culture” (Karin Knor-Cetina). In this context, Tim Ingold (2020) invites us to regenerate current universities as well as build future universities on the four pillars of freedom, trust, education and community. For Ingold, In reality, freedom is not something one has; it is not a property or entitlement. It is rather the condition in which one is; in which is founded one’s very existence. As such it is fundamentally open to others, and to difference, rather than circumscribed by the identity of

214  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha preexisting interests. While identity can lead only to stultification and ultimately to fragmentation, difference holds the key to social continuity and renewal. That key is true freedom. University has and ought to be a place of such a true freedom. This calls for cultivating cultures and ecologies of trust. For Ingold, To trust others is to acknowledge that we depend on them, and on what they do, without in any way curtailing their freedom to act responsibly toward us. There can be no freedom without trust, and no trust without freedom. That is why loss of trust is the greatest enemy of academic freedom, since it leads to the replacement of autonomy and self-determination with surveillance and control. Regarding education, Ingold invites us to realize that it is not the top-down educational model nor is the current model of commodified education. Here Ingold discusses the works of John Dewey to make universities places of democratic education. As a place of education, university is a place for cultivation of curiosity and search for Truth (ibid: 54). For Ingold, “With curiosity, however, comes care. Do we “love the world enough,” asked philosopher Hannah Arendt, “to assume responsibility for it?” Are we curious enough to care? Only if we are, Arendt foretold, can there be hope of renewal for generations to come. Without care, without responsibility, curiosity can only lead to ruin” (ibid: 54). Ingold further tells us: Regimes of management founded on the business model, in which employees are classed as human resources, tasked with delivering corporate objectives and monitored for their compliance in doing so, are inimical to the flourishing of any community of scholarship. Their importation into our universities, mainly during the 1980s and 1990s, has done immense damage. (ibid: 51) University becomes a community of learning, care and responsibility. It becomes a place of gathering “not just for socialization, in time off from study, but for deep conversation” (ibid: 56).18 University has also to cultivate deep conversations with communities and regions where they are located as Ingold writes: Without denying that universities and their scholars are, and should be, in continual dialogue with one another, unconstrained by political and administrative barriers, I want to insist that the region is nevertheless the lifeblood of the university, the very source of its vitality. This is not just about outreach—about offering the public, or schoolchildren, occasional glimpses behind the scenes, or bringing in a bit of local culture to burnish the university brand. It is about fostering a scholarship that breathes the

Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning  215 air of the region, of its people and their history, memory, communities and environment. This is what makes every university different in its character and modus operandi, even in its languages and customs. (ibid: 65) With these four pillars and ways of freedom, trust, education and community, Universities can respond to contemporary challenges of closing of the mind and commodification of knowledge and cultivate creative pathways towards futures.

Summing Up in Our Unfolding Journey In this chapter, we have discussed some of the challenges before contemporary universities and the way they are at a crossroad now. We have also discussed some creative experiments with the idea and practice as well as present and some creative pathways with futures. We hope this discussion helps us in critically rethinking the contemporary discourse and practice of university and create new experimental institutions and next work of co-learning which help us realize our self and responsibility to the others and the world.

Notes 1 Here the following thoughts are helpful to think with the issues at hand in our chapter: Of the institutions that should be guiding us into a viable future, the university has a special place because it teaches all those professions that guide the human endeavour. In recent centuries the universities have supported an exploitation of the Earth by their teaching in the various professions, in the sciences, in engineering, law, education and economics. Only in literature, poetry, music, art, and occasionally in religion and the Biological sciences, has the natural world received the care it deserves. Our educational institutions need to see their purpose not as training personnel for exploiting the Earth but as guiding students toward an intimate relationship with the earth. For it is the planet itself that brings us into being, sustain us in life and delights us with its wonders. In this context we might consider the intellectual, political and economic orientations that will enable us to fulfill the historical assignment before us to establish a more viable way into the future (Berry 1999: p. x). Unless universities reclaim their core purpose—taking responsibility for higher education in the sense of higher-order knowing, ability to synthesize and integrate fragmented pieces of meta-processes at work in society—the mega-trends of dehumanization will become world destiny. (Gidley 2000: 237) 2 Tim Ingold here challenges us to understand the twin challenges of rise of fundamentalism and marke take over plaguing the current universities. Here what Tim Ingold (2020: 46–47) writes deserves our careful consideration: Around the world, universities are in turmoil. There was a time when they stood out as pinnacles of Enlightenment, where scholarly elites could profess to a superior knowledge, based on reason and evidence, of the ways of the world. Their mission was to educate, to spread the light of learning to all nations, and to deliver their citizens from ignorance, poverty and subjugation.

216  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Chauvinistic they may have been, and even complicit in the regimes that created the very oppression from which they offered emancipation—albeit for a privileged few. Nevertheless, universities were progressive institutions, and their legitimate aspirations were backed by a belief in common human potential. Like it or not, however, the Enlightenment program has more or less collapsed, along with the powers that sustained it. These were the historic powers of European-led colonization, by which the allegedly superior ways of knowing of dominant nations were imposed upon subaltern populations. The flag of universality has always been flown by the victors in struggles over knowledge. In our post-colonial world, however, the hierarchies that once propped up the academy’s claim to intellectual hegemony have crumbled. And as tends to happen at such moments, far from reaching an accommodation that would open up to other ways of knowing and being, and to voices previously muted or suppressed, we are witnessing just the opposite, with the emergence on all sides of closed and self-righteous fundamentalisms, whether religious, political or economic. As we are all too aware, the world is becoming an increasingly fractious and dangerous place. Beset by weak and compliant leadership, universities present soft targets for hostile takeover, be it by multinational corporations wedded to the doctrines of neoliberalism, by totalitarian regimes bent on the suppression of critical inquiry or by sectarian organizations aiming to spread their own particular versions of bigotry and intolerance. In the face of this threat, it is imperative for universities to redefine their purpose. There is no going back to a rosetinted version of the past—to an imaginary golden age of cosseted erudition. Universities can no longer take refuge behind self-serving appeals to academic immunity that have ceased to have any traction beyond their ivory towers, nor can they surrender to the profoundly anti-democratic forces that threaten their very existence. Some might argue that universities are already so tarnished by the historical legacy of colonialism, and today so corrupted by corporate interests, that they would be better abandoned to their fate. For in their present form, they are bound to collapse, as surely as the powers that sustain them. Perhaps, then, they should be replaced with something entirely different. I disagree, however. We still have our universities, and they represent a priceless asset. Rather than standing by and waiting for them to fall, I believe we should already commence the task of shaping universities for the future. For anyone of good conscience, who cares about fashioning a world fit for coming generations to inhabit, no task could be more urgent. We need to start now. 3 For Bussey, The root problem is the problem of the One, the ‘uni’ in university. It objectifies everything and everyone. There is no room in this unifying system for alternatives other than as reflections of the One. A unifying perspective applies gravity to the multiple nature of this muddled field and reads it as radical—that is the law of the structure. It shuts down alternatives so that we can imagine a finite set of possibilities and generate comfortable, habit ridden meaning. (in Nehls & Bussey 2012: 2) 4 As Beteille tells us: It is in the long-term interest of society to encourage new ideas, new methods of inquiry, and new areas of investigation to grow even when they appear uncompromising to begin with. But is it necessary or desirable to turn every new kind of study into an academic discipline in order to find a place for it in the university?”. (Beteille 2010: 176)

Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning  217 5 In her latest work, Spivak (2012) draws our attention to segmentation of knowledge in the corporate university. 6 Beteille tells us about these two models, the Humboldtian and Napolean. But the contemporary emphasis on skill is not the classical Napolean model but it is taking an ugly turn with almost a clinical preoccupation with profit-making skills and careers. 7 As Anthony T. Grafton (2012, 23) in a recent review essay on the subject tells us: In research universities, passionate and effective undergraduate teaching offers no prestige, no profit, and no prospect of permanence [..] Saddest of all, the serious course on the bases of Western tradition [..]are rarely required. And even at Columbia and Chicago, where students have to take them, they are mostly taught by younger faculty and graduate students who can be assigned to them, along with a few true believers from the older faculty. Most younger professor look forward to their release from this sort of required generalist teaching, for which they have neither the training nor the taste. 8 For Beteille, Not all individual members of a university, or even all individual universities, can be expected to excel equally in teaching and research, but the university system as a whole should be attentive to the demands of both. If we don’t leave enough room for the diversity of talents within a university or among different universities but try to impose the same requirements on each of them, very little advance will be made in either teaching or research. (2010: 34) 9 For Strydom, “Science is a much slower field than politics, not to mention economics” (2004: 8). When science is “being steadily accelerated and stresses up well beyond its own time culture” social scientists have to contribute to the epochal need of “the unhastening or deceleration of science” (Strydom 2004). But here Gaudenz Assenza who is involved with a project of creating a University for the Future comments that “But even the time of production of goods needs to be slowed down, because so many people get stressed out and ill from the mad rush of the economic system” (personal communication). 10 We can get a glimpse of a different relationship with time in the following poem: I Time is sleeping In the painted breasts of these stones Time is singing In the breaded hair of the forest lake Time is dancing in the soft lips of the waves Time is waking up In moments of our embrace In our Time II It is our fate That we run with Time We dance and make Time dance But Oh Friends Come to the million breasts of Love, Nature and History Where Time is sleeping and snoring In yoga nidra

218  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Oh friends Let us sleep with Time We press our head and hand Put oil in our tired bodies and souls We breathe slowly We put our hands across our hearts Sleeping with Time We weave many quilts We cover us with quilts We make each other warm We weave many threads Of connections Many new yogas. (A poem originally written in Odia by the author and then the above first part translated). 11 To appreciate Bussey’s call for imaginative creativity, the following meditation on playstorming as part of “experimental creativity” is helpful: Playstorming is a way to generate ideas—lots of ideas, but in the context of possibilities. [..] If the outset or innovation is not a problem but instead to look for new potential possibilities, playstorming is one of the ways to create new ideas without a well-defined direction. (Jackobsen & Hansen n.d.) 12 Beteille (2010: 193) here further tells us: University degrees cannot eliminate social inequality, but they are an important aid to individual mobility. [..] But one thing should be clear: we cannot force the pace of individual mobility though university education too far or too long without compromising the academic standards of the university. 13 Mrinal Miri involved with a commission to rethink university in India tells us that the Commission has recommended creation of universities with specific focus such as Art University rather than all encompassing universities (personal communication). 14 I was working as a visiting professor at the Department of Development and International Relations at Aalborg University in 2004–05. During my term, I must have around 30 group projects. On many topics I did not know much as my fellow co-walkers. But during the process of walking, working and meditating together we were blessed with emerging gifts of insights. 15 As Tie Ou and Jorgen Nielsen write about the founding of Roskilde University and its inspiration: The decision by the Danish Parliament to set up the university was aimed at solving the problems that had arisen when the elite universities were transformed into places of mass education, and was taken following a time of student unrest asking for university reforms. The initial teaching population involved in the formation of Roskilde University was the young idealistic academics from Copenhagen, who were influenced by the theories of John Dewey, Jean Piaget and Oskar Negt. Drawing on the inspirations from work by John Dewey on experiential learning, Jean Piaget on cognitive development and Oskar Negt on exemplary learning, these young academics together with the students launched and developed the concept and pedagogy of a new form of study—problem-oriented project work—as the fundamental

Healing and the Challenges of New Institutions of Learning  219 form of study at Roskilde University, which was and is radically different from studies at traditional universities. (2012: 1–2) About the project work method, they write: In the project studies at Roskilde University, the group and individual student have great influence on determining the course of study, and the student must take greater responsibility for his/her own education. In contrast to traditional form of study where the subject is defined and examples are included as illustrations, at Roskilde university a thematically oriented problem is used to guide the students and teachers to the essential areas of knowledge and theories. (Ou and Nielsen 2012: 2) 16 We can also here learn with Kaos Pilot, a creative project of co-learning based in Aarhus, Denmark, which provides an alternative path of higher education after High School. 17 Though I would like to add here that universities of the future should simultaneously nurture homo complexicus as well as homo integratius. The later seeks to realize emergent integration in the midst of complexities of life, self, culture and society (see Giri 2010). 18 Ingold (2020: 56) writes: How can community be restored to the university? Only by reclaiming it as a place of gathering—a place to which students and teachers, researchers all, are drawn by their love of learning, and by their desire to study.

Bibliography Assenza, Gaudenz. 2012. “The University for the Future: A Blue Print.” Document. Berry, Thomas. 1999. The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York: Harmony Books. Beteille, Andre. 2010. Universities at the Crossroads. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Biggers, Jeff. 1996. From the Dusty Soil: The Story of Mitraniketan, Community Education and Development of Rural India. Vellanad, Kerala: Mitraniketan. Chakraborty, Gayatri. 2012. Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dave, Arun Kumar. 2009. “A Rural University: Need of the Nation.” Downloaded from www.neri.in/pdf/February2009pdf/ARuralUniversity.pdf on July 9, 2012 Gidley, Jennifer. 2000. “Unveiling the Human Face of University Futures.” In The University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University, (eds.) Sohail Inayatullah & Jennifer Gidley, p. 235. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2012. “Beyond Adaptation and Meditative Verbs of Co-Realizations.” In idem, Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2013a. “Towards a New Art of Integration.” Integral Review 9(2). ———. 2013b. “Networks of Agape and Creativity: Learning Across Borders and the Calling of Planetary Realizations.” Integral Review 9(2). ———. 2023. The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice, Dialogues and Planetary Realizations. London: Routledge.

220  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Grafton, Anthony. 2012. “Can the Colleges Be Saved?” Review of Andrew Delbancho’s College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, The New York Review of Books LIX (9): 22–27, May 24-June 6, 2012. Hampson, Gary & Gaudenz Asenza. 2012. “Regenerating Higher Education and Community for Humanity and Biosphere.” Document. Ingold, Tim. 2020. “On Building a University for the Common Good.” http://doi. org/10.3726/ptihe.2020.01.03downloadedon Nov 13, 2022. Jacobsen, Herring S. & Soren Hansen. n.d. “Experimental Creativity.” Downloaded from the Web. Nehls, Eddy & Marcus Bussey. 2012. “Let’s have a conversation about the New University.” Manuscript. Nicolescu, Basarab. 2002. Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Nielsen, Jorgen Lerche & Thomas W. Webb. 1996. “Experiential Pedagogy.” In Theoretical Issues in Adult Education: Danish Research and Experience, (eds.) Harring S. Olsen & Palle Rasmussen, pp 89–105. Roskilde: Roskilde University Press. Ou, Tie & Jorgen Lerche Nielsen. 2012. “ICT and Project Studies at Roskilde University.” Roskilde University: Paper. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2012. An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press. Strathern, Marilyn. (ed.) 2000. Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and Academy. London: Routledge. Strydom, Piet. 2004. “The ‘Contest of Faculties’ and Cultures of Time: Sociological Reflections on the Relation of the Natural and Social Sciences.’ Text of the paper presented to the Science Faculty Public Service, University College Cork, Ireland, Feb. 3. ———. 2009 New Horizons of Critical Theory: Collective Learning and Triple Contingency. Delhi: Shipra.

14 Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing*

Introduction and Invitation Boundaries, borders and margins are related concepts and realities and each of these can be conceptualized and organized in closed or open ways with variations in degrees of closure as well as openness.1 The existing conceptualization and organization of boundaries, borders and margins reflect and embody a logic of statis, closure and a cult of exclusivistic and exclusionary sovereignty as reflected in a closed and xenophobic politics over immigration in our recent times. This creates suffering and illness in self and society. Social healing calls for a new art and politics of boundary transmutation, boundary transformation and border crossing. We also need a new realization of margins as spaces of creative boundary transmutation and border crossing rather than a helpless mirror of dualism between margin and the mainstream. In this chapter, I explore new meanings of boundaries, borders and margins and a new art of border crossing, which can help us transform the existing politics of boundary maintenance, existing conceptualization and organization of identities and differences and help us realize, co-create and recreate boundaries, borders and margins as places and times of new beginnings.2 While the existing politics of boundary maintenance is wedded to a cult of sovereignty at the levels of state, society and self—a sovereignty that produces bare lives, bodies and lands—a new art, politics and spirituality of border crossing is inspired by a new politics, art and spirituality of shared sovereignties and non-sovereignties (Agamben 1998; Dallmayr 2005; Giri 2009). This border-crossing challenges us for creative aesthetic, ethical, political and spiritual work not only in the field of physical borders and bounded territories but also in the fields of cultural, social, intellectual and civilizational borders. * This builds upon my presentation in the national seminar, “Politics of Boundary Maintenance,” Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, Nov 16–17, 2009. I am grateful to Drs Prasenjit Biswas and CJ Thomas for their kind invitation and Professor Peter D’Souza, Director of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, for his welcome and hospitality. I am grateful to Drs Sukalpa Bhattacharjee, Rajesh Dev and Vijayalaxmi Brara for their comments, reflections and generosity. I am grateful to Professor David Blake Willis, Fileding University, USA, co-editor of our volume Towards a New Art of Border Crossing in which this chapter is also coming out.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-16

222  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha A new art of border crossing is also linked to a new art, politics and spirituality of pluralization which may be called meditative verbs of pluralization, which are different from conventional discourse and practice of pluralism. Conventional pluralism looks at pluralism as a noun and in a fixed state where identities and differences are also conceptualized in essentialized ways as nouns. Meditative verbs of pluralizations transform these nouns into multiple verbs which are simultaneously activistic as well as meditative (Giri 2012, 2013). The “Art of Border Crossing” with meditative pluralization at its heart not only pluralizes existing conceptions of boundaries, borders, identities and differences but also brings a process of meditation into the dynamics of interactions and interrelationships. Interaction here is not merely reflective or action-oriented as it is in the dominant discourse and practice of modernity but also involves meditation so that interacting individuals and groups also meditate about their selves and identities and realize the need for pluralization and border-crossing. Meditation brings a depth dimension to action and interactions involved in border crossing.

Rethinking Boundaries, Borders and Margins Our borders and boundaries are usually looked at as fixed. But they are historically generated and embody dynamic flows. One epochal challenge is how do we transform entrenched borders and boundaries into dynamic flows? Borders and boundaries are related to conceptions and organization of order. In modernity we are deeply preoccupied with the problem of order, but we now need to realize that non-order is also an integral part of order.3 Similarly sovereignty has a dimension of non-sovereignty and shared sovereignties. Modern nation-states have been based upon a cult of sovereignty, but sovereignty has a dimension of limits of sovereignty. Non-sovereignty is a fact of life though states, societies, and selves want to assert themselves and their cult of sovereignty through violence and war. The history of modern world is a story of fragile sovereignty of nation-states where they have attacked each other in the name of sovereignty. In the modern world inability to share sovereignties resulted in wars and violence which continues unabated when it comes to politics of boundary maintenance and border policing. In this context, there is an epochal need to realize that sovereignty has a dimension of non-sovereignty and it is confronted with the challenge of practicing shared sovereignties. A new art, politics and spirituality of non-sovereignties and shared sovereignties is crucial in zones of boundaries and borders and spaces of margins. This also calls for understanding non-differences in the work of differences and non-identities in the work of identities. Usually we have monolithic, absolutist and one-dimensional conception of identities and differences. But identity has also an integral dimension of non-identity as differences have also an integral dimension of non-difference. If we approach the relationship between identity and difference from the reality, journey,

Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing  223 and aspiration of non-identity and non-difference then it can help us overcome entrenched boundaries and dualism between identities and differences. This in turn calls for and leads to a new process of identity formation and differentiation where non-identities and non-differences play an important role. But in this journey of creative identity formation and differentiation, the issue of closure and openness does face us squarely. Both are parts of life, they have their own necessities as well as their in-built limitations. Life needs boundaries but the crucial challenge is what is the nature of these boundaries. The crucial distinction here is if our boundaries are lines of death and destruction of potential or circles of generation and cultivation of lives and co-lives. The line between the two can be and often is drawn deliberately thin by the powers that be. In this context, the challenge is critical contextual judgment, development of moral and spiritual consciousness as well as institutional forms which facilitate creative boundary making and their transcendence.4 We also need conscious work on creative boundary transmutation and border crossing and border workers, institutions and pedagogies embodying this (see Giroux 2005).

Borders and Margins: Some Contemporary Reflections At this point, we can invite two interesting contemporary reflections on borders and margins, one which looks at margins as spaces of meeting building upon insights of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the other which challenges us to understand the limits of the discourse of margins especially when it is posited against the notion of mainstream. The first reflection comes from Noel Parker who builds upon Deleuze and the second comes from the philosopher Mrinal Miri. In his essay, “From Borders to Margins: A Deleuzian Ontology for Identities in the Postinternational Environment,” Parker argues that the idea of the “border” was “too stringent a concept for discrimination between entities in play” (Parker 2009: 28). It suggests […] manifest difference, sovereign separation, usually control, sometimes the opposition between what lies on one side of the border and what lies in the other. We need to identify the possibility of discriminating identities in much more open terms than the concept of border permits. (ibid) For Parker, the notion of margins is much more helpful than the concept of border. For him, margin is the “space of the meeting of identities. It is the space to determine provisionally shared and discriminating features” (ibid: 29). Furthermore, for him, “most openness can be captured with a notion of margins between entities […] At their margins […] the identities of entities are continuously being determined and redetermined” (ibid: 28).5

224  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha While Parker presents margins as more open than borders with more possibilities, Miri challenges us to understand the limitation of the discourse of margins in his essay, “On Mainstream and Marginality” (Miri 2003). For Miri, “It is clear that the metaphor of the mainstream is a powerful hindrance to the understanding of India, especially for those who set great score by the idea of one nation, one culture” (Miri 2003: 113).6 For Miri, To begin with, the idea of a margin suggests a condition beyond the limit, beyond which a thing ceases to be possible, or simply does not exist. Does this picture at all help us in understanding the cultural situation in India? If we take it seriously, culture other than what we might call the ‘Indian culture’ proper with its own proper margins (frame) will have to be obliterated from our view […] Can an image of India be more distorting than this? There are cultural texts, and perhaps subtexts, which together constitute the complete text of Indian culture. (ibid) Miri makes a distinction between boundaries and margins: These texts may have boundaries, which […] are fluid and frequently messy (mixed up, imprecise). None of them has margins in the above sense; nor does the “complete” text of Indian culture have any margins. It perhaps has boundaries, but if it does, these boundaries can never be delineated. And, this is, of course, just as it should be. The margin metaphor as an aid to understanding the culture of India should, therefore, be abandoned as quickly as possible. (ibid) It may be noted here that Miri and Parker are looking at margins from two different vantage points. While Miri looks at the limits of discourse of margins as it is produced by the discourse of mainstream in the context of a pervasive and hierarchical dualism between margins and mainstreams, Parker drawing on Deleuze looks at margins as a space in between and thus integral to any condition of life, more so in the work of identities and differences. Both Parker and Miri urge us to make borders more fluid. Parker here stresses the significance of making borderlands into spaces of margins—meeting places. For Miri, for this we need not only abstract and intellectualized interactions among individuals and groups but living interactions touching the poetic and intuitive level of our existence.7

Art of Border Crossing: Towards a Festivity of Incompleteness and An Artistic Ontological Epistemology of Participation Our borders are governed by a logic of anxiety and the attendant rule to control and govern. The existing logic of boundary maintenance and border control is governed by what Arjun Appadurai calls, in another context, an

Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing  225 “anxiety of incompleteness” (Appadurai 2004: 8). This anxiety of incompleteness also governs our existing logic of identity, difference, identity formation and differentiation. In this place we need to cultivate and create a festivity of incompleteness. Incompleteness is a condition of life; it is integral to any identity and difference. Poststructuralist thinkers such as Ernesto Laclau (cf. Laclau 1994) urge us to realize this, to which we can add the Buddhist perspective and realization of emptiness. Our cultivation of identity and difference can be accompanied by cultivation of emptiness and incompleteness, and we can celebrate our incompleteness rather than be anxious about it. Our borderlands can be zones of festive celebration of limits of our identities rather than anxious places of anxiety ridden security arrangements, violence and death (see Giri 2017a). Our border zones can be “zones of proximal development,” to use the words of Vygostsky, where we help each other to develop our potential rather than to annihilate it (cf. Holzman 2009). At present, our border zones are spaces of terrorism of state and non-state actors, but they can be also zones of meetings, communication and transcendence. One concrete policy of transcendence can be to make our borderlands places of welcome, hospitality, singing, and even dancing. When we cross borders we could be welcomed with a smile and song rather than be subjected to suspicious looks. Our border patrol officers also could be trained to sing the songs of both cultures lying on the sides of borders.8 Both the border crossing officers and people can dance together, too. But for this we need to cultivate an art of incompleteness and emptiness which is not static but dynamic. It calls for self-transformation and transformation of the existing organization of state and society. This agenda of transformation is a continuous one—any little step that we take towards a new art of border crossing can contribute to transformation of existing consciousness, discourse and organization. But for this we need to cultivate an art of incompleteness and emptiness which is not static but dynamic. It calls for self-transformation and transformation of the existing organization of state and society. But this agenda of transformation is a continuous one—any little step that we take towards a new art of border crossing can contribute to transformation of existing consciousness, discourse and organization. In our anxiety of incompleteness, violence becomes an intimate mode of knowing as Appadurai (2004) tells us in his work on collective violence. We need here other modes of knowing and being. We need fluid and seeking ontologies instead of aggressive, self-certain, arrogant and violent ontologies. We need new modes of knowing or epistemologies where knowing of or about the other is also a festive and artistic process of knowing with (cf. Giri 2013; Sundara Rajan 1998). We need an artistic ontological epistemology of participation for a new art of border crossing in which the boundary between ontology and epistemology is continuously being redrawn with emergent negotiation and creativity (cf. Giri 2006, 2017a, 2017b). Both the border crossing officers and people can dance together.

226  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha In our contemporary reflections we get intimations of such emergent moves in some thinkers. Parker here brings the perspective of Deleuzian ontology which urges us to realize the distinction between “ontological” conditions of existence valid for the world and “ontic” conditions of existence of particular entities or types of entities in the world. Parker further presents us the glimpses of Deleuzian ontology that is helpful here: Discriminations between players are now seen to be needed, but neither fixed nor inherently hostile. Discriminations arise in political processes, broadly understood, in and among the players, whose identities are determined in the qualities that they acquire or lose over time. [We can note this point about quality of actors and then link it to the issue of artistic representation discussed later in the section on border crossing and a new aesthetic politics] As the qualities of entities shift, so do the articulations of their margins, which determine the identities they exhibit in the world and to themselves. (2009: 34) To this we can bring the perspectives of Betsy Taylor and Herbert Reid who speak about “ecological ontology” building upon the insights of Dewey and Merleau-Ponty. Ecological ontology is a folded and layered ontology in which self is part of body, place and commons (Taylor & Reid 2010). In terms of interactions among people and groups, Taylor and Reid building upon Dewey talk about an aesthetic ecology of public intelligence (Taylor & Reid 2006). While the dominant ontology and epistemology creates a logic of fungibility where we are produced and realize ourselves as separate and unconnected atoms which then feeds separatism and fundamentalism, ecological ontology and aesthetic ecology of public intelligence realizes the connections that exist and then cultivates it in creative ways. Ecological ontology helps us have a field view of our identities, differences and borders and realize that both the sides of borders are part of a field. At present, this field is divided by fences but ecological ontology, aesthetic ecology of public intelligence and artistic ontological epistemology of participation urge us to build bridges by ourselves becoming bridges.

Towards a New Art of Border Crossing and a New Aesthetic Politics A new art of border crossing is also accompanied by a new art of politics. The predominant mode of politics in both traditions and modernities has been one of politics of closure rather than openness. Our politics of closure has determined our existing politics of boundary maintenance and border crossing. Here a new art of politics can help us open up our politics of closure. Bringing art and politics is not easy and traditionally it has been fraught with the danger of what David Harvey (1989) had termed long ago as “aesthetics of empowerment.” In aesthetics of empowerment, for Harvey, as

Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing  227 it happened in Nazi Germany, art is used to annihilate the other. Here we can also remember the way the music of Richard Wagner was played to trump up the nationalistic spirit of Germany and it is said, too, that Wagner was played by the Nazi soldiers while marching the Jews to concentrations camps. But this political use of Wagner in creating an aesthetics of hatred, humiliation, torture and annihilation does not exhaust possibilities in Wagner’s music as Daniel Barenboim shows us. Barenboim is a creative Jewish musician who has not only played Wagner in Israel but has also played with Edward Said. Together, Barenboim and Said created a space from bringing young musicians from Israel and Palestine together (Barenboim & Said 2002). This is a new aesthetics politics of crossing borders and building bridges by singing songs of harmony realizing that disunity is at the heart of quest for harmony itself. Historian and philosopher F.R. Ankersmit (1996) has talked about aesthetic politics and has made a distinction between mimetic representation and artistic representation. Politics in modernity has been imprisoned within a logic of mimetic representation in which politicians mimic the existing reality as representatives within a logic of representation. They mimic the existing logic and politics of closure and politics of border petrol and boundary maintenance. They rarely have the courage to question the existing logic and representation itself. But in a new aesthetic politics, politicians as representatives understand the limit of the logic of representation itself. They realize how difficult it is to represent one’s constituency. In order to represent others and the public they need to develop themselves and this is an artistic process. When they develop their own lives as a work of art they are better able to perceive the nuances in the desires and aspirations of people and they can give voice to some of these in their work as representatives. A new art of border crossing calls for such politics of artistic representation where political actors realize the need to go beyond the existing logic of constitutive closure and justification and create new spaces and times of conviviality and co-creation. We see this at times in the border politics in India and Pakistan when concerned actors—politicians, singers, players and citizens—try to go beyond mimetic representation of the status quo and seek new ways of meeting, border-crossing and reconciliation though such efforts are sabotaged by forces who are prisoners of existing logic of bounded violence (see Giri 2010). Aesthetics politics through artistic representation as different from mimetic representation is related to an aesthetics of travel rather than being imprisoned within a logic of fixed and controlled border. The aesthetics of travel creates a “travelling identity” (Majeed 2009).9 But contemporary organization of nation-state and border control does not make this possible. Our borders are spaces of intense and military security arrangement, yet, despite this borders are being made fluid by the varieties of actions of actors. Politics of boundary maintenance as it revolves around nation-state needs to be transformed to make space for aesthetics of travel and a new art of border crossing facilitated by aesthetics politics at home and the world.

228  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha This aesthetic politics and aesthetic travel also needs to go beyond dualism between ethics and aesthetics. In the conventional understanding while ethics is oriented to the other, aesthetics is oriented to the self. We need a border crossing between ethics and aesthetics which nurtures the self and other simultaneously in creative ways with the additional integral cultivation of the spiritual.10 Thus we need an aesthetics ethics of politics and travel for a new art of border crossing which can emerge from the very space of contemporary condition of boundary maintenance, border control and entrenched closures and parochialisms of many kinds.

