Contemporary Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Arijit Nandi BLOGGING....) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:16:00 +0000

SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUALISM

noreply@blogger.com (Arijit Nandi BLOGGING....) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:52:00 +0000

"One man's ceiling is another man's floor."

SOCIETY

Society or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole.

The word society emerged in the 16th century, derived from the French société which stemmed from the Latin societas, a "friendly association with others," from socius meaning "companion, associate, comrade or business partner." The Latin word is probably related to the verb sequi, "to follow", and thus originally may have meant "follower".

Used in the sense of an association, a society is a body of individuals outlined by the bounds of functional interdependence, possibly comprising characteristics such as national or cultural identity, social solidarity, or hierarchical organization. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals sharing a distinctive culture and institutions. Like other communities or groups, a society allows its members to achieve needs or wishes they could not fulfill alone.

More broadly, a society is an economic, social or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied collection of individuals. Members of a society may be from different ethnic groups. A society may be a particular ethnic group, such as the Saxons; a nation state, such as Bhutan; a broader cultural group, such as a Western society. The word society may also refer to an organized voluntary association of people for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. A "society" may even, though more by means of metaphor, refer to a social organism such as an ant colony.

In political science, the term is often used to mean the totality of human relationships, generally in contrast to the State, i.e., the apparatus of rule or government within a territory:

In the social sciences, a society has been used to mean a group of people that form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group. Society is sometimes contrasted with culture. For example, Clifford Geertz has suggested that society is the actual arrangement of social relations while culture is made up of beliefs and symbolic forms.

INDIVIDUALISM

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses independence and self-reliance. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon one's choices, whether by society, or any other group or institution. Individualism is opposed to collectivism, which stresses that communal, community, group, societal, familial or national goals should take priority over individual goals.

In the English language, the word "individualism" was first introduced, as a pejorative, by the Owenites in the 1830s, although it is unclear if they were influenced by Saint-Simonianism or came up with it independently. A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early Owenite socialist, he eventually rejected its collective idea of property, and found in individualism a "universalism" that allowed for the development of the "original genius." Without individualism, Smith argued, individuals cannot amass property to increase one's happiness. William Maccall, another Unitarian preacher, and probably an acquaintance of Smith, came somewhat later, although influenced by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and German Romanticism, to the same positive conclusions, in his 1847 work "Elements of Individualism".

In political philosophy, the individualist theory of government holds that the state should protect the liberty of individuals to act as they wish as long as they do not infringe upon the liberties of others. This contrasts with collectivist political theories, where, rather than leaving individuals to pursue their own ends, the state ensures that the individual serves the whole society. The term has also been used to describe "individual initiative" and "freedom of the individual." This theory is described well by "laissez faire," which means in French "let [the people] do" [for themselves what they know how to do]. This term is commonly associated with a free market system in economics, where individuals and businesses own and control the majority of factors of production. Government interferences are kept to a minimum.

Individuality may be described as the consciousness of the individual as to what he is and how he lives. It is inherent in every human being and is a thing of growth. The State and social institutions come and go, but individuality remains and persists. The very essence of individuality is expression; the sense of dignity and independence is the soil wherein it thrives. Individuality is not the impersonal and mechanistic thing that the State treats as an "individual". The individual is not merely the result of heredity and environment, of cause and effect. He is that and a great deal more, a great deal else. The living man cannot be defined; he is the fountain-head of all life and all values; he is not a part of this or of that; he is a whole, an individual whole, a growing, changing, yet always constant whole.

Individuality is not to be confused with the various ideas and concepts of Individualism; much less with that "rugged individualism" which is only a masked attempt to repress and defeat the individual and his individuality So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as "education." That corrupt and perverse "individualism" is the strait-jacket of individuality. It has converted life into a degrading race for externals, for possession, for social prestige and supremacy. Its highest wisdom is "the devil take the hindmost."

BASE OF SOCIETY

Physical Stage
When humans first evolved on earth say 100,000 years ago, and in particular over the last 10,000 years, individuals were mostly focused on their very survival and existence; everything else was secondary. The atmosphere was one of physical and psychological insecurity. Threats were perceived everywhere -- from threats in nature to threats from other tribes or collectives.

In this physical stage people's social awareness was limited to the tribe. To think and act outside of the tribe and tradition was considered treasonous. In other words, humans had a very limited sense of their own selves. They were beyond to the concerns and authority of the collective.

Vital Stage
Over time society, the collective, overcame these threats from nature, from the outside. Plus they began to develop better cohesion and unity within the collectives they were a part of. We began to master the basic productive operations of life, and we gained control of the physical forces around us. This enabled the emergence of a new vital human. Another way of saying this is that humanity organized themselves at a higher level in the physical stage, enabling a more expansive vital stage.

So what is this vital age? In this stage we see a willingness of people to engage others not of their own tribe or collective. We begin to see the beginnings of trade with other tribes, more interaction with others. This leads to the desire for more travel and exploration to expand trade and resources. Gradually there is an awakening that the individual can improve his own lot, and that he does not have to only focus on the concerns and needs of the collective.

In this vital stage there is a broadening of the social interactions, of interchange with others. We could now begin to focus on our own individual self-interests. We could become prosperous and enjoy life. There was thus a vast expansion of vitality in the vital stage.

Where the physical stage of life was the culmination of an evolution that began 100,000 or so years ago, and formed more fully around 10,000 years ago, the vital stage has only been there around 500 years, roughly corresponding to the Renaissance and the centuries of exploration and discovery. In the last 100 years, and in particular the last 50, there has been the rapid emergence of the next stage of human development; the mental stage.

Mental Stage
The first thing that we notice about the mental stage is that society begins to value the vast amount of accumulated knowledge of the past. In the modern era this knowledge base of the past began to be organized, codified, and then disseminated to the population. Information that was formerly unfocused and scattered is now distributed through systems of training and education. That in turn energizes individuals to further advancement in work, their careers. And then that in turn accelerates people's achievement in life, which we can see expressed in the vast developments in science, communications, and technology of recent years.

Then through that rapidly expanding technology base, through exposure to the vast knowledge base presented in media, in the Internet, people become even more aware of what can be achieved. They become aware of possibilities for achievement; and see that others are doing it. That in turn leads to an era of ever rising expectations; people want and demand more in their own lives.

It's actually been going on for centuries. Freedom, democracy are unstoppable forces that have emerged in the last century or two. These are products of the rationality of the mental age; an acknowledgement of the needs for these essential values in life. Now that same freedom is extending further as we each as individuals become aware of our ability to fulfill our individual dreams, our own self-fulfillment and human potential.

So in this emerging mental stage that we have now begun to enter, with its possibilities of freedom, initiative, and self-determinism, we are very far from the determinism of the physical stage, where we deferred to the collective will to survive.

The quantification and dispersion of accumulated knowledge, the qualitative improvements in life in areas such as education and social benefits, the demand and ability to fulfill one's potential, the awareness and concern for the plight of others, the demand of the individual to be involved in the decisions of the collective, and the emerging political and social freedom are some of the indicators of the mental stage of social evolution.

Spiritual Stage
Then there is a spiritual stage beyond the mental. That is obviously further out. As we begin to emerge through the mental stage, we perceive that even the power of mind cannot be the ultimate salvation for humanity; for after all the faculties of mind as we have said are decidedly limited. So there begins to develop a longing for a unity of awareness and perception that mind cannot hold; an openness to greater truths, greater insights, spiritual knowledge and vision. To an understanding that our individual will, the collective will, and the Divine will are all bound together.

At some point individuals who have experienced the inner life of the spirit, who have begun to transform themselves to a higher physical, vital, and physical existence, who have experience the spirit in action in life, who have felt and opened themselves to a greater spiritual power to effect life, become the harbingers of a new collective life, a new divine life on earth.

DISCUSSIONS

How could individualism add to quality-of-life?

If we accept that individualized society breeds greater happiness than collectivist society, the

next question is how. A plausible explanation would seem that individualized society fits human nature better than collectivist society does. That explanation pre-supposes that humans are not fully determined by society (not born as a 'tabula rasa'), but that human nature sets its own demands, which may fit more or less with the supply of society. In this view, we look at society in the way biologists look at the habitat of a species. Biologists see success of species as a matter of fit with their natural environment. The better the match, the more the species thrives. Humans represent a particular flexible species, which can flourish in varied conditions. Still there are limits to human adaptability. We cannot live in all physical conditions and neither can we be happy in all societies.

Better chance of 'fit' The basic idea of this explanation is that any society sets restrictions to the way its members develop psychologically and to the way they live. This inevitably involves frictions with personal needs and capacities. These frictions gives rise to dysphoric reactions and may harm mental and physical health. Freud (1930) referred to this phenomenon as the "discontents of civilization". Though friction is inherent to organized social life, it is not equally rampant in all societies. In collectivist society, the person is molded very much to the demands of society. The array of psychological modes is limited (few identities, personality types) and social roles are narrowly defined. In this limited assortment, the individual has little choice. How one develops and what one will do depends very much on ascription. Advantages of that system are easy socialization and social allocation. One of the disadvantages is a high rate of 'misfits'. Individualistic society allows more variation. Its socialization produces more variation in mental modes. Psychologically, its members develop more different and more differentiated, and over the lifetime they change more. Its social roles are more 'abstract' and leave more room Ruut Veenhoven 11 QOL in individualistic society for negotiation. Role allocation is largely a matter personal choice. An obvious advantage of this system is that people have a better chance of living a life that fits their nature. An equally obvious disadvantage is that choice has its costs.

There are two reasons why chances for fit are likely to be better in individualistic society.

One reason is the variation of its life-style assortment. The more variation in ways of life, the

greater the chance that the individual finds one that suits his/her needs and capacities. The

second reason is that individualistic society is more responsive to (change in) individual

demands. The variety of its array facilitates the evolution of new practices, whereas in

collectivists societies new life-styles meet strong opposition. The first reason makes that unaverage citizens are better served. The second reason reduces the risk that society ignores the needs of the modal citizen.

Why then are there still collectivist societies? If individualistic society fits human nature so well, why then is this pattern not universal? One reason seems to be that this type of social organization is not always feasible. Another reason could be that its advantages balance its disadvantages only if specific conditions are met.

Individualism not always viable There are good reasons to assume that early human societies allowed a fair amount of freedom. Coercion is difficult in hunter-gatherer bands, where members can leave the group if necessary. Maryanski & Turner believe that the human preference for loose ties evolved in this social context. In their view, success of the species gave rise to scarcity of natural resources, which pressed to another mode of existence, which on its turn gave rise to a more coercive kind of society. Agricultural societies in particular tend to collectivism and become a 'social cage'. Various functional reasons seem to be involved. Though individuals suffer in this system, the quality of their life might even be worse if the social system collapsed. The later shift to industrial society created more room for autonomy. Increasing division of labor enabled a move from 'mechanical solidarity' to 'organic solidarity' (Durkheim 1893) and made individual differences more functional. At the same time the spectacular rise of life-expectancy made investments in differentiated development both more profitable and better possible.

Individualism not always propitious Still, individualistic society is no sure ticket for great

happiness of a great number. As noted, autonomy has its price. In individualist society, one is

confronted with continuous choice. Nothing is self-evident, not even marrying and having children. In choosing one's way of life, one is constantly at risk of making wrong choices. Intimate ties are no longer given by tradition, but things one must establish and maintain.

Successful coping with these problems requires specific capabilities. Opportunity to

choose requires capability to choose. Freedom one cannot handle works out negatively on

happiness. So, the advantages of individualistic society can be reaped only if the appropriate

psychological capabilities are developed. If not, the disadvantages prevail.

So, individualization will add to the quality-of-life only if the mode of existence permits such

social organization, and if socialization develops the necessary capabilities. These requirements seem to be met in the modern nations at hand here.

Why the belief that individualism makes unhappy?

If individualization adds to quality-of-life indeed, why then do so many respectable scholars

believe that it is detrimental to it? One reason is in conceptual confusion. Another reason is

misreading of reality.

Conceptual confusion

Many claims about detrimental effects of individualization mix up 'quality of society' with

'quality-of-life in society'. For instance, individualization is seen to reduce respect for tradition (a quality of society) and on that basis it is concluded that individualization reduces the quality-oflife in that society. A related problem is in the definition of 'quality-of-life'. As noted above, the term is used in two meanings: presence of conditions deemed good for people ('assumed' quality-of-life) and how well people actually thrive ('apparent' quality-of-life). Often these meanings are equated. For example, respect for tradition is assumed to be good for people, and that presumption is extended to the claim that people are happier in traditional society. Lastly, specific 'qualities of life' are mixed up with 'overall quality of life'. In the same example, it is established that individualization reduces respect for tradition (a specific assumed quality of life) and on that basis it is concluded that individualization decreases overall qualityof- life. Sloppy thinking is still a vex in sociology.

