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Working Group: B V Rama Prasad (Convener), G. Sivaramakrishnan, Sunil Sahasrabudhey, Rajeev Sangal

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Societies are sufficiently rich and complex. They possess the imagination and knowledge to understand and address the problems as they arise. Problems become intractable and multiply when expert knowledge claims for itself the right to unconditionally judge and teach others. People are considered ignorant, who need to be guided and manipulated by those who know better. Today's political ideologies whether on the right or the left reinforce this illusion even while they claim to speak on behalf of the people. We need a new political imagination. This can come about through dialogues which bring into discussion ideas and questions which do not find a place in the debates in the media or that circulate in learned journals. This dialogue works by putting trust in the people in their knowledge, in their movements.

Who are the people? People are whom we meet in homes, in the streets, in the markets, at work, and in our travel. They are all people. Farmers, factory workers, laborers, artisans, retailers, hawkers, housewives, students, teachers, jobseekers, jobholders, old people, young people, - are all people. There are some people whom we never meet; we can never meet.  They meet us when  they think we need to be chastised or guided. These people have power, but all people have knowledge; the knowledge to understand problems of society and the knowledge to make and remake societies in ways that make life worth living. It is not as if there are no structures of power and authority among people, it is just that these are distributed in society. If something goes down, something else takes over. When people have the power to shape their own destinies, we call that Swaraj.

Viewed another way, Swaraj is the manifestation of what is innate in every human being. This innateness is rooted in caring for others and love for all. As a person realizes this innateness, his behavior and actions follow accordingly. It leads to a society that naturally is Swaraj, where people build family and community based 'natural' structures. This is in contrast to 'artificial' society being built today whose stated goal is to build efficiency but has no place for family or human relations, where people are powerless and life is not worth living.

How do we promote dialogues on knowledge in society for a new political imagination? This question presupposes that knowledge in society provides a sufficient basis for a new political imagination, namely Swaraj. This is the world of knowledge which houses Swadeshi Darshan and therefore a constructive dialogue here can be a robust departure for a concrete, contemporary concept of Swaraj.

As was demonstrated by Dharampal in his work on 18th century Indian society, village communities across India seem to have managed their affairs without the influence of kingship or other centralized governance. Each village or a group of villages tailored their management to their specific conditions and characteristics, leading to a varied but not necessarily asymmetrical government structures. However, the colonial administration uniformly categorized these local governance mechanisms as panchayats, deeming them unsuitable for their purpose. Therefore, they began to introduce modern state institutions within the villages initiating a progression of reforms in panchayats that persist even to this day. Despite this , traditional governance mechanisms continue to operate albeit hampered by the newly imposed structures of state institutions.

There are numerous examples where the administrative, judicial and political frameworks of state institutions prove inadequate to handle village affairs, while traditional communities, adeptly manage them outside these institutional structures. These communities autonomously resolve conflicts, oversee family and community issues, manage temples and their associated festivals, maintain community and traditional Mathas, Chatras, teach and learn traditional and local performing arts, practice traditional medicine and manage agriculture and allied activities. Importantly, the manner in which these activities are conducted varies from village to another, indicating that Swaraj remains alive in them though in a rather altered form.
Contemporary accounts of villages, derived from colonial accounts and framework tend to misrepresent these as non-existent or corrupt and regressive. This mischaracterization underscores the need to reevaluate these indigenous models of governance and explore the true essence of Swaraj.

This session on the idea of Swaraj for a new political imagination will be incomplete without a serious consideration of what Swaraj means in the twenty first century as we are already in the second quarter when nation-states seem to have come under serious stress and national sovereignty is no longer guaranteed nor sacred, and when global finance capital is dictating terms to even super powers.  Therefore, there is bound to be skepticism about any dialogue on Swaraj. The session will therefore have to address what Swaraj could possibly mean today.

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