By the Way of Conclusion: The Sadhana and Struggle of a New Art of Border Crossing Our contemporary condition of border and boundary maintenance reflects deep anxiety and a military apparatus of exclusion. This is not confined only to national borders but also border between disciplines. While old borders are being dismantled such as that among nation-states of Europe who have become members of the European Union (EU) an impenetrable and brutal border is being created between Europe and outside which is called Fortress Europe. In the meantime, the EU itself is facing the threat of pulling apart with Britexit and other moves. The condition is equally precarious in our part of the world in South Asia (Banerjee 2010). It is in this space of difficulty that we would have to practice a new art of border crossing. This calls for sadhana (one of its meaning being ego-transcending spiritual practice) and struggle. In this essay I have presented an outline of some pathways towards this. As we do this we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts of Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet: Movement always happens behind the thinker’s back, or in the moment when he blinks […] Questions are generally aimed at a future (or a past). […] But during this time, while you turn in circles among these questions, there are becomings which are silently at work, which are almost impossible. We think too much in terms of history, whether personal or universal. Becomings belong to geography, they are orientations, directions, entries and exits. (Deleuze & Parnet 1987: 1)

Notes 1 Here we can think with philosopher Anindita Balslev’s distinction between hard and soft meanings of the term border. Here what Robin May Shott writes in her introduction to her co-edited book, Philosophy on the Border, is helpful: In invoking the metaphor of border, we follow Anindita Balslev’s distinction between the hard and soft meanings of the word. The hard meaning of the word refers to a boundary, a barrier which hinders us in crossing it, and which denies any crossing as a trespassing. The soft sense of border refers to

Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing  229 a separating line that allows one to cross, to witness the differences that exist between life on the other side of the border, and the differences and tensions that exist on each side of the border. (Schott 2007: 9–10; Shott is here referring to Balslev’s Introduction to her 1996 edited book, Cross-Cultural Conversations, Atlanta: Scholars Press) 2 In this exploration, we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts: Do not give me scissors, Give me a needle to stitch Since I do not cut. (Baba Farid) Post-colonial societies everywhere are caught up in the politics of borders leading to extreme sensitivity about issues of security/insecurity around the question of population settled/unsettled in and across these borders. Added to this problem is the understanding that the ideological construction of the state is almost always weighted against ethnic, religious and other minorities who then are relegated to the borders of democracy. Democracy is affected by the socio-political consciousness of those who construct it. Nationalistic democracies aim at being a hegemonic form of territorial consciousness. National identity links territory to culture, language, history and memory. The process of nation-formation legitimates national identity by tracing it back to fictional common pasts of specific groups. It also simultaneously privileges/marginalizes certain territories. It is therefore crucial to reflect on how discourses of national identities are created by privileging certain spatial units, such as the borders. (Banerjee 2010: xi–xii) The exclusivist or statist view is deeply flawed. This was perceived with remarkable prescience by Hugo Grotius, Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Suarez and other seventeenth-century writers, who were committed to the idea of human unity and worried that the newly emerging states risked undermining this by setting themselves up to morally self-contained units standing between individuals and humankind in general. To say that humankind is divided into states is only partially true. The humanity of the citizen is not exhausted in the state, territorial boundaries do not negate the moral bonds that obtain between human beings, and every state remains embedded in a wider human community. (Parekh 2008: 240) If the Samaritan had followed the demands of sacred social boundaries, he would never have stopped to help the wounded Jew. It is plain that the Kingdom involves another kind of solidarity altogether, one that would bring us into a network of agape. (Taylor 2004: 66) 3 This may be linked to contemporary discourse of chaos theory and notion of order emerging out of chaos. 4 Bhikhu Parekh’s related discussion of morality of partiality and impartiality can help us to think of the difficult challenge of morality of closure and opening. For Parekh, morality is not just about impartiality: “If the principle of impartiality were to be the sole basis of morality, one would either need to avoid identity relations, or so define and structure them that they do not make moral claims” (Parekh 2008: 231).

230  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Parekh’s plea for balance here has implication for the difficult field of morality of closure and opening, boundary and boundary transmutation: “The question therefore is one of striking a balance, a and determining to what degree and kind of partiality should be allowed to enable special relations to be sustained and the basic demands of principle of impartiality to be met” (Parekh 2008: 235). 5 What Deleuze and Guittari (1994: 17, 19–20) writes below about concepts is applicable to borders as well: There are no simple concepts. Every concept has components […]. It is a multiplicity […] Components are distinct, heterogeneous, and yet not separable. The point is that each partially overlaps, has a zone of neighborhood […] something passes from one to the other, something that is undecidable between them. There is an area ab that belongs to both a and b, where a and b “become” indiscernible. In this context, what Bussey writes about Deleuze deserves our careful attention: “His tools are his creative disregard for boundaries, a playful approach to language and form what Tony Conley describes as a ‘consciousness of possibility’” (Bussey 2018: 2). 6 What Miri (2003) writes about Shankaradev and the tribals in Assam is helpful here: “Shankardev’s Vaishnavite movement among the tribals has enriched them “in their independent being” “rather than blind them into walking into Hindu embrace. And this was a good thing to do” (Miri 2003: 114). 7 As Miri writes: At a popular level, cultures and therefore, religions have met, conversed with each other, and in many ways, made an impact on each other but such conversations and meeting took place at an intuitive, instinctive, and “poetic” level rather than at an abstract and cerebral, intellectual level. Mutual understanding was, for the most part, unmediated by an abstract articulation of cultures in which one lived and had one’s being. On the other hand, abstract articulations frequently lead to closing of boundaries and deadlocks in communication. (2003: 111) In recent works, I have also been exploring how poetics can help us in moving across entrenched and be part of creative border crossing. (see Giri 2017) 8 We can consider here the following poem on how a cauliflower crosses border between America and Canada: With a cauliflower We would go from America to Canada But what would we say On the border? Asks the officer Do you have anything? Oh We have just a cauliflower We have got it with us We want to make a salad While having our lunch Under the sun and near Detroit Art Museum With the cauliflower We crossed the border

Social Healing and a New Art of Border Crossing  231 Smile also returned Before the border So much silence, so much anxiety All smile lost In the dreary desert Why do our borders feel so dry Why are they not homes of welcome A place of affection Oh our cauliflower We brought it home It may have been born in a green field of America We got this transnational cauliflower From a Canadian supermarket But is the cauliflower happy to come back home America is my motherland Am I happy to come home? (A poem originally written in Oriya by the author and then the above is an extract from this longer poem) 9 Majeed discusses this in the context of the work of Iqbal. He discusses Iqbal’s notion of creative selfhood as a dynamic process. He, at the same time, refers to Iqbal’s preference for Aurangzeb over Dara Sikoh whom he killed to get the throne of the Mughal Empire. While Aurangzeb was for a bounded purity of orthodox Islam, Dara Sikhoh for creative border crossing. He translated Upanishads into Arabic and has gifted us this epochal work in border crossing, Majma Ul Bahrain: Commingling of Two Oceans, A Discourse on Inter-religious Understanding. See Dara Sikhoh (2006) and also Gopal Gandhi’s (2010) play on him. Both travel and translation walking and meditating with Truth helps us in creative border crossing. This is explored in the following poem of the author: Three T and More Ananta Kumar Giri Travel, Truth and Translation Travelling with Truth Translating Truth in Travel In Between the Relative and the Relational Absolute and Approximate Translating While Travelling Self, Culture and Divine Beyond the Annihilating Tyranny of the Singular A New Trinity of Prayer A New Multiple of Sadhana and Surrender [Written at Lake Putra, Putra Jaya, Capital of Malyasia, May 15, 2015: 530 PM. Cf. Giri 2022b] 10 Note here what Edward Said (in Barenboim & Said 2002: 11–12) writes in his dialogue with Daniel Barenboim about his work: One of the striking things about the kind of work you do is that you act as an interpreter, as a performer—an artist concerned not so much with the articulation of the self, but rather with the articulation of other selves. That’s a challenge. The interesting thing about Goethe [..] was that art, for Goethe especially, was all about a voyage to the “other,” and not concentrating on

232  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha oneself, which is very much a minority view today. There is more of a concentration today on the affirmation of identity, on the need for roots, on the value of one’s culture and one’ sense of belonging. It has become quite rare to project one’s self outward, to have a broader perspective. In your work as a performer, Daniel, and in my work as an interpreter— an interpreter of literature and literary criticism—one has to accept the idea that one is putting one’s identity to the side in order to explore the “other.” The above pathways reflect a primacy of the ethical and a conventional understanding of self and identity as closed in oneself. The proposed pathway of aesthetic ethics of border crossing seeks to simultaneously cultivate and transform the self and other in creative ways including cultivation of its aesthetic and spiritual reality and potential (see Giri 2017).

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15 Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes Cross-Fertilizing Roots and Routes, Ethnicity and the Calling of SocioCultural Regeneration and Planetary Realizations* Introduction and Invitation Our identities have realities, possibilities and aspirations of roots and routes. But most of the time there is a wound of separation between these. Social healing strives to heal this wound. We can understand this challenge vis-à-vis our discourse and practice of ethnicity and ethnic identity formation. This chapter deals with some of these challenges as well as pathways of reconstructions and regeneration.1 Ethnicity is a continued challenge for us for creative rethinking and envisioning and practicing shared lives. As Alain Touraine, the deep sociological thinker of our times, urges us to realize: “We are now living through the undermining of national communities and strengthening of ethnic communities” (Touraine 2007). This process is a multi-dimensional process of resistance, struggle, creativity, destruction and transformation which calls for deeper probing of and meditative co-walking with our existing conceptual categories and modes of engagement. As ethnicity cannot be understood either as a static category or in isolation from other categories and realities such as nationality and citizenship, as T.K. Oommen (1997) argues, we also need to understand the limits of these categories themselves as well as the inner and mutual transformations that these are going through both internally as well as in their interrelationship. All these categories and lifeworlds have a complex relationship to tradition, modernity, postmodernity and an emergent modernity called transmodernity where as Enrique Dussel (2017: 226–227) argues “unsuspected cultural richness” rises up like the “flame of fire of those fathoms buried under the sea of ashes from hundreds * This builds on my Keynote Address to the seminar on “Ethnicity and Globalization,” Lady Keane College, Shillong, December 4, December 4–5, 2013. I am grateful to Dr. Saji Verghese for his kind invitation and to Professor Sujata Miri and other participants for their comments and interest. This builds upon my introductory essay to a discussion symposium I co-nurtured with Dr. Marcus Bussey of University of Sunshine Coast for the journal Social Alternatives in 2017. This has also come out in Man in India as well as in Cross-Fertilizing Roots and Routes: Identities, Social Creativity, Cultural Regeneration and Planetary Realizations edited by me and in press with Palgrave Macmillan. I am grateful to Marcus for his kind support and participation. I thank Dr. Sumahan Banejree, Editor of Man in India, and the anonymous reviewer for his comments.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-17

Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes  235 of years of colonialism.” Transmodernity refers to “a process of rebirth, searching for new paths for future development.” If the reality and production of ethnicity is linked to both modernity and colonialism leading to what Oommen (1997) calls ethnification, transmodernity challenges us to understand both historical and contemporaneous processes of deconstruction and reconstruction, resistance and creativity anew. While ethnification is a process of marginalization, ethnicity is not just produced at the disjuncture of home and the world as Oommen argues. Contra Oommen, we do not become an ethnie when we leave our home and come to a foreign land. Ethnicity is an aspect of both home and the world and understanding it as a dynamic process as well as the related categories and histories of nationality and citizenship challenges us to understand ethnicity as well as nationality and citizenship not only as nouns but also as verbs (cf. Giri 2012; Giri 2012). As verbs they embody multiple and multi-dimensional processes of genesis, ongoing dynamics and reconstitution. Oommen’ phrase ethnification points to the verb dimension of the category of ethnicity. At the same time, to these categories of nation, ethnicity and citizenship we need to add the category of soul—self, social as well as cultural—as well as creativity. We need to bring to our existing discursive and practical landscape dynamics of generativity and regeneration of soul, culture and society. Today ethnic mobilization as it is engaged in struggle with other ethnic groups and the state, is also engaged in a process of socio-cultural regeneration as it fights against both the dominant logic of state and market in favor of more autonomy, control over local resources and sometimes creation of new states. Many a time there is a mimetic reproduction of state violence in ethnic mobilization but slowly violent ethnic mobilizations are being forced to realize and learn, as Rene Girard tells us that “the sacrificial system [of violence] is virtually worn out” (quoted in Fleming 2004: 111). This challenges us to realize the limits of violence and absolutism and calls for the difficult journey of non-violent resistance and transformation in a world where violence presents itself as the tempting easy option for both the state as well as non-state actors (Bass 2013; Daniels 1996; Volkam 2006).

Ethnicity, Cultural Rights and Cultural Regeneration: In Between Root and Routes Ethnicity is linked to both territory and culture. The struggle for ethnicity in the modern and contemporary world is a struggle for plural, economic and cultural regeneration and transformation. Ethnicity as it emerges in between culture and location is linked to our need for roots which are invariably multiple (Cf. Weil 1952: 99). Here what Simon Weil (1952: 99) writes in her Need for Roots deserves our careful consideration: To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. It is one of the hardest to define. A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active and natural participation in the life of

236  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha a community which preserves in living shape certain particular measures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. This participation is a natural one, in the sense that it is automatically brought about by place, conditions of birth, profession and social surrounding. Every human being needs to have multiple roots […]2 But our need for roots many a time leads to ethnocentric and exclusionary patriotism. Weil calls this self-idolatry. Today both ethnic and national patriotism in their dominant formation reproduces a logic of self-idolatry.3 But overcoming this self-idolatry challenges us to realize that there are routes in all our roots. But being with routes does not necessarily produce rootless histories and modernities. Here our locations are not only bounded locales but are also translocal. Our locations are “an itinerary rather than a bounded site—a series of encounters and translations,” as anthropologist James Clifford (1988) tells us in his important work, The Predicament of Culture. Clifford here brings our attention to the fieldwork of anthropologist and novelist Amitava Ghosh in Egypt where fieldwork is less a matter of localized dwelling and more a series of travel encounters. Everyone is on the move, and has been for centuries, dwelling-on-travel. Moreover when travel becomes the kind of norm, dwelling demands explanation. Why with what degree of freedom do people stay at home. (ibid) Anthropologist Timo Kaartinen in his work with Banda Eli, a coastal village in Indonesia, also writes: the Banda Eli discourse about the past carries two inter-related ideas of social existence in time. In one sense, expressed in songs of travel, society consists of the past and present horizons of lived experience. These horizons come into relief in the circumstances of separation, alterity and alienation created by overseas travel. In another sense society is a place in which social and cosmic relationships are concretized in an external form. Songs of travel thus represent an openness to transforming events while stories of place represent society as an objective, somewhat final outcome of past events.4 (Kaartinen 2010: 28) Understanding self, ethnicity and nation emerging at the cross-roads of roots and routes where routes are not only territorial but also maritime, as of Prasenjit Duara’s reference to Asian maritime networks in the epigraph, calls for new modes of engagement and understanding, a border-crossing between philosophy and anthropology. Both philosophy and anthropology are even now deeply parochial disciplines and are still Eurocentric in their methods and worldviews. But here anthropologists not only need to embody deep philosophical reflection but also footwork. Both philosopher and

Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes  237 anthropologists need to embody a creative trigonometry of philosophical, historical and footwork engagement (Giri 2012).5 As J.N. Mohanty would challenge us, engagement with both footwork and histories would help us realize how our life worlds including ethnic life worlds are not only closed within themselves but are in communication with each other. But this history of communication can be more creatively cultivated with what Mohanty building on Husserl calls “apperceptive attribution” and “analogizing apperception”: The gap between the far and the near is closed by analogizing apperception of the far, “as if, it were near […] The relativity of the lifeworld is to be overcome by making what it is strange, foreign, unfamiliar gradually familiar.” (Mohanty 2001) What is to be noted is that this process of communication, cross-cultural and inter-ethnic, is not only a matter of state and social system but more crucially of actors. For both Alain Touraine and Jurgen Habermas, such processes call for communicative transformations from all concerned including the so-called marginalized ethnicities and cultural groups in which creative selves and actors play an important role. As Habermas tells us, “Yet cultural rights do not just mean more ‘difference,’ and more independence for cultural groups and their leaders [..] They cannot benefit from a morality of equal inclusion without themselves making this morality their own” (2006: 205). At the same time, there is a lingering universalism in Touraine and Habermas, which can be creatively transformed into transmodern and transversal processes as suggested in Dussel’s pathways of the transmodern where we build upon resources and possibilities in tradition, modernity and postmodernity to build creative self and institutions in our present day world. When we are talking about ethnicity and culture, we need to be on the guard against what James Clifford writes about the propensity of culture to assert “holism and aesthetic form, its tendency to privilege value, hierarchy and historical continuity in notions of ‘common life’.” It is in this context Trouillot’s (2004) calls to say good bye to culture and accepting the new duty that arises out of it deserves our careful consideration.

Beyond Culturalist Holism and Ethnic Absolutism In his work on Gorkhaland movement, Swatosiddha Sarkar (2013) offers us a critical contemporary example of the limits of singular and holistic ethnic representation. As Sarkar (2013) writes, Peace initiatives framed by the state with the vision of homogenizing the actually existing differences between the ‘us’ and ‘them’ run the risk of submerging the rebel voice and reinstate the same hegemonic

238  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha structure which in fact breed the problem […] An alternative thus could be suggested following a policy that recognizes the different stake holders of ethnic cause. Even in the case of ULFA, Nani Mahanta (2013) tells us: Organizations like ULFA never bothered to look into the issues of governance and day-to-day problems that the people of the state used to confront on a daily basis. Struggle for land, forest and water have acquired a new dimension after the emergence of a peasant-based movement known as Krushak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) in 2005 under the leadership of RTI activist Akhil Gogoi. […] Movements centering on people’s issues have become more popular and sustainable in comparison to the armed groups who have perennially neglected these issues for a dream of independent sovereign homeland. At the same time, Mahanta makes a startling observation: At a time when other organizations have taken a bold stand against the immigrants, ULFA has tried to broaden the Assamese nationality by incorporating the immigrants from Bangladesh into the framework of the people of Assam.6 Both these works on ethnic mobilizations point to the limits of looking at them solely in terms of fixed roots and struggle for power and point to the need for ethnic mobilizations to be open to others in a spirit of hospitality and care.

Creating Cultures, Spaces and Politics of Hospitality As ULFA realized the need to incorporate the immigrants from Bangladesh into the framework of Assam, in Assam itself, even in small areas such as Bodoland, ethnic groups are at each other’s throats. The whole North East of India has become a cauldron of ethnic violence and annihilation and State is not the only agent of killing here. This highlights the need to create a culture, space and politics of dignity and respect, one of hospitality. Here we need to realize that we are not helpless between the binary choice of citizenship and total non-existence as an immigrant. Here Seyla Benhabib (2004) argues that nation-states can offer a variety of creative policies and opportunities to the immigrants. They may not be given full citizenship for political and other constraints, but they can be given other rights such as the right to vote in local elections.7 Similarly ethnic groups can also provide different ranges of rights and hospitality to members of other ethnic groups in stead of subjecting them to torture and torment or killing them. So far nationstate and ethnic groups are used to a politics of taking hostage and now they need to practice a politics and spirituality of hospitality (Derrida 2006).

Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes  239 As our political imagination and practice has a deeper religious and theological root, as the complex trajectory of political theology tells us, we need here alternative political theologies and spiritualities which can transform our politics of hostage taking into a politics and spirituality of hospitality. In Judeo Christian tradition the parable of the Good Samaritan and the command to love ones neighbor as oneself needs to be practiced creatively now (see Ricoueur 2000; Vattimo 1999).8 The Bhagavad Gita talks about swadharma (dharma of the self) and the need to protect one’s swadharma from paradharma (dharma of others). But what is swadharma, what is paradharma? So far in conventional religion, politics and interpretative exercise these have been given a literal and group-linked categorical meaning. But swadharma is not only one’s socially given religious identity, it is the dharma of one’s being, the path of unfoldment and duty that one seeks and needs to follow. One needs to nurture and protect one’s unique dharma and mode of self-realization from those forces which are not intrinsically significant for one’s self-realization. So for the Hindus, swadhama is not only Hinduism and Islam is paradharma. This is a very superficial rendering of swadharma and paradharma at the level of caste, religion and gender, as many deep co-walkers with these themes such as Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi would urge us to realize (Sri Aurobindo 1972).9 As we realize the deeper spiritual meaning and challenge of existing categories coming from our culture and religions, we also need to create new categories of reality, living and realization. In case of the existing discourse of self and other, swadharma and paradharma, which has been thrown up into antagonistic battles, we need to create a new category of saha (together) and sahadharma (dharma of togetherness)10 which is an integral part of the other important concern in the Bhagavad Gita, loka-samgraha which means gathering of people not only in a political sense of rights and citizenship but also a spiritual gathering of mutual care and world nurturance and world maintenance.11 We need a new culture, political theology and spiritual ecology which nurtures spaces of togetherness.12 Language and common natural resources constitute our arenas of sahadharma, which includes both conflicts and co-operations, and it calls of a new politics and spirituality of sadhana and struggle, compassion and confrontation. In the field of languages, today there is a deathlike move towards monolignualism. But our mother languages, be it Tamil or Odia, nurture the soul, imagination and dignity and of all those who speak this language and not only Tamil Hindus or Odia Hindus though they may be numerically dominant. Today as our mother languages are being marginalized all of us have a duty, a dharma to nurture and protect this space of sahadharma. Here Hindus, Muslims and Christians can all strive together. Similarly as our living environment is being destroyed and our natural resources are getting depleted, protecting and cultivating this is a matter of a new sahadharma. This is related to protecting and recovering our commons which also calls for a new mode of being with self, other and the world (Reid and Taylor 2010).13 This in turn calls for a new politics, ethics and epistemology of conviviality and

240  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha cross-fertilization where we take pleasure in each other’s presence rather than withdrawing ourselves, feeling threatened and threatening others (Appadurai 2006).

Cultural Regeneration and Planetary Realizations Dynamics of top-down and unilateral globalization puts cultures under threat and as a response, they are engaged in varieties of movements of cultural regeneration. One important aspect of this cultural regeneration is regeneration of knowledge, one’s knowledge tradition (de Sousa Santos 2007, 2014). Modernity has led to the killing of different knowledge traditions what de Sousa Santos calls epistemicide. But we see a slow movement of regeneration of knowledges of our soil and soul in varieties of indigenous movements. In the North East of India where tribals were converted to Christianity, there is a movement for indigenization of Christianity into one’s soil (Frynkenberg 2010). Religious and spiritual movements such as Donyi Polo in Arunachala Pradesh create new spaces of cultural regeneration from one’s soil. Ethnic groups are not only bounded socio-cultural groups as the classic work of Frederic Barth tells us, space of ethnicity is also a space of knowledge about local community, geography, and bio-diversity. Ethnic politics unfortunately is confined mostly to socio-political issues of struggle for and distribution of power but it now needs to be part of a new politics of preservation of knowledge such as bio-diversity. In many parts of the world, ethnic knowledge and language is being used in education. For example, in Odisha, in the Srujan programme, knowledge of the local community on various important issues is being used, and as Mahendra Kumar Mishra (2015) tells us, this has made a difference to the lives of tribals. Similarly in the Chiapas region of Mexico, both the Zapatista movement as well as initiatives such as University de Tierra (University of the Earth) use local language and knowledge in education.14 As part of cultural regeneration, now there is a movement for regeneration of local history and local museums. Local histories are sometimes used to fight against each other settling scores with each other but now we need a creative engagement with histories and ethnic life worlds where our languages, myths, concepts and preoccupations can become nomadic and bridges of translations and not just remain fixed and fixated (Das 2007, 2011).15 These become part of creative and critical memory works which involve both work and meditation with our roots and routes and their complex dynamics of cross-fertilization.16 Such dynamics of cultural creativity and regeneration take us back to our roots but also bring our roots to dance with routes in history and the contemporary world. Such cross-fertilization of roots and routes create an alternative globalization what philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy calls mondialization. For Nancy (2007), while globalization is “uniformity produced by a global economic and technological logic […] leading toward the opposite of an inhabitable world, to the un-world,” mondialization involves authentic world-forming what Nancy calls creation of the world. Cultural creativity

Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes  241 and regeneration is at the heart of such alternative creations of the world (see Villa-Vicencio et al. 2015; see Illich 1973). Planetary realization refers to such processes of realization of potential of self, culture and society. For Chitta Ranjan Das (2004), it also involves the generation of people’s power in place of the power of the state to which we can also add the power of the market. We see glimpses of cultural regeneration and planetary realizations in movements such as Ekta Parishad, a Gandhian movement in contemporary India which is also transnational as it nurtures and is supported by any activists and volunteers from Europe and other parts of the world. Ekta Parishad brings together people from different ethnic groups in their struggle over land, water and forest but it is dreaming and fighting for a new world, to create the world as a family as suggested in this primordial aspiration from India, vasaudheiva kutumbakam (let the whole world become a family).17

Notes 1 In our exploration here the following thoughts are helpful The Asian maritime networks of the pre-colonial era … involved a wide variety of merchant communities at different points who did not speak the same languages or trade in the same currencies […] In many ways, contemporary Asian regional interdependence resembles the maritime Asian trade networks, because of the separation of political, economic and military levels and power […] Although the actual products flowing through the Asian maritime networks were miniscule compared to today’s figures, the cultural flows they enabled–packaged in Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Islam—were nothing short of world-transforming. […] Nonetheless, the older Asian models of cultural circulation without state domination of identity presents us with a historical resource to explore new possibilities. (Duara 2015: 277) But origin always meets us from the future.

(Heidegger 1971: 10)

Modern Societies are replete with notions of ethnicity, cultural/religious identity which are often valorized in recent times to the point of unreason, plunging ethnically different communities into conflict situations. This new awareness of one’s distinct ethnic identity often plays a horrendous role in our present-day world; for, your “difference” is made a special privilege which you would proceed to deny to others who differ from you in terms of clan, creed or color. Remember the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda, Burundi who massacred each other in millions, not to mention on the ethnic cleansing that proceed, say from Kosovo to Kashmir. (Sharma 2014) 2 To this, we can add Gandhi’s emphasis on root. As Chatterjee interprets Gandhi’s path: The world was interested in the fruits, not the root. For the tree itself, however, the chief concern should be not the fruit, but the root. It was in the depth of one’s being that the individual had to concentrate. He had to nurse it with the water of his labour and suffering. The root was his chief concern. (Chatterjee 2005: 98)

242  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha In a related way, Wangari Mathai, the inspiring fighter for ecology and the Noble Peace Prize winner, tells us also about the significance of roots in the dynamics of nature as well as for the preservation and efflorescence of both biodiversity and cultural diversity. Mathai tells us that while she was growing up, her mother told us never to cut the fig tree. Later on when she studied biology, she realized that: there was a connection between the fig tree’s root system and the underground water reservoirs. The roots burrowed deep into the ground, breaking through the surface soil and diving into the underground water table. The water traveled up along the routes until it hit a depression or weak place in the ground and gushed out as a spring. Indeed, wherever these trees stood, there were likely to be streams. (Maathai, 2008: 46) But colonial rule struck at the root of this ecosystem. Mathai tells us that the colonial government in Kenya “decided to encroach into the forest and establish commercial plantation of the nonnative trees [….] The eliminated local plants and animals, destroying the natural ecosystem that helped gather and retain rainwater” (Maathai, 2008: 39). But Mathai also tells us how colonization of Kenya and the wider Africa not only struck at the roots of the natural eco system, it also struck at the roots of cultural vitality and dignity of people as it also destroyed roots of mother languages of peoples. 3 For Simon Weil: Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. […] The word pagan, which applied to Rome, really possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people, not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism. 4 Kaartinen writes that “songs of travel represent an openness to transforming events.” Here we can refer to an interesting anthropological reflection on the travels of the poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore by anthropologist Ravindra K. Jain (2010). Jain tells us how in his travels, Tagore experiences an “unbearable softness of being” and goes beyond his identity as a self-confident man. This comes out in his letter to his intimate friend and admirer, the Argentinian Victoria Occampo from the sea: It will be a difficult for you to fully realize what an immense burden of loneliness I carry about me, the burden that has specially been imposed upon me by my sudden extraordinary fame. […] My market price has been high and my personal value has been obscured. This value I seek to realize with an aching desire which constantly pursues me. This can be had only from a woman’s love and I have been hoping for a long time that I do deserve it. (quoted in Jain 2010: 16) Jain suggests that travel creates a condition for a new realization of poetics of manhood in Tagore which is not one of macho manhood as originally suggested in the work of Michel Herzfeld but a manhood of softness and vulnerability. Such a narration of vulnerability and transformative yearning for intimacy we find in many songs of travel with the sea on the part of those who leave home for faraway land. We find such a narration in the sea travelogue of Chitta Ranjan

Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes  243 Das, a creative thinker and writer from Odisha, in his letters from the sea to his younger brother. In his first letter he writes: Today you all would be remembering me. Also Mother. […] As much as you are pulling me in the rope of relational affection from your side my heart is equally getting shaken from this side. There is a sorrow in this shakeness but if our heart was made of stone, life would have been so unbearable! I have always gained assurance from this shakenness of heart. (Das 1999: 2; my translation from the original Odia) 5 I make a distinction between fieldwork and footwork. Fieldwork does involve footwork but colonialist fieldwork was done riding on the horse backs and now present-day fieldworkers rarely go to the field as they assign this to their research assistants and even when they go they rarely walk together with people as a way experiencing life and knowing about it. Footwork involves such practices of being and knowing (Giri 2012). 6 Dr. N.K. Das, a noted anthropologist and a longstanding deep scholar of ethnic movements in the North East India here comments that this is not the stand of the whole of faction-ridden ULFA but only the stand of the Paresh Baruah section of ULFA which has got shelter in Bangladesh. 7 We can see here that these rights emerge from what Hanah Arendt long ago had termed the right to have rights. 8 Here Chris Fleming interprets Rene Girard’s perspective on the Biblical tradition, “The uniqueness of Bible was that it effectively enacted a subversion of the sacred from within.” It proclaimed “the innocence of victims of violence, beginning with Abel and Joseph, continuing through to prophets such as Jeremiah and Zachariah and the singers of peritential psalms, concluding finally, with Jesus Christ” (Fleming 2004: 114). 9 Both Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi walked and mediated with Bhagvad Gita. In his Essays on Gita, Sri Aurobindo urges us to realize that swadharma here does not mean the so-called dharma of caste and organized religion but the path of evolution of soul imbued as it is by God Consciousness or Brahmic Consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo writes: “The ‘God seeker’ begins with established social and religious rule in the community and ‘lifts it up by imbuing it with ‘Brahmic Consciousness’” (quoted in Chatterjee 2009: 165). Similarly, in Gandhi, the dharma in Gita is a much deeper call for one’s righteous conduct in the world, for example following a path of non-violence in the midst of battles of life including inner battles (see Desai 1946). It is in this context, it is also helpful to meditate on the following interpretation of svadharma offered by philosopher Tara Chatterjea: But Krishna gives a twist, so that many modern thinkers feel that, in the Gita, varnadharma is seen in such a way, that the moral duties of this person are determined more by his specific nature than by his identity as the member of a class. (2008: 113) 10 Sahadharma emerges from what Martin Heidegger calls “midpoint of relationships.” This is suggested in the concluding lines of Rigveda where there is a call for Samagahadhwa, Sambadadhwam. For Daya Krishna, this path of togetherness is the call of the future and the God to come is a God of togetherness. In his words: Rta and Satya provide the cosmic foundation of the universe and may be apprehended by tapasa or disciplined “seeking” or sadhana and realized through them. The Sukta 10.191, the last Sukta of the Rgveda, suggests that this is not, and cannot be, something on the part of an individual alone, but is rather the “collective” enterprise of all “humankind” and names the “god”