Misreading of reality

Still there are scholars who do refer to final 'apparent' quality-of-life, and claim that individualization of society reduced that. Why do they believe so? One reason seems to be that the costs of individualization are more salient than its benefits. Misery is more visible than happiness. A related point is that it is not easy to asses the balance of effects. For long, there were no good measures of overall quality-of-life. By lack of a better indicator, investigators used incidence of suicide and admissions to psychiatric hospitals, which suggest adverse effects of individualization. Comparable data on happiness are only recently available. Another ground may be that the balance of effects has probably been less favorable in the past. Firstly, the change towards individualization involved costs of transition. Secondly, the development took place in less favorable conditions: less capability to choose (education and information) and less alternatives to choose (economic development). So, in their time, earlier sociologists were possibly right in estimating that individualization is detrimental to the quality-of-life.

INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIETY

An individualist enters into society to further his or her own interests, or at least demands the right to serve his or her own interests, without taking the interests of society into consideration (an individualist need not be an egoist). The individualist does not lend credence to any philosophy that requires the sacrifice of the self-interest of the individual for any higher social causes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would argue, however, that his concept of "general will" in the "social contract" is not the simple collection of individual wills and precisely furthers the interests of the individual (the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseau's eyes, a form of ignorance and submission to one's passions instead of the preferred autonomy of reason).

Societies and groups can differ, in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly "self-regarding" (individualistic, and arguably self-interested) rather than "other-regarding" (group-oriented, and group, or society-minded) behavior. Ruth Benedict argued that there is also a distinction, relevant in this context, between "guilt" societies (e.g., medieval Europe) with an "internal reference standard", and "shame" societies (e.g., Japan, "bringing shame upon one's ancestors") with an "external reference standard", where people look to their peers for feedback on whether an action is "acceptable" or not (also known as "group-think").

The extent to which society, or groups are "individualistic" can vary from time to time, and from country to country. For example, Japanese society is more group-oriented (e.g., decisions tend to be taken by consensus among groups, rather than by individuals), and it has been argued that "personalities are less developed" (than is usual in the West). The USA is usually thought of as being at the individualistic (its detractors would say "atomistic") end of the spectrum (the term "Rugged Individualism" is a cultural imprint of being the essence of Americanism), whereas European societies are more inclined to believe in "public-spiritedness", state "socialistic" spending, and in "public" initiatives.

John Kenneth Galbraith made a classic distinction between "private affluence and public squalor" in the USA, and private squalor and public affluence in, for example, Europe, and there is a correlation between individualism and degrees of public sector intervention and taxation.

Individualism is often contrasted with either totalitarianism or collectivism, but in fact there is a spectrum of behaviors ranging at the societal level from highly individualistic societies through mixed societies (a term the UK has used in the post-World War II period) to collectivist. Also, many collectivists (particularly supporters of collectivist anarchism or libertarian socialism) point to the enormous differences between liberty-minded collectivism and totalitarian practices.

Individualism, sometimes closely associated with certain variants of individualist anarchism, libertarianism or classical liberalism, typically takes it for granted that individuals know best and that public authority or society has the right to interfere in the person's decision-making process only when a very compelling need to do so arises (and maybe not even in those circumstances). This type of argument is often observed in relation to policy debates regarding regulation of industries, as well as in relation to personal choice of lifestyle.

CRITICISM

Some critics of individualism state that societies are groups of social animals and thus collectivist whether collectivism is formally accepted or not.

Others criticize it as being inherently elitist and prone to abuse and oppression. The anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman has criticized individualism for creating inequality:

‘Rugged individualism’ has meant all the ‘individualism’ for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking ’supermen.’…Their ‘rugged individualism’ is simply one of the many pretenses the ruling class makes to mask unbridled business and political extortion.

Individualization of society adds to the quality-of-life of citizens, at least in present day

developed nations. Although life in individualist society is not without problems, the costs of

individualism costs are clearly outbalanced by its benefits. There is no support for the claim that individualization has gone too far. Though there is obviously an optimum level, the turning point is not yet in sight.

Sources :

a) http://www.wikipedia.org/

b) New York Times

c) QUALITY-OF-LIFE IN INDIVIDUALISTIC SOCIETY- A comparison of 43 nations in the early 1990's By Ruut Veenhoven

d) The Individual, Society and the State
by Emma Goldman

e) Yahoo!

Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution

noreply@blogger.com (Arijit Nandi BLOGGING....) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:09:00 +0000

Roots of Human Violence and Greed

The two most powerful psychological forces in human history have been without doubt violence and greed. However, the current global situation has amplified the consequences involved. More people were killed in the last hundred years than have existed from the dawn of humanity up to the last century. We have the dubious privilege of being the first species in natural history that has achieved the capacity to eradicate itself and destroy in the process all life on this planet. Yet the current global crisis is of a psychospiritual nature, and it cannot be resolved without a radical inner transformation of humanity on a large scale. While this would seem a hopeless task, the recent theoretical concepts and practical approaches from a number of new-paradigm sources offer promising new strategies, which fall into the following five categories: development of a new image of the Universe and of a more comprehensive understanding of human nature and of the psyche; new understanding of the roots of malignant aggression and human violence; new insights into the nature of insatiable greed; experiential approaches facilitating positive personal transformation and consciousness evolution; and transpersonal psychology, consciousness research, and the global crisis.

It has become increasingly clear that consciousness is not a product of the physiological processes in the brain but is a primary attribute of existence. In the last analysis, the individual psyche of each of us is commensurate with the totality of existence; the deepest nature of humanity is not bestial, but divine.

Malignant aggression does not reflect true human nature; it is connected with a domain of unconscious, perinatal dynamics that separates us from our deeper identity. Those who initiate war activities and violence in general are typically substituting external targets for elements in their own psyches, which should properly be faced in personal self-exploration. The circumstances of birth play an important role in creating a disposition to violence and self-destructive tendencies or to loving behavior and healthy interpersonal relationships; thus changing birth practices to kinder and gentler ones would have a huge impact on the degree of violence acted out in the world.

Perinatal sources of greed lie in a feeling of dissatisfaction and discomfort with the present situation, whatever it might be. Like the child stuck in the birth canal, the individual feels the need to get to a better situation that seems to lie ahead, resulting in a "rat-race" strategy of existence which is incapable of delivering happiness. Transpersonal sources of greed lie in our separation from our true identity with the Divine, resulting in a craving for substitute satisfactions or surrogates—Atman projects.

However, hope lies in deep experiential approaches that facilitate personal transformation through psychospiritual death/rebirth and connection with the memories of positive postnatal or prenatal memories. Such approaches have consistently resulted in the emergence of deep spirituality of a universal and all-encompassing nature and a corresponding development of deep humanitarian and ecological concerns in individuals.

The current global situation has exteriorized many of the essential themes of the perinatal dynamics. If we continue to act out the problematic destructive and self-destructive tendencies originating in the depths of the unconscious, we will undoubtedly destroy ourselves and the life on this planet. However, if we succeed in internalizing this process on a large enough scale, it might result in an evolutionary progress that can take us as far beyond our present condition as we now are from primates. Thus, it is essential to spread the information about these possibilities for transformation and consciousness evolution and get enough people personally interested in pursuing them. We seem to be involved in a dramatic race for time that has no precedent in the entire history of humanity.

Human History: Past, Present, and Future

The two most powerful psychological forces in human history have been without doubt violence and greed. The amount and degree of atrocities that have been committed throughout ages in various countries of the world—many of them in the name of God—is truly unimaginable and indescribable. We can think here of the countless Christians, sacrificed in Roman arenas to provide a highly sought-after spectacle for the masses; many hundreds of thousands of victims of the medieval Inquisition, who were tortured, killed, and burned in the autos-da-fé; the mass slaughters on the sacrificial altars of the Aztecs; and the millions of soldiers and civilians killed in wars and revolutions of all times.

Genghis Khan’s hordes sweeping through Asia, killing, pillaging, and burning villages; Alexander the Great’s army conquering all the countries lying between Macedonia and India; the amazing spread of Islam by sword and fire; the expansion of the Roman Empire; the Crusades; the ventures of Cortez and Pizarro; the colonialism of Great Britain and other European countries; and the Napoleonic wars—all these are examples of unbridled violence and insatiable greed.

This trend has continued in an unmitigated fashion in the twentieth century. Historically, more people were killed in the last hundred years than have existed from the dawn of humanity up to the last century. A total of twenty-million men and women were killed on the battlefields of World War II, and an equal number as a consequence of the wars off the battlefield.

The expansionism of Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust, Stalin’s domination of Eastern Europe and his Gulag Archipelago, the civil terror in Communist China and in the South American dictatorships, the atrocities and genocide committed by the Chinese in Tibet, the cruelties of the South African Apartheid, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the recent bloodshed in Yugoslavia and Rwanda are just a few salient examples of the senseless human slaughter we have witnessed during the last fifty years.

Human greed has also found new, less violent forms of expression in the philosophy and strategy of capitalist economy, emphasizing increase of the Gross National Product and "unlimited growth," reckless plundering of nonrenewable natural resources, encouraging conspicuous consumption, and practicing "planned obsolescence." Moreover, much of this wasteful economic policy that has disastrous ecological consequences has been oriented toward production of weapons of increasing destructive power.

In the past, violence and greed had tragic consequences for the individuals involved in the internecine historical events and for their immediate families. However, they did not threaten the evolution of the human species as a whole and certainly did not represent a danger for the ecosystem and for the biosphere of the planet. Even after the most violent wars, Nature was able to recycle all the aftermath and completely recover within a few decades. This situation has changed very radically in the course of the twentieth century. Rapid technological progress, exponential growth of industrial production, massive population explosion, and particularly the discovery of atomic energy have forever changed the equations involved.

In the course of this century, we have often witnessed more major scientific and technological breakthroughs within a single decade, or even a single year, than people in earlier historical periods experienced in an entire century. However, these astonishing intellectual successes have brought modern humanity to the brink of global catastrophe, since they were not matched by a comparable growth of emotional and moral maturity. We have the dubious privilege of being the first species in natural history that has achieved the capacity to eradicate itself and destroy in the process all life on this planet.

The intellectual history of humanity is one of incredible triumphs. We have been able to learn the secrets of nuclear energy, send spaceships to the moon and all the planets of the solar system transmit sound and color pictures all over the globe and across cosmic space, and crack the DNA code and start genetic engineering. At the same time, these superior technologies are being used in the service of primitive emotions and instinctual impulses that are not very different from those that motivated people of the Stone Age.

Unimaginable sums of money have been wasted in the insanity of the arms race, and the use of a minuscule fraction of the existing arsenal of atomic weapons could destroy all life on Earth. Many millions of people have been killed in the two world wars and in countless other violent confrontations occurring for ideological, racial, religious, or economic reasons; hundreds of thousands were bestially tortured by the secret police of various totalitarian systems. Insatiable greed is driving people to hectic pursuit of profit and acquisition of personal property beyond any reasonable limits. Besides the specter of a nuclear war, this strategy has resulted in a situation where humanity is threatened by several less spectacular, but insidious and more predictable, doomsday scenarios.

Among these are industrial pollution of soil, water, and air; the threat of nuclear waste and accidents; destruction of the ozone layer; the greenhouse effect; possible loss of planetary oxygen through reckless deforestation and poisoning of the ocean plankton; and the dangers of toxic additives in our food and drinks. To this we can add a number of developments that are of less apocalyptic nature, but are equally disturbing, such as species extinction proceeding at an astronomical rate, homelessness and starvation of a significant percentage of the world’s population, deterioration of family and crisis of parenthood, disappearance of spiritual values, absence of hope and positive perspective, loss of meaningful connection with Nature, and general alienation. As a result of all the above factors, humanity now lives in chronic anguish on the verge of a nuclear and ecological catastrophe, while in possession of fabulous technology approaching the world of science fiction.

Modern science has developed effective means that could solve most of the urgent problems in today’s world—combat the majority of diseases, eliminate hunger and poverty, reduce the degree of industrial waste, and replace destructive fossil fuels by renewable sources of clean energy. The problems that stand in the way are not of an economical or technological nature; their deepest sources lie inside the human personality. Because of our human failings, unimaginable resources have been wasted in the absurdity of the arms race, in power struggles, and in pursuit of "unlimited growth." These failings also prevent a more appropriate distribution of wealth among individuals and nations, as well as a reorientation from purely economic and political concerns to ecological priorities that are critical for the survival of life on this planet.

Diplomatic negotiations, administrative and legal measures, economic and social sanctions, military interventions, and other similar efforts have had very little success; as a matter of fact, they have often produced more problems than they solved. It is becoming increasingly clear why they have to fail: It is impossible to alleviate this crisis by application of the strategies rooted in the same ideology that created it in the first place. In the last analysis, the current global crisis is of a psychospiritual nature; it reflects the level of consciousness evolution of the human species. It is therefore hard to imagine that it could be resolved without a radical inner transformation of humanity on a large scale and a rise to a higher level of emotional maturity and spiritual awareness.

