Life Ordinary Life & Emancipating Transformation:

This question always hangs around in my mind: Why was I born? The more I look at the animal world, animal life and put it on 1:1 scale with my world and life, the more this question disturbs me. The similarity being that like any animal I am born, learn ways of the world and life within it; marry (animals do not), raise a family and provide for the same; finally merge with the Mother Earth.  Can this be termed as ‘ordinary life’ or do I qualify to be an emancipated being?

The difference being that being a part of the ‘modern world’ that prides in the ‘scientific temper’ of the man I am trained to devour the resources of the Mother Earth, which animals are not trained to do; to exploit human resources; to perpetuate miseries on the human race that animals do not do in their kingdom. Does this difference make me more liberated than animals? In the last 500 years has this Man been emancipated? Transformed: Yes; Emancipated:?

If I say that there is no need to determine the exact date of the birth of this universe; no need to philosophise on how and why it was born; no need to speculate on the purpose of its existence and its ultimate destiny; does this make me an ordinary man with ordinary thinking and therefore associated with ordinary life? If I say that such quests are not material for human societies and therefore waste of time and resource; is it primitive thinking; an under developed skull; and if I choose to live on these precept, am I in urgent need of ‘emancipating transformation’!

If I live by the precept that I am the child of the Mother Nature, ever dependent on it for my existence/ survival and therefore it is my solemn duty to live as a member of its family and not exploit it to harm it, does it get classified as a primitive thought in urgent need of transformation? If I decide to restrict my reach to the geographical area around me where my legs can take me and understand my surroundings, discover the natural resources available therein, invent means to make use of them (without hurting the Mother Nature) for my existence; does this qualify to be an irrational thought in urgent need for rationalisation?

If I say that societies/communities/races living in geographical regions different from each other in terms of the surrounding environment, climatic conditions, and natural resources should be free to make use of their wisdom, knowledge (vidhya) to devise methods to integrate their lives with their immediate Mother Earth & Nature; does it qualify to be an emancipating thought for civilised living or a primitive one deserving its place only in a garbage tin can?

The choice may lie between exploitative and non exploitative ways; exploitative means are those that hurt Mother Nature & Earth. Emancipation is not the absolute term and so may not be the definitions of exploitative and non exploitative means; the moot point is that if the societies are allowed to figure it out for themselves and no thought process/ philosophies alien to them are thrust upon them then and only then shall emerge multiple definitions of ‘being emancipating’, ‘being ordinary’, ‘being exploitative’, and ‘being non exploitative’, in the extant context. 

This is in the nature of a man to dislodge a thought process, an idea or a scheme from his mind if it is not going to be useful to him (in his domain of things); given the freedom to do so.  The sense of right and wrong is also imbibed in every human being, if only there is freedom to practise it. From among the things relevant to life, most of them every individual learns from interactions with the external world; these are not taught in any school, college and/or university. Does the information so acquired, assimilated and put to use not qualify as ‘vidhya’/ ‘knowledge’? Some things that I learnt by whatever means I learnt & for whatever reasons I learnt that help me not only in living my life at my terms, but guiding it through a course, do these not qualify to be ‘vidhya’/’knowledge’? The bigger question is: Why do I care whether the ‘emancipated’ ones recognise my world of ‘vidhya’/’knowledge’ or not so long as it enables my life dynamics and steers it through a course and also imbibes within me enough strengths to face oddities of life ? Nature is so diverse and societies are born in to it with all kinds of diversities around them, therefore how there can be one & only one yardstick to certify some one’s ‘vidhya’ as ‘avidhya’ or vice-versa! When parents cannot sermonise their child in to believing that theirs is the only way life could be lived, how any ‘emancipated’ society can sit on judgement on the ways and means of others? The moment I decide to seek cognisance for my ‘vidhya’ from a knowledge system based on totally different precepts, I attempt an absurd comparison. It’s me & only me  who shall decide the relevance of the ‘vidhya’ in regards to the necessities of my life and only I am qualified to enhance my ‘vidhya’ in certain direction if I find it insufficient for my endeavours; and only I am qualified to set the priorities vis a vis enhancements in the domain of my ‘vidhya’.

Constitution of India provides for 1) right to live, 2) right to freedom, 3) right to work; it therefore concedes that during colonial rule these rights were nonexistent. The catch here is that someone/ somebody/ some holy book has taken upon itself to grant me such rights which I indeed acquire naturally by birth because I am the baby of Mother Nature & Mother Earth; so every ‘right’ is not only predefined (even for yet to be born), but also restricted by the wisdom of a few. So life gets defined before one is born because freedom & work are defined. Right to livelihood based on ones ‘vidhya’ is not provided for because then the grip is lost. More cleverly what was done was to recognise only one knowledge system which encompassed everything including ‘life’, ‘freedom’, ‘work’ etc.; this recognition rendered everything ‘guaranteed’ by ‘Constitution’ irrelevant, because my birth right to acquire ‘vidhya’ in my own way and within my own means was snatched from me. There cannot be a better way than this one to enslave minds.

The irony however is that the ‘recognised’ knowledge system churns out such ‘servants’ of the Nation that are ever dependent on somebody/ some organisation employing them for, they are neither qualified nor competent to fend for themselves, whereas an individual empowered with Lokavidhya does not hanker after jobs, but has the wherewithal to fend for himself under all possible situations. The ‘legitimately’ educated migrate to greener pastures for their ‘good’ & ‘carrier’; the unrecognised ‘vidhya’ holder contributes to the GDP, no matter what! No expenses incurred by anyone for someone to acquire Lokavidhya and yet this individual contributes a lot to the society & the Nation; efficiency: quantum of output divided by ZERO input costs equals ‘∞’.  Efficiency of ‘legitimate’ knowledge holder equals (output burdened with costs) divided by (input costs as borne by the exchequer) tends to near ‘0’. For those who migrate they become the parasites for the Nation; of course the apologists will say that NRIs contribute dollars to our country in later stages of their life.

The moot or may be ‘ordinary’ question is: which of the two is more appropriate ‘vidhya’ for a society, not forgetting the problem of unemployment.

India houses two civilisations: one parasitic in nature & content, devouring all possible resources and blaming the ‘population explosion’ for all the ills; the other one productive, non-parasitic in nature, non-devouring type; not accusing existence of others for whatever hardships & discomforts its populace go through. Of these two civilisations which one is ‘emancipating’ and which one is ‘ordinary’? In my understanding, one who gives despite hardships is emancipated and ‘emancipating’ & the other who is insatiably devouring is ‘ordinary’. 

Debatable!!