244  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha of this Sukta “Somjnanam” emphasizing the “Togetherness” of all “Being” and spelling it out as Sam Gachhadhwam, Sam Vadadyam, Sambho Manasi Jayatam, Deva Bhagam Jathapurve Sanjanatam Upasate. (Krishna 2006: 8) 11 Here what Fred Dallmayr writes bringing Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger and the idea of loka-samgraha from Bhagvad Gita deserves our careful consideration as it also presents us a glimpse and pathways of sahadharma: As an antidote to the spread of “worldlessness” in our time, Hannah Arendt recommended the restoration of a “public realm” in which people would actively participate and be mutually connected. Digging beneath this public forum, Heidegger unearthed the deeper source of connectedness in the experience of “care” (Sorge, c ura) in its different dimensions. From the angle of human “being-in-the world,” care penetrates into all dimensions of this correlation—in the sense that existence is called upon to care about “world” and its constituent features (fellow-beings, nature, cosmos). Differently put: There cannot be, for Heidegger, an isolated “self-care” (c ura sui) without care for the world—that includes care for world maintenance (without which Dasein cannot exist). In this latter concern, is work does not stand alone. In the Indian tradition, especially the Bhagavad Gita, we find an emphasis on a basic ethical and ontological obligation: the caring attention to “world maintenance” or loka-samgraha. According to the Gita, such attention needs to be cultivated, nurtured and practiced in order for human life to be sustainable and meaningful. (Dallmayr 2016: 51–52) 12 We can read the Betsy Taylor and Herbert Reid’s important book, Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place and Global Justice Movement, from this perspective of sahadharma (Reid and Taylor 2010). 13 For Reid and Taylor (2010), we need folded ontology in place of flat ontology of modernity. 14 University of Earth is an initiative of a local priest in San Crystobal of La Cassas in the Chiapas, which creates a learning environment using local means and needs. 15 Here what Ayesha Jalal writes in her recent work on Pakistan also provides us a glimpse of difficult work of cultural regeneration and cosmopolitanization: The bourgeoning of a popular culture in the midst of State-sponsored Islamization and terrorism is a remarkable feat for Pakistan. It draws on rich and vibrant poetic, musical, and artistic traditions that are well manifested in the country’s diverse regional and sub-regional settings […] If military dictatorships have not stunted the creative impulse, the unending waves of terror and counter terror are being resisted through imaginative recourse to local, regional, as well as transnational idioms of a cosmopolitan humanism that celebrates rather than eliminates the fact of difference. […] But the misery and human degradation that has sprung from the effects of external wars on Pakistani soil have been an equally powerful factor in raising the popular interest in the rich cultural repertoire of the mystical traditions of the country. (Jalal: 2014: 393, 394, 395) 16 The following poem by the author explores these pathways of memory works, route works and route works as well as meditations: Roots and Routes: Memory Works and Meditations Roots and Routes Routes within Roots

Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes  245 Roots with Routes Multiple Roots and Multiple Routes Crisscrossing With Love Care and Karuna Crisscrossing and Cross-firing Root work and Route Work Footwork and Memory Work Weaving threads Amidst threats Dancing in front of terror Dancing with terrorists Meditating with threat Meditating with threads Meditating with Roots and Routes Root Meditation Route Meditation Memory Work as Meditating with Earth Dancing with Soul, Cultures and Cosmos [UNPAR Guest House, Bandung February 13, 2015, 9 am. Cf. Giri 2019: 10] 17 One of the animating songs of Ekta Parishad is: Jai Jagat, Jai Jagat, Jai Jagat Pukareja. Which means victory to the world, victory to the world

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246  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha ———. 2011. “Moral and Spiritual Striving in the Everyday: To Be a Muslim in Contemporary India.” In Ethical Life in South Asia, (eds.) Anand Pandian & Daud Ali. Delhi: Oxford University Press. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. (ed.) 2007. Another Knowledge is Possible. London: Verso. ———. (ed.) 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Derrida, Jacques. 2006. “Hospitality.” In The Derrida-Habermas Reader (ed.), Lasse Thomassen, pp. 208–230. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Desai, Mahadev. 1946. The Gospel of Selfless Action or The Gita According to Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Duara, Prasenjit. 2015. The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Dussel, Enrique. 2017. “Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation.” In Research As Realization, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Primus Books. Fleming, C. 2004. Rene Girard: Violence and Mimesis. Cambridge: Polity Press. Frynkenberg, Robert E. 2010. Christianity in India: From the Beginnings to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2012. Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2019. Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays. Delhi: Studera. Habermas, Jurgen. 2006. “Religious Tolerance: The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights.” In The Derrida-Habermas Reader, (ed.) Lasse Thomassen, pp. 195–207. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper Perennial. Illich, Ivan. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Marion Books. Jain, Ravindra K. 2010. “Roots and Routes: Notes Towards a Personal Anthropology of Rabindranath Tagore.” Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences XV11 (1&2): 13–19. Jalal, Ayesha. 2014. The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics. Camdridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University. Kaartinen, Timo. 2010. Songs of Travel, Stories of Place: Poetics of Absence in an Eastern Indonesian Society. Helsinki: Academia Scientianum. Krishna, Daya. 2006 “Rgveda: The Mantra, the Sukta and the Mandala or the Rsi, the Devta, the Chanda: The Structure of the Text and Problems Regarding it.” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research XX111 (2): 1–13, April–June. Maathai, Wangari. 2008 [2006] Unbowed: One Woman’s Story. New York: Arrow Books. Mahanta, Nani. 2013. Confronting the State: ULFA’s Quest for Sovereignty. New Delhi: Sage. Mishra, Mahendra K. 2015. “Local Knowledge in Elementary Education for a Culturally Creative Learning.” In New Horizons of Human Development, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. Delhi: Studera Press. Mohanty, J.N. 2001. Explorations in Philosophy: Volume Two: Western Philosophy. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. The Creation of the World or Globalization. Stony Brook: State University of New York Press.

Healing the Wound of Roots and Routes  247 Oommen, T.K. 1997. Citizenship, Nationality and Ethnicity: Reconciling Competing Identities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Reid, Herbert & Betsy Taylor. 2010. Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place, and Global Justice. Urbana-Champagne: University of Illinois Press. Ricoueur, Paul. 2000. The Just. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sarkar, Swatosidha. 2013. Gorkhaland Movement: Ethnic Conflict and State Response. Delhi: Concept Publishing House. Sri Aurobindo. 1972. Essays on the Gita. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Touraine, Alaine. 2007. A New Paradigm for Understanding Today’s World. Cambridge: Polity Press. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2004. “Adieu, Culture: A New Duty Arises.” In idem, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. New York: Palgrave. Villa-Vicencio, Charles et al. 2015. (eds.) The African Renaissance and the AfroArab Sing: A Season of Rebirth? Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Volkam, Vamik. 2006. Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts. Charlottsville, Virginia: Pitchstone Publishers. Weil, Simone. 1952 [1949]. The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind. London: Routledge.

16 Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance The Multiverse of Hindu Engagement with Christianity and Plural Streams of Creative Co-Walking, Contradictions, Confrontations and Reconciliations* Introduction and Invitation Religious ignorance and arrogance creates wounds in self and society. Social healing strives to heal these wounds and create new realities and possibilities. This chapter explores these issues vis-à-vis interaction between Hinduism and Christianity in India.1 Hinduism and Christianity have been in interaction for a long time. According to some, Jesus and his spiritual journey which later took an institutional form in Christianity was deeply influenced by devotional streams in Vaishnavism and spiritual quest in Buddhism prevalent in India and Asia. Jesus himself is said to have come to India and Tibet during the missing years of his life in Palestine and learnt the art of yoga and spiritual quest (see Yogananda 2007).2 Many fellow seekers and fellow pilgrims such as Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Yogananda Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda have realized in Jesus a yogi, a spiritual master and an embodiment of Divinity and have found great affinity between inclusive streams of yoga in India and Asia and the spiritual quest of Jesus. On a related historical note, since the time of the Apostles, Christianity has been with India. St Thomas is said to have come to India, preach among the people and was tragically murdered. But since then his followers and their community have been part of Indian social and religious life. Then with the Portuguese colonial conquest of Goa, it opened up new limits and possibilities of evangelism, colonialism and cross-cultural denigration, confrontation and mutual challenge.

Complex Histories of Co-Walking from the Hindu Shores With the Portuguese colonial conquest of Goa, Western Christianity got a new lease of life in India. Robert de Nobili (1577–1656) came to India after *  This is an updated version of an essay which appeared in The Oxford Handbook of Asian Christianity edited by Professor Felix Wilfred, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014. I am grateful to Professor Felix Wilfred for his kind invitation, bibliographic help and patience and to Professor Francis X. Clooney of Harvard University for advice. I also thank two anonymous readers of this essay for their comments. I am grateful to Fr. Lawrence of Satya Nilayam for his kind permission to freely use the library for some period for doing research for this essay and to Fr. George, the Director, for his kindness.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-18

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  249 this as part of Jesuit missionary activities. He accepted indigenous mode of dressing and behaved as a Hindu sannyasi. But, as Amaladoss tells us, “He adopted local customs in order to win over the people of his day and to communicate his message, and not necessarily because he appreciated these customs” (Amaladoss et al. 2005: 33). When we come to the modern period, we see the deep significance of encounter with Christianity in the reforms of Hinduism and formation of challenging streams such as Brahma Samaj (see Painadath 2007). But even before this, encounter with Christianity had influenced Bhakti movements in India and varieties of critical spirituality which had challenged caste and feudal domination. As Gail Omvedt writes: While it may appear unrealistic to argue that Kabir’s “sai” was actually “Isa” (Jesus) and make him into a kind of crypto-Christian, it remains quite possible that among the later poets using the name “Kabir” one was indeed influenced by Christian ideas. After the sixteenth century, specifically after 1545 when Jesuits began to spread through north and south India, a wide compact of ideas can be seen. In Maharastra, a Krista Purana was reported as composed in 1626, as one of the earliest Konkani/Marathi writings, written by Fr. Thomas Stephen (1549– 1619), an English Jesuit. (2000: 65) Rammohan Roy (1772–1833), considered by many as the father of modern Bengal-Indian Renaissance, was influenced by the ethical precepts of Jesus. As Romain Rolland writes: “Roy extracted from Christianity its ethical system, but rejected the divinity of Christ, just as he rejected the Hindu incarnations” (Rolland 1954: 103). He was also influenced by Islam, its lack of idolatry and monotheism. In fact, his first book was on Islam entitled Tuhfat-ul-Muwathiddin (A Present to the Believers in One God; a treatise in Persian with a preface in Arabic language). Roy’s encounter with Christianity made him realize the ethical significance of religion and with this he wanted to fight against cruel practices in Hinduism such as Sati. His interpretation of Christianity was challenged by evangelical and doctrinaire Christians of the time such as Marshman who insisted on the significance of baptism and dogma. But in this insistence, Christianity lost a chance to creatively engage itself with the ethical and wider challenges of society beyond doctrinaire assertion and dogma. Unfortunately the situation is not much different now even after two hundred years.3 Keshab Candra Sen (1838–1884), Roy’s successor in Brahma Samaj, continued the creative dialogue with both Hinduism and Christianity, but he sought to bring devotion to Roy’s rationalism.4 If Roy had missed dialogue with indigenous devotional stream of Bengal and India such as the great Chaitanya movement which had transformed the religious situation in medieval India, making it anti-caste and open to dialogue with Islam, Keshab brought the Chaitanya stream to Brahmo Samaj thus widening the

250  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha social base of Brahmo Samaj.5 In this, he would have been definitely influenced by his meeting with Sri Ramakrishna though some also think that Keshab also influenced Ramakrishna.6 Keshab introduced a new form of worship in the mother language (cf. Mukherjee 1992). Keshab wrote creatively in both Bengali and English and he contributed to a new style in Bengali prose which would have brought him closer in his communication and interaction with ordinary people of Bengal.7 In his engagement with Christianity, Keshab offered his own concept and realization of Oriental Christ: “Behold! He cometh to us in his long flowing garment, his dress and feature altogether Oriental” (in Thomas 1970: 70). Keshab also focused on the need to develop indigenous Christianity and develop a national church which is Christ-centered, rather than narrowly church-centered. What Thomas had written more than 40 years ago on Keshab’s vision is still a challenge before Christianity in India, Asia and the world: the idea of a Christ-centered integration of the Indian and Western religious and cultural heritages, expressing itself in an indigenous Christianity, is highly relevant to the future of the Christian church in India. In fact, the Church of South India has written into its constitution that it stands for a Church expressing the universality of Christ in indigenous thought-patterns and life-forms of the Indian people. In view of the rapid changes taking place in these thought-patterns and life-forms, it is necessary to say that the church must become indigenous not to an India that is past, but to contemporary India in which the religious and cultural traditions of its hoary past are themselves seeking reintegration within the context of the new humanism relevant to the developing secular, pluralistic and open society.8 P.C. Mazoomdar (1840–1905), Keshab’s successor in Brahmo Samaj also followed his theme of Oriental Christ. For Mazoomdar, if “the light of Oriental Christ and mystic devotion is allowed to fall upon the “ecclesiastical figure of the Sweet Prophet of Nazareth, that figure will be illumined with strange and unknown radiance” (quoted in Thomas 1970: 83). Along with his realization of Oriental Christ, Mazoomdar also laid emphasis on the significance of Holy Spirit in life and the world. His emphasis on Spirit also brings us to a similar emphasis by Bede Griffiths9 from the other side of the shore though, for Thomas, Mazoomdar reduces “the Trinity to a Spirit-monism” (1970: 99). In the multiverse of Hindu engagement with Christianity in nineteenthcentury Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886) and Swami Vivekananda (1863– 1902) have been deeply influential. Sri Ramakrishna’s realization of Jesus and Madonna was a spiritual realization going beyond dogma and outward paraphernalia. Once Ramakrishna saw a picture of Madonna in one Jadu Mallick’s country house, and he was immediately moved by it. After this he also realized the presence of Jesus.10 Ramakrishna was also deeply moved by

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  251 the Biblical story of Peter walking on water: “A picture of this scene was later hung on the wall of his quarters in the temple; it was the only image that was borrowed from the Christian tradition” (Schouten 2012: 87). Swami Vivekananda “was formed by the mystical experience of his teacher” (ibid: 82). For him, The best commentary on the life of [Jesus] is his own life. “The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” That is what Christ says as the only way to salvation; he lays down no other way. He writes about Jesus: He had no other occupation in life, no other thought except that one, that he was a spirit. […] And not only so, but he, with his marvelous vision, had found that every man and woman, whether Jew or Gentile, whether rich or poor, whether saint or sinner, was the embodiment of the same undying spirit as himself. Therefore, the one work his whole life showed was to call upon them to realize their own spiritual nature. […] You are all Sons of God, immortal Spirit. “Know,” he declared, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” “I and my Father are one.” Dare you stand up and say, not only that “I am the Son of God,” but I shall also find in my heart of hearts that I and my Father are one? (Schouten 2011: 21) Swami Vivekananda realizes Jesus as a Son of the Orient and Christianity as a religion from Asia and the Orient.11 Like many from India, he is not bothered about the historicity12 of Jesus but realizes Him as God: “If I, as an Oriental, have to worship Jesus of Nazareth, there is only one way left to me, that is, to worship him as God and nothing else” (ibid: 23). Unlike Rammohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda looks at Sermon on the Mount as not primarily ethical; he was not impressed by the moral precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. […] He once called the famous Golden Rule, with which the Sermon on the Mount ends, “excessively vulgar” because of the orientation to the Self. For him, the heart of all religion was to transcend the orientation to the self and to achieve unity with the godhead. One text in the Sermon on the Mount stood out, in his view, i.e., “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). (Schouten 2012: 98) But from this it is not helpful to make a contrast between ethical Christ and mystical Christ in Swami Vivekananda.13 Swami Vivekananda was deeply influenced by the ethical and practical work of Jesus as his mystical and spiritual work. He was concerned with ethical aspects of religion and

252  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha society and in their transformation through what he called practical Vedanta. As Thomas aptly puts it: “it is possible to look at Vivekananda’s religion as an attempt to synthesize Advaita Vedanta with Christian philanthropy” (1970: 246). But Vivekananda’s practical Vedanta was not just philanthropy; it was also an engagement in practical mysticism as it was with Sri Ramakrishna. In fact, Sri Ramakrishna brought the challenge of transformation of suffering as the central challenge before any religion, and especially Hinduism, and it is said that he once kicked Swami Vivekananda in his mouth to make him realize that he should not just hanker after his own salvation, rather work for the amelioration of suffering such as poverty and transformation of the world.14 It is the realization of Jesus which had played a key role in the formation of Sri Ramakrishna Mission. Swami Vivekananda founded the order, telling to his fellow walkers the story of Jesus Christ.15 Seekers in the Sri Ramakrishna-Vivekananda stream have continued to undertake their own journey of Jesus realization and formally Christmas is a holiday in Sri Ramakrishna mission—a tradition started by Swami Brahmananda who succeeded Swami Vivekananda. This has inspired some Hindus such as Vengal Chakkarai who was a prominent Christian nationalist and theologian to embrace Christianity.16 Of many monks from Sri Ramakrishna Mission who have written about Christ such as Swami Akhilananda who wrote Hindu View of Christ, Swami Ranganathananda’s Christ We Adore calls for our own co-walking realization of Jesus. Like Swami Vivekananda, for Swami Ranganathananda, “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17: 21) has “extraordinary significance for Hindus” (Schouten 2012: 100). As Schouten tells us: Ranganathananda also interprets “within you” as “in your inner self”: the Kingdom of God can be experienced in the inner life. Pureness in heart is a precondition for sharing in this kingdom. But whoever fulfils this condition can realize unity with God and thus see God.17 (ibid: 100) Thus an encounter with Christianity in Ramakrishna-Vivekananda stream was a decisive step in the shaping of modern Hinduism which also led to much deeper and wider turns and cross-currents of reconstruction, creativity and confrontations (confronting one’s tradition as Swami Vivekananda had done) compared to what had happened during the days of Brahmo Samaj.18 Yogananda Paramahansa (1893–1952), the spiritual seeker from India who has inspired millions across the world also realizes Jesus as a yogi and a spiritual teacher.19 Philosopher S. Radhakrishna (1888–1975) realizes Jesus in terms of sacrifice of ego.20 This also finds a resonance in the Christian theological interpretation of Christ and Trinity, which also realizes the significance of sacrifice (cf. Anand 2004). For instance, Drawing inspiration from Vedic notion of Purusa as Jagnya, Subhash Anand

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  253 develops a notion of Trinity and God as Self-giving: “the Father is the Father because He gives himself totally to the Son; the Son is the Son because He gives himself totally to the Father; and the Spirit is precisely this […] mutual self-giving” (2004: 45). He presents similar views of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: Father’s self-utterance in the generation of the Son is an initial “kenosis” within the Godhead that underpins all subsequent kenosis. For the Father strips himself, without remainder, of his Godhead and hands it over to the Son […] Inherent in Father’s love is an absolute renunciation: he will not be God for himself alone. He lets go of his divinity. (ibid: 46) The theme of sacrifice brings us to Gandhi’s (1869–1948) realization of Jesus, engagement with and challenge to Christianity. Gandhi realized Jesus as a Satyagrahi and in his engagement with and challenge to Christianity realized cross in societies and histories. Many Christians realized Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and freedom struggles as bearing a cross21 for liberation while others sided with the imperialist and colonialist forces. S.K. George was one such Christian who was inspired by Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement of 1919–1921 and took part in it, which “made real to his youthful mind the idealism and passion of Jesus of Nazareth’” (Thomas 1970: 219). “And in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930–1932 he felt his Christian duty ‘to appeal to all Indian Christians to join in and act as custodians of non-violence” (ibid). “But for this he not only lost his job in the theological college in Calcutta where he was teaching but his affiliation with church.” But he was not deterred by this and lived his life for realization of satyagraha and an “undogmatic Christianity” (ibid).22 George took part in India’s freedom struggle but he was not alone. Many Christians took part in India’s freedom struggle.23 In his book, Gandhi’s Challenge to Christianity, George tells us about Gandhi as a spiritual fact24 having demonstrated “how the Sermon on the Mount can be practical politics” (1939: 25). In his foreword to this book, Radhakrishna also writes: Whatever the Continental theologian may say, it is impossible for the Indian Christian to resist the impression that God has been present in the age-long struggle of man for light. The fact of Gandhi is a challenge to the exclusive claims of Christianity.25 (ibid: 9) In his engagement with Christianity, Gandhi was deeply influenced by Sermon on the Mount and he found similarity between the Sermon and the Gita. Gandhi was also influenced by Tolstoy’s understanding of Christianity.26 In his journey of life Gandhi felt “great leaning to Christianity and for a time wavered between Christianity and Hinduism. But in the end, he ‘saw no reason for changing his religion’” (Thomas 1970: 210).

254  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Gandhi was opposed to conversion to Christianity using gullible means. His first priority was reform of one’s religion. Gandhi’s critique of conversion raised issues of responsibility to reform one’s religion of birth but his was not a closed approach to one’s own religion as he himself was wavering between Hinduism and Christianity seriously considering to convert to the later at one time.27 But Bishop Azariah, the Bishop of Dronakal, challenged Gandhi’s view on conversion by arguing that conversion is not only led by foreign missionaries but also by people like himself who had grown up from the soil of suffering and was working with them for their amelioration and transformation.28 But Gandhi’s opposition to conversion is not an instance of what Omvedt (2000) calls his “soft Hindutva.” She is here swayed away by her own judgmental enthusiasm and seems not to try to understand Gandhi’s own position as well as his border-crossing realizations. As the above paragraph says, Gandhi was not relating to Christians only as a Hindu, he was seeking to realize himself as simultaneously Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and many more.29 In tune with many spiritual seekers from Hinduism and India whom we have discussed in the previous pages, Deepak Chopra (2008: 9) presents us his realization of a Third Jesus “who taught his followers how to reach the God-consciousness.” For Chopra, “The first Jesus was a rabbi who wandered the shores of Northern Galilee many centuries ago” (2008: 8). The second Jesus is a product of theological construction what Rajeev Malhotra (2011) calls the Nicean creed: Millions of people worship another Jesus, however, who never existed, who does not even lay claim to the fleeting substance of the first Jesus. This is the Jesus built up over thousands of years by theologians and other scholars. He is the Holy Ghost, the Three-in-One Christ, the source of sacraments and prayers that were unknown to the rabbi Jesus when he walked the earth. (ibid: 9) Chopra further writes: “The idea of the Second Coming has been especially destructive to Jesus’ intentions, because it postpones what needs to happen now. The Third coming—finding God-consciousness through your own efforts—happens in the present” (ibid: 10). To this multiverse of Hindu engagement with Christianity, we can invite realizations of Chitta Ranjan Das (1923–2011), a creative thinker from Odisha. In his “Jesus Christ, White, Black or Yellow?” Das tells us: “whatever might be said about the Jesus in history, Jesus has come to be one of the very important inspiration in mankind’s history and continues to be that inspiration even today” (2020: 44). Like many of his fellow seekers, Das urges us to go beyond a merely historicist understanding of Jesus and here urges us to realize the mystical quest of Meister Eckhart:

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  255 For Eckhart, Jesus was not born only once at one particular point of history. He is being born every moment of our life and world’s life. […] Jesus ceases to be only a happening in history, he becomes a challenge instead. (Das 2020: 47; also see Mieth 2009) But to realize this we need to go beyond the theological construction of Jesus including the Papal condemnation of life of poverty of Jesus.30

Hindu Christian Engagement: From the Shore of Christian Journey As Hindus have realized Jesus and Christianity with their own initial starting points in a journey of unfolding realizations, so have Christians who have sought to understand not only Hinduism but also Jesus and Christianity with an immersion in some of the spiritual pathways of Hinduism. Here we can begin with the journey of Jesus himself. It is believed that Jesus himself came to India and Tibet during the missing years of his life in Palestine and learnt from the spiritual practices of these lands. Both the devotional stream of Krishna and the Vaishnavas and the spiritual seeking of Buddhism influenced Jesus.31 Down the ages Christians have been influenced by their participation in the cultural and spiritual journey of Hindus which unfortunately has also meant retaining or adapting one’s caste practice. Like our previous section, here we can focus on a few exemplary voices their working with what Victoria Harrison (2011) calls “exemplary reasoning.”32 We come right to the modern period and begin with Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya (1861–1907). Upadhyaya was a classmate of Swami Vivekananda. He accepted Christianity and was baptized. He also took part in the Swadeshi movement in Bengal and worked with revolutionaries such as Sri Aurobindo. But Upadhyaya did not renounce Hinduism, rather he continued to be a Hindu Catholic. Upadhyaya was the first to use the name Satchidananda for the “Christian idea of Trinity within Christian church” (Thomas 1970: 102). Upadhyaya used Vedanta to understand Christian theology but here used the Thomist framework, not the mystical framework of Swami Vivekananda. Upadhyaya established an Ashram and introduced worship of Sarasvati—the Goddess of Learning—in his Ashram. About his journey as a Catholic Hindu he wrote: “By birth we are Hindus and shall remain Hindu till death. But as Dvija [twice born] by virtue of our sacramental rebirth, we are catholics” (quoted in Thomas 1970: 109). Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922) is another exemplary seeker who refused easy categorization and denominational fixation. She was a great wanderer, a courageous rebel and a creative being. She was born in a Brahmin family and had travelled with her parents the nook and corner of this country on foot. Ramabai was a critic of patriarchal Hinduism. When she accepted baptism while Brahmin reformers such as Ranade criticized her, Jyotirao Phule welcomed it and supported her (cf. Kosambi 2000; Omvedt 2008).

256  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Ramabai established a woman’s home for widow and destitute woman called Mutkisadan (abode of liberation) in Khedgaon near Pune. Here she taught women how to live independently learning different trades, skills and vocations of life. Ramabai learnt Hebrew and translated Bible into Marathi. This was more creative and communicative compared to earlier missionary translation, which was heavily Sanskritic.33 Ramabai lectured in the U.S. about the same time as Swami Vivekanda was lecturing. She told her audience about the plight of high caste Hindu women and came into confrontation with Swami Vivekananda about missing this aspect of Hinduism in his representation of Hinduism to the West. But with her self-critical interrogation of her own Brahminical tradition, she was not an uncritical convert to the other side as well. As Schouten writes: “While defending the Christian faith to Indian readers, she attempted to give English readers a better understanding of India’s high civilization. […] Like Rammohan Roy, she objected to the designation ‘heathen’ for a Hindu” (2012: 74).34 Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889–1929) was a convert to Christianity from the Sikh path and like Ramabai was not comfortable with denominational fixation. He lived the life of a wondering monk moving in between India and Tibet and like Ramabai also travelled around the world (Andrews 1934). He was committed to an indigenous church in India: “The water of life has hitherto been offered by thirsting souls in a European vessel. Only when it is given in an Eastern bowl will it be accepted by simple men and women who seek the truth” (Andrews 1934: 86–87). C.F. Andrews (1871–1940) came to India as an Anglican priest and soon immersed himself with freedom struggle of India as well as in the struggle for dignity on the part of the indentured Indians in Fiji, South Africa and around the world. He taught at St. Stephens and Tagore’s Santiniketan (see Chaturvedi and Sykes 1949).35 Bede Griffiths and Swami Abishiktananda (original name Henri Le Saux) also realized the spiritual paths in Hinduism and made deep dialogues with Vedanta and other streams of seeking realizations. Henri Le Saux, later known as Swami Abishiktananda (1910–1973), a Benedictine priest from France, came to India in 1949. In 1950, together with Fr Monchanin, who had come a decade earlier, he founded an Ashram near Trichy named Shantivanam. He was deeply influenced by Ramana Maharshi and also lived in a cave in Thiruvanmalai for some time. For Ramana, “the guhantara, the cave of the heart, the interior space of experience resolved all dualism, and it is this imagery that is the central symbol in Abhisiktananda’s writing” (Visvanathan 2007: 163). About his experience of Advaita, Swami Abishiktananda writes: “The most terrifying experience for the Christian who experience Advaita is that the Lord himself goes away—it appears to tear him away from the Church and the sacraments which bind him to Christ” (quoted in Visvanathan 2007: 174). He also writes: The more I live in India, and the more I am in touch with Hindus, the more certain I am that only spiritual means will transmit the message of the Gospel. The church was poor and a pariah under the Roman

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  257 Empire during the first three centuries, but she was victorious. Here, in four centuries with money, good works, protection and [colonial] power and a host of missionaries, we have barely scratched the surface of India.36 (ibid: 181; see Abhisiktananda 1975) Bede Griffiths also had a deep appreciation for the spiritual life of India: “The first thing that I have learned is a simplicity of life which before I would have not thought possible. India has a way of reducing human needs to a minimum” (Griffiths 1976: 1). He also stayed in Shantivanam for a long time. Griffiths challenges us to realize the mystical dimension of Christianity and here he finds affinity between Sankara and Aquinas: “Sankara and Aquinas were both mystics who had experienced the reality of the world which transcends the senses and could bring their intelligence to bear on that” (ibid: 105). Griffiths finds yoga a spiritual way for the Christians as well, finding similarity between the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Christian yoga.37 The creative border-crossing and spiritual quest of Abishiktananda and Griffiths find a resonance in many Christians from India (see Painadath 2007). They both belonged to the Christian Ashram movement of India though not totally closed within a view of Ashram as an institution. It must be noted that there is a long tradition of Ashram movement in India nurtured by such pioneering initiatives such as the Christa Prema Seva Ashram in Sivajinagar, Maharastra, founded in 1927 by Anglican John “Jack” Winslow. In this field, along with Santivanam, Karisumala Ashram in Kerala is another whose founder Fr. Francis Acharya (originally known as Fr. Francis Mahieu, a Cistercian monk from Belgium) had stayed in Shantivanm in his early days as he had also drawn inspiration from Gandhi, especially Gandhi’s concept of bread labor.38 Samkeeksha Center for Indian Spirituality based in Kalady, the birth place of Shankar, is another which works with inter-religious dialogue. It also pleads for creative border-crossing between Hinduism and Christianity. Sebastian Painadath from Sameeksha, as in one of the opening paragraphs of this essay, urges us to realize how Christians and Hindus can simultaneously realize the prophetic and mystical dimension in their social, religious and spiritual lives. Realizing the mystical dimension would help Christianity go beyond its exclusivism and realizing the prophetic dimension would help Hinduism to go beyond oppressive structures of many kinds such as caste system and realize self and social liberation. Michael Amaladoss and Subhash Anand also bring deep realization to this journey of Hindu–Christian mutual co-realization. In his essay, “From Syncretism to Harmony,” Michael Amladoss tells us about his own journey as a Hindu Christian: We can think of another standpoint from within. For me, an Indian Christian, Hinduism is not an “other” religion, as it is a foreign missionary. It is the religion of my ancestors. God has spoken to my

258  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha ancestors through it. It is part of my tradition. I have my roots in it. I could say that I have two roots: Hinduism and Christianity. I will not find myself till I can discover and integrate the riches and human creativity—both these traditions have given to me. I am not anymore looking at Hindu scriptures, symbols and rituals from the outside as “other,” but from within as “mine.” Obviously I cannot have my feet in two boats at the same time. I will have to find a personal integration. Being a Christian, my integration of other religious elements will be around my experience of Jesus. I do not have to reject the Christian historical tradition but I will have to see that the Christian and Hindu traditions interact within me and my community in a creative manner. I will then be not only an “Indian Christian,” but a “Hindu-Christian,” my main identity being Christian. What I say here about Hinduism in my own personal case can be applied by others to Buddhism, Islam, Tribal, Dalits or other religions depending upon where their roots are. (Amaladoss 2008: 145) Subhash Anand also embodies inspiring openness in his participation with some of the rivers of Hinduism. He applies the Upanishadic principle of Bandhu, which means friendship to realize a more creative inter-relationship between Hindus and Christians theologically and practically. He tells us that when he is in a chapel he realizes Natraj as the Lord of Dance and also Christ as Dance.39 He presents Natraja as a holistic Christian icon: “Indeed, Jesus is the Dance of God, nay he is also the Lord of Dance” (2004: 167; also see Anand 1994). Anand urges us to realize that Siva is not only male but also female, Siva is a womb which can also challenge us to realize Jesus as a mother, as a womb.40 Francis X. Clooney (2010) has explored some of the similarities between feminine spirituality in Hinduism and Christianity as part of a project of cross-cultural theology. But Clooney shares with us with inspiring honesty the difficulty of radically crossing one’s identity as a Christian, a journey we find in Griffiths and Abhishiktananda. Similarly, Felix Wilfred also challenges Christian theology and practice for more radical opening to Hinduism. Wilfred pleads for a Christian relativism as part of going beyond exclusive claims to truth. He also urges Christian institutions to go beyond their closed organizational logic and be part of wider democratic civil society of accountability, transparency and equal participation (Wilfred 2000). Wilfred challenges for a radical border-crossing in his Margins: Site of Asian Theologies: Reading the New Testament will reveal how it has all the things necessary for salvation. But I have been struck by the lack of one thing in the New Testament: the humour. Though the gospels are meant to convey joy and peace, yet humour does not seem to have a due place. A reading of the divine intervention in human history as through the avatar of Sri Krishna would bring in the element of play, both in God and also in human life. This play, in reality, is not expression of any frivolity. Through the play (lila) of