The task of imbuing humanity with an entirely different set of values and goals might appear too unrealistic and utopian to offer any real hope. Considering the paramount role of violence and greed in human history, the possibility of transforming modern humanity into a species of individuals capable of peaceful coexistence with their fellow men and women regardless of race, color, and religious or political conviction—let alone with other species—certainly does not seem very plausible. We are facing the necessity to instill into humanity profound ethical values, sensitivity to the needs of others, acceptance of voluntary simplicity, and a sharp awareness of ecological imperatives. At first glance, such a task appears too fantastic even for a science-fiction movie.

Transpersonal psychology—a discipline that is trying to integrate spirituality with the new paradigm emerging in Western science—offers very promising new strategies that could help alleviate the crisis we are all facing. They are in full agreement with the perennial wisdom of the great spiritual philosophies of the East and the mystical traditions of the world.

The observations and insights from the fields of modern consciousness research, transpersonal psychology, and the emerging paradigm those are relevant from the point of view of the current situation in the world fall into the following five categories:

New understanding of the roots of malignant aggression and human violence
Development of a new image of the Universe and of a more comprehensive understanding of human nature and of the psyche replacing the behaviorist and Freudian models
New insights into the nature of insatiable greed
Experiential approaches facilitating positive personal transformation and consciousness evolution
Transpersonal psychology, consciousness research, and the global crisis

New Image of the Universe, the Psyche, and Human Nature

In recent years, many authors have pointed out that a significant factor in the development of the global crisis has been the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm that has dominated Western science for the last three-hundred years. It portrays the Universe as a giant, fully deterministic supermachine governed by mechanical laws and involves a sharp dichotomy between mind and Nature. The image of the Cosmos as a mechanical system has led to the belief that it can be adequately understood by dissecting it and studying all its parts.

In addition, by elevating matter to the most important principle in the Cosmos, Western science reduced life, consciousness, and intelligence to its accidental byproducts. In this context, humans appear to be nothing more than highly developed animals. This led to the acceptance of antagonism, competition, and the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" as the leading principles of human society. In addition, the description of organic and inorganic nature as unconscious provided the justification for its exploitation by humans, following the program so eloquently formulated by Francis Bacon.

Freudian psychoanalysis has contributed to the global crisis by painting a pessimistic picture of human beings as creatures whose primary motivating forces are bestial instincts. In this view, if we were not afraid of societal repercussions and controlled by the superego (internalized parental prohibitions and injunctions), we would kill and steal indiscriminately, commit incest, and be involved in unbridled promiscuous sex. This image of human nature relegated such concepts as complementarity, synergy, mutual respect, and peaceful cooperation into the domain of temporary opportunistic strategies or naive utopian fantasies. It is not difficult to see how these concepts and the system of values associated with them have helped to create the crisis we are facing.

However, during the last twenty-five years, revolutionary developments in Western science have brought convincing evidence for a radically different understanding of the Cosmos, human beings, and the psyche. It has become increasingly clear that consciousness is not a product of the physiological processes in the brain but is a primary attribute of existence. The Universe is imbued with creative intelligence, and consciousness is inextricably woven into its fabric. Modern consciousness research has shown that the conceptual framework of traditional psychiatry and psychology—which reduces the human psyche to biology, postnatal biography, and the Freudian individual unconscious—is superficial, inadequate, and incorrect.

In no ordinary states of consciousness—such as systematic meditation; shamanic rituals; near-death experiences; psychedelic sessions; powerful forms of experiential psychotherapy such as rebirthing, holotropic breathwork, and primal therapy; and spontaneous psychospiritual crises—the psyche can reach far beyond such narrow limits. It is possible to transcend the dynamics of the unconscious dominated by animal instincts and connect with transpersonal domains. In the last analysis, the individual psyche of each of us is commensurate with the totality of existence; the deepest nature of humanity is not bestial, but divine. This understanding of existence provides a natural basis for reverence for life, cooperation and synergy, concerns for humanity and the planet as a whole and deep ecological awareness.

New Understanding of the Roots of Malignant Aggression
and Human Violence

The modern human study of aggressive behavior started with Charles Darwin’s (1859/1952) epoch-making discoveries in the field of evolution in the middle of the last century. The attempts to explain human aggression from our animal origin generated such theoretical concepts as Desmond Morris’s (1967) image of the "naked ape," Ardrey’s (1961) idea of the "territorial imperative," Paul MacLean’s (1973) "triune brain," and Richard Dawkins’s (1976) sociobiological explanations interpreting aggression in terms of genetic strategies of the "selfish gene." More refined models of behavior developed by pioneers in ethology—such as Konrad Lorenz (1963), Nikolaas Tinbergen (1965), and others—complemented mechanical emphasis on instincts by the study of ritualistic and motivational elements.

However, any theories suggesting that the human tendency to violence simply reflects our animal origin are inadequate and unconvincing. Animals exhibit aggression when they are hungry, defending their territory, or competing for sex. However, the nature and scope of human violence—Erich Fromm’s (1973) "malignant aggression"—has no parallels in the animal kingdom. There are no natural parallels to the atrocities committed in the course of human history. Awareness of the inadequacy of the belief that aggression is an inborn fact of evolutionary nature led to the formulation of psychodynamic and psychosocial theories that consider a significant part of human aggression to be learned phenomena. This trend began in the late 1930s with the monograph Frustration and Aggression by Dollard and Miller (1939).

Psychodynamic theories are trying to explain the specifically human aggression as a reaction to frustration, abuse, and lack of love in infancy and childhood. However, even explanations of this kind fall painfully short of accounting for extreme forms of individual violence (such as the Boston Strangler, serial murders of the Geoffrey Dahmer type, or the Texas gunman White), crimes committed by gangs and criminal groups (like the Sharon Tate murders or prison uprisings), and particularly mass societal phenomena like Nazism, Communism, bloody wars, revolutions, genocide, and concentration camps.

In the last several decades, psychedelic research and deep experiential psychotherapies have been able to throw much light on the problems of human aggression. They discovered that the sources of this problematic and dangerous aspect of human nature are much deeper and more formidable than traditional psychology ever imagined. However, at the same time, these experiential modalities also revealed extremely effective approaches that can help to neutralize and transform these deep and dark roots. In addition, the observations from these therapies indicate that malignant aggression does not reflect true human nature. In fact, malignant aggression is connected with a domain of unconscious dynamics which separates us from our deeper identity. When we reach the transpersonal realms that lie beyond this screen of malignancy, we realize that our true nature is divine rather than bestial. This finding is fully congruent with the understanding described in the ancient Indian Upanishads by the phrase "Tat tvam asi" (Thou art That)—meaning that, in the last analysis, each of us is identical with the creative principle of the Universe.

Perinatal Sources of Violence

There is no doubt that malignant aggression is connected with traumas and frustrations in childhood and infancy. However, modern consciousness research has revealed additional significant roots of violence in deep recesses of the psyche that lie beyond postnatal biography and are related to the trauma of biological birth (or perinatal). The vital emergency, pain, and suffocation experienced for many hours during biological delivery generate enormous amounts of anxiety and murderous aggression which remain stored in the organism. The reliving of birth in various forms of experiential psychotherapy does not involve only concrete replay of the original emotions and sensations, but is typically associated with a variety of experiences portraying violent scenes. Among these are often powerful sequences depicting wars, revolutions, racial riots, concentration camps, totalitarianism, genocide, and other such horrifyingly violent scenes.

This spontaneous emergence of sociopolitical themes and insights during the perinatal process makes it possible to make very specific conclusions about the psychological dynamics involved. Naturally, wars and revolutions are extremely complex phenomena that have historical, economic, political, religious, and other dimensions. The intention here is not to offer a reductionistic explanation but to add some new insights concerning the psychological and spiritual dimensions of these events that have been neglected, or covered in an inadequate and superficial way.

The images of sociopolitical events accompanying the reliving of biological birth tend to appear in very specific connection with the consecutive stages of the birth process. These distinct stages of the birth process have termed basic perinatal matrices, BPM for short. While reliving episodes of undisturbed intrauterine existence (an example of a Basic Perinatal Matrix I, or BPM I experience) subjects typically experience images from early human societies with an ideal social structure, cultures living in complete harmony with Nature (e.g., pristine Polynesian Islands), or of future utopian societies where all major conflicts have been resolved. Disturbing intrauterine memories (toxic womb, imminent miscarriage, attempted abortions) are accompanied by images of human groups living in industrial areas where Nature is polluted and spoilt, or of belonging to societies with all-pervasive insidious danger and paranoia.

Regressive experiences related to the first clinical stage of birth (in my terminology, BPM II), during which the uterus periodically contracts but the cervix is not open, present a diametrically different picture. They portray oppressive and abusive totalitarian societies with closed borders, victimizing their populations, and "choking" personal freedom (Czarist or Communist Russia, Hitler’s Third Reich, South American dictatorships, Apartheid) or inmates in Nazi concentration camps or Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago. Subjects experiencing these scenes of living hell identify exclusively with the victims and feel deep sympathy for the downtrodden and the underdog.

The experiences accompanying the reliving of the second clinical stage of delivery (BPM III), when the cervix is dilated and continued contractions propel the fetus through the narrow passage of the birth canal, feature a rich panoply of violent scenes—bloody wars and revolutions, human or animal slaughter, mutilation sequences, sexual abuse, and murder. These scenes often contain demonic elements and repulsive scatological motifs. Additional frequent concomitants are visions of burning cities, launching of rockets, and explosions of nuclear bombs. Subjects are not limited to the role of victims but can participate in three roles—that of the victim, of the aggressor, and of an emotionally involved observer.

The events characterizing the third clinical stage of delivery (BPM IV)—the actual moment of birth and the separation from the mother—are associated with images of victory in wars and revolutions, liberation of prisoners, success of collective efforts such as patriotic or nationalistic movements, triumphant celebrations and parades, or postwar reconstruction.

In 1975, socialists described these observations linking sociopolitical upheavals to stages of biological birth in my first book, Realms of the Human Unconscious (Grof, 1975). Shortly after its publication, I received a letter from Lloyd deMause, a New York psychoanalyst and historian. DeMause is one of the founders of psychohistory—a discipline that applies the findings of depth psychology to history and political science. Psychohistorians study such issues as the relationship between the childhood history of political leaders and their systems of values and processes of decision-making, or the influence of childrearing practices on the nature of revolutions of that particular historical period. Lloyd deMause was very interested in my findings concerning the trauma of birth and its possible sociopolitical implications, because they provided independent support for his own research.

For some time, Lloyd had been studying the psychological aspects of the periods preceding wars and revolutions. It interested him how military leaders succeed in mobilizing masses of peaceful civilians and transform them into killing machines. His approach was very original and creative; in addition to analysis of traditional historical sources, he drew data of great psychological importance from political cartoons, caricatures, jokes, dreams, personal imagery, slips of the tongue, side comments of speakers, and even doodles and scribbles on the edges of the rough drafts of political documents. By the time he contacted me, he had analyzed in this way seventeen situations preceding the outbreak of wars and revolutionary upheavals, spanning many centuries since antiquity to most recent times.

He was struck by the extraordinary abundance of figures of speech, metaphors, and images related to biological birth in this material (deMause, 1975). Thus military leaders and politicians of all ages describing a critical situation or declaring war typically use terms that equally apply to perinatal distress. They accuse the enemy of choking and strangling us, squeezing the last breath out of our lungs, or confining us, and not giving us enough space to live (Hitler’s "Lebensraum"). Equally frequent are allusions to dark caves, tunnels, and confusing labyrinths; dangerous abysses into which we might be pushed; and the threat of engulfment or drowning. Similarly, the promise of resolution comes in the form of perinatal images: The leader promises to guide us to the light on the other side of the tunnel, lead us out of the labyrinth, and guarantee that after the oppressor is overcome everybody will again breathe freely.

Lloyd deMause’s historical examples at the time included such famous personages as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Samuel Adams, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, Krushchev, and Kennedy. Samuel Adams talking about the American Revolution referred to "the child of Independence now struggling for birth." In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm stated that "The Monarchy has been seized by the throat and forced to choose between letting itself be strangled and making a last ditch effort to defend itself against attack." During the Cuban missile crisis Krushchev wrote to Kennedy, pleading that the two nations not "come to a clash, like blind moles battling to death in a tunnel." Even more explicit was the coded message used by Japanese ambassador, Kurusu, when he phoned Tokyo to signal that negotiations had broken down with Roosevelt and that it was all right to go ahead with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He announced that the "birth of a child was imminent" and asked how things were in Japan: "Does it seem as if the child might be born?" The reply was, "Yes, the birth of the child seems imminent." Interestingly, the American intelligence listening in recognized the meaning of the war-as-birth code.

Particularly chilling was the use of perinatal language in connection with the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The airplane was given the name of the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay. The atomic bomb itself carried a painted nickname, Little Boy, and the agreed-upon message sent to Washington as a signal of successful detonation was, "The baby was born." It would not be too far-fetched to see the image of newborn also behind the nickname of the Nagasaki bomb, Fat Man.

Since the time of our correspondence, Lloyd deMause has collected many additional historical examples and refined his thesis that the memory of the birth trauma plays an important role as a source of motivation for violent social activity (see, e.g., deMause, 1982, 1996).

The issues related to nuclear warfare are of such relevance that I would like to elaborate on them using the material from a fascinating paper by Carol Cohn (1987) titled "Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defense Intellectuals." The defense intellectuals are civilians who move in and out of government, working sometimes as administrative officials or consultants, sometimes at universities and think tanks. They create the theory that informs and legitimates US nuclear strategic practice—how to manage the arms race, how to deter the use of nuclear weapons, how to fight a nuclear war if the deterrence fails, and how to explain why it is not safe to live without nuclear weapons.

Carol Cohn attended a two-week seminar summer workshop on nuclear weapons, nuclear strategic doctrine, and arms control. She was so fascinated by what had transpired there that she spent the following year immersed in the almost entirely male world (except secretaries) of defense intellectuals. She collected some extremely interesting facts confirming the perinatal dimension in nuclear warfare. In her own terminology, these facts confirm the importance of the motif of "male birth" and "male creation" as important psychological forces underlying the psychology of nuclear warfare. She uses the following historical examples to illustrate her point of view:

In 1942 Ernest Lawrence sent a telegram to a Chicago group of physicists developing the nuclear bomb: "Congratulations to the new parents. Can hardly wait to see the new arrival." At Los Alamos, the atom bomb was referred to as "Oppenheimer’s baby." Richard Feynman wrote in his article, "Los Alamos from Below," that when he was temporarily on leave after his wife’s death he received a telegram that read, "The baby is expected on such and such a day."

At Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, the hydrogen bomb was referred to as "Teller’s baby," although those who wanted to disparage Edward Teller’s contribution claimed he was not the bomb’s father, but its mother. They claimed that Stanislav Ulam was the real father, who had all the important ideas and conceived it; Teller only "carried it" after that. Terms related to motherhood were also used to the provision of "nurturance"—the maintenance of the missiles.

General Grove sent a triumphant coded cable to Secretary of War Henry Stimson at the Potsdam conference reporting the success of the first atomic test: "Doctor has just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from here to high hold and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm." Stimson, in turn, informed Churchill by writing him a note that read, "Baby satisfactorily born."

William L. Laurence witnessed the test of the first atomic bomb and wrote: "The big boom came about a hundred seconds after the great flash—the first cry of a newborn world." Edward Teller’s exultant telegram to Los Alamos, announcing the successful test of the hydrogen bomb "Mike" at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands read, "It’s a boy." The male scientists gave birth to a progeny with the ultimate power of domination over female Nature.

The Enola Gay, Little Boy, and "The baby was born" symbolism of the Hiroshima bomb, and the Fat Man symbolism of the Nagasaki bomb were mentioned already.

Carol Cohn also mentions in her paper an abundance of overtly sexual symbolism in the language of defense intellectuals. The nature of this material, linking sex to aggression, domination, and scatology shows a deep similarity to the imagery occurring in the context of birth experiences (BPM III). Examples: American dependence on nuclear weapons was explained as irresistible, because "you get more bangs for the buck." A professor’s explanation of why the MX missiles should be placed in the silos of the newest Minuteman missiles instead of replacing the older, less accurate ones was, "You are not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it into a crummy hole." At one point, there was a serious concern that "we have to harden our missiles," because "the Russians are a little harder than we are." One military adviser to the National Security Council referred to "releasing seventy to eighty percent of our mega tonnage in one orgasmic whump."

Lectures were filled with terms like "vertical erector launchers," "thrust-to-weight ratios," "soft lay-downs," "deep penetration," and the comparative advantages of "protracted" versus "spasm attacks." Another example is the popular and widespread custom of "patting the missiles," an expression of phallic supremacy but also homoerotic tendencies. It clearly is quite appropriate for feminist critics of nuclear policies to refer to "missile envy" and "phallic worship."

Further support for the pivotal role of the perinatal domain of the unconscious in war psychology can be found in Sam Keen’s (1988) excellent book The Faces of the Enemy. Keen brought together an outstanding collection of distorted and biased war posters, propaganda cartoons, and caricatures from many historical periods and countries. He demonstrated that the way the enemy is described and portrayed during a war or revolution is a stereotype that shows very little variation and has very little to do with the actual characteristics of the culture involved.

He was able to divide these images into several archetypal categories according to the prevailing characteristics (e.g. Stranger, Aggressor, Worthy Opponent, Faceless, and Enemy of God, Barbarian, Greedy, Criminal, Torturer, Rapist, and Death). According to Keen, the alleged images of the enemy are essentially projections of the repressed and unacknowledged Shadow aspects of our own unconscious. Although we would certainly find in human history instances of "just wars," those who initiate war activities are typically substituting external targets for elements in their own psyches which should properly be faced in personal self-exploration.

Sam Keen’s theoretical framework does not specifically include the perinatal domain of the unconscious. However, the analysis of his picture material reveals a preponderance of symbolic images that are characteristic for BPM II and BPM III. The enemy is typically depicted as a dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes—particularly vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksand also abound in pictures from the times of wars, revolutions, and political crises. Juxtaposition of pictures from no ordinary states of consciousness that depict perinatal experiences with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd deMause and Sam Keen represents strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence.

According to the new insights—provided jointly by observations from no ordinary states of consciousness and the findings of psychohistory—we all carry in our deep unconscious powerful energies and emotions associated with the trauma of birth that we have not adequately mastered and assimilated. For some of us, this aspect of our psyche can be completely unconscious, until and unless we embark on some in-depth self-exploration with the use of psychedelics or some powerful experiential techniques of psychotherapy, such as holotropic breathwork, primal therapy, or rebirthing. Others of us can have varying degrees of awareness of the emotions and physical sensations stored on the perinatal level of the unconscious.

The activation of this material can lead to serious individual psychopathology, including unmotivated violence. It seems that, for unknown reasons, awareness of the perinatal elements can increase simultaneously in a large number of people. This creates an atmosphere of tension, anxiety, and anticipation. The leader is an individual who is under a stronger influence of the perinatal energies than an average person. He also has the ability to disown his unacceptable feelings (the Shadow in Jung’s terminology) and to project them onto the external situation. The collective discomfort is blamed on the enemy, and a military intervention is offered as a solution.

The war provides an opportunity to abandon the psychological defenses that ordinarily keep the dangerous perinatal tendencies in check. Freud’s superego—a psychological force which demands restraint and civilized behavior—is replaced by the "war superego": We now receive praise and medals for the same behaviors that are unacceptable and punishable in peacetime—murder, indiscriminate destruction, and pillaging. Once the war erupts, the destructive and self-destructive impulses can be freely acted out. The perinatal elements that we normally encounter in a certain stage of the process of inner exploration and transformation (BPM II and III) now become the images that are part of our life, either directly or in the form of TV news and print media. Various no-exit situations, sadomasochistic orgies, sexual violence, bestial and demonic behavior, unleashing of enormous explosive energies, and scatology—which belong to standard perinatal imagery—are all enacted in wars and revolutions with extraordinary vividness and power.

However, the acting out of unconscious impulses—whether it occurs on the individual scale or collectively in wars and revolutions—does not result in transformation as would their full conscious experience, since insight and therapeutic intention are missing. Thus the goal of the underlying birth fantasy, which represents the driving force of such violent events, is not achieved, even if the war or revolution has been brought to a successful closure. The most triumphant external victory does not deliver what was expected and hoped for: an inner sense of emotional liberation and spiritual rebirth. After the initial intoxicating feelings of triumph come, at first, a sober awakening and, later, bitter disappointment. And it usually does not take a long time before a facsimile of the old oppressive system starts emerging from the ruins of the dead dream, since the same unconscious forces continue to operate in the deep unconscious. This seems to happen again and again in human history, whether the event is the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, or World War II.

Since for many years I conducted deep experiential work in Prague at the time when Czechoslovakia had a Marxist regime, I was able to collect some fascinating material concerning the psychological dynamics of Communism. The issues related to Communist ideology typically emerged at the time when my clients were struggling with perinatal energies and emotions. It became obvious that the passion the revolutionaries feel toward the oppressors and their regimes receives a powerful reinforcement from their revolt against the inner prison of their perinatal memories. And conversely, the need to coerce and dominate others is an external displacement of the need to overcome the fear of being overwhelmed by one’s own unconscious. The murderous entanglement of the oppressor and the revolutionary is thus an externalized replica of the situation experienced in the birth canal.

The Communist vision contains an element of psychological truth, which has made it appealing to large numbers of people. The basic notion—that a dramatic experience of a revolutionary nature is necessary to terminate suffering and oppression and institute a situation of greater harmony—is correct when understood as a process of inner transformation. However, it is dangerously false when it is projected into the external world as a political ideology of violent revolutions. The basic fallacy lies in the fact that what on a deeper level is essentially an archetypal pattern of spiritual death and rebirth takes the form of an atheistic and anti-spiritual program.

Communist revolutions have been extremely successful in their destructive phase; but instead of the promised brotherhood and harmony their victories have bred regimes where oppression, cruelty, and injustice ruled supreme. Today when the economically ruined and divided Soviet Union and the Communist world have fallen apart, it is obvious to all people with sane judgment that this gigantic historical experiment conducted at the cost of millions of human lives and unimaginable human suffering has been a colossal failure. If the above observations are correct, no external interventions have a chance to create a better world, unless they are associated with a profound transformation of human consciousness.

The observations from modern consciousness research also throw some important light on the psychology of concentration camps. Over a number of years, Professor Bastians in Leyden, Holland, has been conducting LSD therapy for people suffering from the concentration-camp syndrome, which is a condition that develops in former inmates of these camps many years after the incarceration. Bastians has also worked with former kapos on their issues of guilt. An artistic description of this work can be found in the book Shivitti written by a former inmate, Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (1989), who underwent a series of therapeutic sessions with Bastians.

Bastians (1955) himself wrote a paper describing his work, titled "Man in the Concentration Camp and the Concentration Camp in Man." There he pointed out, without specifying it, that the concentration camps are a projection of a certain domain which exists in the human unconscious: "Before there was a man in the concentration camp, there was a concentration camp in man" (Bastians, 1955). Study of the no ordinary states of consciousness made it possible to identify the realm of the psyche Bastians was talking about. Closer examination of the general and specific conditions in the Nazi concentration camps reveals that they are a diabolical and realistic enactment of the nightmarish atmosphere that characterizes the reliving of biological birth.

The barbed-wire barriers, high-voltage fences, watch towers with submachine guns, mine fields, and packs of trained dogs certainly created a hellish and almost archetypal image of an utterly hopeless and oppressive no-exit situation which is so characteristic of the first clinical stage of birth (BPM II). At the same time, the elements of violence, bestiality, scatology, and sexual abuse of women and men—including rape and sadistic practices—all belong to the phenomenology of the second stage (BPM III), familiar to people who have relived their birth.

The sexual abuse existed on a random individual level, as well as in the "houses of dolls," which were institutions providing "entertainment" for the officers. The only escape out of this hell was death—by hunger, disease, or suffocation in the gas chambers and the fire of the crematoria. The books by Ka-Tzetnik 135633, House of Dolls (1955) and Sunrise Over Hell (1977), offer a shattering description of the life in concentration camps. The SS officers directed special bestiality against pregnant women. The irrational nature of the camps is best shown in the scatological dimension—throwing eating bowls into the latrines and asking for retrieval, and forcing the inmates to urinate into each other’s mouths were practices that besides their bestiality bring the danger of epidemics (in Buchenwald in one month, twenty-seven inmates drowned in feces).

The intensity, depth, driving quality, and convincing nature of all the emotions and sensations involved in these experiences suggest that they are not individually fabricated from such sources as adventure books, movies, and TV shows; but that they originate in the collective unconscious. It certainly seems that when, in our inner exploration, we reach the memory of the trauma of birth, this seems to open the gates into the collective unconscious and mediates access to experiences of people who once were in a similar predicament. It is not hard to imagine that the perinatal level of our unconscious, which "knows" so intimately the history of human violence, is actually partially responsible for wars, revolutions, and similar atrocities. If this is true, it should be possible to reduce the amount of malignant aggression by a change in birth practices.