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  259 Krishna is expressed the unbound freedom of God and God’s creation. In fact creation is viewed as the play of God. What is happening at the microcosmic level with the play of Krishna is in fact the mirror of the macrocosmic reality of infinite freedom. […] The magnetic pull of the milkmaids towards Krishna playing flute is nothing but the irresistible way the Divine power draws everything to itself. In Christian tradition we speak of the way the cross as the power of God’s mystery draws us all […] In short, a reading of the New Testament symbolism of the cross through the story of Krishna playing flute could be very enriching for both the traditions. A cross-scriptural reading of the New Testament message of the cross with the play and aesthetics (rasa) involved in the play of flute by Krishna could save us also from the possible danger of masochistic trends.41 (2008: 182)

Interrogating Available Tropes of Hindu-Christian Engagement: Dalits and Adivasis Hindus are not homogeneous. Scheduled Castes who are now called Dalits constitute a major part of Hindu society. Dalits oppose Brahminical Hinduism and they as well as Dalit Christians in particular interrogate the terms such as Hindu Christians or Catholic Christians. For them this is the language and realization offered by what Frynkenberg (2010) calls “trophies of grace,” the high caste Hindu converts to Christianity who were preoccupied with mystical and other philosophical issues such as the significance of Vedanta in interpreting Christian Trinity.42 They did not experience the pangs of social discrimination and their individual conversion did not alter the group humiliation of Dalits. Dalit Christians have interrogated the caste-ridden Christian church as well Hindu society. In Tamil Nadu, there is a vibrant movement of Dalit Christians which question casteist church practice as well as the wider social practice of caste domination and exclusion both theoretically and practically.43 As David Mosse (2010) tells us, the priests from Dalit background question the caste bias of main-stream churches and they question the paternalism of the churches (also see Devasahayam 1996; Dhavamony 2009).44 While other Scheduled Castes and Dalits get benefit of reservations, Dalit Christians are not entitled to it. There is now a long struggle to reverse this decision. But in the meantime, many Dalit Christians in the government schools use Hindu names to be able to avail of reservation benefits (Kumar & Robinson 2010). Dalit Christians assert their own theology. According to Prasanna Kumari, Luther’s theology of cross is most suited to the Dalit condition with their suffering (cf. Meshak 2007). A. Arul Maria Raj also talks about subversive Dalit theology and spirituality. For Sathiananthan Clarke (1998), Dalits use drums in their day to day life. Dalit theology and spirituality is a theology and spirituality of drums—of beating drums against oppression and for liberation. For Clarke,

260  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha the drum represents the Christic presence among the Dalits. […] the drum depicts the “No” of the Paraiyar to the colonizing and demonizing tendencies of the valuational system of caste communities. […] The way of the suffering and path of Christ are intimately bound up in the drum. (1998: 188, 192, 194; also see Clarke et al. 2010; Skolimoswki 1999) Dalit Christians here not only build on symbols of their own life worlds such drum and the available Christian theological resources such as the Lutheran theology of cross. They also build on centuries of Nirguna and critical spirituality cultivated by seekers and challengers such as Ravidas and Kabir (Robinson 2003). For example, in an ethnographic work on a Dalit from Uttar Pradesh named Massih, Mathew Schmalz tells about the continued significance of the Kabir tradition for the Dalits as well as Dalit Christians. John Massih joined a Christian Asrham of inculturation and found that in this place, there was no dialogue with the traditions of Kabir and Ravidas: “Certainly, Kabir and Ravidas were as Indian as Patanjali or Shankara. But one did not hear their name mentioned in the ashram, either in morning meditation or in Indian Christian experience” (Schmalz 2010: 200).45 Massih wrote a poem expressing his marginalization: “How can one continue the struggle when one crosses over his life that lies before him, like a broken mirror […] Oh, but I am a tiger in cage.”46 Christianity has also spread among the tribals of India who are called Adivasis through many processes including conversion which has been a subject of ire by many Hindus. But on the part of tribals, there is also an emergent move towards indigenization. Christian conversion has completely changed the religious affiliation of tribals in places like Nagaland. But there is also a yearning for roots here which is similar to that demonstrated in the longing of a Keshab Chandra Sen, a Pandita Ramabai or a Upadhyaya or a Amaladoss. A Christian leader from Nagaland tells us: I, like my Nagas, am a Christian, but I am not a European. I have a relationship with my God. Now my God can speak to me in dreams, just as happened to my Anglican ancestors. I do not have to be like Anglicans or Catholics and go through all those rituals. I do not need them. What I am talking about is Naga Christianity—an indigenous Naga Christianity. (quoted in Frynkenberg 2010: 443) We see the move towards indigenous Christianity among the tribals which is also part of an emergent tribal theology (see Lalruatkima 2010). This revival is part of a wider tribal awakening which we see in movements such as Danyi Polo in Arunachal Pradesh. But Nancy Lobo tells us about this complex process: through the process of indigenization the Catholic church seeks today to enmesh itself with the culture of its different community of believers.

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  261 It is possible to be Christian and Adivasi […] On the other hand, there are processes at work within the Catholic church itself that might keep elite thinking and control effective in place.47 (Lobo 2010: 231) So movement towards Christianity in terms of conversion or the selfreflective moves of Christians and Christian communities have been accompanied by movements of indigenization and enculturation. While earlier these were thought of in terms of high-caste, Sanskritic and frames of reference such as Vedanta. Now these have been much more broadened involving multiple dialogues with histories, streams of alternative spirituality such as Kabir’s, Dalit and Adivasi spirituality.48 Such moves have also led to creative efforts in literature, art and paintings. Here the works of Jyoti Sahi and Susheila Williams are inspiring. Sahi painted many pictures of Jesus embodying deeper cross-cultural spiritual realizations. Williams’s picture “The Man on a Village Tree” shows Jesus crucified in a tree.49

Hindu-Christian Engagement: Colonialism, Evangelism and Conversion Hindu-Christian engagement took a complex turn with the coming of British colonial power in India (see Hedlund 2012, Hancock 2010). East Indian company did not encourage missionaries and the first European missionaries settled in areas other than ruled by the company such as the Danes. But slowly the situation changed and Christianity was seen by the local population as a ruling power. Missionaries and evangelists worked for conversion. They denigrated Hindu religion which created unease among the Hindus. But they also challenged practices such as caste which led to reform. Many Hindu organizations such as Ramakrishna Mission and Arya Samaj modeled their social service work Christian social service institutions such as schools and hospitals.50 While the Raj did not necessarily support the missionaries which Frynkenberg calls Hindu Raj, members of groups such as Bibhuti Sangha in Madras opposed Christian missionaries and attacked the converts. But despite this in many parts of India conversion from marginalized section of society went on. In places like South Travancore, London Missionary Society played an important role in this. Dick Kooiman’s (1989) study of it shows us how the missionary work of LMS presented a way out for low-castes such as Shanars who later on came to be known as Nadars. With the inspiration from the missionaries Shanars protested against the dress code of the prevailing caste-ridden society such as Shanar women not allowed to wear upper garment (also see Gnanadason 1994). But in terms of cultural interaction that the work of missionaries created Koiman presents us an interesting picture. Caste Hindus came to hear the lectures of Samuel Mateer, a pioneer of the indigenization of church who transferred administrative responsibility to local people and ordained many

262  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha locals as ministers. But the caste Hindus were not interested in conversion. While the low-caste converted and supported the work of his mission, they were not interested in scripture nor in the content of the belief. They were interested in material gains to their own condition of life.51 But their primacy on material benefit has been many a time used a judgmental stick to beat their act of conversion. Here Felix Wilfred (2012) challenges us to go beyond such a dualistic anthropology and spirituality. Wilfred asks: why conversion for the sake of spiritual illumination is necessarily superior to what is done for the realization of one’s survival. Wilfred here challenges us to critically think beyond judgmental categories such as rice Christians, i.e. those Christians who converted for the sake of getting rice for their belly.52 For Wilfred and other liberation theologians such as Walter Fernandez, conversion is not “an encounter between Hinduism and Christianity, but a protest on the part of Dalits against social injustice” (Kim 2012: 203). But coming to our historical story of conversion in South Travancore, it must be noted that here not all marginalized groups converted to Christianity. While Shanars converted, Iravazas found a way in the reform movement of Narayana Guru.53 In South Travancore also there emerged a religious reformer named Muttukuti who presented himself as an incarnation of Vishnu and offered to the untouchable castes alternative pathways of recognition and dignity (cf. Patrick 2003). He inspired a movement known as Aya Vali which gave “the subordinated Canars a realm of self-assertion, autonomy and agency, denied to them in the public sphere and in the economic and political realm” (ibid: vii). But “even as one section of society acknowledged Muttukuti as their religious leader, the missionaries of London Missionary Society, both of foreign and local origin, perceived him to be a threat to their missionary enterprises. They characterized him as Satan” (Patrick 2003: 84). Missionary work and conversion created ripples in the existing society. It also led to new creativity as well as new ways of justifying old caste practice. For example, in Tamilnadu, H.A. Krishna Pillai (1827–1900) published Rakshany Yatrikam which was a Tamil adaptation of Pilgrim's Progress. It was “the work of a lifetime. In over 4,000 verses, it expressed depths of Christian thought and feeling within the classical idiom of the ancient Sangam poets” (Frynkenberg 2010: 225).54 For Dennis Hudson, his poetry shows both the continuity with the past in terms of a shared mystical vocabulary between Shrivaishnavism and Christianity, and the rupture that Krishna Pillai elaborates through his verse, when he describes, as he believes the delusions of his former religious life and the clarity of the Christian marga. (quoted in Visvanathan 1993: 14) But Krishna Pillai’s brother Muttaiya Pillai wrote a “forceful treatise on the nature of difference and why symbols of difference were important to maintain” (ibid).

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  263

Hindu-Christian Engagement: Continued and Contemporary Challenges Colonialism, evangelism and conversion are critical questions which are not just confined to the past. For a long time, Hindus have been uneasy with the forces of conversion. Critics of forceful and fraudulent conversion includes Gandhi as well as forces of Hindu extremist organizations such as Rastriya Swayam Sevak and Bajrang Dal (Shourie 1994). But for this, it is not correct to group all these critics together (see Nadkarni 2003, 2008). Many Hindus feel offended the way their religions are portrayed by the missionaries and evangelists and would like to contribute to a transformation of such conditions of humiliation and disrespect. Some of these forces have now become more powerful and aggressive. For example, groups such as Jehova’s Witnesses and the Pentecostals openly preach that their religion is the best and conversion is the only route left for non-Christians for realizing salvation. In post-independent India there have been several legislations to address such concerns as well as to stop forcible and gullible conversion (see Mehta 2011). But these legislative moves are not innocent; they are enmeshed in wider politics of group identity, fear as well as the will to dominate. With all these difficulties, in the last quarter century Hindu extremist forces have targeted Christians and Christian communities in places like Gujarat and Odisha. The attack against Christians in Dang in the 1990s, the cruel and barbaric burning of Graham Staines and his two little sons Philip and Timothy, the murder of Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati in 2008 and the ensuring anti-Christian riots and violence is a cruel reminder of the persisting tension and violence in the relations between Hindus and Christians (cf. Giri 2004, 2009).

The Multiverse of Hindu-Christian Relations: Limits and Possibilities In this journey, we have touched several aspects and dimensions of HinduChristian relations—historical, sociological, theological, spiritual and ontological. Hindus and Christians have interacted with each other in complex fields of power, belief as well as quest for truth and self-realization. In this complex field, participants have interacted with each other not only as Hindu and Christians but have sought to realize themselves as seeking selves. In this seeking we find an ontological dimension of Hindu-Christian engagement which is not confined to ontology as essence or group identity but embodies a seeking self in quest for unbounded realization. This is a weak and practical ontology of vulnerability, love and labor (cf. Vattimo 1999; Dallmayr 2005). We find glimpses of this quest in Jesus himself as well as in Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Deepak Chopra, Chitta Ranjan Das, Bede Griffiths, Swami Abhishiktananda, Felix Wilfred, Subhash Anand, Michael Almaladoss and Sebastian Painadath. These selves have also

264  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha created ripples in group relations and the future of Hindu-Christian engagement depends upon further creative quest at the level of self and society. This then brings us to the much talked about issue of the historical and the mystical.55 Indian seekers in this multiverse of engagement such as Swami Vivekananda, Gandhi and Chitta Ranjan Das have not been dismissive of their responsibility to history but they have realized the limits of the historical and the significance of mystical in the direction of practical mysticism which includes cultivation of both the transcendental and immanent, material and spiritual, self as well as group. It seems further cultivation of practical mysticism going beyond the limits of dualism of history and mysticism and cultivation of simultaneous prophetic-mystical streams in both Hinduism and Christianity is a way out of the continued legacy of violence and lack of respect which still poisons part of our fields of life and society in India, Asia and the world.56

Notes 1 Here the following thoughts are helpful: To be a good Hindu also meant that I would be a good Christian. There was no need for me to join your crowd to be a believer in the beauty of the teaching of Jesus or try to follow his example. Mohanddas Karamchand Gandhi: But how many churches are willing to worship Krishna or Siva as the same universal God described in the Bible? […] Jewish and Christian religions cannot afford to compromise on their history-centric beliefs, because to do so would be tantamount to surrendering their claim of unique access to knowledge of God’s will. (Malhotra 2011: pp, 23, 93) The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or else no Christian at all. (Rahner 1973: 149) The term “Christian” is more of an adjective than a noun. The term […] is a property of something else, a concept that implies “diminishment”—which is indicative of positional subordination. […] there was never such a thing, nor is there any such thing as a purely “Indian” Christian, any basic or generic sense. Only more earth-bound, “hybrid,” or “hyphenated” forms of Christians can be implied within historical understandings. Such Christians were, and are, pinned to the earth by their local culture and languages—and most of all, by their birth (jat), or caste. (Frynkenberg 2010: 458) 2 Though there are controversies about it, Yogananda Paramahansha (2007) in his book refers to archival work and documentary evidence about it. 3 As Wilfred (2010: 217) writes: When Ram Mohan Ray, the father of Indian Renaissance, wrote a little book on “The Precept of Jesus” he was attempting to read universal ethics in the life and teachings of. Ethics in the Gospels was the beginning of a Hindu appraisal of Christianity in modern times […] But then sadly, instead of

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  265 welcoming his effort to relate Jesus the moral teacher with Indian situation, his approach was resisted by missionaries, because it did not tally with what they thought was the Christian belief system. […] A meaningful presence of Christianity in Asia seems to lie in what it could offer in terms of ethics than in terms of beliefs. (emphasis added) 4 It is to be noted that on March 6, 1881 Keshab celebrated “the Blessed Sacrament with rice and water instead of bread and wine” (Rolland 1954: 132). 5 Omvedt talks about the elitist character of Roy: [Roy’s arguments] were focused on the elite. […] In fact, in presenting a religion of rationality and anti-idolatry monotheism, he was increasing the differentiation of the bhadralok from the subaltern masses—who were Vaishnavite devotee of one or another sect, who were not troubled by the problems of widow remarriage and sati but were very much troubled by caste. And caste was an issue that did not enter the agenda of the “Renaissance” elite reformers. (2008: 148) But Keshab “introduced Chaitanya into Brahmo religious practice” (Thomas 1970: 31). 6 Note here what Rolland writes about Keshub: A hyper-individualist by nature and doubtless just because this was the case, he early in his life recognized that part of evils of his country arose out of this same hyper-individualism, and that India needed to acquired a new moral conscience. “Let all souls be socialized and realized their unity with the people, the visible community.” The conception uniting the aristorcratic unitarianism of Roy to the Indian masses, put young Keshab into communion with the most ardent aspirations of the rising generation. Just as Vivekananda in after days […], Vivekananda believed religion to be necessary for the regeneration of race. (1954: 118–119) 7 According to his biographer Arun Kumar Mukherjee: Keshab developed a new style of Bengali prose—forceful, fluent, simple and communicative. [… He also] developed a new style of English prose—based on oratory. It was poetical oratory which married itself to his highly spiritual teaching as perfect music unto noble minds. (Mukherjee 1992: 59) 8 However, Thomas makes clear that Sen’s project of Christ-centered integration was different from building a “universal religion based on the equality of all religions” (1970: 73). 9 Though Rajeev Malhotra (2011) questions the equation of Spirit with Sakti, what Bede Griffiths (1976: 129) writes below resonates with many Hindus: The Spirit is the Sakti—the power—of the Godhead, the breath by which the Word is uttered, the energy which flows from the Father into the Word and overflows in the creation. It is by the Spirit that “ideas” in the Word are given form and substance and the creation comes into being. […] The Spirit is the feminine principle in the Godhead, the Mother of all creation. It is in her that the seeds of the Word are planted and she nurtures them and brings them forth in creation […] It is the Spirit which is continually drawing us into the

266  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha divine life. For the Spirit is that divine life latent in nature and becoming conscious in us. By the Spirit we know that we are not merely flesh and blood, formed from the matter of the universe, not merely the subject of sensations, feelings, imaginations and thoughts, but an energy of love which seeks always to transcend the barriers of space and time and to discover the Divine Life The above meditation and realization of Spirit as Sakti can be invitation to Christians especially Pentecostals who speak a lot about the Spirit. But while their Spirit seems to be mainly confined to gift of Tongues. Griffiths cross-cultural and spiritual realization of Spirit can be a transformative stream in contemporary Christianity not only in Asia but all over the world. 10 Ramakrishna’s biographer Romain Rolland writes about it: Sometimes about November, 1874, a certain Mallik, a Hindu of Calcutta, with a garden near Dakhineswar read the Bible to him. For the first time Ramakrishna met Christ. Shortly afterwards the word was made flesh. The life of Jesus secretly pervaded him. One day when he was sitting in the room of a friend, a rich Hindu, he saw on the wall a picture representing the Madonna and the Child. The figures became alive. Then the expected came to pass according to the invariable order of the Spirit; the holy visions came close to him and entered into him so that his whole being was being impregnated with them. Then one afternoon in the grave of Dakhineswar he saw coming towards him a person with beautiful large eyes, a serene regond and a fair skin. Although he did not know who it was, he succumbed to the charm of his unknown guest. He drew near and a voice sang in the depths of Ramakrishna’s soul: Behold the Christ, who shed his heart’s blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the master Yogin, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love incarnate […] The son of Man embraced the son of the Mother, and became merged in him. Ramakrishna was lost in ecstasy. Once again he realised union with Brahman. Then gradually he came down to earth, but from that time he believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God. But for him Christ was not the only Incarnation. Buddha and Krishna were others India. (1954: 83, 87) 11 In his address Swami Vivekananda challenged his audience: With all your attempts to paint him with blue eyes and yellow hair, the Nazarene was still an Oriental. All the similies, the imagaries, in which the Bible is written—the scenes, the locations, the attitudes, the groups, the poetry, and symbol,—speak to you of the Orient, of the bright sky, of the heat, of the sun, of the desert, of the thirsty men and animals; of men and women coming with pitchers on their heads to fill them at wells; of the flocks, of the ploughmen, of the cultivation that is going on around; of the water-mill and wheel, of the mill-pond, of the millstones. All these are to be seen today in Asia. (2011: 11–12) 12 For Swami Vivekananda: We are not here to discuss how much of the New Testament is true, we are not here to discuss how much of that life is historical. […] But there is something behind it, something we want to imitate. […] You cannot imitate that which you never perceived. But there must have been a nucleus, a tremendous power that came down, a marvelous manifestation of spiritual power— and of that we are speaking. (2011: 22–23)

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  267 13 Thomas does this when he writes: “Vivekananda rejects the ethical Christ for the mystic Christ […] the Sermon on the Mount, for Vivekananda, is not primarily ethics, but an expression of the spirituality of self-renunciation” (Thomas 1970: 125). 14 Chitta Ranjan Das used to often tell us about this story. Romain Rolland also makes an interesting remark that without this continuous challenge from Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda would have become another Dayananda Sarasvati: “Dayananda was what Vivekananda would have been, if he had not encountered Ramakrishna” (1954: 143). Both Swami Dayananda and Swami Vivekananda had enormous energy, but Rolland suggests that it is Ramakrishna’s influence which made the later socially committed to transforming suffering as well as open to other religions such as Christianity. While Swami Dayananda Sarasvati was also engaged with social upliftment, he lacked RamakrishnaVivekananda dialogical engagement with other religions. 15 About this it is written in one of the records of Ramarkrishna Mission: The story begins on a winter night in a village named Antpur not very far from Calcutta. Some young monks were gathered around a blazing fire under the open sky. They were all direct disciples of Ramakrishna […] That night, after a long session of meditation, Narendranath told his gurubhais the story of Jesus Christ, the mystery of His wondrous birth and death and His subsequent resurrection. Through the eloquence of Narendra, the boys were admitted to the apostolic world where in Paul had preached the gospel of the arisen Christ and Naren made his plea to them to become Christs themselves to realize God […] standing before dhuni (wood-fire), with the flames lighting up their countenances and cracking of the wood as the sole disturbance of their thoughts, they took the vow of Sannayasa before God and one another. (Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan Trust 2009: 9–10) Romain Rolland also writes about the initial period of the seminary and the mission: In this panorama of all the heroic and divine thoughts of humanity, we must again notice the place of honour which seems to have been given to Christ and the Gospels. These Hindu monks kept Good Friday, and they sang the Canticles of St. Francis. Naren spoke to them of Christian saints, the founders of the Western Orders. The Imitation of Jesus Christ was their bedside book together with the Bhagavad-Gita. Nevertheless there was never for a moment any question of enrolling themselves with the Church of Christ. They were and remained complete and uncompromising Vedantic Advaitists. But they incorporated in their faith all the faiths of the world. The waters of the Jordan mingled with their Ganga. (Rolland 2010: 8) 16 As Chakkarai tells us: the mere Scripture teaching would not have any impression on my mind and lately by the advent of Swami, whose conception of the catholicity of Vedanta destroyed my Hindu prejudices against Christianity as a foreign religion. It was he that first taught me to regard Christianity an essentially Oriental faith. (quoted in Pandian 2010: 34) 17 Schouten further tells us: Ranganathananda quotes two texts from the Upanishads in order to demonstrate that the goal in both religions is identical. These texts could be translated as “Verily, the self must be seen,” and “He who is without desire, sees

268  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha the greatness of the self” (Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad 11: 45; Katha Upanishad 1: 2: 20). Typical for the linguistic usage in the Ramakrishna Movement is that in both texts the words for “see” are translated by “realize.” All emphasis is on deliberate human endeavour. (2012: 100) 18 In this context, what Thomas writes below deserves our careful consideration: While Brahmoism as a movement of reform in Hinduism had absorbed a great many of the Christian notions about religion it had very shallow roots in the fundamental metaphysical framework of Hinduism. Nehemiah Goreh was certainly right in asserting that this metaphysical framework was Advaita Vedanta […] and, as he predicted, Brahmoism withered, without roots either in fundamental Hinduism or in Christian revelation. But what he did not predict did happen, namely the redefinition of Advaita Vedanta, with its assertion of its mystic center, but with a capacity to absorb into its framework the value of moral struggle and social service. (1970: 146) 19 Yogananda Paramahansa writes: We must know Jesus an Oriental Christ, a supreme Yogi who manifested full mastery of the universal science of God-Union, and thus could speak, and act as a Saviour with the voice and authority of God. He has been Westernized too much. (Yogananda 2007: 90) 20 In the words of Radhakrishnan: The abandonment of the ego is the identification with a fuller life and consciousness. The soul is raised to a sense of its universality. In Gethsemane, Christ as an individual felt that the ego should pass away […] The secret of the cross is the crucifixion of the ego and the yielding to the will of God. “Thy will be done.” (quoted in Thomas 1970: 100) In a recent essay, Jesudas Athyal also tells us that Radhakrishnan in his Eastern Religions and Western Thought attempts to “demonstrate inter alia that Christ and Christianity were influenced by many Eastern elements such as mysticism, asceticism and non-violence” (Athyal 2012: 578). 21 Speaking of his experience of being with Gandhi at his historic fast in Delhi, C.F. Andrews writes: Instinctively my gaze turned back to the frail, wasted, tortured spirit on the terrace by my side, bearing the sins and sorrows of his people […] And in that hour of vision, I knew more deeply, in my own personal life, the meaning of the Cross. (quoted in Thomas 1970: 226) 22 George lived with his conviction: An undogmatic Christianity, true to the spiritual insight of Jesus of Nazareth, will yet discover and establish its links with liberal elements in all other religions, and will especially find its rightful place in that larger fellowship of faiths that is yet to be. (quoted in Thomas 1970: 219)

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  269 23 Here Mary John’s work sheds much light. He tells us about one “Joseph Baptista (1864–1930), fondly called Kaka Baptista, [who] was a close friend of Bala Gangadhara Tilak. He is claimed to be the one who first suggested the Home Rule Movement to Tilak even before Annie Besant launched it” (John 2011: 61). 24 For George, “ Unlike a natural phenomenon a spiritual fact is a challenge—you have got to do something about it—make up your mind, take an attitude towards it. […] Gandhi is a spiritual fact of this category” (1939: 23). 25 Radhakrishna also raises the issue of cross-cultural realization and understanding of Christianity in India in this foreword: If Europe interpreted Christianity in terms of his own culture, Greek thought and Roman imagination, there is no reason why Indian Christian should not relate the message of salvation in Christ to the larger spiritual background of India. Possibly, India’s religious insight may help to revify Christianity, not only in India but the world at large. Can’t we have a Vedanta tradition in Christianity? The late Max Muller thought of himself as a Christian Vedantin. There are thousands in the West today who have acquired a new and deeper impulse of religious life through the influence of Hindu thought. If even non-Indian Christian find it easier to understand Christianity in the light of Vedanta, it is unfortunate that Indian Christians are led to adopt an attitude of indifference, if not hostility, to Hindu religion and metaphysics. (in George 1939: 10) 26 It is probably for this reason that Sri Aurobindo had once commented that Gandhi’s Christianity is Russian Christianity. For Sri Aurobindo, “Gandhi is a European … truly a Russian Christian in an Indian body” (quoted in Desai 2011: 23). 27 Though in his critique of missionary conversion Gandhi sometimes used a language of disrespect which needs transformation: Would you preach the Gospel to a cow? Well, some of the Untouchables are worse than cows in understanding. I mean they can no more distinguish between the relative merits of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity than a cow. (quoted in Wilfred 2007: 146) 28 It is important here also to note the dialogue between Azariah and Ambedkar. Rudolf C. Heredia tells us about the following about it: In 1936 Ambedkar met Azariah and asked, if in becoming Christians the Harijans would be united as one people in one church, free from prejudice, Azariah later admitted that he had never felt so ashamed because he could not answer “yes,” but could only come away in disgrace. (Heredia 2007: 71) 29 Schouten helps us understanding the influence of his family background especially the devotional background of her mother belonging to the Pranamisampradaya on Gandhi’s open-ended approach to religion: Gandhi’s mother ‘belonged to the Pranami sampradaya. […] The more remarkable thing about this school in Vaishnavism is its extensive openness towards other religious traditions, both within and outside of Hinduism. This included a remarkable habit of placing various sacred texts next to one another to read and worship. (2012: 150–151)

270  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha About Swami Prannath, the leader of this community, Schouten writes: Swami Prannath was the leader of the pranamis in the second half of the 17th century […] He was gradually convinced that all religions ultimately came down to the same thing. […] To enlarge his knowledge of Islam, he made various trips to Arabic countries where he built up contacts with Islamic theologians. Nor did the Christian faith lie outside of his interest. Through the Portugese and British people he encountered in the harbor city of Gujarat, he acquired some knowledge of the Bible and Church doctrine. (2012: 152) 30 Das tells us about it: “In 1322, it is said, Pope John XX11 condemned as heretical the doctrine of poverty of Christ and thereafter the early lives of St Francis were rewritten to down the unfortunate views of the founder on that subject” (2012: 28). 31 Sri Aurobindo hints at it in his essay, “Our Ideals” when he talks about Buddhism and Vaishnavism impacting Semitic temperament through Christianity. Yogananda Paramahansa (2007) also talks about the journey of Jesus to India and Tibet and he gives documentary evidence of it. 32 Harrison tells us that “exemplary reasoning” is different from “scriptural reasoning” and inter-religious dialogue through “exemplary practitioners of one’s faith” (2011: 24). Furthermore, “exemplary reasoning is, essentially, a process of thinking with others about examples or models. The use of the term “reasoning” rather than “reason” indicates that it is involved in an ongoing process of reflection” (ibid: 29). 33 Schouten writes about it: [In earlier translation] The religious terminology was derived partly from Sanskrit and she suspected that elements of Hinduism came with them. […] She studied Greek and also acquired some knowledge of Hebrew. Moreover, she made use of the linguistic skills of Indians of Jewish ancestry, from the “Beni-Israeli community.” She completed her translation of the Bible shortly before her death in 1922. (2012: 72) Chitta Ranjan Das also writes the following about her translation: “Ramabai’s translation is in simple colloquial Marathi in a style very different from the archaic classical way in which the missionaries have done it” (Das 2012: 235–236). 34 Robert Eric Frynkenberg (2010: 390) also tells us: Ramabai continued to see herself as both “Hindu” and “Christian”—a pilgrim attempting to resolve inner conflicts within herself and within her own people in India. Refusing to become a clone, a proselyte, or a hostage of either Anglican, or any other form of Christendom, she withstood each onslaught and kept her balance. Within her lay a toughness forged on anvils of hard experience. 35 Once a missionary asked Gandhi, “How do you think should the missionaries identify themselves with the masses? The answer was just three words: ‘Copy Charlie Andrews’” (quoted in Visvanathan 2007: 63). 36 He also writes: “The Church of the poor ought to be, not a Church that gives to the poor, but one which lives in poverty” (quoted in Visvanathan 2007: 185).

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  271 37 What Griffiths writes deserves our careful consideration here: In the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo the values of matter and life and the human consciousness and the experience of personal God are not lost in the Ultimate Reality, the divine Sachhidanada. Matter and life and consciousness in man are seen to be evolving towards the divine life and divine consciousness, in which they are not annihilated but fulfilled. This is the goal of a Christian yoga. Body and soul are to be transfigured by the divine life and to participate in the divine consciousness. (1976: 138) 38 The Ashram which is located in a hill near Vagmanon, Kerala combines Indian spiritual practices such as meditation and singing of devotional songs with Christian spiritual practice especially from the Benedictian-Cisterian tradition. As the Ashram was inspired by Gandhi’s concept of bread labor, here monks earn their livelihood by raising and milking cows, Gandhi himself was inspired by the Cisterian spiritual tradition. After a visit to a monastery in South Africa, Gandhi had written: I once stayed with Cistercian monks. They are votaries of divine love, of poverty, of chastity. Their monastery was a veritable garden. There was a sweet silence pervading the whole atmosphere. I still live under the charm of their cells. It would be my ideal to found such an institution. 39 Anand writes: Sometimes I sit for prayer in a chapel with darkness all around me. More than once I have caught myself contemplating the flame of the oil-lamp placed close to the tabernacle. The dance of the fire grips me, and I can go on watching it for long, unmindful of the passing of time. Slowly as I began to meditate on the Nataraj icon—and I have been doing this for quite some years now—I understand a little what was happening to me. The Spirit whom I received in Baptims has not pushed out the Spirit I received from my ancestors. The more I try to contemplate the Nataraj icon the more it fascinates me, and I thank God for making me a child of the land which has given to the world an icon which is aesthetically superb and theologically profound. This icon fascinates me all the more because I am trying to reflect on my Christian faith in the light of Hindu wisdom. I find the Nataraj icon very appropriate to express my own faith. Jesus tells us that God, who as the perfect Being (sat) grounds all being, is a most loving Father. He is indeed the Merciful One. He is Shiva. In Him there is perfect self-possession and self-awareness (cit): the primordial Word (logos or sabda). From this perfect self-awareness of perfect Being arises the perfect joy of Being (ananda), and from this springs forth Breath (pneuma), that Spirit which makes Speech (vac) possible. The Nataraj icon can be seen as expressive of this Trinitarian mystery. (Anand 2004: 168–169) Here the following thoughts of Henryk Skolimowski on dancing Shiva are helpful and we can read these together with Anand and realize the deeper significance of a dancing Shiva and dancing Christ in our lives, societies and the cosmos: Dancing Shiva is the symbol of life unfolding, of recreating itself, partly destroying itself in order to create novo. Dancing Shiva is you and me engaged in the creative/destructive process of life. […] The eternal dance of Shiva becomes the dance of healing—of the planet and ourselves, becomes

272  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha the dance of purifying our rivers, our mountains and our bodies […] The new dance of Shiva is a form of Eco-Yoga, for the whole society. (1991: 5, 10, 13) 40 Anand writes: Siva too has a maternal side deep within him because he is ardha-nari-isvara, and lasya is his tender, nurturing dance. It is very significant that, in the SivaSahasra-nama, Siva is described not only as the great male organ (mahalinga, 74a)—but only once, and also as the great womb (maha-garbha, 81d, 103c, 131a)—that too thrice! In primal symbolism the tree has a great affinity with woman and hence a maternal character. Siva not only appears like a tree, but himself the cosmic Tree. (2004: 163) I have also explored this in part of the following poem: Mata Krista Namoh, Krista Mata Nama Garva Krista Namoh, Christa Garbha Namoh (Salutations to Mother Christ, Christ Mother Salutations to Womb Christ, Christ Womb) (Cf. Giri 2022) I have also explored Cross as our mother in the following poem, “Cross! Our Mother”: Oh Cross! Our Mother Your Four Sides The Crucified Middle Are Not Only a Square Of Torture, Suffering and Cruelty You are a Circle of Compassion Of One and Many— Nature, Divine and Man Of Meeting and Evolution Oh Cross! You are a Field In Your Field We learn our Limitations and Possibilities In your lap Hands of compassion Give us strength Trust and Hope We embrace you Our pain and suffering Become circles of awakening From ashes arise the Gold Flowers of Transformations (Cf. Giri 2019: 108) 41 We can also here bring together Anand’s realization of Christ as dancing Shiva and Wilfred’s realization of Christ as flute playing Krishna.

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  273 42 In the words of Frynkenberg (2010: 457): Many of these Brahmin Christians focused their attention on intellectual or mystical-cum-spiritual (bhakti) issues […] that sought for links between the great traditions from which they themselves had come and from which most of them never entirely parted. Even Pandita Ramabai’s own bhakti devotionalism did not begin to veer away from her own pure […] identity until after her third Christian conversion and the ‘Holy Ghost’ revival that broke twenty years later (1905) at the Mukti Mission in Kedagaon. Nor can the Christian career of Sadhu Sundar Singh be seen as reflecting a close identification with either Adivasi or avarna forms of Indian Christianity. 43 Mosse writes about this: A Dalit-focused caste-based approach to social activism gradually became the predominant form among activists within the priesthood, beginning with the Jesuits of Madurai Province, whose anti-caste “social action ministry” inverted the social “accommodations” of their 17th-century founder Robert de Nobili. Indeed, from 1987 the Jesuit “option for the poor” had been firmly recast as a Dalit option [… But] despite its “Dalit option,” only 18 of the 300 odd Jesuit priests were Dalits. (Mosse 2010, 237, 239) 44 For Mosse, “ as public service institutions-Catholic schools and technical colleges transacted symbols of caste honor and prestige much as temples or churched did in the past” (2010: 245). 45 Pandian (2010) offers a similar critique of Vengal Chakkarai’s project of indigenization, which for him is mainly Brahminical. 46 The following interpretation is insightful: Even in its brevity, the partial poem is replete with words evocative of Dalits and their condition: “struggle” (sangharsh), “cage” (pinjara) and “tiger” (sher). But the image of the “broken mirror” (tuta darpan) says the most about John, not to mention Dalit religion on the margins. In nirguni poetry, the mirror is often a sign of vanity, as it is in Kabir’s famous song “what face do you see in the mirror (darpana)?” In one sense, John uses the mirror to represent his reflecting on his shattered pride. In another sense, he also seems to be mourning his lost dreams. (Schmalz 2010: 206) 47 In his study of Christianity among the Oraons, Peggy Froerer tells us how Christian church and the priests demonize the local deities and subject the practitioners to social and financial punishment: “ a system of ostracism and fines is instituted against those found guilty in Unchristian activities, with a mechanism of excommunication or ‘outcasting,’ where participants are excluded from the school until such fines are paid and confession is extracted” (2010: 135; also see Froerer 2007). 48 This is in tune with the perspectives of scholars such as Judith Brown and Robert Frynkenberg. For Brown, “India’s history has been marked by a religious pluralism in which converts to Christianity carried with them much from their former beliefs and cultural practices” (Coward 2004; cf. Brown & Frynkenberg 2002). This has contributed to “new Indian modes of worship and theological emphasis” (ibid). 49 For Schouten: Under the influence of dalit theology we see another representation of Jesus emerging in recent years. In addition to what has now become the traditional

274  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha depiction of an exalted teacher of wisdom or a cosmic figure, we now see him in villages, associated with the culture of the low-caste people. Jyoti Sahi, for instance, painted Christ in his later work a dancer who impassions people with a large hand drum. (2012: 255) 50 Rajeev Bhargava (2012) discusses some of these changes in Hindu organizations and the accompanying proceses of what he calls “social democratization” but he does not seem to acknowledge how these changes were brought about by encounter with Christianity. 51 Samuel Meteir, who spent the better part of his life among the Pulayas of Trivandrum district, summarized their frank enquiries about the temporal benefits of Christianity in the following way: What is the profit of learning your religion? Will you feed us? Shall we be freed from dying? Shall we be allowed to steal when we are hungry and have nothing to eat? May we take as many wives as we please? (quoted in Kooiman 1989: 170) 52 For Wilfred, such labelling reflects a: dichotomous anthropology, which contrasts and hierarchizes the material and the spiritual in human. By hierarchizing the material and the spiritual, and subordinating the latter to the former a framework is created for the subordination of Dalits to the caste-Christians, who represent higher spiritual realm. (2012: 594) Wilfred also challenges us to understand the longing for material security on the part of the low-caste and the rich people’s craving for money: The quest for rice was a quest for life, and it cannot be placed on par with the greed for material possessions by the rich and the powerful […] In their search for material goods, security and dignity in the church, our Dalit sisters and brothers were seeking life, which they continue to affirm with the power of the Spirit against those who deny it through individual and collective selfishness. (Wilfred, 2012: 596) The conflict between material and spiritual that Wilfred talks about finds an interesting resonance in the Webb Kean’s (2007) study of conversion in Indonesia. For Keane while Dutch missionaries focused on content of belief, the people of Shumba were interested in their material objects which were denigrated as fetishes by the missionaries. 53 Shanars now Nadars belonged to low-caste position in South Travancore while the Iravazas, also considered untouchable in caste hierarchy, belonged to North Travancore. 54 Felix Wilfred (personal communication) here urges us to understand the influence of Hindu tradition in the creation of Christian literature: “For example, the widely acclaimed classic Thembavani by the Italian missionary Beschi reflects the way Hindu gods and goddesses are presented in traditional literature.” 55 Some Hindus here think that Judeo-Christian tradition is reluctant to give up its history-centeredness which would also make it give up its claim to uniqueness: “Jewish and Christian religions cannot afford to compromise on their history-centric beliefs, because to do so would be tantamount to surrendering their claim of uniqueness access to knowledge of God’s will” (Malhotra 2011: 90). For Rajiv Malhotra, here yoga provides freedom from history.

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  275 56 Here we can reflect upon the following conversation between Ramin Jahanbegloo and Peter Desouza in which Jahanbegloo asks De Souza: “[Vivekananda] entertained a vision of India having a Vedantic brain, an Islamic body, and a Christian heart. Do you think India today has a Christian heart?” (Jahanbegloo 2008: 164). De Souza replies: I think if there is something like Christian heart then we would like to have it. I think the idea of fraternity, brotherhood and sisterhood is there in Christianity. The world is moving away from these sensibilities and that’s the cause for some degree of gloom actually. (ibid)

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276  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Devasahayam, V. (ed.) 1996. Frontiers of Dalit Theology. Chennai: Gurukul Summer Institute. Dhavamony, Mariasusai. 2009. Hindu-Christian Dialogue: Theological Sounding and Perspectives. Delhi: Overseas Indian Press. Froerer, Peggy. 2007. Religious Division and Social Conflict: The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in Rural India. Delhi: Social Science Press. Frynkenberg, Robert E. 2010. Christianity in India: From the Beginnings to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. George, S.K. 1939. Gandhi’s Challenge to Christianity. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2004. “Love and Fire.” In idem, Reflections and Mobilizations: Dialogues with Movements and Voluntary Organizations. Delhi: Sage. ———. 2009. “Peace in Kandhamal.” Mainstream. ———. 2019 Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birth Days. Delhi: Studera. ———. 2022 Sikhara o Buddhapada [Peak and the Feet of Buddha]. Bhubaneswar and Toronto: Vidya Publishing. Gnanadason, Joy. 1994. A Forgotten History: The Story of the Missionary Movement and the Liberation of People in South Travancore. Chennai: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute. Griffiths, Bede. 1976. Return to the Center. London: Fount Paperbacks. Haldar, Dipankar. n.d. “The Realisation of Kingdom of God in Neo-Vedanta.” www.biblicalstores.org.uk downloaded on Jan 27, 2012. Hancock, Mary E. 2010. “Landscapes of Christianity in Colonial South India: The Matter of Hindu Ritual and Christian Conversion, 1870–1920.” Harrison, Victoria. 2011. “Embodied Values and Muslim-Christian Dialogue: ‘Exemplary Reasoning’ as a Model for Interreligious Conversations.” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 21 (1): 20–35. Hedlund, Roger. (eds.) 2012. Oxford Encyclopedia of South Asian Chrisitianity. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Heredia, Rudolf C. 2007. Changing Gods: Rethinking Conversion in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jahanbegloo, Ramin. 2008. India Revisited: Conversations on Contemporary India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kim, Sebastian C.H. 2012. “Conversion,” In Hedlund 2012: 201–204. Kooiman, Dick. 1989. Conversion and Social Equality in India: The London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the 19th Century. Delhi: Manohar. Kosambi, Meera (ed.). 2000. Pandita Ramabai: Through Her Own Works. Selected Works. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kumar, Ashok & Rowena Robinson. 2010. “Legally Hindu: Dalit Lutheran Christians of Coastal Andhra Pradesh.” In Robinson & Kujur 2010: pp. 149–167. Lalruatkima. 2010. “TRANS-formative Possibilities: Tribal Formations in Conversation with Dalit Theology.” In Sathianathan Clarke et al. 2010: pp. 104–117. Lobo, Nancy. 2010. “Christianization, Hinduization and Indigenous Revivalism among the Tribals of Gujarat.” In Robinson & Kujur 2010: 211–233. Malhotra, Rajiv. 2011. Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism. New Delhi: Harper Collins. Mary, John. 2011. Indian Catholic Christians and Nationalism: A Study Based on the Official Catholic Journals of the Period 1857–1957. Delhi: ISPCK.

Healing the Wounds of Religious Ignorance and Arrogance  277 Mehta, Pratap Bhanu. 2011. “Hinduism and the Politics of Rights in India.” In Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights, (eds.) Thomas Banchoff & Robert Wuthnow. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meshak, Samuel W. (ed.) 2007. Mission with the Marginalized: Life and Witness of Rev.Dr. Prasanna Kumari Samuel. Tiruvalla: Christian Sahitya Samiti. Mieth, Dietmar. 2009. “Meister Eckhart: The Power of Inner Liberation.” In Modern Prince and the Modern Sage: Transforming Power and Freedom, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri, pp. 405–428. New Delhi: Sage. Mosse, David. 2010. “The Catholic Church and Dalit Christian Activism in Contemporary Tamil Nadu.” In Robinson & Kujur 2010: 235–262. Mukherjee, Arun Kumar. 1992. Keshub Chunder Sen. Delhi: Publications Division. Nadkarni, M.V. 2003. “Ethics and Relevance of Conversions: A Critical Assessment of Religious and Social Dimensions in a Gandhian Perspective.” Economic and Political Weekly 38S: 227–235. Nadkarni, M.V. 2008 [2006]. Hinduism: A Gandhian Perspective. New Delhi: Ane Books. 2nd Edition. Omvedt, Gail. 2000. Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anti-Caste Intellectuals. Delhi: Navyan. Painadath, S. 2007. We are Co-Pilgrims: Towards a Culture of Inter-religious Harmony. Delhi: ISPCK. Pandian, M.S.S. 2010. “Nation as Nostalgia: The Ambiguous Spiritual Journey of Vengal Chakkarai.” In Discourse, Democracy and Difference: Perspectives on Community, Politics and Culture, (eds.) M.T. Ansari & Deeptha Achar, pp. 23–48. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Patrick, G. 2003. Religion and Subaltern Agency. Chennai: Department of Christian Studies. Robinson, Rowena. 2003. Christians of India. Delhi: Sage. Robinson, Rowena & Joseph M. Kuzur (eds.). 2010. Margins of Faith: Dalits and Tribal Christianity in India. Delhi: Sage. Rolland, Romain. 1954 [1929]. The Life of Ramakrishna. Mayavati, Almora: Advaita Ashram. ———. 2012 [1931]. The Life of Vivekananda. Mayavati, Almora: Advaita Ashram. Samartha, S.J. 1973. The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ. Chennai: Christian Literature Society. Schmalz, Mathew N. 2010. “Broken Mirror: John Masih’s Journey from Isaih to Dalit.” In Robinson & Kuzur 2010. Schouten, Jan Peter. 2012. Jesus as Guru: The Image of Christ Among Hindus and Christians in India. Delhi: Overseas Press India. Shourie, Arun. 1994. Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas. Delhi: ASA Publications. Skolimowski, Henryk. 1991. Dancing Shiva in the Ecological Age: Heralding the Dawn of Ecological Reconstruction in 21st Century. New Delhi: Clarion Books. Thomas, M.M. 1970. The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance. Madras: Christian Literature Society. Vattimo, G. 1999. Belief. Cambridge: Polity Press. Visvanathan, Susan. 1993. Missionary Styles and the Problem of Dialogue. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Visvanathan, Susan. 2007. Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism: Essays in Dialogue. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan Trust. 2009. The Wandering Monk. 2nd Edition.

278  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Vivekananda, Swami. 2011 [1900]. Christ the Messenger. Mayavati, Almora: Advaita Ashram. Wilfred, Felix. 2000. Asian Dreams and Christian Hopes. Delhi: ISPCK. ———. 2007. Dalit Empowerment. Bangalore: NBCLC. ———. 2008. Margins: Sites of Asian Theology. New Delhi: ISPCK. ———. 2010. Asian Public Theology: Critical Currents in Challenging Times. Delhi: ISPCK ———. 2012. “Rice Christians: A Quest for Life.” In Hedlund 2012: 594–595. Yogananda, Sri Sri Paramahansa. 2007. The Second Coming of Christ Within You: The Resurrection of Christ within You. Calcutta: Yugoda Satsanga Society of India.

17 Social Healing and the Challenges of Transforming Suffering and Striving for Reconciliation and Peace*

Introduction and Invitation Transforming suffering is crucial for realization of peace and is integrally linked to striving for reconciliation and a new art of integration. It also helps us in self and social healing. The present chapter discusses these challenges building on the work of K.S.R. Murty, a philosopher from India, written nearly half a century ago on these themes. Murty begins his essay on suffering from the following lines from Buddha: “Only one thing I always teach—suffering and cessation of suffering” (Murty 1973: 1). But while cessation of suffering may be difficult, we can always strive towards transformation of conditions of suffering—self and soul, intersubjective relations and structures of the world. Transforming conditions of suffering is a multi-dimensional sadhana and struggle involving socio-spiritual as well as socio-political mobilizations. There is a joy in this sadhana and struggle in transforming conditions of suffering where lokadukha (suffering of people) about which Murty talks about is connected to lokasangraha (gathering of people) in a continuous way of gathering multitude for realization of beauty, dignity and dialogue in self and society. Bima Bhoi, a creative spiritual seeker and poet from Odisha, expresses this commitment to transformation of suffering when he sings his immoral lines: Praninka arata duka apramita dekhu dekhu keba sahu mo jibana pache narke padithau jagata uddhara heu [The life of beings is full of immeasurable miseries but who can tolerate all these? Even if my life is in hell, let the world be liberated!] Chitta Ranjan Das (see Giri 2011), a creative thinker, who also works with the spirit of Bhima Bhoi challenges us to realize the significance of *  Revised version of a paper presented at the National Seminar on “The Philosophy of K. Satchidananda Murty,” Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, Sept 21–24, 2011. I am grateful to Professor Ashok Vohra for his kind invitation and Professor Satyanarayana for his help with books of Professor Murty and hospitality. The part on transformative reconciliation here builds on an earlier essay of mine (cf. Giri 2011).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-19

280  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha transforming suffering by asking a question to Buddha: Did the Buddha forget that our sufferings have a collective origin and responses to suffering must also be collective? What Das is suggesting here is that through creative solidarity and meaningful actions at the levels of self and society, we can transform suffering. Here we can realize the distinction between cessation of suffering and transformation of suffering. Thus we need a new Buddha and circle of Bodhisattvas who would say: “Along with many things we facilitate co-learning [in place of teaching] about suffering and transformation of suffering.”1 Such a pathway is emerging in varieties of engaged Buddhism. Buddhadasa Bikhu of Thailand who inspired democratic movements against military dictatorship in non-violent ways talks about practical paticcasamuppada—practical dependent origination and I talk about practical nirvana in our everyday life as well as in our wider society involving our struggle and sadhana to overcome the condition of suffering such as poverty and varieties of domination such as caste, gender, market and state (cf. Buddhadasa Bhikhu 1992; Giri 2012). This is also part of practical spirituality. Practical spirituality is an important part of transformation of suffering which challenges us to rethink the relationship between contingency and suffering. For Murty, “Suffering is tied up with contingency and passing away” (1973: xiii). But if there is no escape from contingency, we need to realize that in this world of contingency there is not only suffering but also varieties of strivings to transform conditions of suffering. Contingency is not solely solitary. Nor does it refer only to the double contingency of self and the other (which still imprisons not only Advaita Vedanta but also sociological thought) but also the triple contingency involving a third which is not just a number but a prayer,2 meditation, sadhana and struggle for creative and transformative suffering. Both Advaita Vedanta and sociological theory are imprisoned within the double contingency of self and other and in this place we need a triple contingency of self, other and the creative and critical public (cf. Strydom 2009). Murty begins his essay on suffering with a line of Toynbee from his A Historian’s Approach to Religion: “The inseparability of desire and suffering is attested by the universal experience of Mankind” (Toynbee 1956: 289). But in the same book Toynbee contrasts between those ideologies which valorize power and those which acknowledge finitude of power and human condition and suffering.3 It is the universal valorization of power, not power as force as Murty would have said it but power as violence which is a cause of suffering. Murty refers to both the Upanishads and Kierkegaard on despair4 but in his Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard writes with which Murty would agree that State does not know that there is such a thing as despair.5 Such a state creates social suffering as we see today where state in collusion with global multinationals is dispossessing people of their land, home and Habitat and the advocates and managers also see like a state (cf Scott 1988). In Odisha, where such brutal industrialization is taking place at gunpoint, as it

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Suffering & Striving  281 happens in other parts of India, China and around the world, even intellectuals cannot feel the cry and pain of the people, they see like a state. But overcoming suffering calls for co-feeling and dialogue as in the Book of Job in the Bible. Job is dialoguing with God and his fellow beings about his predicament of suffering but the crucial question is are we listening and ready for dialogue?

Phenomenology of Peace and a New Ethics of Reconciliation Murty has not only written about suffering but also about peace what he calls “phenomenology of peace” (Murty 1960). In his “Phenomenology of Peace,” Murty tells us how peace is crucially dependent upon a “general will to peace” (1960: 320). Murty writes: The philosophy of John Dewey and anthropological researches of Ruth Benedict and others have produced a new perspective to understand the problem of war. […] Dewey says that war is just a “social pattern” like slavery. […] Cultural anthropology has reinforced the arguments and conclusions of Dewey. It tells us that certain cultures have no place the institution of war; and in those cultures which use it, it is used for achieving “contrasting objectives, with contrasting organization in relation to the state, and with contrasting sanctions. […] To bring about [peace …], one should not wait for others; but should begin to do what one can, regarding oneself as a manifestation of the Spirit of the Republic. It should be the business of every scholar and scientist to spread the ideals of harmony, concord, tolerance, peace and liberty in the community, starting with his own family and friends, and condemn strife, intolerance, and slavery wherever in the world he finds them. A Hindu politician, who supports varnashrama at home but criticizes apartheid in South Africa, and the discrimination against Negroes in the South of the U.S.A. is not serving the cause of justice and humanity. Learned men of today should recapture the great tradition of men like Erasmus, who used to write letter after letter to kings and bishops urging them not to be fools and make peace with each other, and who have travelled from country to country conversing and conferring with like-minded men to create an enlightened conscience; like Leibniz who held endless correspondence with the learned men of his day to bring about reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics, and Cartesians and Aristotelians, and who untiringly tried to convince the Princes of Europe that their good lay in peace; like Voltaire, who rising above national barriers condemned injustice wherever it was, unafraid of governments and princes. If there were to be organized at least a small group of such men in every country of the world, the prospects for world peace would indeed be very great. (Murty 1960: 300, 343–344)

282  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Murty talks about cultivating a peace ethos consisting of homonoia, tolerance and universal ethics. Homonoea for Murty means “being of mind together” and this applies to the whole of humankind.6 For this, for Murty, we need a new republic of letters what Murty calls Respublica Litteraria which reminds us of the work of Erasmus who wrote not only letter on behalf of Peace to humankind but both kings and commoners for realizing peace.7 For Murty, Respublica Litteraria consists of men [and women and children] who can “put the interests of truth, justice and humanity above the interest of their countries and races, and who have come together in a missionary spirit animated by the same ideals” (ibid: 342). For Murty, A citizen of the republic of letters can each belong to his own culture and religion, but yet discover intersecting lines among them and agree to evolve common ethics. […] Out of common programs of action it might be possible to evolve in the course of generation a new worldview, which should be assiduously propagated by the members of the Respublica Litterariaa. (ibid: 342) “But such endeavours would be possible only if thinkers give up ‘one-track’ minds, and the notion that a single conception of truth is the whole truth” (ibid: 343). Furthermore, “To bring about this […] one should not wait for others; but should begin to do what one can, regarding oneself as a manifestation of the Spirit of the Republic” (ibid). Realization of peace calls for such efforts on the part of self as well as transformation of political organization. For Murty, “it is difficult to have peace in a world organized on the principle of sovereign nation-states” (ibid: 307). Murty makes it clear: “action based on finer moral sentiments is not possible without the evolution of an appropriate political and social organization in all countries” (ibid: 311). In realizing peace, Murty talks about the significance of appropriate ethics and ethos, which can be linked to an emergent ethics of reconciliation. Here we can engage ourselves with recent sociological discourses about ethics of reconciliation, as for example, in the work of sociologist Ari Sitas from South Africa. For Sitas (2011: 571), “The emergence of an ‘ethics of reconciliation’ is a significant phenomenon of our recent history.” For Sitas, an emergent ethics of reconciliation of our times emerges from painful and annihilating violence in the midst of which we learn failingly from our failures and despite setbacks do not quickly give up hope. It is a fragile emergence but it is here to stay as some of us concerned, especially victims of violence, realize that there is no other way except to strive for reconciliation and peace.8 But this reconciliation is not just repetition of the existing status quo and peace here is not an apology for continuing the existing logic of violation and humiliation. For Sitas, ethics of reconciliation “socializes people into specific dispositions towards others” where the other is not “eliminable surplus” and “non-enslaveable and non-exploitable” (Sitas 2011:

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Suffering & Striving  283 572). It navigates “both individual behaviour and broader forms of group and collective action” (ibid). An important aspect of the emerging ethics of reconciliation which we ought to take note of is that “there are an increasing number of people whose ‘dispositions’ display in a ‘Bourdieuan’ [referring to Bourdieu whose work on social suffering has been discussed before] sense openness to reconciliation,” a disposition which emerges out of interaction, exposure and participation.9 For Sitas, the emergent ethics of reconciliation “points to a remarkable negotiated revolution. Nelson Mandela’s gesture of reconciliation resonates everywhere, moving people from Mexico to China. It was disarming and however difficult, it allowed for transcendence and co-existence in South Africa” (ibid: 572). Along with this, Sitas presents us four more sources for the emerging ethics of reconciliation: the predominance of neo-Gandhian ideas and practices in the so-called third world and the global south; the self-reflexivity of modernity of modernity in the West; the increasing convergence between socialist (read: anti-Stalinist) and human rights discourses and, finally the subterranean and usually underrated work of the “arts” and “literature.” (ibid) Sitas and his colleagues have also studied prospects for reconciliation in Cyprus (Sitas et al. 2007). In this Sitas et al. are exploring the prospects for reconciliation in Cyprus between the Turkish Cypriots of the North and the Greek Cypriots of the South after decades of ethnic conflicts, invasion of Turkey and subsequent de facto partition and efforts towards reconciliation. For Sitas et al, “the Cyprus case did not end up in murderous ethnic cleansing because of self-restraint which speaks to a humanism that precedes the conflict” (Sitas et al. 2007: 3). In their study they find that those affected by violence have a disposition towards reconciliation: “First in the midst of the narratives collected there is a thick description of very violent and traumatic experiences. Yet in approximately a third of the narratives there appears to be remarkable acts of kindness and humanism even in extreme situations of combat and fight” (ibid: 37). Similarly, in her work on peace and reconciliation in South Africa anthropologist Fiona Ross (2004) tells us about individuals and groups who are creatively engaged in reconciliation and peace as an ongoing work of “remaking the everyday.” But she also tells us about the limits of the existing discourse of reconciliation especially in South Africa. As Sitas seems to be proceeding with a rather celebratory approach to the Mandela model and the South African model of reconciliation, it is important to note that in the Mandela-Tutu-South African model, as Ross tells us, “responsibility for breaking with the unjust past” “rests precisely on those whose futures have been curtailed by the damages to them” (ibid: 15). Such a model of reconciliation places a heavy onus on the victims and is not accompanied by material reparation of inequality such as inequality in landownership as a result of colonialism and apartheid. In this context, we need to transform the emerging

284  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha ethics of reconciliation into a much broader and deeper process and cultivate transformative reconciliation which involves structural transformation addressing some of the limitations of a celebratory approach to South African model of reconciliation and its uncritical global claims. Transformative reconciliation is a dynamic process animated by both compassion and confrontation.10 While compassion enables the participants to share in their suffering as well as joys of coming out of closures of violence and counter-violence, confrontation enables them confront each other as well as structures of domination which still determine the existing condition of lack of peace (cf. Giri 2012). This confrontation is face to face as well as takes place at the wider institutional level. This is not necessarily violent. In fact, the work of Randall Collins (2008) shows that in the face of face to face confrontation people understand their limitation to inflict harm on the other. Confrontation also takes place in non-violent ways and it does and can involve compassion giving rise to reality and further emergent and evolutionary possibility of compassionate confrontation. Ross’s study of reconciliation process in South Africa shows how varieties of confrontations took place in the court room itself between perpetrators and victims. We can also read the significance of the Cyprus study by Sitas et al. in terms of opportunities for compassion and confrontation that it presents to interested actors. Those who meet with each other from across the border can understand each other compassionately and they can also confront each other especially the more fundamentalist, ethno-nationalist and heroic construction of identities from each other’s sides. Sitas argues that ethics of reconciliation is not a philosophy of being but a philosophy of praxis and he also creatively interprets pathways of Gandhi and neo-Gandhian moves beyond the person of Gandhi. Though Sitas may not necessarily have in mind a dualism between being and praxis, it is important to cultivate ethics of reconciliation as a multi-dimensional field of non-duality consisting simultaneously of being and praxis, ontology and epistemology. Transformative reconciliation involves the dynamic creative interpenetration of both ontological nurturance, especially adequate self-preparation and self-transformation, and epistemic learning involving the work of what I have elsewhere called “ontological epistemology of participation” (Giri 2006). In their study of prospects of reconciliation in Cyprus Sitas et al. talk about hard variables such as class and soft variables such as participation in peace organizations and other border-crossing and boundary crossing meetings. For them, the more our hard variables influence swings in dispositions, the less space exists for individual and collective action. The more soft variables swing dispositions, the more space exists for individual and group action. […] The remarkable finding is that the soft variables swing disposition towards reconciliation, co-existence and forgiveness in a more vigorous way that the hard ones. (Sitas et al. 2007: 53)

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Suffering & Striving  285 We can look at the significance of these soft variables as creating condition for creative collaborative learning and necessary work on self, for example nurturing the self as part of a vibrant sociality towards reconciliation. Transformative reconciliation is an aesthetic project as it an ethical one.11 In his work on peace, Murty talks about ethics but not aesthetics, but here we need to realize reconciliation as simultaneously ethical and aesthetic. We need a new language and practice of aesthetic ethics of reconciliation. This, in turn, builds upon border-crossing dialogue and work between the aesthetic and the ethical. The language of ethics has some inherent limitations, for example, ethical suffers from a preoccupation with the other while not cultivating self appropriately as the aesthetic suffers from some aspect of self-closure and not opening oneself to the face of the other, as Levinas would urge us to realize (cf. Quarles van Ufford & Giri 2003). Aesthetic ethics helps us overcome the limits of both the ethical and aesthetic and it also involves a project of social aesthetics and art of building bridges across borders while one becomes a bridge oneself.12 Transformative reconciliation grapples with suffering—self as well as social—and is a manifold process of healing. In this there is a spiritual dimension at work. Transformative reconciliation is linked to spiritual as an ongoing and emergent processes of critique, creativity and transformation and is part of what can be called practical spirituality (cf. Giri 2009). Practical spirituality is animated by quest for beauty, dignity and dialogue in our world still burdened with much ugliness, violence and monological assertion of oneself and one’s singular and imperial truth. Transformative reconciliation also involves mediation, meditation and transformation. We can further creatively look at the spaces created by the work of Sitas’s soft variables as spaces where not only mediation and mutual learning in compassion and confrontation takes place but also meditation. We can look at meditation in an open-ended way. Sitas looks at the emergent ethics of reflection through what he calls “self-reflexivity of modernity.” But the discourse and practice of reflexivity may not necessarily involve meditation especially what I have elsewhere called meditative verbs of co-realizations (Giri 2012).13 Understanding the significance of meditation poses foundational challenge for both the existent practice of reconciliation as well as to sociological discourse of reflexivity which is the reflexivity of a self-reflexive subject where both self and reflexivity are predominantly defined in rationalist ways. The practice of reconciliation in South Africa was deeply influenced by a mode of Christian practice; it was an act of forgiveness also in the public. It probably lacked spaces of self and co-meditations. Imagine what would have happened if along with followed practices of reconciliation the participating agents would have also meditated together in Cyprus, South Africa and beyond. Thus we can cultivate fields of transformative reconciliation as fields of meditations—sitting, walking as well as dancing.14 For this existing models of reflexivity, mediation and reconciliation have to go out of their initial locations and learn together with humility and festivity with and around the world what can be called the dance of a new

286  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha planetary co-learning. In this process “the anxiety of incompleteness” (cf. Appadurai 2006) is transformed into what can be called “festivity of incompleteness” where with mediation and meditation we help each other to realize our fuller potential which has been so far stunted by ongoing violence and intractable conflicts. We thus complete each other and create what Vygotsky would call “zones of proximal development” (cf. Holzman 2009).