The role of the birth trauma as a source of violence and self-destructive tendencies has been confirmed by many clinical studies. There seems to be an important correlation between difficult birth and criminality. The data suggest that a traumatic childhood in and of itself is not sufficient to produce criminal behavior in later years. To be a significant factor in this regard, postnatal traumatization, such as separation from mother, has to be preceded by complicated birth. Also aggression directed inward, in particular, suicide, seems to be psycho genetically linked to difficult birth. According to a recent article published in Lancet, resuscitation at birth is conducive to higher risk of committing suicide after puberty. The Scandinavian researcher Bertil Jacobsen found a close correlation between the form of self-destructive behavior and the nature of birth (Jacobsen et al., 1987). Suicides involving asphyxiation were associated with suffocation at birth; violent suicides, with mechanical birth trauma; and drug addiction leading to suicide, with opiate and/or barbiturate administration during labor.

The circumstances of birth thus play an important role in creating a disposition to violence and self-destructive tendencies or to loving behavior and healthy interpersonal relationships. French obstetrician Michel Odent (1995) has shown how the hormones involved in the birth process and nursing (oxytocin, endorphin, adrenaline, no adrenaline, and prolactin) participate in this imprinting. While oxytocin is known to induce maternal behavior in animals and endorphins foster dependency and attachment, the adrenaline mechanisms played an important role in evolution as mediators of the aggressive protective instinct of the mother at the time when birth was occurring in unprotected natural environments. Under the present circumstances, it should not be difficult to provide for birthing a quiet, safe, and private environment conducive to positive interpersonal imprinting. The busy, noisy, and chaotic milieu of many hospitals interferes with this process, induces anxiety, and imprints the picture of a world that is potentially dangerous and requires aggressive responses.

Transpersonal Sources of Violence

The above material clearly indicates that a conceptual framework limited to postnatal biography and the Freudian unconscious does not adequately explain extreme forms of human violence on the individual and collective scale. However, it seems that the roots of these phenomena reach even deeper than to the perinatal level of the psyche. Consciousness research has revealed significant additional sources of aggression in the transpersonal domain; here belong, for example, archetypal images of demons and wrathful deities, complex destructive mythological themes, matrices for animal aggression, and painful past-life memories.

C. G. Jung believed that the archetypes of the collective unconscious not only have a powerful influence on the behavior of individuals but also govern large historical movements. From this point of view, entire nations and cultural groups might be enacting in their behavior important mythological themes. In the decade preceding the outbreak of World War II, Jung found in the dreams of his German patients many elements from the Nordic myth of Ragnarok, or "the twilight of the gods." He concluded from this that this archetype was emerging in the collective psyche of the German nation. He also predicted that it would lead to a major world catastrophe which would ultimately turn out to be self-destructive.

In many instances, leaders of nations specifically use not only perinatal but also archetypal images and spiritual symbolism to achieve their political goals. The medieval crusaders were asked to sacrifice their lives for Jesus in a war that would recover the Holy Land from the Mohammedans. Hitler exploited the mythological motifs of the supremacy of the Nordic race and of the millennial empire, as well as the ancient Aryan symbol of the swastika and the solar eagle. Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein have ignited the imaginations of their Muslim followers by references to jihad—the holy war against the infidels.

It is interesting to mention in this context Carol Cohn’s observations on the spiritual symbolism and religious imagery associated with the language of nuclear weaponry and doctrine. From her feminist perspective, she saw this as an effort of male scientists to appropriate and claim ultimate creative power. The authors of the strategic doctrine refer to members of their community as the "nuclear priesthood." The first atomic test was called Trinity—the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the male forces of creation. The scientists who worked on the bomb and witnessed the test described it in the following way: "It was as though we stood at the first day of creation." And Robert Oppenheimer thought of Krishna’s words to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: "I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."

New Insights into the Nature of Insatiable Greed

Psychoanalytic interpretation of the insatiable human need to achieve, possess, and become more than one is emphasizes sublimation of lower instincts. According to Freud (1955),

What appears as . . . an untiring impulsion toward further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive formations and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct’s persisting tension.

More specifically, greed is interpreted as a phenomenon related to disturbances in nursing. Oral frustration or overindulgence causes oral fixation and the primitive infantile need to eat — orally incorporate objects—extends in adulthood to a variety of other objects and situations. Modern consciousness research has found this interpretation to be superficial and inadequate and has discovered additional perinatal and transpersonal sources of acquisitiveness and greed.

Perinatal Sources of Greed

In the course of biographically oriented psychotherapy, many people discover that their life has been inauthentic in certain specific sectors of interpersonal relations. For example, problems with parental authority lead to specific patterns of difficulties with authority figures; repeated dysfunctional patterns in sexual relationships can be traced to parents as models for sexual behavior; sibling issues color future peer relationships; and so on.

However, when the process of experiential self-exploration reaches the perinatal level, people typically discover that their life up to that point has been largely inauthentic in its totality, not just in certain partial segments. They also find out to their surprise and astonishment that their entire life strategy has been misdirected and, therefore, unfulfilling. The reason for this is the fact that it was primarily motivated by the fear of death and the unconscious forces associated with biological birth that have not been adequately processed and integrated (we are born anatomically, but not emotionally).

When the field of consciousness is strongly influenced by the underlying memory of the struggle in the birth canal, it leads to a feeling of discomfort and dissatisfaction with the present situation. It can focus on a large spectrum of issues: unsatisfactory physical appearance, inadequate resources and material possessions, low social position and influence, insufficient amount of power and fame, and so on. Like the child stuck in the birth canal, the individual feels the need to get to a better situation that seems to lie ahead.

Whatever is the reality of the present circumstances is not satisfactory, and the solution always seems to lie in the future. Our fantasy will create an image of a future situation that will be more satisfactory; until we reach it, life will be only preparation for a better future, not yet "the real thing." This results in a life pattern that has been described as a "treadmill" or a "rat-race" type of existence. The existentialists talk about "auto-projecting" into the future.

When the goal is not reached, the continuing dissatisfaction is rationalized by the failure to reach the correcting measures. When the goal is reached, the continuing dissatisfaction is typically explained by the fact that the goal was not quite right or was not ambitious enough and has to be amplified or exchanged for another one. The failure is not correctly diagnosed, that is, attributed to a fundamentally wrong strategy which is in principle incapable of delivering happiness. This pattern is responsible for reckless irrational pursuit of various grandiose goals which results in much suffering and many problems in the world. It can be played out on many different levels, since it never brings true satisfaction.

Transpersonal Roots of Insatiable Greed

True as this may be, modern consciousness research and experiential psychotherapy have discovered that the deepest source of our dissatisfaction and striving for perfection lies far beyond the biographical and perinatal domain. The insatiable craving that drives human life is ultimately transpersonal in nature. In Dante Alighieri’s words, "The desire for perfection is that desire which always makes every pleasure appear incomplete, for there is no joy or pleasure so great in this life that it can quench the thirst in our soul." In the most general sense, the deepest transpersonal roots of insatiable greed can best be understood in terms of Ken Wilber’s (1980) concept of the Atman project. According to this understanding, our true nature is divine—God, Buddha, Brahma, Tao—and although the process of creation separates and alienates us from our source, the awareness of this fact is never completely lost. The deepest motivating force in the psyche on all the levels of consciousness evolution is to return to the experience of our divinity. However, the constraining conditions of the consecutive stages of development prevent a full experience of full liberation in and as God.

Real transcendence requires death of the separate self, dying to the exclusive subject. Because of the fear of annihilation and because of grasping onto the ego, the individual has to settle for Atman substitutes or surrogates, specific for a particular stage. For an infant, this will be satisfaction of age-specific physiological needs; for the adult, besides food and sex, also money, fame, power, appearance, knowledge, and so forth. Because of our deep sense that our true identity is the totality of cosmic creation and the creative principle itself, substitutes of any degree and scope—the Atman projects—will always remain unsatisfactory. Only the experience of one’s divinity in a no ordinary state of consciousness can ever fulfill our deepest needs. Thus the ultimate solution for the insatiable greed is in the inner world, not in secular pursuits of any kind and scope. This can be illustrated by the following quote from Traherne describing a mystical experience:

The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it. I knew no churlish proprieties, nor bounds, nor were divisions; but all proprieties and divisions mine; all treasures and the possessors of them. So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world, which I now unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the kingdom of God.

Experiential Approaches Facilitating Deep Personal
Transformation and Consciousness Evolution

The discovery that the roots of human violence and insatiable greed reach far deeper than academic psychiatry ever suspected and that their reservoirs are truly enormous could in itself be very discouraging. However, it is more than balanced by the discovery of new therapeutic mechanisms and transformative potentials associated with the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the psyche.

Over the years I have seen profound emotional and psychosomatic healing, as well as radical personality transformation, in many people who were involved in serious and systematic inner quest. Some of them were mediators and had a regular spiritual practice; others had psychedelic experiences or spontaneous episodes of psychospiritual crises; and many participated in various forms of experiential psychotherapy and self-exploration. As they were consciously facing and integrating sequences of perinatal and transpersonal experiences, their personality typically underwent radical changes.

As the content of the perinatal level of the unconscious is brought into consciousness, the level of aggression typically decreases; and people become more peaceful, more comfortable with themselves, and more tolerant of others. The experience of psychospiritual rebirth and connection with the memories of positive postnatal or prenatal memories reduces irrational drives and ambitions and enhances the ability to enjoy the present circumstances of life (everyday activities, Nature, music, love-making). Experiences of cosmic unity and one’s own divinity further reduce irrational drives, bring the sense of wonder and the ability to love, and open deep sources of creativity. The most consistent consequence of deep experiential self-exploration is the emergence of universal spirituality of a mystical nature that is based on personal experience.

No ordinary states of consciousness offer even more exciting possibilities of positive evolutionary changes in the form of experiential identification with other people, entire human groups, animals, plants, and even inorganic materials and processes in Nature. One can gain experiential access to events occurring in other countries, cultures, and historical periods, and even to the mythological realms and archetypal beings of the Jungian collective unconscious. The fact that these experiences can contain accurate information about various realms of existence that goes far beyond what the individual has obtained in his or her lifetime through the conventional channels proves that they are authentic.

This suggests that, on a deeper level, each individual psyche is intimately connected with the rest of the Cosmos and, in a certain sense, is actually commensurate with it. In this way, modern consciousness research has confirmed the basic thesis of the ancient Indian Upanishads that each of us, in the last analysis, is identical with the totality of existence and with the creative principle of the Universe. An individual is not just a body-ego but is also the supreme cosmic principle (Atman-Brahman).

The above observations from transpersonal psychology have far-reaching theoretical and practical implications for the area of our discussion. People who gain experiential access to the perinatal area of their unconscious have the unique opportunity to bring into consciousness profound destructive and self-destructive energies and disturbing emotions that are stored in this domain of the human psyche, come to terms with them, and integrate them. They also discover within themselves deep spirituality of a universal and all-encompassing nature. As a result of such spirituality, they feel an increase of inner peace, self-acceptance, tolerance toward others, and acceptance of differences.

These changes deepen and extend even further when the process of experiential self-exploration reaches the transpersonal level. What began as psychological probing of the unconscious psyche now automatically becomes a philosophical quest for the meaning of life and a journey of spiritual discovery. People who connect to the transpersonal domain of their psyche tend to develop a new appreciation for existence and reverence for all life. One of the most striking consequences of various forms of transpersonal experiences is spontaneous emergence and development of deep humanitarian and ecological concerns. It is based on an almost cellular awareness that the boundaries in the Universe are arbitrary and that each of us is identical with the entire web of Being. It is suddenly clear that we cannot do anything to Nature without simultaneously doing it to ourselves. Differences among people now appear to be interesting and enriching rather than threatening, whether they are related to sex, race, color, language, political conviction, or religious belief. It is obvious that a transformation of this kind would increase our chances for survival if it could occur on a sufficiently large scale.

Transpersonal Psychology, Consciousness Research,
and the Global Crisis

Some of the insights of people experiencing no ordinary states of consciousness are directly related to the current global crisis and its relationship with consciousness evolution. They show that we have exteriorized in the modern world many of the essential themes of the perinatal process that a person involved in deep personal transformation has to face and come to terms with internally. The same elements that we would encounter in the process of psychological death and rebirth in our visionary experiences make today our evening news. This is particularly true in regard to the phenomena that characterize what I call BPM III.

We certainly see the enormous unleashing of the aggressive impulse in the many wars and revolutionary upheavals in the world, in the rising criminality, terrorism, and racial riots. Sexual experiences and behaviors are taking unprecedented forms, as manifested in sexual freedom of youngsters, promiscuity, open marriages, overtly sexual books, plays, and movies, gay liberation, sadomasochistic experimentation, and many others. The demonic element is also becoming increasingly manifest in the modern world. A renaissance of satanic cults and witchcraft, the popularity of books and horror movies with occult themes, and crimes with satanic motivations attest to that fact. The scatological dimension is evident in the progressive industrial pollution, accumulation of waste products on a global scale, and rapidly deteriorating hygienic conditions in large cities.