Transformative Reconciliation and Striving for Peace Transformative reconciliation is related to the ongoing striving for peace where peace is also a creative mediation of and meditation on tensions involving at the same time necessary and courageous steps towards transformations. Here we can come back to Murty’s phenomenology of peace with some further contemporary reflections. Like reconciliation, peace is not a noun but a verb and as a verb both of them are not only activistic but also meditative.15 Peace is an ongoing arduous journey in Cyprus, South Arica, Kashmir, Tibet, Palestine and around the world and in the recesses of our hearts; it is an ever present challenge calling for fuller realizations. Peace embodies here what Galtung calls structural peace and what I would like to call soulful peace, which embodies both inner peace as well as peace and striving for soulful togetherness in our world of fragmentation, isolation, violence, violation and annihilation. Both structural and soulful peace helps us realize ecological, social and spiritual peace (cf. Chandra & Ikeda 2009; also see Sahi 2002). Striving for peace works in the existing condition of conflict and violence, “negative peace” (which is characterized by the absence of violence—as in a ceasefire) and “positive peace” characterized by presence of harmony (cg. Galtung & MacQueen 2010). This harmony is not static but dynamic; striving for peace is animated by processes of dynamic harmonization which unsettles many accepted foundations of statis and domination. For Galtung and MacQueen, striving for peace is a “joint project, building on and building positive cognitions and emotions. A project is something spiritual, imbuing the parties with meaningful lives together” (2010: 17). Along with structural peace which involves equity and reciprocity, striving for peace also “implies integration in the sense of all relating to all, as all parties, as opposed to segmentation” (ibid: 18). Towards a New Art of Integration But this integration is a weak and gentle one and different from the telos and ideology of strong integration characterizing models of both social, system and self-integration in modernity. An evolutionary challenge before both transformative reconciliation and realization of peace is the challenge of cultivating a new art of integration what I have elsewhere called weak and gentle integration (Giri 2010c). In Galtung and Macqueen this can be related to the battle between hard and soft sides of each of us and

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Suffering & Striving  287 our traditions including traditions of science, secularism and religion and the epochal need to cultivate soft dimensions of each of us as self and creative practitioners of traditions. This can be also creatively related to the significant discussion of Sitas about the work of soft variables in practices of reconciliation. A challenge before philosophy, sociology, peace studies and contemporary practice is to cultivate creative softness and weakness in us building upon manifold weakness of our contemporary field of discourse and practice such as weak nationalism, weak ontology and weak religion. Cultivating softness is an evolutionary challenge now but an important practical and theoretical challenge before is how do we cultivate weakness, softness and gentleness in a world full of violence and without our softness being wiped out. Here we need to develop what can be called weak strength and energetic softness, which is not cowardly, fearful and afraid but has the courage to practice compassionate confrontation and weave a new art of integration from our wounds and fragments. This would also help us realize peace and reconciliation as well as transform our suffering.

By the Way of Conclusion: Philosophy, Sociology and Beyond Murty has meditated on peace and suffering as a philosopher and his perspectives on these now can be fruitfully enriched by bringing in recent sociological works on social suffering, peace and reconciliation. In this chapter, I have made an effort in this direction. Understanding important human concerns such as peace, suffering and reconciliation calls for transformative dialogue among philosophy, sociology and anthropology going beyond disciplinary and perspectival exclusivism of either of these. But sadly in India as much of the world there is little transformative interpenetration between philosophical and sociological modes of engagement as between the philosophical and the anthropological. Philosophers rarely do fieldwork with their thematic explorations nor do field-working sociologists and anthropologists embody philosophical reflections. But simultaneous engagement is an urgent challenge of our times. By engaging ourselves in such border crossing creativity and transformations and personally and socially cultivating peace and reconciliation, we can pay tribute to the enduring and immortal spirit of K. Satchidananda Murty. Such border crossing would also contribute to healing of wounds of disciplines as well as wounds of conflicts in self, culture and societies.

Notes 1 Here what Ambedkar writes is helpful: What was the object of the Buddha in creating the Bhikhu? Was the object to create a perfect man? Or was his object to create a social servant devoting his life to the service of the people and being their friend, guide and philosopher? (Ambedkar 1992: 1)

288  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha 2 Here part of following poem Three as a prayer may be of interest: One, Two, Three I am not only an Addition Nor Subtraction Nor Multiplication I am a Guna [quality] with one and two A meditation A Prayer A Million Melodies of Depth and height With One, Two and Three And Beyond Taking one and two and transforming A Sadhana of Lokasamgraha A Creative Lokachakra (Cf. Giri 2022: 209) 3 In the words of Toynbee (1956: 74): In human life, Suffering is the antithesis of Power, and it is also a more characteristic, and more fundamental element in Life than Power is. […] Suffering is the essence of Life, because it is the inevitable product of an unresolvable tension between a living creature’s essential impulse to try to make itself into the center of the Universe and its essential dependence on the rest of creation and on the Absolute Reality on which all creatures live and move and have their being. On the other hand, human power, in all its forms is limited and, in the last resort, illusory. Therefore any attitude towards Life that idolizes human power is bound to be a wrong attitude towards Suffering and, in consequence, a wrong attitude towards Life itself. 4 Murty writes: The Upanishads use two terms dukha and soka, suffering and despair, to describe the human condition. Dukha occurs only in one major Upanishad, the Katha but in an expressive phase: lokadhukha, which can mean either the suffering of the world, or the world that is suffering. […] The other concept Soka, despair, receives more attention in the Upanishads. He who does not know the self despairs, the Chandogya declares. As Kierkegaard said, “not being conscious of oneself as spirit,” is despair. (1973: 5) 5 Kierkegaard writes: “The minimum of despair is a state which (as one might humanly be tempted to express it) by reason of a sort of innocence does not even know that there is such a thing as despair. So when consciousness is at its minimum the despair is least” (1848: 345). 6 About the concept of homonoia, Murty (1960: 322) writes: By the time of his death, Alexander came to conceive of a kingdom in which all men would live as brothers and partners. Long before Alexander, the Greeks developed the concept of Homonoia, “a being of one mind together,” which had the following meaning as it passed through different stages. Originally it meant the unity of a family, but as Greek political and social life came to be centered in cities, it came to mean unity in the city and absence of faction in cities.

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Suffering & Striving  289 7 Erasmus (1986: 293)among others wrote a highly evocative and provocative essay called Complaints of Peace in which he writes: Peace speaks: If it were to their advantage for men to shun, spurn and reject me, although I have done nothing to deserve it, I would only lament the wrong done to me and their injustice; but since in rejecting me they deny themselves the source of all human happiness and bring on themselves a sea of disasters of every kind, I must shed tears rather for the misery they suffer than for any wrong they do me. I should have liked simply to be angry with them, but I am driven to feel pity and sorrow for their plight. 8 This is also born out in my study of communal violence in Kandhamal, Orissa, India. See Giri 2010a. 9 Here Sitas quotes Bourdieu: “One might say that we are disposed because we are exposed” (Sitas 2011: 57 2). 10 Note what Murty also writes: “Non-injury unless motivated by compassion becomes a superstition and compassion may sometimes may commit injuries to living beings” (1960: 180). The later may be related to what I call confrontation. 11 Sitas (2011: 579) urges us to realize the significance of art for the practice of reconciliation: What artists bring to consciousness is a unique attention to the ‘particular’, to life forms, to living rights […] Unlike sociological theorization that needs to move to determinate and systematic abstractions to illuminate the field, the artist is haunted by it—she lives the field, invents another with its subconscious, pregnant from all other fields she has known or imagined. 12 Here we can consider the work of Joseph Beuys and his work in social aesthetics. Chitta Ranjan stells us about two wings of aesthetic consciousness touching both Anna and Ananda—food and bliss. 13 Meditation as meditative verbs of co-realizations refers to practices of self and relationship where through meditation we co-realize each other and help each other to breathe together, feel our pulses and establish a rhythm of harmony. I am now trying to re-realize the project of self-other relations including sociality as meditative verbs of co-realizations (cf. Giri 2012). 14 In this context, what Galtung and MacQueen (2010: 184) write deserves our careful consideration: In Cambodia the Center for Peace and Reconciliation, established chiefly by Buddhists, has attempted, through nonviolence training, peace walks and other programs, to begin the process of healing and restoration in Cambodia of a peace culture, while in Sri Lanka, a healing garden for children traumatized by the conflict has been established in the Batticaloa region. Although it has been designed to be non-denominational so as to transcend the religious and ethnic divisions, the garden has drawn upon earth-centered symbols of peace and wholeness. 15 Note here what Ross (2004: 1) writes: In English, “peace” is not a verb. This observation appears commonplace, but it signals the necessity of action, a force or energy that is brought to bear to produce a result. In turn, this implies human action and a temporal dimension. The verbs that precede “peace” require that we think about its locatedness and its lack in everyday life and about the diverse ways in which “peacefulness” might be generated, encouraged, coaxed or allowed to emerge from prevailing conditions of possibility.

290  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha But here the verb that Ross talks about is mainly activistic and not meditative. Gandhi looks at peace as a verb when he says: “There is no way to peace, peace is the way” (quoted in Galtung 1996 in Galtung & Ikeda 1996) but the verb here is both activistic and meditative.

Bibliography Ambedkar, B.R. 1992. The Buddha and His Dhamma. Mumbai: Govt of Maharastra, Dept of Education. Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Evil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chandra, Lokesh & Daisaku Ikeda. 2009. Buddhism, A Way of Values: A Dialogue on Valorisation Across Time and Space. New Delhi: Eternal Ganges Press. Clammer, John. 2013. Culture, Development and Social Theory: Towards an Integrated Social Development. London: Zed Books. Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dalai, Lama. 2009. The Middle Way: Faith Grounded in Reason. Boston, MA: Wisdom. ———. 2008. “Soundarya Bodhara Duiti Aki” [Two Eyes of Aesthetic Perception]. Eshana 56: 118–131, June. Das, Chitta Ranjan. 2010. Byakti O Byaktitya [Person and Personality]. Bhubaneswar: Pathika Prakashani. Erasmus. 1986 [1516]. Querila Pacis: A Complaint of Peace Spurned and Rejected by the whole World. The Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Frankl, Victor. 1967. Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy. Hammondsworth: Penguin. Galtung, Johan & Daisaku Ikeda. 1996. Choose Peace. London: Pluto Press. Galtung, Johan & Graeme MacQueen. 2010. Globbalizing God: Religion, Spirituality and Peace. Transcend University Press. Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2006 “Creative Social Research: Rethinking Theories and Methods and the Calling of an Ontological Epistemology of Participation.” Dialectical Anthropology 30 (3): 227–271. ———. 2008 “The Calling of Practical Spirituality.” In Science, Spirituality and the Modernization of India, pp. 238–254, (ed.) Makarand Paranjape. Delhi: Anthem South Asian Studies ———. 2010a “Peace in Kandhamal.” Mainstream. April. ———. 2010b “Knowing Together in Compassion and Confrontation: The Calling of Transformative Knowledge.” Madras Institute of Development Studies: Working Paper. ———. 2010c “Towards a New Art of Integration.” Paper presented at the International Symposium on “Learning across Boundaries.” Luxemburg. ———. 2011 “Cultivating Transformative Reconciliation and Striving for Peace: Compassion, Confrontation and a New Art of Integration.” Current Sociology 59 (5): 604–609. ———. 2012 “Beyond Adaptation and Meditative Verbs of Co-Realizations.” In idem, Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. ———. 2013 Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London et al.: Anthem Press.

Social Healing & the Challenges of Transforming Suffering & Striving  291 ———. 2022 “Three,” in Alphabets of Creation: Taking God to Bed. Delhi: Authors Press. Habermas, Jurgen. 2006. The Divided West. Cambridge: Polity Press. Holzman, Lois. 2009. Vygotsky at Work and Play. London: Routledge. Honneth, Axel. 2007. Disrespect: Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kierkegaard, Soren. 1848. Sickness Unto Death. Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das & Margaret Lock (eds.) 1997. Social Suffering. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Murty, K. Satchidananda. 1960. “The Phenomenology of Peace.” In Murty & Bouquet 1960. ———. 1973. The Realm of Between: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Murty, K. Satchidananda & A.C. Bouquet. 1960. Studies in the Problem of Peace. Bombay et al.: Asian Publishing House. Quarles van Ufford, Philip & Ananta Kumar Giri. (eds.) 2003. A Moral Critique of Development: In Search of Global Responsibilities. London: Routledge. Ross, Fiona. 2004. “Peace, Reconciliation and the Accomplishment of Everyday Life: Interpersonal relations in South Africa.” Paper presented at the EASA meet in Vienna. Sahi, Jane. 2002. Education and Peace. Pune: Akshara Mudra. Scott, James. 1988. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Heaven, CT: Yale University Press. Sitas, Ari. 2011. “Beyond the Mandela Decade: The Ethic of Reconciliation.” Current Sociology 59 (5): 571–589. Sitas, Ari. et al. 2007. Prospects of Reconciliation, Co-Existence and Forgiveness in Cyprus in the Post-Referendum Period. Oslo: PRIO. Strydom, Piet. 2009. New Horizons of Critical Theory: Triple Contingency and Collective Learning. Delhi: Shipra. Toynbee, Alfred J. 1956. A Historian’s Approach to Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

18 COVID-19 and the Challenges of Trauma, Healing and Transformations Ethics, Politics and Spirituality, and Alternative Planetary Futures* COVID-19 is one of the most serious challenges before humanity today and different societies are facing it differently and it heightens the need for deepening our visions and practices of global social healing. To understand this, we need to understand our contemporary human social condition.1 With the spread of COVID-19 and the rising death and destruction, our contemporary COVID-19 condition challenges us to understand the different dimensions of it. With COVID-19, it is not only a case of viral pandemic but also one of civic pandemic (Horton 2020; Fang & Berry 2020).2 This civic pandemic is manifest by the use of authoritarian means to deal with pandemic as it happens with handling of this disease in some countries. COVID-19 leads to the damage of our respiratory system and eventually our inability to breathe. But here historian and philosopher Achille Mbembe (2020) challenges us to realize that humanity was already threatened with suffocation before COVID-19.3 This becomes evident with the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, USA in the hands of the police officers whose last words were: “I cannot breathe.” This murder led to wide-spread protests and movements such as Black Lives Matter and movements for police reform in the USA. This also reminds us the challenges of conjoint fight against virus, racism and endemic poverty as carried by leaders such as Jane Addams in the USA who fought against poverty, racism and the Spanish flu. For Mbembe, COVID-19 is also related to our problems of co-living such as racial co-living but also living with other species reminding us of the works of pioneers such as Donna Haraway (2007).

*  This builds upon my presentation at the webinar on this theme organized by Lady Keane College and Dr. Saji Verghese on 9 July and my Keynote Address to the second webinar on this theme at Lady Keane College on July 21, 2020.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-20

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  293

Towards a Critical Genealogy and Ontology of our Corona Presents It is our inability to live with respect and concern with other species and our mindless and unconcerned destruction of forests and habitat that has led to the unleashing and transmission of viruses such as COVID-19 which also puts questions to the working of contemporary human civilization.4 Thus, the current COV ID-19 crisis is related to crisis of civilization (Chakrabarty 2020). It is also related to crises of climate and capitalism, as critically suggested and argued by activists and scholars such as Greta Thunberg (2019), Bruno Latour (2020) and Slavos Zizek (2020). Understanding our contemporary COVID-19condition challenges us to understand what Michel Foucault (1984) calls a critical ontology of the present which is historical as well as animated by an urge to overcome the fatalism of the present and create alternative different presents and futures. Such an approach is also facilitated by Gianni Vattimo’s (2011) pathway of ontology of actuality which also can be realized as an ontology of actualization. At the heart of Vattimo’s project is the work of weak ontology which is a realization of our own limits and rather than asserting our own knowledge, ignorance, arrogance and power in a strong way. Our contemporary COVID-19 condition brings to the fore our inability to know, our own uncertainty, as many critical thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas (2020) and Veena Das (2020a, 2020b, 2020c) have challenged us to realize.5 The challenge before us is to fashion appropriate public policies of containment and healing based upon our ignorance and limited knowledge rather than what economist Jishnu Das (2020) calls an “epidemic of ignorance.”6 Acknowledging our limits and uncertainty calls for a new practice of knowing, a more humble as well as courageous way of knowing, a “new epistemic humility,”7 new border crossing between ontology and epistemology which can be called an ontological epistemology of participation (Giri 2006). Our contemporary COVID-19 condition calls for an appropriate ontological epistemology of participation.

COVID-19 and the Challenges of Trauma, Solidarity and Responsibility COVID-19 creates trauma which is both natural and social. But while this threat to humanity should have led to greater collaboration among nations and peoples, it has led to avoidable conflicts and struggles for power. A case in point is the geopolitical struggle between USA and China during the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another traumatic part of our contemporary COVID-19 moment is the aggression of China. Instead of doing all it could do to help humanity deal with these crises, China started aggression against countries like India in the Galwan valley in Ladakh as well as threatening countries such as Vietnam and a show of strength in South China Sea. Such aggression is accompanied by manifest authoritarianism in

294  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha the decision of some elected political leaders which is adding injury to the salt. Thus, the trauma of the virus is multiple as we are confronted not only with the virus and the vaccine but also with the challenge of veracity as sociologist Jenny Reardon (2020) challenges us to realize. Here we need to realize the manifold interlinked challenges of virus, vaccine, veracity and victory where we strive to realize victory not only over virus and Nature but also with virus and Nature. This also calls for appropriate construction of trauma in which awakened individuals and social movements play an important role which can build on earlier works on social constructions of risk (see Beck 1992; Strydom 1999). Only with such creative articulation and construction, trauma can be transformed into responsibility as suggested by the important work of cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander and his colleagues (Alexander et al. 2004). Both in India and the United States, we see such critical and creative construction at work vis-a-vis raising voices against both racism as well as the authoritarian governance of the COVID19 pandemic. In the Indian context, journalists and human rights activists played an important role in bringing to light the immense suffering of the migrants walking back home or boarding the migrant express and some dying in the train (Hans et al. 2021; Mander 2020). Such construction of trauma calls for a new relationship with reality and constructiveness. As Greta Thunberg (2019) suggests in the context of the related challenge of climate crises, we need to think outside the box for this which would help us cultivate what she calls “cathedral thinking.” And here Judith Butler (2020) challenges us to realize for such critical and creative constructiveness where we work with the challenge of the pandemic to produce solidarity, we have an ethical obligation to be unreal (see Butler 2020; Gessen 2020 & Weir 2020). In this creative act of constructivism, writing plays an important role as well as gives us strength to go beyond the fatalism of the present. As Fang Fang writes in her much talked about Wuhan Diary about the Wuhan lock down in China: Since most of the resident in Wuhan do not have their own automobiles, they had to walk from one hospital to another in search of a place that might admit them. It is hard to describe how difficult that must have been for those poor patients. […] We all felt completely helpless in face of these patients crying out, desperate for help. Those were also the most difficult days for me to get through. All I could do was write, so I just kept writing and writing; it became only form of psychological release.8 (Fang & Berry 2020) Writing here is linked to a new vocation of being and becoming and it is also linked to a new art of responsibility (Das 2020; Giri 2020). To respond to challenges of COVID-19 as well as the related challenges of climate change, we need creative and critical visions and practices of responsibility.

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  295 In our present-day world, we predominantly move in frames of rights and justice but these are not adequate to deal with our challenges and we need creative frames, institutions and practices of responsibility at the levels of self, society, state and our international order (Strydom 2000). While COVID-19 threatens the whole human world, what needs more conscious cultivation is the corresponding movement of global responsibility. In this context, Ramin Jahanbegloo (2020) in his recent book on COVID-19 tells us that In the tragic and increasingly exacting battle that is taking place between humanity and its new enemy, Covid-19, the common suffering of human beings has paved the way for a broader solidarity of all individuals across all lands. A global march like this on a long and dark road is a new endeavor for humanity, perhaps the most significant since the fight against Nazim in the 1940s. (2020: 59) In his chapter “Solidarity of the Shaken” Jahanbegloo tells us: We can deal with global tragedies, like the coronavirus outbreak, only if we learn to change our modes of being-in-the world and doing-in-the world. This crucial and critical renewal consists above all in always substituting responsibilities for rights. Being obsessed with rights alone means dismissing the dimension of solidarity as the art of forging a unity with others. The coronavirus outbreak has demonstrated that the fundamental right to live is suspended from the duty of each person to respect the instructions of containment. Therefore, developing a sense of solidarity with Others as part of a global citizenry si paramount as each of us is dependent on others. Tracking the question of solidarity in real life, one needs to the idea of responsibility.9 In this call of “Solidarity of the Shaken,” we have to realize the urgency of the solidarity with the shaken. This is particularly true of migrant workers who had to leave their places of work and then to come back home walking of travelling in most precarious circumstances. The Prime Minister of India announced a country-wide lockdown at four hour notice in March 2020, which led to immense suffering and miseries. Many people died out of starvation and exhaustion while travelling or walking back home. In his essay on this theme, Manoranjan Mohanty raises the question of rights, responsibility and fundamental freedoms that the plight of migrant workers poses. Mohanty urges us to realize here: The real challenge that came out boldly during the COVID-19 crisis was the need to ensure everyone’s right to work with dignity in their home regions. Much of migration is distress migration. Therefore, the prevailing economic process must be re-examined so that people get

296  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha work in their own village or town or nearby area and do not migrate. Thus, restructuring the political economy to facilitate local employment and local development is the urgent need. Once an area is developed, the migrant labour, more as mobile labour, can go with a higher bargaining power and adequate facilities to help meet the labour demand in certain areas of the country or abroad. We need to initiate restructuring of the rural economy as a whole so as to provide longterm solutions to poverty and unemployment. Rather than aiming at a five trillion GDP, achieving full employment should be our goal […]. MGNREGS can be re-imagined to cover the entire rural economy rather than specific types of jobs listed in a schedule. A diversified rural economy combining traditional and modern technologies can be planned by the panchayats as a zero-unemployment development strategy. The prevailing system of neoliberal, growth-centric economic model steered from above which throws crumbs as relief to the poor under various programmes needs to be transformed into a decentralised self-propelling, sustainable development process at the grass-roots level that makes it possible for people to realise their fundamental rights to live with. (2021: 5–6) Engaging with the precarity of the migrant laborers and the need for alternative politics which recognize the significance of labor, Mohanty further tells us: In my view, the alternative is a new politics of labour that fundamentally challenges the political economy of gradation and degradation of labour and economies. It must reject the charity-and welfare approach of capital and state and affirm the rights approach instead, thus moving from an instrumentalist view to a substantive view of recognising labour as the principal force of civilisational development. (2021: 9)

The Challenges of Transformations The current trauma of the pandemic calls for multi-dimensional transformations. For example, it calls for transformation of nationalistic jingoism including vaccine nationalism where nation-states with more resources and vaccine capacity are not always sharing this with less resourced and capable people and countries. This calls for greater co-operation among nations, individuals and cultures. It also calls for transformation of the nation-state. As Arjun Appadurai (2020) argues, the pandemic does not kill globalization but calls for a different kind of globalization and transformation with transformation of the logic of the nation-state. In line with our earlier discussion of Chakraborty’s distinction between the global and the planetary, the pandemic urges us to transform the global mode to the planetary. It also

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  297 calls for building new transnational institutions and movements. It also calls for building new regional movements and institutions for economic, political and climate-related collaboration. The current logic of long-distance production and consumption which is a direct offshoot of our contemporary economic system is not sustainable. The pandemic challenges us to build new ecologies of production and consumption. Here social activist Ela Bhatt (2015) challenges to build hundred-mile communities where producers and consumers would be able to exchange their production and consumption.10 And here anthropologist and creative thinker Alf Hornborg argues that we need to have local currencies in our interactive communities of trade and exchange which would help us in localization as well as cross-local regional and planetary collaboration (Hornborg 2017, 2019). The current COVID-19 pandemic calls for creative transcendence of existing borders and boundaries such as nation-state erected borders. It also calls for a new art of border crossing where we can overcome our existing epistemic and ontological borders and cultivate new ways of learning and being together. It also calls for new pathways of cross-cultural dialogues so that we can realize new meanings of death, disease, well-being, life and healing. The pandemic also calls for political transformation, a new kind of politics. It calls for more collaborative leadership rather than single person or authoritarian leadership (see Willis 2020; Giri 2023; Laclau & Mouffe 1995). We see that such leadership which listens to many voices have been able to stem the spread of the pandemic. Also, the countries that are led by women leaders such as Taiwan, New Zealand, Germany and Finland have been able to control the spread of the virus. This has led to a very important discussion about the differential significance of women leaders in providing creative and collaborative leadership in handling critical crises such as the present pandemic. We need empathic leaders who can feel the pain and suffering of self and others and listen to them, who can work as “apostles of ear,” who become apostolic in their visions and practices of listening.11 We also need leaders who can listen to the voices of their souls, listen to the rhythms of their bio-regions—biological diversity as well as cultural diversity—and the whispers and groans of our Mother Earth (see Howard et al. 2019). We need leaders who become bio-regional as well as Soul-Planetary or Atmic Planetary as suggested in our previous section on corporate social and spiritual responsibility. A related challenge is also practicing a new kind of politics what Arturo Escobar (2020) calls pluriversal politics which gives spaces and voices to the many rather than the one-dimensional nation-state centered system of politics of modernity. We find intimations of a new kind of politics from contemporary critical scholars such as William Connolly (2013), Donna Haraway (2016), Judith Butler (2020) and P.V. Rajagopal (see Reubke 2020).12 They challenge us to cultivate a new political imagination and practice which is less violent and based upon collaborative self-organization and mutual organization. Such a politics would rethink the current

298  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha project of rights and justice and link it to responsibility. While working on justice, it would acknowledge the significance of interpretation in realizing justice (Dworkin 2013). Justice here is also not confined among human beings; much more attention is given to the art of living together justly with other beings, especially other species what Martha Nussbaum (2006) calls “cross-species dignity.” The interpretative exercises of justice are here also not anthropocentric or shrouded in the veil of ignorance and arrogance of nation-state; rather these involve sympathetic and radical movements across borders where we interpret life and justice not only from the primacy of the human and state-centered and capital-centered rationality but also from the points of view of all lives. This way justice and responsibility become multi-topial where we move across different topoi and terrains and strive to create livable worlds and Earth by putting ourselves in the feet and trails of other species (Giri 2018a).

Ethical Issues These issues of political transformations and a new kind of politics are related to issues of ethics. To live with and beyond the pandemic we need to live ethically and here we can build upon multiple understanding of ethics and morality and multiple traditions of it. In this context, along with many contemporary approaches, the project of ordinary ethics as cultivated by Veena Das (2020b, 2020c, 2020d, 2020e, 2015), Michel Lambek (2010) and others are helpful where we live ethically in our everyday lives acknowledging our vulnerability and, at the same time, realizing our capacity to resist degradation and create new possibilities.13 A related project is a project of emergent ethics where we work on emerging ethical sensibility and norms in our contingent situations and our location in multiple contingencies of self, other, state, market, social movements and the world (cf. Quarles van Ufford & Giri 2003). Such an emergent ethics is different from an emergency ethics which is imprisoned within a logic of state of exception and based upon fear and terror (see Agamben 1995). Another project is a project of aesthetic ethics where ethics creates an art of living—an ethos of artistic living—building upon both ethics and aesthetics (Ankersmit 1996; Clammer & Giri 2017). Our current COVID-19 condition calls for creative works and meditations of aesthetic ethics in our lives which also involves critiques of egotistic and possessive individualism and affirmation of “social and ecological interdependence, which is largely misrecognized as well” (Butler 2020).

The Spiritual Calling of COVID-19 Our contemporary condition also brings us to the spiritual dimension of our existence as well the sadhana and struggles for transformations. Spirituality is not confined only to our individual well-being but also our collaborative well-being as suggested in Martin Luther King’s vision and practice of Beloved Community (King 1967). Spirituality helps us in our

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  299 strivings and struggles to live with beauty, dignity and dialogues (Giri 2018b). It also challenges us to realize the agonies of our life and then engage in strivings and struggles to transform it thus becoming agonal spirituality. Such an agonal spirituality which resonates with the project of agonal democracy as suggested by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) helps us to realize spirituality as both compassion and confrontation. The rise of authoritarianism and fundamentalism of many kinds calls for confrontation as well as compassion. Here we can build upon spiritual possibilities in our religious traditions. With regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can realize that many religious and spiritual traditions urge us to wear masks such as the Jaina traditions. The Jaina tradition urges us to relate to the virus as an entity and not just as an enemy challenging us to beyond the dominant enemy trope of modernistic politics, political theology as well as our current war on virus strategy (see Fang & Berry 2020). The Jaina tradition has a practice of dying peacefully and with our voluntary effort and in the context of the current pandemic of death and destruction, we need to learn how to die and also to live with dignity and wisdom (Chapple 2020). This is also the spirit of a philosophical approach to our current situation as suggested by the noted philosophers Simon Critchley (2020) and Ramin Jahanbegloo (2020).14 COVID-19 calls for a new common sense. COVID-19 and other pandemics are related to our inability to hear the voices of Nature, one aspect of our life with senses is to cultivate our hearing senses so that we can listen to the cries of both Nature as well as vulnerable social groups such as the migrant workers whose lives were given a toss by the powers that be by announcing a lock down at a four hour notice. Primal people of the world have far more developed sense to listen to each other and Nature. But our modern social sciences privilege speaking over listening. For realizing further possibilities with our senses such as listening, hearing and seeing, we need to further develop our senses which would contribute to a deeper realization of common sense.15 Common sense is also not bound only to the realm of sense perception, that too empirical sense perception. It also touches what Pitrim Sorokin (1947) long time ago called the super-sensate. COVID-19 is creating death and suffering and much of it is avoidable if we have the right public policy as well as right ways of living at the levels of individuals, families, and community. At the same time, the current pandemic challenges us to live differently and live with death differently and resist what Horton (2020) calls “radical dehumanization.”16 Modernity has been primarily preoccupied with life, that too young and successful life, and it has put death into background. We need to learn to live with death creatively and meaningfully. We need to have dialogues with death. In this dialogue with death, we can learn from multiple traditions of humanity. In the Indic traditions, there are insightful dialogues with Death. In the dialogue between Yama and Nachiketa in Kathopanishad, Nachiketa is not afraid of death and wants to use the opportunity of dialogue to realize the meaning of life and immortality. This theme of immortality again arises in the famous

300  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha dialogue between Yajnavalkya and Maitryeyi in The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Yanjnyavalkya tells Maitryee that the world’s wealth cannot give her immortality and her life would be as miserable as life of other rich people (see Sen 1999). There is an important dialogue between Yaksha and Yudhisthira in Mahabharata where this dialogue is happening in the context of death of his four brothers who rushed to drink the water in the lake without listening to the voice of Yaksha to answer his question. This was an act of arrogance which is related to arrogance of many of us in our contemporary moment of the pandemic. Yaksha asks Yudhisthira who is a living corpse and Yudhisthira says: “He who does not worship the following five—‘Gods, guests, family, dependents and soul’—is a living corpse though living normally” (Murthy 2004). There is also dialogue between Savitri and the King of Death in the Mahabharata as well as in Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri in which Savitri is striving to revive her dead husband Satyavan. This can be read and realized together with the scene of a young boy in a railway station in Bihar where he is trying to awaken her sleeping mother without him not knowing that her mother is dead after an exhaustive journey back home in a COVID-special train during the lockdown in India. During this pandemic, many people—front line health workers as well as ordinary human beings—are trying to put their lives in risk and revive others. This is a creative and courageous act which challenges us to create life in places of death and destruction. Through such creativity and courage which is shown by many people in saving and nurturing lives during our pandemic we overcome mortality and cultivate immortality.17 The current pandemic brings us to both crises of life as well as death as part of our current civilizational crises. It challenges us to cultivate a new civilization of life and death. Both science and spirituality challenge us to realize that the virus is not just our enemy. Human life has evolved with the virus (Tanabe 2020). But the dominant discourse is a war on virus. A spiritual engagement tells us how we can embrace the challenge of the virus in a new way, do a yoga with COVID-19 which can become viral. We do a new Corona yoga which leads to a yoga of karuna-compassion. We just cannot be victorious over the virus and Nature but we are victorious with virus and Nature as our intertwined story, sadhana and struggles for creating livable worlds of beauty, dignity and dialogues for all.

COVID-19 and Alternative Futures In the context of our current predicament, there is a discourse of the new normal. But the new normal with lock down and many other aspects of our contemporary condition such as authoritarianism and violence is also pathological. It is in this context that we need to rethink our present and pathways to futures critically and creatively. We need to work with and transform both our new normality and pathology and realize as Axel Honneth (2007: 35) argues: “A paradigm of social normality must, therefore, consist in culturally independent conditions that allow a society’s

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  301 members to experience undistorted self-realization.” Honneth continues: “The question then comes crucial whether it is a communitarian form of ethical life, a distance-creating public sphere, non-alienated labor or a mimetic interaction with nature that enables individuals to lead a well-lived life (ibid). In their recent work on migration and COVID-19, Asha Hans et al. also tell us: It is time to start the pedagogic imagining and structuring of a future world that will open up to new possibilities. The questions before us are: what is normal and just, and how do we protect our fundamental rights when these rights are trampled on? In this context, questions we should be then asking are: what is the appropriate language to create a new alternative? How do we work in collaborative ways? We also need to ask: how do we stop this violence from becoming the “new normal” in our lives? Are we prepared to re-imagine new worlds where security is dependent not on force but recognition of an interdependent world of collaboration? It is imperative to introduce different methods of development and a new alternative to the “new normal”. Would this mean creating fundamental changes in our understanding of words such as “poverty”? This new manifestation is the shift that strikes at the very core of our social structure calling for a reconceptualisation of the vocabulary of change? We recognise that the pandemic has essentially affected our lives and our humanity and is the catalyst we hope for a new equal and just global system. (Hans et al. 2021: 5–6) In this context, we need to transform our suffering embedded in these questions and our implicated existence into healing—self, social and global. As Mbembe (2020) here challenges us to realize: In the aftermath of this calamity there is a danger that rather than offering sanctuary to all living species, sadly the world will enter a new period of tension and brutality. In terms of geopolitics, the logic of power and might will continue to dominate. For lack of a common infrastructure, a vicious partitioning of the globe will intensify, and the dividing lines will become even more entrenched. Many states will seek to fortify their borders in the hope of protecting themselves from the outside. They will also seek to conceal the constitutive violence that they continue to habitually direct at the most vulnerable. Life behind screens and in gated communities will become the norm. In the context of our current predicament, there are varieties of talks about post-COVID futures. But without multi-dimensional transformations— social, economic, political and spiritual—our post-COVID-19 futures may not be different from our current condition. In this context, we need to cultivate alternative planetary futures both in discourse and practice. But

302  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha future is not only a fact—a cultural fact but also is a matter of values (Appadurai 2013). We are challenged to create pathways of beauty, dignity and dialogues and alternative planetary futures which are not reproductions of existing dead and killing systems and ways of thinking. As Arundhati Roy (2020) challenges us to realize in her challenging reflections, “The Pandemic is a Portal:” What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it’s God’s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world. Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality,” trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Notes 1 In this exploration, the following thoughts are helpful: The viral epidemic is basically a matter of health and disease. But there is another epidemic of a public or civic kind which reduces politics basically to the conflict between friends and enemies. This conception has tended to become dominant in recent times world-wide - and this is why it can also be called a pandemic. This conception is opposed to a view which sees politics mainly as the struggle for the “good life2 of all. The key term of the first conception is “power”, the key term of the second view is “justice”. The two kinds of pandemics are different: the viral pandemic attacks or destroys the physical body, the civic pandemic attacks and destroys the public body or the spirit of civic life. One needs to keep them apart. However, there are also overlaps or instances where the two epidemics become fused. This happens when the politics of “power” seeks to control the pandemic of health, that is, where political rulers seek to manipulate the health epidemic. (Fred Dallmayr (personal communication) This was a pandemic that was described and reported in terms of statistics— numbers of infections, numbers of patients in critical care and numbers of death. Lives were transformed into mathematical summaries […]

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  303 But those who died must not be summarized. They must not become lines on squared paper. They must not become mere rates used to argue differences between nations. Every death counts. A person who died in Wuhan is as important as one who died in New York. Our way of describing the impact of the pandemic erased the biographies of the dead. The science and politics of COVID-19 became exercises in radical dehumanization. (Horton 2020) We must reclaim the lungs of our world with a view to forging new ground. Humankind and biosphere are one. Alone, humanity has no future. Are we capable of rediscovering that each of us belongs to the same species, that we have an indivisible bond with all life? Perhaps that is the question – the very last – before we draw our last dying breath. (Memembe 2020) 2 The noted political theorist Fred Dallmayr (personal communication) makes this distinction between civic pandemic and viral pandemic. Continuing his thoughts presented in the epigraph of this essay, Dallmayr tells us how political leaders manipulate the pandemic in countries like USA: “Medical experts or experts in medical science are often overruled or pushed aside by political power-seekers. In this way, the two epidemics become one big threat to humankind” (personal communication). 3 As Memembe (2020) writes: Before this virus, humanity was already threatened with suffocation. If war there must be, it cannot so much be against a specific virus as against everything that condemns the majority of humankind to a premature cessation of breathing, everything that fundamentally attacks the respiratory tract, everything that, in the long reign of capitalism, has constrained entire segments of the world population, entire races, to a difficult, panting breath and life of oppression. To come through this constriction would mean that we conceive of breathing beyond its purely biological aspect, and instead as that which we hold in-common, that which, by definition, eludes all calculation. By which I mean, the universal right to breath. 4 We can here relate the rise of COVID-19 from destruction of wild habitats to the burning of Khandava forest in Indian epic Mahabharata. Lord Krishna and his companion heroic Arjuna burnt the Khandava forest to propitiate the desire of Agni, the god of fire. All animals, bird and inhabitants of the forest were killed including a baby snake from her mother’s womb chased and killed by the great Krishna Arjuna duo. Tatkshaka, the king of snakes, escaped and he built a magical palace with the help of Maya for the Pandavas seeing which King Duryoadhana became envious. He then defeated the Pandavas in the game of dice and then humiliated Draupadi. Draupadi tried to seek revenge which was one of the reasons of the Mahabharata war. According to Irawati Karve, it is the burning of the Khandhava forest which is the prime reason for subsequent violence in Mahabharata including violence against Draupadi helping us to realize the significance of works by scholars such as Vandana Shiva that violence against women and Nature go together (Karve 1991; Shiva 1988). But while Draupadi took revenge against her humiliation she did not take to task her husband Arjuna and friend Krishna for the degradation of Nature, for the burning of Khandava forest. To complete the story of revenge, Takshaka finally bit her grandson King Parikshit. But before this the King wanted to listen to words of wisdom from the sage and writer Vyasadeva who wrote Srimad Bhagavatam. In a similar way, we can realize the arrival of COVID-19 from our destruction of forest and wild habitats and we need to compose and listen to a new

304  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Bhagavatam which is a story of human, nature and divine and act wisely by reversing and transforming our ways of destruction. President Jair Bolsonaro who was infected with COVID-19 has been involved with the burning of the Amazon rain forest. Now the virus has caught on him. And it is out to catch all of us unless we stop our thoughts and actions of burning our forests and other beings and weave our own paths and stories of human, nature and divine, a new Bhagavatam, a new Corona and Karuna (compassion) Bhagavatam. 5 In the famous words of Habermas (2020): “Never before has so much been known about what we do not know.” 6 Here what Veena Das (2020a) writes deserves our careful consideration: How could the government not see and only realize belatedly that the policy of lockdown was directly contradicted by the offer of free buses to ply migrants across the border? And not only that the crowds gathered there would pose immediate risks of infection among themselves, but also that as these migrants spread out in villages, it would become impossible to trace contacts? Why did the higher-ups in the police administration neither think that policemen on patrol needed masks and gloves, nor that one stern order to the effect that anyone found using lathis (long wooden sticks) to beat up people would be suspended, or a one-day tour of affected areas by senior police officers to rein in the lower-level policemen might have constrained them from using their sticks so freely? 7 Upendra Baxi (2020) writes: Epistemic humility is then a first virtue of the tasks and labours of governance, development, rights and justice. What matters is not the willingness to strike accompanied by the fear of being wounded, but the willingness and ability on all sides to learn from manifest and latent mistakes in law, policy, and governance accompanied by rapid course-correction. Epistemic humility requires us all to learn from and listen to each other, and not take recourse to antagonistic politics that divides people into the friend and the enemy. Second, not just the social activists but the bureaucracy, security, and political elites need always to accept the accumulated constitutional wisdom of the judiciary. A subservient judiciary and a sycophantic legal profession (and media) are no friends of a democratic order. If the Supreme Court is to remain a “last resort of the bewildered and the oppressed” (in the immortal words of Justice P K Goswami), adjudicatory co-governance of the nation (the wisdom of the people speaking through courts, or demosprudence) is as essential as is legisprudence (the wisdom of the legislators) and jurisprudence (the wisdom of the jurists). Pooling these wisdoms is the need of the hour in combating Covid-19. Third, this pandemic renders political oneupmanship or hyperpartisanship entirely superfluous and downright dangerous. Epistemic humility requires us all to learn from and listen to each other, and not take recourse to antagonistic politics that divides people into the friend and the enemy. If nothing else, Covid-19 should teach us to care for each other and co-learn from fellow-citizens, rather than use the arsenal of law to silence or punish free and responsible acts of speech and expression, howsoever inconvenient or irritating these may prove to those who hold power. To accuse each other of defamation, hurting religious or cultural sensitivities, sedition or even treason is an undemocratic vice not to be celebrated. 8 And as the novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday (2020) expresses in his verse, “In the Time of Plague:” We endure thoughts of demise And measure the distance of death. Death too wears a mask.

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  305 But consider, there may well be good In our misfortune if we can find it. It is Hidden in the darkness of our fear. But discover it and see that it is hope And more; it is the gift of opportunity. We have the rare chance to prevail, To pose a resolution for world renewal. We can be better than we have ever been. We can improve the human condition. We can imagine, then strive to realize, Our potential for goodness and morality. 9 Jahanbegloo (2000: 62) here presents the thoughts of Jean Keane which is important in our engagement with responsibility in this book: Responsibility is the center of gravity of the self […] it requires the existence of a person who is responsible and someone or something for whom or for which that person is responsible. Responsibility orientates the self—endows that self with the power to confer meaning on its relations with the wider world […] That means that the struggle to establish and cultivate responsibility is a life-and-death struggle to survive as a human being. Life is constantly threatened by nothingness […] the power of individuals […] to fend off nothingness, depends upon their [..] capacity for responsibility. (Keane 2000: 289–290, quoted in Jehanbegloo 2000) 10 Here what critical economist Irene van Staveren (2020: 19) writes is also helpful: I think if we look at the world economy as a whole, we see that most world trade is dominated by multinational companies, by interconmpany trade. That is because huge specialization in low cost production along very long value chains. The corona crisis has shown us the vulnerability of such massive specialization: the global North is too dependent on just a few value chains for key products, while the economies in the global South are dependent for their employment on those same value chains. This calls for a systematic change to the world economy towards shorter supply chains. 11 Pope Francis speaks about being apostolic in our listening to each other. Inspired by this I have written this poem which can be read in our journey of cultivating a new poetics of apostolic and listening leadership: Apostle of Ears Ananta Kumar Giri Apostasy Apostle of Fear Where are Apostles of Ears? Marching in the Name of Kingdom of God Ram Rajya—Kingdom of Rama Banishing Sita and Killing Shambuka On the Way Sacrificing Innocents as Lambs Where are your tears Where are your Ears? [I dedicate this to Pope Francis and other sadhakas and sadhikas of listening in this anxiety-ridden and apathetic world of ours. Bangalore, September 4, 2017.

306  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha This has come out in my book of poems, Alphabets of Creation: Taking God to Bed. Giri 2022] 12 Here as Butler (2020) challenges us: “We would need to develop political practices to make decisions about how to live together less violently.” 13 Here what Veena Das (2020a) writes with a personal touch is an inspiring example of ordinary ethics: I am a realist. I know that I belong to one of the “vulnerable” groups, and indeed, in the triage of hospital beds or ventilators, I would rather that a younger person with more life to live gets priority over me. Yet I do what I can to survive. 14 In the context of Coronavirus, what Ramin Jahanbegloo (2020: 1) writes about living with an art of listening and singing like birds and living wisely is helpful: We all live the same life but we each live it differently. That is what makes life interesting. Starting the day at dawn is an art that the birds have perfected. They sing to us innocently and without hesitation, not knowing that we human beings have lost the art of living. If we human beings keep our faith in life, if we believe in living with equal faith, we will know how to live like the rest of the natural world. It is by a mathematical point only that we are alive today, but mathematicians don’t know how to listen to the birds singing. We may not be able to give meanings to our lives with calculus or trigonometry, but we can certainly maintain ourselves on this earth by living according to the dictates of wisdom. To be wise is not merely to follow the path of reason. Many people are capable of common sense, without being necessarily wise. To be wise is to see the cruelty of fate, but also to be able to surpass it. One implication of the above thought of Jahanbegloo is that we have to learn to live with COVID-19 wisely not accepting it as a cruel fate. We have to learn how to live with this making our fate into a destiny—paths of mutual destination with love, care, wisdom and responsibility. The same calling is also there with pathways of death. We also have to learn how to embrace death with wisdom while doing all that we must do to nourish and protect life. 15 Veena Das (2003) here challenges us to overcome the dualism between sociology and common sense and how sociology can learn together with common sense for deeper understanding of self and society. 16 Following Horton’s epigraph about this, here what he writes below is also challenging: At press conference after press conference, government ministers and their medical and scientific advisors described the deaths of their neighbors as “unfortunate.” But these were not unfortunate deaths. They were not unlucky, inappropriate or even regrettable. Every death was evidence of systematic government misconduct—reckless acts of omission that constituted breaches in the duties of public office. 17 Living with fragility during our Corona times also is an invitation for us to cultivate our immortality with and beyond our mortality which becomes our sources of hopes. Here we can draw inspiration from Sri Aurobindos’ epic Savitri: Born of its amour with eternity Our spirits break free from their environment. The future brings its face of miracle near,

COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  307 Its godhead looks at us with present eyes; Acts deemed impossible grow natural; We feel the hero’s immortality; The courage and the strength death cannot touch Awake in limbs that are mortal, hearts that fail; We move by the rapid impulse of a will That scorns the tardy trudge of mortal time. These promptings come not from an alien Sphere: Ourselves are citizens of that mother State […] (Sri Aurobindo 1993: 262)

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COVID-19 & the Challenges of Trauma, Healing & Transformations  309 Hornborg, Alf. 2017. “How to Turn an Ocean Liner: A Proposal for Voluntary Degrowth by Redesigning Money for Sustainability, Justice and Resilience.” Journal of Political Ecology. ———. 2019. Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press. Horton, Richard. 2020. The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How To Stop it Happening Again. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Howard, Sarah et al. 2019. “Perspectives on Bioregional Urbanism: Transformative Harmony with Living Systems.” In Transformative Harmony, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri, pp. 317–358. Delhi: Studera Press. Jahanbegloo, Ramin. 2020. The Courage to Exist: A Philosophy of Life and Death in the Age of Coronavirus. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Karve, Irawati. 1991 [1969]. Yuganta: The End of an Epoch. Hyderabad: Disha Books. King, Martin Luther Jr. 1967. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Laclau, Ernesto & Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. Lambek, Michael (ed.) 2010. Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action. New York: Fordham Press. Latour, Bruno. 2020. “Is This a Dress Rehearsal?” In the Moment, Critical Inquiry. Mander, Harsh. 2020. Locking Down the Poor: The Pandemic and India’s Moral Center. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger. Mbembe, Achille. 2020. “The Universal Right to Breathe.” In the Moment, Critical Inquiry. Mohanty, Manoranjan. 2021. “Migrant Labour on Center Stage: But Politics Fails Them.” In Migratoin, Workers and Fundamental Freedoms: Pandemic Vulnerabilities and States of Exception in India, (eds.) Hans, Asha, Kalpana Kannabiran, Manoranjan Mohanty and Pusphendra. London & New York: Routledge. Murthy, S.V. Ramana. 2004. The Enchanted Lake: Yaksha Yudhisthira Samvada. Pune: Rajakiya Sanskrit Sansthan. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quarles van Ufford, Philip & Ananta Kumar Giri (ed.) 2003. A Moral Critique of Development: In Search of Global Responsibilities. London: Verso. Reardon, Jenny. 2020. ‘V is for Veracity.” Items. New York: Newsletter of Social Science Research Council. Reubke, Karl-Julius. 2020. Struggles for Peace and Justice: India, Ekta Parishad and Globalization of Solidarity. New Delhi: Studera Press. Roy, Arundhati. 2020. “The Pandemic is a Portal.” In Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction. Penguin. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knof. Shiva, Vandana. 1988. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Sorokin, Pitrim. 1947. Society, Culture and Personality: Their Structure and Dynamics. New York. Strydom, Piet. 1999. “The Civilization of the Gene: Biotechnology Risk Framed in the Responsibility Discourse.” In Nature, Risk and Responsibility: Discourse of Biotechnology, pp. 21–36. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

310  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha ———. 2000. Discourse and Knowledge: The Making of Enlightenment Sociology. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Tanabe, Akio. 2020. “Politics of Relationship in the Anthropocene: A Search of Well-Being of Human Co-Becomings.” Paper presented in the International Webinar on “Writing Post-Pandemic Life World: Society, Cultural Materialities and Practices.” Department of History, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, 17 July. Thunberg, Greta. 2019. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference. New York: Penguin. van Staveren, Irene. 2020. “The Economic Consequences of the Corona Crisis.” Student-Staff Dialogue Between Vincenzo D’Egdio & Irene van Staveren. ISS News 22 (1): 19. Vattimo, Giani. 2011. A Farewell To Truth. New York: Columbia University Press. Weir, Margaret. 2020. “The Pandemic and the Production of Solidarity.” Items. New York: Newsletter of Social Science Research Council. Willis, David Blake. 2020. “Gandhi and Aurobindo in the Age of Corona: Reflections on Transformative Leadership, End Times and the Kali Yuga.” Afterword to Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, (ed.) Ananta Kumar Giri. London & New York: Routledge. Zizek, Slavos. 2020. Covid-19 Shakes the World. London: OR Books.

19 Global Social Healing Upholding Our World, Regenerating our Earth and the Calling of a Planetary Lokasamgraha*

Introduction and Invitation Global social healing calls for new visions and practices of upholding our world and regenerating our Earth. Here, we can draw inspiration from the visionary works of Fred Dallmayr who has written an Afterword to this volume. This concluding chapter explores how we can learn with Dallmayr in this journey. Fred Dallmayr has been an inspiring seeker of love, knowledge, wisdom, friendship, beauty, dignity, dialogues and transformations in our world whose life and travel is an inspiration to many of us—humble fellow seekers and travelers. Dallmayr has traveled lightly and with light1 across many different traditions, religions and philosophical movements of our world with profound humility and a quest for learning which has gifted us deep insights and wisdom as to the fundamental issues of the human condition as well as contemporary issues of survival and transformations, dialogues and peace, freedom and solidarity, mindfulness and letting be, cosmopolitanism and good life, post-secular faith and a religion of service. Dallmayr has pursued his sadhana (strivings) and struggle with courage and karuna (compassion) fighting against apocalypse and striving to recover our wholeness—self, social and humanity’s. Dallmayr has pursued his life’s journey of search for knowledge and Truth with a spirit of wondering and wandering rather than be a theoretical system builder as he also gently challenges us to realize such a mode of thinking and being: Faithful to the Platonic motto of “wondering” (thaumazein), the reflective theorist in the global village must shun spectatorial allures and adopt the more modest stance of participant in the search for truth: by opening mind and heart to the puzzling diversity of human experiences and traditions—and also to the possibility of jeopardizing cherished preoccupations or beliefs. (1999)

*  A version of this essay has been published in Cosmopolitan Civility: Global-Local Reflections with Fred Dallmayr. I thank Professor Ruth Abbey of University of Notre Dame, the editor of this volume, for her kind invitation, encouragement and support.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-21

312  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Dallmayr has striven with gentility, courage and compassion to uphold life in face of death and destruction and also uphold our world. It is with a sense of desperation and deep spiritual hope that he has composed such deeply meditative and transforming texts as Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village, Achieving our World: Toward a Global and Plural Democracy, Peace Talks: Who Would Listen? In Search for Good Life: A Pedagogy for the Troubled Times, Dialogue Among Civilizations, Freedom and Solidarity: Toward New Beginnings and Democracy to Come: Politics as Relational Praxis (Dallmayr 1998, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2015a, 2017c; also see Dallmayr 2009, 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c). His essay, “Democracy to Come,” is an example of his profound humility as well as radiant critical engagement in which he spends so much time with care and kindness in elaborating the thoughts of Jacques Derrida on democracy to come. But only in the last paragraph, Dallmayr raises some questions which are profound. As he writes: A post-humanist praxis—including democratic praxis—requires a correction of this imbalance. Viewed from this angle, democratic praxis and “democracy to come” complement each other, rather than being separated by an abyss. Just as steady practice in music precedes the great virtuoso, steady democratic practice makes room and prepares the growth for the democratic event beyond mastery and control. (Dallmayr 2011: 43) If Dallmayr had wanted he could have become a theoretical system builder but he has followed an exemplary path of listening with respect to the arguments of fellow great thinkers in the present and past and then offering his own deep reflections modestly. This way he reminds us of a great seeker, philosopher and traveler like Sankaracharya from India who also commented upon other great works and whose philosophical journey was part of a spiritual journey as well as realization of Beauty in the world. Sankaracharya wrote not only original philosophical commentaries on important classical texts such as Brahmasutra but wrote poems of deep devotion such as Saundaryaalahari. Though Dallmayr probably does not write poetry himself but he has a deep journey with the poetic as part of seeking of life as he writes: “Poetic language is one art form which illustrates the combination of disclosure and sheltering of meaning required for contemporary mindfulness” (Dallmayr 2014).2 He also invites us to find Sophianic Feminine and Goddess dimension of our human condition in poetry, songs and music.3 Dallmayr has also sought to regenerate our soil and soul with a spirit of a new co-creation and fecundation. With works such as Return to Nature? An Ecological Counter History, Dallmayr (2011a) has joined our contemporary epochal striving and struggle to regenerate our Earth with new seeds of thinking, movements, beings and co-beings. Dallmayr has sought to uphold our world with a simultaneous engagement and participation in the

Global Social Healing  313 calling of Dharma and Dhamma (right and rightful conduct from Hindu and Buddhist traditions) as well as Nomos and the Normative from the Greek and the Western tradition where both stand not only for reproduction of existing norms of society but quest for a good life of beauty, dignity and dialogue, and the Rights and Rites from the Confucian tradition. Going beyond familiar dualisms like rights and rites, right and the good, freedom and solidarity, Dallmayr (2011c) challenges us to cultivate these simultaneously, for example love and justice with a spirit of mindfulness. Dallmayr seeks to uphold our world with mindfulness in a world full of noisy chatters and fierce argumentation. For Dallmayr, “Mindfulness means a stance of quiet abstinence, an outlook seeking to recover its beauty through reticence and ‘letting-be” (Dallmayr 2014). In a spirit of practical renunciation which corresponds to his exemplary pathway of practical ontology characterized by love, labor and learning, Dallmayr pleads for mind-fasting. For Dallmayr, who builds upon Heidegger sometimes a bit religiously, to mind is not an engine of acquisition, a predator ready to appropriate whatever it encounters; rather, it has to practice the difficult task of renunciation, of letting beings “be.” This task is particularly crucial when mindfulness encounters the “unground” of “non-being.” At this point, mind has to “un-mind” itself by emptying itself of all pretended knowledge. Mindfulness has to give way to mind-fasting. (ibid) Upholding the world requires a spirit of co-creation and Dallmayr invites us to uphold our world in a spirit of co-creating it and taking it into next evolutionary level without being a slave of narrow progressivism or linear Eurocentric evolutionism. It also calls for action as well as meditation, acting as well as non-acting what can be called meditative verbs of co-realizations (Giri 2012).

Upholding the World: Dharma, Sahadharma and the Calling of an Integral Pursurartha Upholding the world calls for a life of Dharma—right conduct and right living on the part of individuals as well as society. Dharma in Indic thought also has a cosmic dimension. Dharma is part of Purusartha—four fold end or goal of life characterized by Dharma (right conduct and right living), Artha (which means wealth as well as meaning giving rise to the challenge of meaningful wealth), Kama (desire) and Moksha (salvation). Dharma refers to modes of right conduct and thinking which is different from righteousness as a fixed system of classification between right and wrong especially imprisoned within a political and religious system of classification between righteous self and the unrighteous other. Upholding our world depends upon our living a life of Dharma and cultivating it in the lives of self and society. It challenges us to understand the relationship between

314  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Dharma and law as well as justice and Dharma (Giri 2013) as Dharma challenges us to go beyond an anthropocentric reduction of justice and dignity and realize our responsibility not only to human beings but also to the non-humans.4 Here we also need to explore the link between Kama and Dharma, desire and Dharma. We can critically rethink our epics such as Mahabharata and Gilgamesh to understand the violence of Kama (desire) when it is not guided by Dharma. The burning of Khandava forest in Mahabharata is a manifestation of destructive desire of Agni, the god of fire. In the epic, Krishna and Arjuna instead of interrogating the desire of Agni to consume the forest of Khandava became an accomplish to this which constitutes the originary violence in Mahabharata which led to subsequent violence, for example the violence against Draupadi and the fratricidal war between Kauravas and Pandavas (Karve 1968). Similar is the killing of Humamba, the guardian god of forest in the epic Gilgamesh from Sumerian civilization, the earliest epic of humanity (Rifkin 2010). Our dominant models and practice of development are being accompanied by destruction of forests and Nature which today has brought us to the tipping point of climate change. It is a product of work of our Karma (action) and Kama (desire) not restrained and uplifted by the spirit of Dharma. Upholding our world is facilitated by a life of Dharma but Dharma is part of Purusartha of life and upholding our world also calls for proper relationship with other elements of Purusartha. Purusartha was an important vision and pathway of life in classical India which talked about realization of meaning and excellence in terms of four cardinal values and goals of life-Dharma (right conduct), Artha (wealth and meaning), Kama (desire) and Moksha (salvation). It provided paths of human excellence and social frame in classical India. But its implication for human development, social transformations, and upholding our world in the present day world has rarely been explored. This is not surprising as much of the vision and practice of development is Euro-American and suffers from an uncritical one-sided philosophical and civilizational binding of what Fred Dallmayr (1998) calls “Enlightenment Blackbox” which cuts off our engagement with human development from our roots and especially our integral links with Nature and the Divine. For upholding our world, we need to rethink and transform both Purusartha and human and social development. In traditional schemes, Purusartha is confined to the individual level and rarely explores the challenge of Purusartha at the level of society. In our conventional understanding elements of Purusartha such as Dharma and Artha are looked at in isolation. But we need to overcome an isolated constitution of elements of Purusartha and look at them instead in a creative spirit of autonomy and interpenetration. Much of illness and ill-being both in traditional societies as well as in our contemporary ones emerges from isolation of these elements for example, Artha (wealth) not being linked simultaneously to Dharma (right conduct) and Mokhsa (salvation) (Krishna 1991). Integral Purusartha goes beyond an isolated construction of elements of Purusartha and challenges us to realize and create transformational relationships among them.

Global Social Healing  315 Here we are also challenged to rethink vision and practices of human development which can learn from visions of Purusartha in creative ways in the process both opening Purusartha and human development to cross-cultural, cross-religious and cross-civilizational dialogues. For instance, it is helpful to explore what are the parallels of Purusartha in other religious and civilizational streams such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Chinese civilizations and here we can build upon the deep quest of Dallmayr over the years in inter-cultural dialogue and dialogue among civilizations. Dharma in Indic scheme of Purusartha ought to be brought together with similar visions and practices such as Dhamma in Buddhism and rites in Confucian traditions. Dharma as part of an integral Purusartha also challenges us to rethink and realize Dharma in an open way rather than part of a logic of self-justificatory closure between self and other. Here we can engage ourselves with the discourse of swadharma and paradharma in Shirmad Bhagavad Gita. Shrimad Bhagavad Gita talks about swadharma ( dharma of the self) and the need to protect one’s swadharma from paradharma (dharma of others). But what is swadharma, what is paradharma? So far in conventional religion, politics and interpretative exercises these have been given a literal and group-linked categorical meaning. But swadharma is not only one’s socially given religious identity, it is the dharma of one’s being, the path of unfoldment, and the duty that one seeks and needs to follow. One needs to nurture and protect one’s unique dharma and mode of self-realization from those forces which are not intrinsically significant for one’s self-realization. If one has inclination to be an artist and if one is forced to be something else as it happened in case of Hitler, then one is not following the path of one’s swadharma. If one is born into Hinduism, then one’s swadhama is not only Hinduism in a superficial sense and Islam is the paradharma—the dharma of the other. This is a very superficial rendering of swadharma and paradharma at the level of caste, religion and gender. As we realize the deeper spiritual meaning and challenge of existing categories coming from our culture and religions, we also need to create new categories of reality, living and realization. In the case of the existing discourse of self and other, swadharma and paradharma, which has been used inantagonistic battles, we need to create a new category of saha (together) and sahadharma (dharma of togetherness). Sahadharma emerges from what Martin Heidegger calls “midpoint of relationships” (Dallmayr 1993). This is suggested in the concluding lines of Rigveda where there is a call for Samagachadhwam, Sambadadhwam. For Daya Krishna, this path of togetherness is the call of the future and the God to come is a God of togetherness. In his words: Rta and Satya provide the cosmic foundation of the universe and may be apprehended by tapasa or disciplined “seeking” or sadhana and realized through them. The Sukta 10.191, the last Sukta of the Rgveda, suggests that this is not, and cannot be, something on the part of an

316  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha individual alone, but is rather the “collective” enterprise of all “humankind” and names the “god” of this Sukta “Somjnanam” emphasizing the “Togetherness” of all “Being” and spelling it out as Sam Gachhadhwam, Sam Vadadyam, Sambho Manasi Jayatam, Deva Bhagam Jathapurve Sanjanatam Upasate. (Krishna 2006: 8) For upholding our world, we need a new culture, political theology and spiritual ecology of sahadharma which nurtures spaces and times of togetherness. Language and common natural resources constitute our arenas of sahadharma, which includes both conflict and cooperation, and it calls of a new politics and spirituality of sadhana and struggle, compassion and confrontation. Practice of and meditation with sahadharma and recovery of commons is linked to processes of regeneration of self, culture and society and it creates movements for bottom-up processes of self and cultural awakening and challenges top-down processes of one-sided modernization and now globalization which resonates with Dallmayr’s deep reflections on grass-roots globalization.