Many of the people with whom we have worked saw humanity at a critical crossroads, facing either collective annihilation or an evolutionary jump in consciousness of unprecedented proportions. Terence McKenna (1992) put it very succinctly: "The history of the silly monkey is over, one way or another." It seems that we all are collectively involved in a process that parallels the psychological death and rebirth that so many people have experienced individually in no ordinary states of consciousness. If we continue to act out the problematic destructive and self-destructive tendencies originating in the depths of the unconscious, we will undoubtedly destroy ourselves and the life on this planet. However, if we succeed in internalizing this process on a large enough scale, it might result in an evolutionary progress that can take us as far beyond our present condition as we now are from primates. As utopian as the possibility of such a development might seem, it might be our only real chance.

Let us now look into the future and explore the various avenues that would have to be pursued should the concepts that have emerged from the transpersonal field and the new paradigm in science be put into action in the world. Although the past accomplishments are very impressive, the new ideas still form a disjointed mosaic, rather than a complete and comprehensive worldview. Much work has to be done in terms of accumulating more data, formulating new theories, and achieving a creative synthesis. In addition, the existing information has to reach much larger audiences before a significant impact on the world situation can be expected.

But even a radical intellectual shift to a new paradigm on a large scale would not be sufficient to alleviate the global crisis and reverse the destructive course we are on. The forces driving this vicious cycle, rooted as deep as they are in the unconscious, would hardly be neutralized by changes of cognitive structures and a new worldview. Rather, what is required is a deep emotional and spiritual transformation of humanity. Using the existing evidence, it is possible to suggest certain strategies that might facilitate and support such a process.

Efforts to change humanity would have to start with psychological prevention at an early age. The data from pre- and perinatal psychology indicate that much could be achieved by changing the conditions of pregnancy, delivery, and postnatal care—improving the emotional preparation of the mother during pregnancy, practicing natural childbirth, and emphasizing in the postpartum period emotionally nourishing contact between the mother and the child.

Much has been written about the importance of childrearing, as well as the disastrous emotional consequences of traumatic conditions in infancy and childhood. Certainly this is an area where continued education and guidance is necessary. However, to be able to apply the theoretically known principles, the parents have to reach sufficient emotional stability and maturity themselves. It is well known that emotional problems are passed like a curse from generation to generation. We are facing here a very complex problem of the chicken and the egg.

Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies have developed effective experiential methods of self-exploration, healing, and personality transformation. Some of these come from the therapeutic tradition; others represent modern adaptations of ancient spiritual practices. There exist approaches with a very favorable ratio between professional helpers and clients and others that can be practiced in the context of self-help groups. Systematic work with them can lead to a spiritual opening, which is a move in a direction that is sorely needed on a collective scale should our species survive.

Finally, it is essential to spread the information about these possibilities and get enough people personally interested in pursuing them.

We seem to be involved in a dramatic race for time that has no precedent in the entire history of humanity. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of life on this planet. If we continue the old strategies, which in their consequences are clearly extremely destructive and self-destructive, it is unlikely that the human species will survive. However, if a sufficient number of people undergoes a process of deep inner transformation, we might reach a level of consciousness evolution that will bring us to the point of deserving the name given to our species, Homo sapiens—i.e., wise humans.

HOMOSEXUALITY AND INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (Arijit Nandi BLOGGING....) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:57:00 +0000

Introduction :

Homosexuality is generally considered a taboo subject by both Indian civil society and the government Public discussion of homosexuality in India has been inhibited by the fact that sexuality in any form is rarely discussed openly. In recent years, however, attitudes towards homosexuality have shifted slightly. In particular, there have been more depictions and discussions of homosexuality in the Indian news media and by Bollywood. On 2 July 2009, a Delhi High Court court ruling decriminalized homosexual intercourse between consenting adults was and adjudicated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to be conflicting with the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India.

Religion has played a significant role in shaping Indian customs and traditions. While homosexuality has not been explicitly mentioned in the religious texts central to Hinduism, the largest religion in India, some interpretations have been viewed as condemning homosexuality. Scholars differ in their views of the position of homosexuality within India's main religious traditions. There have been arguments that homosexuality was both prevalent and accepted in ancient Hindu society.

Several organizations like the Naz Foundation (India), National AIDS Control Organization, Law Commission of India, Union Health Ministry, National Human Rights Commission and The Planning Commission of India have either implicitly, or expressly come out in support of decriminalizing Homosexuality in India, and pushed for tolerance and social equity for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. India is among countries with a social element of a third gender.

History and relegion :

The Manusmriti, which lists the oldest codes of conduct that were proposed to be followed by a Hindu, does include mention of homosexual practices, but only as something to be regulated. Though homosexuality was considered a part of sexual practices, it was not always well accepted. There were punishments prescribed for homosexual behaviour. For instance, the verse referring to sexual relations between an older woman and a virgin (woman) reads"...a woman who pollutes a damsel (virgin) shall instantly have (her head) shaved or two fingers cut off, and be made to ride (through the town) on a donkey", suggesting a severe punishment. However, the verse referring to sexual relations between two virgins suggests a relatively milder punishment – "...a damsel who pollutes (another) damsel must be fined two hundred (panas), pay the double of her (nuptial) fee, and receive ten (lashes with a) rod". These provisions, quoted out of context, seem homophobic, but in fact they are concerned not with the gender of the partners but with the loss of virginity that rendered a young woman unworthy of marriage. For instance, the punishment for a forced sex act between a man and a woman states "...if any man through insolence forcibly contaminates a maiden, two of his fingers shall be instantly cut off, and he shall pay a fine of six hundred (panas)", which seems more severe in comparison to the punishment prescribed for the same act between two virgins. There is also no penalty prescribed for two non-virgins who have sex together.

The punishment for male offenders was less severe: "...an unnatural offence with a man, are declared to cause the loss of caste (Gatibhramsa)". "...man who commits an unnatural offence with a male...shall bathe, dressed in his clothes". The punishment seems extremely mild, as this is supposedly how most villagers traditionally took their baths.

The skewed treatment may have been due to gender bias, considering that the Manusmriti is the same scripture that has stated that the status of woman in the society is the same (or even lower than) that of a man’s land, his cattle and other possessions.

The unabridged modern translation of the classic Indian text Kama Sutra. deals without ambiguity or hypocrisy with all aspects of sexual life—including marriage, adultery, prostitution, group sex, sadomasochism, male and female homosexuality, and transvestism. The text paints a fascinating portrait of an India whose openness to sexuality gave rise to a highly developed expression of the erotic.

In "Same-Sex Love in India : Readings from Literature and History", authors Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai analyse the history of homosexual behaviour in India, drawing from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and modern fictional traditions. The preface to the book states that it 'traces the history of ideas in Indian writing traditions about love between women and love between men who are not biologically related.' The book has a collection of stories from ancient texts like Mahabharata, Panchatantra, Kamasutra, Shiva Purana, Krittivasa Ramayana, The Skanda Purana, Amir Khusro, and Baburnama; along with contemporary Indian literature that support the idea.

LGBT culture in India :

There is a vibrant gay nightlife in cities such as Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore, including discos and nightclubs. The reports of harassment of homosexual individuals and gatherings by the police has seen a gradual decline since 2004. The majority of Indians, according to various polls and surveys, still look down upon the LGBT community. However, many social and human rights activists have been working to promote an increased acceptance of homosexuality. Time Out (Delhi) has a dedicated column covering gay events in Delhi every week. Now with the emergence of several LGBT support groups across the nation, the much hidden queer community has increased access to health services and social events^.

In 2005, Prince Manavendra Singh Gohil, who hails from a conservative principality in the Gujarat state, publicly came out as gay. He was quickly anointed by the Indian and the world media as the first openly gay royal. He was disinherited as an immediate reaction by the royal family, though they eventually reconciled. He has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, and is currently appearing on BBC3's Undercover Princes.

In 2008, Zoltan Parag, a competitor at the Mr. Gay International contest said that he was "scared" to return to India fearing discrimination. He said, "Indian media has exposed me so much that now when I call my friends back home, their parents do not let them talk to me".

On 29 June 2008, four Indian cities (Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata and Puducherry) celebrated gay pride parades. These were the first pride parades in Delhi, Bangalore and Puducherry. About 2000 people turned out in these nationwide parades. Mumbai held its pride march on 16 August 2008, with Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley also coming out to join in the festivities.

On 16 April 2009, India's first gay magazine Bombay Dost, was re-launched by Bollywood actress and former Miss India Celina Jaitley in Mumbai.

On 27 June 2009, Bhubaneswar, the capital city of the Orissa state, saw its first gay pride parade. The same day, Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily announced that the Union Home Minister has convened a meeting with Union Law Minister, Union Health Minister and Home Ministers of all states to evolve a consensus on decriminalising homosexuality in India. On 28 June 2009, Delhi and Bangalore held their second gay pride parades, and Chennai - generally considered to be a very conservative city - held its first.

The Internet has created a prolific gay cyber culture for the South Asian community. Gay dating websites provide an alternative way for meeting people; online communities also offer a safe and convenient environment for meeting gays all around India. The blogsphere has also not been immune to the modern emergence of a queer desi identity. Web logs highlight stories and issues specific to this marginalised community.

Though Bollywood (as the Indian Hindi film industry is loosely called) has gay and trans characters, they have been primarily ridiculed or abused. There are few positive portrayals of late like Onir's My Brother Nikhil, Reema Kagti's Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd., Parvati Balagopalan's Rules: Pyaar Ka Superhit Formula, etc. but they have been sporadic and not mainstream. There have also been a few independent films that deal with homosexuality like Sridhar Rangayan's Gulabi Aaina - The Pink Mirror, Yours Emotionally, 68 Pages and Ashish Sawhney's Happy Hookers. The first Indian film to deal openly with homosexual relations was Fire by Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta. With its release in India 1998 it stirred up a heated controversy throughout the country.

Advocacy for legalising homosexuality :

The Naz Foundation (India), a New Delhi based NGO is at the forefront of the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality. The organisation aims to sensitise the community to the prevalence of HIV, as well as highlight issues related to sexuality and sexual health. The organisation has strong linkages with human rights groups and agencies such as Lawyers Collective, Human Right Law Network, Amnesty International, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Naz India has collaborated with these agencies to address cases of sexual rights abuse. Naz India’s efforts in sensitising the government to different issues related to the epidemic include the amendment of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code commonly known as the ‘Anti-sodomy Law’. This act criminalises same sex sexual behaviour irrespective of the age and consent of the people involved, posing one of the most significant challenges in effective HIV/AIDS interventions with sexual minorities. In December 2002 Naz India filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to challenge IPC section 377 in the Delhi High Court.

In September 2006, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and acclaimed writer Vikram Seth came together with scores of other prominent Indians in public life to publicly demand this change in the legal regime. The open letter demands that 'In the name of humanity and of our Constitution, this cruel and discriminatory law should be struck down.'

On 30 June 2008, Indian labour minister Oscar Fernandes backed calls for decriminalisation of consensual gay sex, and the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for greater tolerance towards homosexuals.

On 4 July 2008, gay activists fighting for decriminalisation of consensual homosexuality at the Delhi High Court got a shot in the arm when the court opined that there was nothing unusual in holding a gay rally, something which is common outside India.

On 23 July 2008, Bombay High Court Judge Bilal Nazki said that India's unnatural sex law should be reviewed.

Former Indian health minister Anbumani Ramadoss advocated legalising homosexuality in India. On 9 August 2008, he campaigned for changing "Section 377" of the Indian penal code, which makes homosexuality an unnatural act and thus illegal. At the International AIDS Conference in Mexico city, he said, "Section 377 of IPC, which criminalises men who have sex with men, must go." His ministerial portfolio had put him at odds with the Indian Home ministry in seeking to scrap Section 377. In late 2008, he changed his argument saying he does not want the "scrapping" of Section 377 but a mere "modification" of the law treating homosexuality as a criminal offence punishable up to life imprisonment. He said he wants Prime Minster Manmohan Singh to resolve the matter, while he wanted to avoid discord with the home ministry, who said the altered law would then result in an increase in criminal incidences of sodomy or offences involving sexual abuse of children, particularly boys. In doing so he alleged that the law even penalises health workers for "abetting," while making this a cognisable and non-bailable offence. "The entire objective of getting homosexuality decriminalised is primarily to reach out to an estimated 4.5 million MSMs across the country as about 86 per cent HIV/AIDS-affected persons in India are ‘Men Having Sex with Men’ (MSM). My concern is purely on health grounds because Section 377 in its present form interferes with health ministry’s efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS epidemic, as even the doctors treating gay patients could be punished. Hence unless we take appropriate steps it would be difficult to contain the spread of the virus." He added the last comment saying the disease through blood transfusion and parentage declined while the other methods were hindering tackling the epidemic.