Regenerating Our Earth Upholding our word is accompanied by manifold efforts of regenerating our Earth. Our Earth today has been under stress and with climate change it is now bereft of green cover in many parts of our world which threaten human life on Earth. Our Earth is our Mother but sometimes we look at Earth as only a dead Matter and with inspiration from Gaia cosmology which also touches science and religious and spiritual traditions of the world we can relate to Earth with sacredness. This is the spirit of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si and Dallmayr’s meditation in his Return to Nature? It also calls us to plant seeds of trees and life on and with Earth. Regenerating our earth is connected to climate care movement in which we all can take part (Swaminathan 2011). It calls for creative discovery of our roots and also a cross-fertilization between roots and routes. Regenerating our Earth calls for regenerating our both roots and routes in creative and transformative ways. It calls for new ways of Earth work which also consists of new ways of memory works and memory meditations in which we can hear the groaning of our Mother Earth and contribute to Her healings especially as ravaged by war and climate change. I had nurtured a symposium on this issue of regenerating earth with the title “Cross-Fertilizing Roots and Routes,’ in which Dallmayr had taken part (Giri 2017). In his contribution to this symposium Dallmayr brings the discussion of Earth and World from Martin Heidegger which also helps us to understand the relationship between upholding our world and regenerating our earth. Here what he writes deserves our careful consideration:

Global Social Healing  317 In Heidegger’s preservation, the terms “world” and “earth” refer basically to the difference between openness and sheltering, between revealment and concealment, between the disclosure of future possibilities of life and the reticence of finite origins. As in Giri’s case, what is important to note, however, is that difference is not equivalent to dualism or antithesis, but rather serves as a synonym for counterpoint or differential entwinement. In Heidegger’s words, difference here establishes a counterpoint which is a kind of “midpoint” between world and earth, but not in the sense of a stark antagonism. Hence, world is not simply openness and earth not simply closure; rather, there is mutual conditioning and interpenetration. (Dalmayr 2017a: 12) Dallmayr’s call for understanding the entwinement between Earth and World urges us to realize Earth as an open journey of evolution and realization. Upholding our world and regenerating our earth calls for seed works, seed meditations and a sadhana of gardening. It also calls for creative and critical works such as walking and meditating with the vision and discourse and realization of Kingdom of God. The first challenge is to realize that the visions like “kingdom of god is within you” needs further deeper quest and realization. As Harvey Cox tells us, the real impulse of the vision “kingdom of God is within you” in Aramaic is to realize that kingdom of God is across you (Cox 2016). This brings the sadhana of realization of kingdom of God relational resonating with the spirit of Sahadharma and God of togetherness discussed above. Along with this, we are also invited to transform the language and discourse of Kingdom of God into a Garden of God. The vision and discourse of Kingdom of God has many a time been imprisoned within a logic of power where we are prone to valorize God’s power in order to valorize our own power on Earth, especially the logic of sovereignty at the level of self and society, rather than realize God’s mercy. We are also entrapped in a literal understanding of Garden of Eden and fall from it by the deviation of the snake, Adam and Eve. But we can now transform the vision and discourse of kingdom of God to Garden of God and realize snake, Adam and Eve as children of both God and Mother Earth. This is an aspect of k ­ undalini sadhana discussed above. We can realize God as a Gardener, a creative Gardener, rather than a power hungry Sovereign dancing with the cosmic dance of what Dallmayr calls “sacred non-sovereignty and shared sovereignty” (Dallmayr 2005). With a cross-cultural realization, we can realize that it is possibly the Divine in Snake which might have inspired Eve to whisper to Adam to eat the forbidden Apple so that the dance of creation and the Divine play on earth can unfold. We can here draw upon traditions such as Kundalini and Tantra from Indic traditions which challenges us to realize the significance of serpentine energy and Kundalini in life (see Ananthamurthy 2018; Bussey 1998).5 Rethinking and transforming Kingdom of God into Gardens of God opens up new ways of looking at the

318  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha traditions of political theology and link it to the vision and practice of deeper cross-cultural spiritual realizations. Dallmayr’s critique and reconstitution of the cult of sovereignty in political theology is an important help here which also can be cultivated further in the direction of practical spirituality (Dallmayr 2005). In his insightful Foreword to our edited book Practical Spirituality and Human Development Dallmayr has invited us to walk and meditate with such new pathways of movement from political theology to practical spirituality (Dallmayr 2018a).

Lokasamgraha Lokasamgraha is an important invitation for self, social and cosmic transformation from the Indic tradition and it appears briefly in Srimad Bhagvad Gita twice. It is usually translated as well-being of all but it also refers to the process of gathering—gathering or collecting of loka—people (Rao 2016; also see Agarwala 1995). It is creative and critical gathering of people and the accompanying process of mutual care that leads to well-being of people. As a process of gathering it is not just confined to the public, the public sphere—or public political processes. It also involves in an integrally inter-linked manner gathering of soul—atmasamgraha. Lokasamgraha and atmasamgraha— gathering of soul and people—leading to a creative gathering of society not just as a mechanical entity but as a living process of critique, creativity and transformation. It also leads to creative regeneration of commons and a cosmic mobilization of energy. As K.B. Rao (2016) writes: “If the term Samgraha is taken as a verb, it stands for the act or process. But taken as a noun it stands for Reality in its dynamic Being.” Lokasamgraha challenges us to realize that our life, self, society and the world have a cosmic dimension and our cosmos is not just a dead entity but a living evolving process. Lokasamgraha challenges us for a transformation of our cosmology from a mechanical one to a living and a spiritual one. Lokasamgraha is not confined among human beings, it includes all beings and therefore challenges us to go beyond an anthropocentric concept of welfare and to “widen the implications of lokasamgraha to cover the universal order of Being” (Rao 2016). In our earlier discussion we saw the significance of dharma as sahadharma and integral Purusartha for upholding our world and regeneration our Earth. But there is a link between Purusartha and Lokasamgraha. As Rao, a deep seeker in this field, tells us: “the completeness of the Purusarthas is possible only when they include Lokartha, that is Lokasamgraha, as an integral part thereof” (Rao 2016: 167). Lokasamgraha challenges us to realize well-being and happiness for all but for this we are all invited to be creative in our strivings and struggles and it cannot be left to the others, society and state. At the heart of Lokasamgraha is care and responsibility which connects the vision and practice of Lokasamgraha in the Western political traditions such as in the works of Hannah Arendt and in the Chinese philosophy of Tian-Xia—All Under Heaven (Dallmayr 2015).

Global Social Healing  319 Lokasamgraha challenges us not only to maintain the world but to uphold it. This upholding is crucially dependent upon right living in self and society which is facilitated by appropriate social policy and public actions as well as by the strivings and preparation of the soul. It also challenges us to regenerate our earth by planting new seeds and trees of life in the landscape of despair and destruction especially of climate change.

The Calling of Lokasamgraha Loka means both space and time and Lokasamgraha calls a creative gathering of space and time with and beyond their contemporary capitalist production as commodities and alienating entities. Lokasamgraha challenges us for creative rethinking and reconstitution of space and time where we can gather together without anxiety and help each other realize our potential—our evolutionary potential (see Giri 2013). Our space and time in modernity as well as in contemporary late modern times are determined by logics of capital but Loksamamgraha challenges us to nurture our space and time as pregnant capable of generating new lives and relationships and not just reproduce the capitalist relations of power and profit. Loksamgraha is also a process of knowing about each other and knowing oneself. It involves creative epistemic practices of mutual knowing and knowing self, other and the world. It also involves ontological processes of self-realization, co-realizations, self-development as well as co-development. Processes of being together in Lokasamgraha involves manifold creative movements of ontological epistemology of participation going beyond the dualism of epistemology and ontology which bedevils modernist science, subjectivity and politics (Giri 2017). Lokasamagraha also involves movements across our initial positions and locations so that we do not become fixed and imprisoned within our positions and we can stand, seat and meditate in other positions and others’ positions (see Appadurai 2006; Das 2011; Giri 2019; Mogensen 2017; Painadath 2007; Sri Aurobindo 2000). Such transpositional movements create possibility of a new subject formation called a transpositional subjectivation rather than only a positioned subjectivity. Similarly objectivity in Lokasamgraha is also not fixed; it emerges out of transpositional movements across positions. Lokasamgraha calls for cultivation of a new subjectivity and objectivity which can be called transpositional subjectobjectivity (Giri 2016). It challenges us to go beyond the dualism of subjectivity and objectivity, ontology and epistemology. Going beyond the dualistic logic of modernity, Lokasamgraha calls for a cultivation of a non-dual logic and path of living, a multi-valued logic and path of living of autonomy and interpenetrations (Mohanty 2000; Giri 2017). Lokasamgraha also involves creative reconstruction of hermeneutics along the lines suggested by Dallmayr. In Dallmayr, one finds pathways of critical and reconstructive hermeneutics which does not justify or valorize initial prejudices rather than transform these into creative movements of mutual learning, collective learning and planetary learning.6 This also

320  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha involves moving across multiple topoi and terrains of our humanity and hermeneutics that emerges here is not only the positional hermeneutics of a single cultural tradition or that of diatopical hermeneutics whereas philosopher and theologian Raimundo Panikkar and sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) argue, we put our feet across two cultures but multi-topial where we walk and mediate with multiple topoi of hermeneutics. But this movement is not just lateral but also vertical touching the depth dimensions of self, culture, other and the world. Here bringing a Kundalini approach to multi-topial hermeneutics we can realize that we also move from our lower planes or chakras of existence to higher planes. While understanding each other we understand self and other mainly from our positions in lower chakras such as sex, desire and accumulation of profit or preoccupation with worldly power and interpretative victory then our understanding is bound to be inadequate. But if we base our hermeneutics on higher planes of our own and mutual Truth realization (animated by a co-operative and collaborative search for Truth) which is not dismissive of the lower but is part of an integral hermeneutics then it helps us to gain deeper understanding of self, other and the world. Multi-topial hermeneutics and an integral chakra hermeneutics help us understand each other deeply which is crucial for a cross-cultural dialogue, planetary conversations and planetary realizations where we realize each other as fellow and interested children of Mother Earth and our each other’s knowledge and gifts to the world. Multi-topial hermeneutics involves movements across multiple terrains, topoi and traditions and it is animated by a spirit of weaving meanings, connections, communications and relationships. It involves thread works and thread meditations as part of weaving meaning and communication across borders and boundaries in the midst of threats and threat works of many kinds (Giri 2012). It is this act of weaving which keeps the spirit and process of Lokasamgraha alive in the midst of varieties of threats and destruction which leads to Lokavinahsa or destruction of people. For realizing the link between weaving and Lokasamagraha, we can build upon multiple traditions of creative thinking and practice in humanity and on such weavers of meaning and life such as Kabir, St. Francis of Assissi, Hans Christian Anderson and Gandhi.7 Kabir, St. Francis of Assissi, Hans Christian Anderson, Gandhi and many kindred souls and movements in societies and histories devoted themselves to quest for Truth and sought to transform self and society. This is the spirit of Satyagraha. Gandhi’s most profound contribution to humanity is a spirit of integral Purusartha (as discussed above) in finding a proper relationship between Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha where Moksha is transformed from its other worldly preoccupation to worldly transformative movements and realizations and Satyagraha (Parel 2016). For realization of Lokasamagraha, we need multi-dimensional movements of integral Purusartha, integral development and Satyagraha. But Satyagraha is not only a political action but also an epistemic and ontological action and

Global Social Healing  321 meditation. Satyagraha is a quest for Truth but Truth here is neither merely epistemological nor ontological. It exceeds both epistemology and ontology and, as Dallmayr (1996) has helped us understand in case of Gandhi’s Truth, has a demand quality to it. Truth is not only a product of the existing discourse and constellation of knowledge and power. Truth is not only a point but part of a landscape of reality and realization. We can here cultivate an ecological view of Truth which is different from Truth as egological and Satyagraha as quest for Truth is also related to our practices of travel and translation which resonates with Gandhi’s life of traveling on foot and translating from other languages to one’s mother language. For realization of Lokasamagraha, we need to bring creative movements of Truth, Travel and Translations as part of Satyagraha in self, culture, other, society and the world.8

The Calling of a Planetary Lokasamgraha With and Beyond Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism has been a discourse which seems to help us understand our belonging to our world. It helps us to realize that we are all citizens of the world. But this itself suffers from Eurocentric and ethnocentric limitations and now we need to go beyond cosmopolitanism as citizens of the world and realize that we are simultaneously citizens of the world and children of our Mother Earth. This is the spirit of planetary Loksasamgraha which also resonates with the important reconstructive works of Dalmmayr on cosmopolitanism including his Foreword to the book on cosmopolitanism I have edited, Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations (Dallmayr 2018b).

Upholding our World and Regenerating Our Earth Global Social Healing, Planetary Lokasamagraha and a New Politics and Spirituality of Co-Creativity and Co-Creation Lokasamgraha is related to generation of well-being and thus is at the root of this heart- touching aspiration and prayer: Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu which means let all people be happy. But how can we be happy? What is the meaning of happiness when it becomes a slave of quick satisfaction and consumption? Can we be happy without being creative? Creativity may be the foundation of well-being, creative self and creative society. Thus along with the familiar prayer Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu we can strive and pray new prayers: Lokah Samastah Srujana Bhavantu—let all people be creativity, Lokah Samastah SrataBhavantu—let all people be creators, Lokah Samastah Saha Srasta Bhavantu—let all people be co-creators. Lokasamgraha calls for multi-dimensional co-creative movements in self, society and cosmos to be creative in self and society, religion, politics,

322  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha spirituality and every day. In his creative oeuvre of last half a century, Dallmayr has walked and meditated with multiple pathways and movements of co-creativity and taking inspiration from him we can offer ourselves to further movements of critical and transformative creativity and co-creativity in our lives and the world which can contribute to healing self, society and the world. We can also sing this new song of creativity and aspiration together: We thirst for faith and prayer, Love, Light and Water, Bread, Touch and Soul An Ocean of Communication, Compassion and Communion.9 We can also dance here the following lines of Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri: You shall reveal to them the hidden eternities, The breath of the infinitudes not yet revealed […] (Sri Aurobindo 1993)

Notes 1 In being with the life and soul’s movement of Dallmayr, one is reminded of what Ibn Batutah, the fourteenth-century Moroccan traveler of the world writes about a “caravan of Hajj pilgrimages travelling at night with torch through an area made hazardous by brigands: People travel as it were among wandering stars which illuminate the depth of the darkness and which enable the earth to compete in brightness with stars of heaven” (Mishra 2011). 2 Unfortunately Sankaracharaya’s philosophical system soon became appropriated into an anti-Buddhist tirade and campaign and valorization of Brahminical Hinduism. But Dallmayr’s journey does not face such danger partly because of the deeply spiritual and compassionate nature of his quest which seeks to embrace all. Dallmayr is a model of criticism where one never finds a hurtful word or incorrect interpretation attributed to one with whom even he disagrees a bit. This comes out for example in his deeply respectful engagement and disagreement with Jurgen Haberamas. 3 Dallmayr cultivates this perspective in his Afterword to author’s book of poems, Weaving New Hats (Dallmayr 2019). 4 Gurucharan Das describes the need to cultivate dharma vis-a-vis in our relationship to non-humans in his interpretation of Mahabharata (see Das 2009). 5 This is suggested in the following poem by the author: Cross and Kundalini Being with Cross Walking and Meditating Upward Flow of Energy Love, Concentration and Co-Evolution From the Bottom to the Top From the Underworld to Light Supreme Awakening and Generation of Kundalini Not only vertical But also horizontal

Global Social Healing  323 Self, Other and the world Becomes a Sadhana and Tapasya of Cross Kundalini flowing across As a Grace of Mutualization With and Beyond the Terror and Tyranny of Annihilation (Giri 2022: 157) 6 Here what Dallmayr (2017b: 116) writes deserves our careful consideration: my siding in favor of difference and hermeneutics never amounted to a slide into a shallow pragmatism or relativism (which separated me from some of the more exuberant forms of post-modernism). In the case of Gadamer, this slide is prevented by his moorings in Aristotle as well as in Herder/Hegel and in Heidegger. There is another point worth mentioning: my intellectual encounters up to this point were confined to European or Western philosophy. Despite my fondness for difference, my outlook was still basically Eurocentric or Western-centric. Although having been prepared by various episodes, the crucial step had not yet been made. The step happened in 1984 with my first visit to India. The occasion was a conference on political theory / philosophy at the University of Baroda in Gujarat. The convener, Bhikhu Parekh (himself an eminent political thinker), had invited a number of colleagues from Europe and America and also a large contingent of Indian scholars. Although in travelling to India I had expected a routine event, nothing routine-like occurred. I finally broke through my Western shell and, then and there, vowed to myself to become a serious intercultural scholar. 7 In a recent insightful essay, artist and philosopher Jyoti Sahi (2017) helps us understand the spirit of weaving in Kabir, Gandhi and St. Francis of Assisi. For Sahi, all these pioneers gave themselves to the sadhana of weaving. In case of St. Francis of Assisi, he drew inspiration from the La Troubadour who sang across borders and wove new meanings and relationships. Both Gandhi and St. Francis of Assisi wove their own humble clothes. For understanding the significance of thread works and thread meditations in philosophy, theology and literature we can here reflect upon the creative works of Hans Christian Anderson, the great poet, story writer and novelist from Denmark. Here what Kaj Mogensen, a critic, writes deserves our careful consideration: There is as well as thoroughgoing poetics displayed in the novel [of Hans Christian Anderson]. The invisible thread in the lives of the characters in the novel will show that there is also an invisible in the lives of the readers. In this way it is clear that the novel has the intention of making a proclamation. Indeed, it reveals what the task of poetry is all about: by poetic means to present the invisible threads so that it is understood to be the real thread in human life. 8 This is suggested in the following poem of the author: Three T and More Travel, Truth and Translation Travelling with Truth Translating Truth in Travel In Between the Relative and the Relational Absolute and Approximate Translating While Travelling Self, Culture and Divine

324  Global Social Healing and the Calling of Planetary Lokasamgraha Beyond the Annihilating Tyranny of the Singular A New Trinity of Prayer A New Multiple of Sadhana and Surrender (Giri 2022: 48) 9 A poem by the author. Here we can also draw inspiration from the line: Benedict Spinoza has spoken about potestas and potential—words that in Latin mean power. They are different in their import because they point to different connotations. The former is functionally the urge to possess by bossing it over others, and the latter reminds us about the potentials inherent in every human being, the many possibilities of flowering up and upholding, if freedom is the climate in which it develops. According to Spinoza, love is the mediating link between knowledge and power. Love of humanity, love of the world, a deep faith in the unending possibilities of individuals as well as the collectives. This calls for a higher consciousness that all knowledge should congenially aim at. To Sri Aurobindo, a higher consciousness, as a rule, has to prove itself in the world. It never runs away and can afford to prove itself to be an asset of the world. But the change over is not that easy as the wonderful words and references may suggest. There will be many-a-restraint, obstacles and oppositions, both from without and within. Hence, those who have chosen love have been men of protest. (Das 2009: 580–581)

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Afterword Fred Dallmary

In our time nothing seems more needed and urgent than the effort of healing. Human life in this world today is torn apart by rifts and conflicts in multiple dimensions: on the levels of nation, race, and ethnicity as well as those of religion, culture, and social practices. Some of those rifts and ailments are contingent and can be lifted with some good will and a deepening of sensitivity. However, other ailments are constitutive of the human condition and cannot or should not be simply removed or healed. Thus, for Christian peoples the cross is not fortuitous or accidental and captures a crucial feature of human life. In a similar way, the wandering of the Buddha was not a happenstance, but was intrinsic to his message. Due to the cross and the wandering, human faith or aspiration cannot be leveled into imperial power or worldly might. Yet, curiously, cross and wandering are not simply signs of weakness, suffering or unrelieved despair. At the same time, quite powerfully (yet without worldly power), they are also the permanent carriers of the “good news” for all people. So goodness is not amenable to pride or self-righteousness. It is not something we can possess; it possesses us—and thus is the ultimate source of healing or redemption. Ananta Kumar Giri’s Social Healing helps us in re-envisioning health and healing and cultivating new pathways of transformative practice.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003395409-22

Index

Alexander, Jeffrey 294 Ambedkar, B.R. 54–56, 167–177, 183–185, 287 Amaladoss, Michel 257–258 Anand, Subhash 257–258, 271–272 Andrews, C.F. 256, 268 Appadurai, Arjun 100–101, 224–225, 296, 302 Appiah, K. Anthony 150 Arendt, Hannah 154 Ankersmit, F.R. 70, 140 Assenza, G et al. 213 Athyal, Jesudas 268 Azariah, Vedanayagam Samuel 269 Bauhaus movement 139 Baba Farid 229 Bakker, Hans 116 Banerjee, Paula 229 Barenboim, Daniel & Edward Said 227 Bateson, Gregory 96 Baxi, Upendra 304 Bhadwar, Neera K. 202 Bhargava, Rajeev 274 Benhabib, Seyla 238 Beteille, Andre- 18–19, 24, 202, 207–208, 210–211, 216–218 Bellah, Robert N. 21–22 Bhudhadas Bhikhu 280 Bildung 208 Benjamin, Walter 25, 91 Beuys, Joseph 289 Bhaskar, Roy 79–80 Bohm, David 98 Bourdieu, Pierre 4–5, 63, 153 Bussey, Marcus 25, 53, 91 Bussey, Marcus and Eddy Niehls 209, 216, 230 Brier, Soren 50, 57 Brown, Judith 273

Canty, Janine M 6–7 Carrette, Jeremy 46 Cavell, Stanley 45, 139 Chatterjee, Partha 113 Chatterjee, Partha & Ira Katznelson 117–118 Chodron, Prema 23 Chakkarai, V 267 Chakraborty, Dipesh 296 Champagne, Patrick 4 Chatterjee, Margaret 32, 36, 241 Chattrjea, Tara 243 Chopra, Deepak 254 Clammer, John 48, 96, 107 Clarke, Sathianathan 259 Clifford, James 236 Clooney, Francis X 258 Cohen, G.A. 189 Collins, Randall 284 Comaroff, Jean & John 95–96 Connell, Raewyn 95 Connolly, William E. 194 Cousins, Norman 10, 13 Coward, Harold 43 Dallmayr, Fred 57, 63, 68–69, 90, 95–97,107, 115–117, 140, 163, 320, 311–323 Das, Chitta Ranjan 8–9, 11, 21, 200–201, 204–205, 254–255, 270, 279–280, 289, 324 Das, Jishnu 293 Das, Veena 35, 38, 40, 45 Das, N.K. 243 Dash, Bijayalaxmi 135 Dash, Rabi Narayan 12 Datta-Ray, Deep K. 163 Davy, Charles 26 Deleuze, Gilles & C. Planet 228, 230 de Nobili, Robert 248

Index  329 de Saint-Cheron, Michael 183 de Sousa Santos, Boaventura 66, 74, 159 de Souza, Peter 275 Dewey, John 54 Deheja, Harish 26–27 Derrida, Jacques 47, 51, 161, 241 Duara, Prasenjit 236, 241 Dumont, Louis 112 Dussel, Enrique 234 de Tocqueville, Alexis 24 Derrida, Jacques 47 Dalai Lama 24 Drozdiack, William 162 Dynamic sunyata 90 Eckhart, Meister 51 Elgin, Catharine Z 95 Escobar, Arturo 46, 297 Erasmus von Rotteradmus 47, 203 Fang, Fang & Michael Berry 294 Fernandez, Walter 262 Fleming, Chris 243 Floyd, George 292 Forst, Rainer 150, 189 Foucault, Michel 46, 69, 80, 150, 293 Frank, Lawrence K. 4 Frankenberg, Robert 259–260, 264, 270, 273 Frankl, Vickor 5 Froer, Peggy 273 Fromm, Eric 6–5, 11, 67 Fukuyama, Francis 148, 150 Gadamer, Hans-George 3 Gandhi, Gopal Krishna 231 Gandhi, Mohandas K 149–150, 180, 185, 191, 253–254, 264 Gandhi, Ramachandra 192 Gasper, Des 57 Gasper, Des et al. 46 Galtung, Johann & MacQueen 24, 286 George, S.K. 252–253, 269 Ghosh, Amitava 236 Ghosh, Raghunath 44 Goethe, Wolfgang von 7, 202 Ghode, Ramesh 203 Gidley, Jennifer 215 Girard, Rene 235, 242 Grafton, Anthony 217 Griffith, Bede 265–266, 271 Grundtvig, NFS 45 Guru, Gopal 181–182, 193 Guha, Ramachandra 98–99, 192

Habermas, Jurgen 29, 47, 55, 62, 81, 154, 186, 202 Hague, Paul 50 Hartz, Richard 42–43 Haraway, Donna 47 Harrison, Victoria 270 Hans, Asha et al. 301 Harvey, David 124, 139, 226 Heredia, Rudolf C. 269 Herzfeld, Michael 242 hooks, bell 155, 162 Hodgkinson, Brian 98 Holzman, Lois 57 Honneth, Axel 7, 11, 300–301 Horton, Richard 299, 302, 306 Horton, Myles 199 Heidegger, Martin 34, 44–45, 63, 79, 84, 99, 136–137, 142, 241, 243, 316–317 Highlander 200 Husserl, Edmund 30–31, 35–36, 66 Ingold, Tim 137, 213–215, 219 Irigaray, Luce 54 Jacobsen, Herrnig & Soren Hanson 218 Jahanbegloo, Ramin 275, 295 Jain, Rabindra K. 242 Jalal, Ayesha 244 Jaspers, Karl 94 John, Mary 269 Joas, Hans 56 Kaartinen, Tim 236, 242 Kakar, Sudhir 202 Karve, Irawati 303 Khanprom, Nitivan 12 Khilnani, Sunil 185 Keane, Webb 274 Keane, John 305 Kierkegaard, Soren 5–6, 280, 288 Kim, Youngmin 186–187 Kim, Sebastian 262 King, Martin Luther 298 Kinsella, John 142 Kold, Kristen 45 Koiiman, Dick 261 Korsgaard, Ove 205 Korzybsky, Alfred 9, 13 Kostesky, Eagor G. 204 Krishna PIllai, H.A. 262 Kumari, Prasanna 259 Laclau, Ernesto 225 Laclaue, Ernesto & Chantal Mouffe 299

330 Index Latour, Bruno 62, 209 Lederach, John P and Angella Jill 6 Liu, Xiaobo 115 Lobo, Lancy 260–261 Lokasamgraha 109–110, 158 Lown, Bernard 12 Luchte, James 39–40, 51 Luther, Martin 47 Maathai, Wangari 242 Majeed 227 Mahadevan, Kanchana 186, 188–189 Mahanta, Nani 238 Malhotra, Rajeev 254, 264–265, 274 Maneck 162 Maria Raj, Arul 259 Marti, Jose 99 Maslow, Abraham 7 Maya 82 Mazoomdar, PC 250 Mead, George Herbert 52, 93 Meditative verbs of pluralization 82 Meditative verbs of co-realizations 85 Mehta, J.L. 99 Memembe, Achille 292, 301, 303 Meteir, Samuel 274 Mishra, Godavarish 88–89 Mishra, Mahendra Kumar 240 Mishra, Pankaj 322 Mishra, Yoshodhara 124–125 Miri, Mrinal 223–224, 230 Meher, R.K. 138 Melucci, Alberto 49 Momaday, N. Scott 304–305 Menon, Nivedita 163 Mogensen, Kaj 303 Molz and Edwards 70, 85, 99 Mosse, David 273 Mondialization 240 Morgan, Arthur 211 Mohanty, J.N. 25, 29–31, 36, 66–67, 70, 84–85 Mohanty, Manoranjan 26, 295–296 Mohanty, Satya 65 Mosse, David 273 Multi-topial hermeneutics 83, 95, 179, 320 Mukherjee, Arun Kumar 265 Mukherjee, Meenakshi 97 Murthy, K.S.R. 279, 281–282, 288 Nadkarni, M.V. 190 Nancy, Jean-Luc 203 Narayan, Badri 189 Nayak, Samarendra 133–134

Nehls, Eddy 210 Nielsen, Jorgen 212 Nielsen, Jorgen and Thomas Webb 212 Nietzsche, Frederik 51, 161 Neo-Confucianism 108–109 Neo-Vedanta 109 Nicolas of Cusa 75–78 Nicolescu, Basarab 202 Nussbaum, Martha 48, 65 North, Michel 69–70 Occampo, Victoria 242 Omvedt, Gail 249, 254, 265 O’Malley, Mathew 142–143 Ophlus, William 96 Ou, Tie & Jorgen Nielsen 212, 218, 219 Oommen, T.K. 234–235 Ordinary Ethics 298 Ontological epistemology of ­participation 80, 85 Paglia, Camila 161 Painadath, Sebastian 185 Parida, Ashutosh 135 Pande, G.C. 163 Pandit, M.P 100 Panikkar, Raimundo 83, 320 Parekh, Bhikhu 229–230 Parker, Noel 223–224, 226 Patrick, Gnana 262 Philips, Bernard 20 Peirce, Charles Sanders 50, 56 Pradhan, Rajesh 192 Practical jihad 23 Practical nirvana 23 Pranamisampradaya 269 Putnam, Hilary 65 Quasmiyeh, Yousef 141 Radhakrishnan, S 268 Ramakrishna Paramahansha 51, 250–251 Ramabai, Pandita 255–256, 270 Rahner, Karl 264 Ratha, Brajanath 130–133 Raveh, Daniel 189–190 Reid, Herbert and Betsy Taylor 206, 226, 244 Reardon, Jenny 294 Reubke, Karl-Julius 192, 194 Rolland, Roman 265, 266, 267 Ross, Fiona 289

Index  331 Routledge, Paul 128–139, 143 Roy, Arundhati 302 Roy, Ramashroy 150, 160–161 Sahadharma 236, 313–316 Satyagraha 82–83, 148, 155, 182 Saifudeen, Aden 97 Said, Edward 231–232 Sahi, Jyoti 323 Sarkar, Swatosiddha 237–238 Sawyer, R. Keith 98 Schmalz, Mathew 273 Schouten, Jan Peter 52, 57, 251–252, 267–270, 273–274 Shah, Mihir 202 Shiva, Vandana 303 Semasko, Leo 17–20, 27 Sen, Amartya 61, 145, 189 Sen, Keshab Chandra 249–250 Sennett, Richard 5 Sharma, TRS 241 Singh, Sadhu Sundar 256 Sitas, Ari 282–284, 289 Sivaraksha, Sulak 107 Shiva, Vandana 303 Shott, Mary Robin 228–229 Sikoh, Dara 231 Skof, Lenart 54–55 Skolimowski, Henryk 271–272 Somboon, Vira 23 Spivak Gayatri Chakraborty 217 Spiritual pragmatism 49–55, 92 Sri Aurobindo 25, 36, 42–45, 62, 87, 108, 116, 142, 179–181, 193, 270, 306–307, 322 Stakhov, Alexey 25 Steffen, Albert 142 Steiner, Rudolf 49 Strathern, Marilyn 112 Strydom, Piet 69, 82–83, 97, 189, 217, 97

Sugitharaja, R.S. 115 Sundara Rajan, R. 37–38, 74, 160 Swaminathan, M.S. 316 Swami Prannath 270 Swami Ranganathananda 252 Swami Vivekananda 32, 186, 250–251, 266 Tagore, Rabindranath 192 Taylor, Charles 202, 229 Thunberg, Greta 294 Toynbee, Arnold Joseph 116, 280, 288 Touraine, Alain 63, 234 Tu, Wei-ming 110 Upadhyay, Brahmabandhav 255 Unger, Roberto M. 56 van Balthasar, Urs 253 van Staveren, Irene 305 Vattimo, Gianni 57, 64, 70, 80, 93, 96, 194, 293 Visvanathan, Susan 24, 256 Vygotsky, Leo 7–8, 225 Wagner, Richard 227 Weil, Simon 235–236, 242 Wickman, P.O 96 Wilkersen, Isabel 182–183 Wilfred, Felix 90, 258–259, 264–265, 274 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 34–35 West, Cornell 52 World Social Forum 94 Yengde, Suraj 186 Yogananda Paramahansha xx, 264 Zapatista 240