International pressure :

The United Nations urged India to decriminalise homosexuality by saying it would help the fight against HIV/AIDS by allowing intervention programmes, much like the successful ones in China and Brazil. Jeffrey O'Malley, director of the United Nations Development Programme on HIV/AIDS, said countries protecting homosexuals from discrimination had better records of protecting them from getting infected by the diseases. [But] unfortunately in India, the rates of new infections among men who have sex with men continue to go up. Until we acknowledge these behaviours and work with people involved with these behaviours, we are not going to halt and reverse the HIV epidemic. Countries which protect men who have sex with men... have double the rate of coverage of HIV prevention services—as much as 60 percent." In talking to the The Hindu, he added that "The United Progressive Alliance government here is in a difficult position as far as amending Section 377 of the Constitution is concerned because of the coming elections as any changes could be misrepresented. We need to change the laws, sensitise the police and judiciary....But when discriminatory laws have been removed, marginalised people have got access to treatment and prevention facilities like condoms." Warning of the urgency he said, "India has achieved success in checking the spread of this dreaded disease through commercial sex workers but transmission through gay sex, and injectable-drug users is still an area of concern. Injectable-drug use can also be controlled through targeted interventions but is difficult to control or change people’s sexual habits."

Legal status :

See also: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code

Indian law does not recognise same-sex marriages, nor does it provide for civil unions. Until July 2009, homosexual intercourse was a criminal offence under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, which made it an offence for a person to voluntarily have "carnal intercourse against the order of nature." Whilst convictions under this section were extremely rare, with no convictions at all for homosexual intercourse in the twenty years to 2009, Human Rights Watch have said that the law has been used to harass HIV/AIDS prevention activists, as well as sex workers, men who have sex with men, and other groups at risk of the disease. The group documents arrests in Lucknow of 4 men in 2006 and another 4 in 2001. The People's Union for Civil Liberties has published two reports of the rights violations faced by sexual minorities and, in particular, transsexuals (hijras and kothis) in India.

In recent years, the continued existence of this section had become controversial. The Law Commission of India had historically favoured that the retention of this section, but in its 172nd report, delivered in 2000 it recommended its repeal, as did the then Health minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, in 2008. On 2 July 2009, in the case of Naz Foundation v National Capital Territory of Delhi, the High Court of Delhi struck down much of S. 377 of the IPC as being unconstitutional. The Court held that to the extent S. 377 criminalised consensual non-vaginal sexual acts between adults, it violated an individual's fundamental rights to equality before the law, freedom from discrimination and to life and personal liberty under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution of India. The High Court did not strike down S. 377 completely - it held the section was valid to the extent it related to non-consensual non-vaginal intercourse or to intercourse with minors - and it expressed the hope that Parliament would soon legislatively address the issue.

Decisions of a High Court on the constitutionality of a law apply throughout India, and not just to the territory of the state over which the High Court in question has jurisdiction.^[44] As a result, the decision of the Delhi High Court has the effect of striking down S. 377 throughout the territory of India, with the exception of the State of Jammu and Kashmir which has its own penal law. However, the decision does not bind courts outside Delhi, although it has persuasive value, which means that the High Court of any other state could in theory dissent from the decision of the High Court of Delhi and hold the section to be valid.

Legal aspect :

In 2008 Additional Solicitor General PP Malhotra said:

Homosexuality is a social vice and the state has the power to contain it. [Decriminalising homosexuality] may create [a] breach of peace. If it is allowed then [the] evil of AIDS and HIV would further spread and harm the people. It would lead to a big health hazard and degrade moral values of society." A view similarly shared by the Home Ministry. He argued before the bench of the Delhi High Court that it was crucial to hold such "unnatural" behaviour as a criminal offence and that its deletion would lead to moral degradation. Citing an Orissa court judgement, he also added that such behaviour resulted from a perverse mind that needed to be controlled.

Recognition of same-sex couples :

There is no legal recognition of same-sex couples under Indian law. During a recent visit to India by the Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was asked by a journalist what he thought of the new law allowing gay marriage in Canada. His reply was that "there would not be much appreciation for a law like that in India," and he went on to talk about how they were culturally very different societies.

The supreme Sikh religious body, the Akal Takht, has issued an edict condemning gay marriage and has told Sikhs living in Canada not to support or allow gay marriages in gurudwaras. In 2005, two unnamed women in Hyderabad asked the Darul Qaza, an Islamic court, for a fatwa allowing them to marry, but permission was denied with a rebuke from the chief qazi. None of the principal Christian denominations in India allow same-sex marriage.

However, since 1987, when the national press carried the story of two policewomen who married each other by Hindu rites in central India, the press has reported many same-sex marriages, all over the country, mostly between lower middle class young women in small towns and rural areas, who have no contact with any gay movement. Family reactions range from support to disapproval to violent persecution. While police generally harass such couples, Indian courts have uniformly upheld their right, as adults, to live with whomever they wish. In recent years, some of these couples have appeared on television as well. There have also been numerous joint suicides by same-sex couples, mostly female (male-female couples also resort to suicide or to elopement and religious marriage when their families oppose their unions). In "Same-Sex Love in India : Readings from Literature and History", author Ruth Vanita analyses dozens of such marriages and suicides that have taken place over the last three decades, and explores their legal, religious, and historical aspects. She argues that many of the marriages can arguably be considered legally valid, as under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, any marriage between two Hindus performed according to the customs prevalent in the community of one of the two partners is legally valid. No license is required to marry, and most heterosexual Hindu marriages in India today are performed by religious rites alone, without a marriage license and are never registered with the state. State recognition is not sought by most couples because it confers few benefits. Most couples seek the validation of family and community, and several female couples in rural areas and small towns have received this validation.

There have also been a couple of high profile celebrity same-sex marriages, such as the civil union of designer Wendell Rodricks with his French partner, conducted under French law in Goa, India. LGBT rights organisations have demanded the right to same-sex marriage, and, inspired both by news from the West, have discussed the issue.

Sources : Newspapers and http://www.wikipedia.org

Extras :

1.The Times Of India (a) (b) (c)

2.The NAZ Foundation

3.The Guardian

CURRENT DOMESTIC POLITICAL TRENDS IN INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (Arijit Nandi BLOGGING....) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:34:00 +0000

Introduction

By common reckoning, India has made it. The triumphalism of ‘India Inc.’, effectively promoted abroad, and a steady growth rate, triggered by successive waves of liberalisation since the early 1990s and nearing the double digit, have won over earlier sceptics, who always held forth that India will never make it out of the shadow of her East Asian neighbour(s) economically. In addition, political leaders, businessmen and investors alike are now never tiring in lauding the country’s democratic set-up as being an ‘advantage India’ over its old economic Asian rival China.
In political terms as well, India has witnessed an enormous ego-booster internationally, as a nuclear power on the brink of getting integrated into the international nuclear regime despite being non-party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), as a ‘player to deal with’ and increasingly also as a spokesperson in all kinds of international regimes, from the WTO to the UN.

The current hype about India as the ‘Asian (great) power to be’ is also reflected in its popular culture, its arts and cultural traditions, becoming ever more prominent all over the world. Part of this recent ‘success story’ is justified. India, long entrenched in the confines of its rather protectionist mixed-economy approach and the rigid boundaries of the ‘licence-permit-raj’, coupled with an inward-looking policy perspective and a general thrust of its foreign policy maintaining that its better not to meddle in international issues and concerns and not to give in to often even bilateral alignments, is on its way to conquer the global market and has eventually come out of its ‘splendid isolation’.

It has developed a solid economic base in the service sector and since long commands over a buoying IT-industry. It multiplies trade relations and attracts investors from all over the world with its seemingly unlimited market opportunities. It strives for a new, bigger role in a (multi-polar) world order, takes position – sometimes also takes over responsibility - in international affairs and seeks greater influence in the region - all this while harping constantly on the (sanctifying) fact that it is the world’s largest democracy and one of the most resilient in the post-colonial world, which it is, formally at least, and that therefore, it deserves a privileged spot in international relations and the global market.

Along goes a sense of growing national pride and ‘the world belongs to us’ attitude – always there, but never as pronounced as these days. One can sense it in such minor incidents as the rejection of bilateral financial assistance after the Tsunami had devastated bigger parts of the country’s southern shores as well as in the general confinement of bilateral development cooperation to a circle of (strategically) selected countries, in the way the nouveau riches and middle class in the metros display their newly acquired wealth, or in the country’s general reluctance to accept any kind of criticism of or interference in its internal affairs. In that sense, India is ‘shining’ - to use the former governing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral campaign slogan - for some at least and more so in the imagination of the West.

This view of course does not reflect the full picture. It is not only the obvious insight that there are ‘two (quite disparate) Indias’, one rich, one poor, one urban, one rural, one secular, one (religiously) deeply divided etc., or the rising concerns regarding the sustainability of economic growth and prosperity in the face of existing social discrepancies or uneven growth, ecological challenges, a looming energy crisis, lacking infrastructure and social security nets that should inform any depiction of this emerging power of the South.

Above all, the overoptimistic portrait of India lacks a thorough look into the patterns of the country’s rather distinct domestic politics - lesser known to the policy-makers and the general public in the West or, for that matter, Europe.

While it is hard to detect trends, since by nature they are ephemeral - either becoming reality or being based on misperception - the following attempts to track some of the current undercurrents of the country’s domestic politics, which I consider to be of relevance for any proper assessment of where India will stand 15 years from now. These are underlying developments, seen from a personal perspective, and do not represent an in-depth and analytical account of recent events, the institutional set-up or the country’s socio-cultural and socio-political givens. Since a lot of information on specifics of India’s body politic, (civil) society, party system, the economy etc. is already given in detail in the other contributions to this volume, the following deals with what I think are important and – in part – neglected patterns and aspects of India’s political ‘inner-life’ and discourse that will determine the future course of an emerging India, which is still on the brink of an elusive dawn. In addition, the rather general political trends mentioned below are far from being exhaustive. Finally, they should also not be conceived of as only depicting what is ‘wrong’ with the Western perception of a booming, shining, rising India, thus somehow ‘spoiling’ the current hype about the next ‘Asian superpower’, which is necessary to deepen the interest and engagement with the subcontinent. If only the latter would be informed by what is really going on in the country and not only by the latest Sensex all-time-high, the economic growth rates, the self-confident appearances at Western security conferences or the glitzy presentations in Davos or Hanover.

In political terms as well, India has witnessed an enormous ego-booster internationally, as a nuclear power on the brink of getting integrated into the international nuclear regime despite being non-party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), as a ‘player to deal with’ and increasingly also as a spokesperson in all kinds of international regimes, from the WTO to the UN.

The current hype about India as the ‘Asian (great) power to be’ is also reflected in its popular culture, its arts and cultural traditions, becoming ever more prominent all over the world. Part of this recent ‘success story’ is justified. India, long entrenched in the confines of its rather protectionist mixed-economy approach and the rigid boundaries of the ‘licence-permit-raj’, coupled with an inward-looking policy perspective and a general thrust of its foreign policy maintaining that its better not to meddle in international issues and concerns and not to give in to often even bilateral alignments, is on its way to conquer the global market and has eventually come out of its ‘splendid isolation’.

It has developed a solid economic base in the service sector and since long commands over a buoying IT-industry. It multiplies trade relations and attracts investors from all over the world with its seemingly unlimited market opportunities. It strives for a new, bigger role in a (multi-polar) world order, takes position – sometimes also takes over responsibility - in international affairs and seeks greater influence in the region - all this while harping constantly on the (sanctifying) fact that it is the world’s largest democracy and one of the most resilient in the post-colonial world, which it is, formally at least, and that therefore, it deserves a privileged spot in international relations and the global market.

Along goes a sense of growing national pride and ‘the world belongs to us’ attitude – always there, but never as pronounced as these days. One can sense it in such minor incidents as the rejection of bilateral financial assistance after the Tsunami had devastated bigger parts of the country’s southern shores as well as in the general confinement of bilateral development cooperation to a circle of (strategically) selected countries, in the way the nouveau riches and middle class in the metros display their newly acquired wealth, or in the country’s general reluctance to accept any kind of criticism of or interference in its internal affairs. In that sense, India is ‘shining’ - to use the former governing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral campaign slogan - for some at least and more so in the imagination of the West.

This view of course does not reflect the full picture. It is not only the obvious insight that there are ‘two (quite disparate) Indias’, one rich, one poor, one urban, one rural, one secular, one (religiously) deeply divided etc., or the rising concerns regarding the sustainability of economic growth and prosperity in the face of existing social discrepancies or uneven growth, ecological challenges, a looming energy crisis, lacking infrastructure and social security nets that should inform any depiction of this emerging power of the South.

Above all, the overoptimistic portrait of India lacks a thorough look into the patterns of the country’s rather distinct domestic politics - lesser known to the policy-makers and the general public in the West or, for that matter, Europe.

While it is hard to detect trends, since by nature they are ephemeral - either becoming reality or being based on misperception - the following attempts to track some of the current undercurrents of the country’s domestic politics, which I consider to be of relevance for any proper assessment of where India will stand 15 years from now. These are underlying developments, seen from a personal perspective, and do not represent an in-depth and analytical account of recent events, the institutional set-up or the country’s socio-cultural and socio-political givens. Since a lot of information on specifics of India’s body politic, (civil) society, party system, the economy etc. is already given in detail in the other contributions to this volume, the following deals with what I think are important and – in part – neglected patterns and aspects of India’s political ‘inner-life’ and discourse that will determine the future course of an emerging India, which is still on the brink of an elusive dawn. In addition, the rather general political trends mentioned below are far from being exhaustive. Finally, they should also not be conceived of as only depicting what is ‘wrong’ with the Western perception of a booming, shining, rising India, thus somehow ‘spoiling’ the current hype about the next ‘Asian superpower’, which is necessary to deepen the interest and engagement with the subcontinent. If only the latter would be informed by what is really going on in the country and not only by the latest Sensex all-time-high, the economic growth rates, the self-confident appearances at Western security conferences or the glitzy presentations in Davos or Hanover.

Domestic (Party) Politics - flaws of democratic representation in the face of democratic resilience

Ever since the Nehruvian times and the subsequent demise of the Congress-governed system of one-party-dominance there was constant talk among political observers of Indian democracy about the ‘de-institutionalisation’ of the country’s political institutions, especially the party system. Even though competitive and rather ‘free and fair’ throughout India’s post-colonial democratic career - except for the brief authoritarian interlude of the Emergency – the state and process of democratic representation was seen as increasingly getting distorted through personalism, favouritism, the lack of political parties able to function as integrative institutions between state and society and a declining capacity to promote development and to accommodate diverse interests simultaneously, resulting in a general decline in governability.

This view became rather unpopular in recent years against the background of India’s formidable economic performance and new image as a rising power of the South and given the fact that the country’s democratic resilience, despite mass poverty, extreme socio-cultural heterogeneity and complexity of developmental problems, persistently defied scholarly assumptions about the sustainability of democracy in such a context.

And indeed, the country’s democratic resilience in itself is a remarkable feature. But as Amartya Sen has put it succinctly in his recent and much-appraised ‘The Argumentative Indian’, ‘since democracy is not only a blessing in itself, but can also be the most important means to pursue public ends, it is not enough to make sure that Indian democracy survives. While we must give credit where it is due, Indian democracy has to be judged also by the strength and reach of public reasoning and its actual accomplishments’. (1) His assessment of how ‘democratic’ India fared with regard to overall improvement in the areas of social equity and economic progress, attests a measurable degree of underperformance, which he traces back to a lack of democratic participation or the use of ‘political voice’.

At the same time, a couple of recent trends in democratic representation should at least allow raising some doubt as to whether the abovementioned process of ‚deinstitutionalisation’ does not in fact continue.

‘You don’t get what you vote for’ - lack of party-political professionalism and ideological confusion

Firstly, and contrary to all parties’ display of ‘people-oriented’ electoral campaigning rhetoric, there is a growing tendency of political parties being less and less able to take the lead in actually formulating and debating reform-oriented policies, which determine and reflect people’s aspirations and the societal mood. The same goes for their capacity to initiate as well as implement reforms instead of merely preserving the status quo for the sake of not endangering the current economic boom and, consequently, basically attending to the demands and anxieties of a vociferous middle class with its newly acquired power.

In this regard, the coming to power of the Congress-led and Communist-backed United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2004, in itself ample proof of a people’s mandate for reform and of a denial of the belief in the old ‘trickle-down’ story’ (significant redistribution and employment is relegated to second- or, more realistically, third-round effects), promised a lot in terms of breaking the cycle of providing full-bodied assurances of people-centered policies and reforms at election times and, once in power, falling back into a ‘paralysed state’ of fighting for political survival and rarely/barely questioning or touching the status quo. So far, the bold promises of the UPA have either been watered down or got lost in some sort of a ‘committee culture’, where a committee is established for every initiative and question of societal importance, but no actual output becomes visible. And where there are new initiatives, as in the case of the current controversy over the planned 27% reservation/quota for Other Backward Castes (OBC) in institutions of higher education, the debate gets hijacked by civil society groups, the highly educated beneficiaries of the current economic boom and the ever more assertive (electronic) media. The parties largely remained silent on the issue. It has to be seen, as to whether the core social policy initiative of the UPA, the National Rural Employment Scheme, which guarantees employment at the minimum wage for 100 days for one member of each rural household, will eventually be effectively implemented? Or, whether it will also fall prey to the usual ‘policy and implementation paralysis’ and reduced role as ‘opinion-makers’, which Indian political parties currently display. This is not to take position on the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of the heated debate on these policy initiatives or the general discussion on state versus market, that is fought over so prominently these days, but simply to state that political parties have lost momentum in determining the political discourse.

Partly, this ‘flaw’ of democratic representation in the general sense that ‘you don’t get what you vote for’, is due to the fact that whereas the formula for winning elections – as was again shown in the five States’ Assembly election in April and May 2006 – is making bold welfare- and ‘people’-oriented promises, the formula for staying in power is to bow down to the most powerful and articulate vested interests. Secondly, it is due to the meanwhile all-pervasive coalition logic and arithmetic of Indian party politics, and, finally, to the lack of (programmatic) professionalism and experienced and capable cadres and to the leader-centric attitudes among the political parties.

As a result, utter policy contradictions and ideological confusion characterise not only the party system as a whole, but also prevail within almost all of the major political parties. Thus, the Congress is divided between the largely pro-status quo (continuation of the prevailing, basically neo-liberal macro-economic management and adherence to fiscal austerity policies) triumvirate of Harvard- or Oxford-trained economists, namely Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister Chindambaran and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on the one hand and a ‘pro-people’, or, for that matter, more populist group headed by party president Sonia Gandhi and her entourage of old Congress stalwarts like the pro-Mandal/reservation crusader and current Minister for Human Resources and Development Arjun Singh on the other hand. The latter group is keeping in mind potential electoral gains and more mundane but necessary ‘pork and barrel politics’.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI (M), is torn between the energetic, liberal, pro-capital, FDI-attracting and industry-friendly Chief Minister of West Bengal, Bhuddadeb Bhattacharjee, who, in the first half of 2006, led the party to its seventh electoral victory in a row, a rare occurrence in a country where normally the ‘antiincumbency’ factor dictates electoral outcomes, and the ideologically more orthodox, anti-liberalisation and -privatisation national leadership around General Secretary Prakash Karat, elected last year. Meanwhile, the BJP as the third political force of national prominence and erstwhile governing party seems to be at free fall since it lost power in 2004. It is not knowing how to position itself between the poles of ardent Hindu nationalism as promoted by its organisational backbone, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and a more moderate, inclusionary position, is unable to come up with a new and younger leadership capable of discarding the shadow of former party president Advani and former prime minister Vajpayee and is entangled in various intra-party feuds, bickering and infighting.

In sum, there seems to be a complete lack of ideological or programmatic coherence, cadre-based professionalism and strategic vision on behalf of the country’s main political parties. Or, as Harish Khare recently commented, ‘the point is that the political parties are losing their capacity and the skills to join the battle of ideas, values and sentiments in the polity (…) Unless the political leaders find the willingness and the imagination to reclaim their traditional role as moulders of collective ideals and aspirations, the polity will gradually be taken over by anti-democratic voices and forces’. (2)

Popular accountability and transparency - politics as ‘dirty business’

The second trend is rather a continuing tendency of Indian party politics and will therefore only be briefly touched upon here. This trend or, for that matter, aspect of Indian party politics has to do with the still moribund or again deteriorating state of popular accountability and transparency of democratic representation and elected representatives.

It is linked to what had once been termed the ‘criminalisation’ of Indian politics and basically involves the widespread and resilient mindset among politicians, especially those representing regional parties, whose inclusion into national politics is a requirement of coalition politics, that getting elected means having access to state resources, very often for personal benefit.

Of course, new assets of Indian democracy, which are evolving in the course of a gradual, civil-society backed expansion of democracy’s participatory ethos, such as the ‘Right to Information Act’ introduced last year, and an ever more assertive, well-fortified and watchdog-like media, with its notorious ‘sting operations’, make it more difficult for perpetrators to get away with their lapses. They have left behind many a ‘tainted’ minister, who often finds his or her way back to the political arena nonetheless. But the overall image of (party) politics as a somehow ‘dirty business’ still prevails and this is not to deny that ‘old-fashioned’ corruption or ‘modern forms of lobbying’ permeate other sectors, especially the bureaucracy, as well.

The latest manifestations of this second tendency were the scandal involving parliamentarians from various parties taking bribes for asking (fake) questions in Parliament in late 2005, and the ‘office of profit’ controversy over politicians holding additional offices as chairman, board members etc. of foundations, committees, state institutions etc., thus profiting from their stand and reputation as elected representatives, erupting in early 2006. It led to the resignation of some high-ranking parliamentarians, including Sonia Gandhi, who nonetheless benefited from her resignation by once again turning it into an opportunity to claim the moral high ground, as in 2004, when she stepped down from her claim to the prime ministership. It came as no surprise when soon afterwards she was re-elected to parliament by a massive margin in the following byelections in the Rae Bareli constituency, which is some sort of an ‘electoral fiefdom’ of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

The ‘dirty business’ image of party politics also extends to the way, in which the struggle for political power and survival is carried out, often including the manipulation and instrumentalisation of political institutions. While definitely no foreign word under the previous BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime, the Congress/UPA as well had its fair share of resorting to dubious political manoeuvres in its attempt to consolidate power, including the use of politically appointed governors to topple non- Congress governments, as in Goa in early 2005, or to prevent elected non-Congress governments from coming into power, as in Bihar and Jharkhand last year. And since long, the CPI (M) in West Bengal is known for following a practice, popularly known as ‘scientific rigging’ of elections, a practice stalled during this year’s assembly elections in West Bengal, thanks to the vigorous check-ups and inspections by a reinforced independent Election Commission.

Public space vacated by the state – the need for state- society synergy

Finally, the third trend, closely related to the first one, is the phenomenon of non-party, non-governmental actors taking over roles and responsibilities formerly occupied and assumed by parties and the state as well as (decision-making) space vacated by parties and the state, as to be found, for example, in growing civil society assertiveness or judicial activism in all kinds of public affairs.

Be it the controversy over the Narmada valley dam(s), which erupted again this year after famous social activist Medha Patkar had gone on a hunger strike to protest against the concerned States’ non-compliance with a Supreme Court order directing the respective States’ governments to guarantee a proper rehabilitation of the evicted families before raising the Sardar Sarovar dam’s height and flooding a vast area, and, subsequently, the Supreme Court telling the Prime Minister to come forward with a decision on the issue. Or be it this spring’s Delhi High Court ruling - a reaction to complaints and petitions from the powerful Residents Welfare Associations - on taking action against the many illegal constructions and businesses running from residential areas in the city, a hopeless task of course, given the scale of these constructions and businesses and the lack of commercial space available, but clearly disclosing what went wrong with regard to urban planning in Delhi since a couple of decades. Or, on a smaller scale, the many NGOs providing services to the poor and marginalised, predominantly a state prerogative, and taking on Public Interest Litigation against pollution, slum evictions etc., often on behalf of those and covering issues neglected by the state - all these examples, and there are many more, are evidence that a formidable retreat of the state from public affairs has taken and is taking place, be it necessary political decision-making, fulfilling its public monitoring function or providing delivery of public goods. In a sense, even the Naxalite menace of impoverished, marginalised and radicalised social groups, especially in the States of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, who are taking the law into their own hands, can be seen as a result of this retreat of the state.

It seems that the abrupt ending of what had once been termed by the American scholars Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph as the ‘omnipresence of the state’ in all public, and often also private, affairs in the wake of liberalisation, has created confusion as to who is to fill the gap. Now, one could argue that judicial activism or increased civil society assertiveness are good and healthy signs for a constitutional organ fulfilling its watchdogrole or for the gradual development of a more participatory democracy. And, indeed, they are. But it is not the task of civil society or the judiciary to fill the space the state has vacated. Nor is it a good sign, if the state and the political class abandon crucial and necessary roles and responsibilities.

In fact, a transformative compromise on the question of ‘how much state and how much market’ is needed, an agreement on clearly defined roles for every stakeholder in the governance process, and, finally, what American sociologist Peter Evans termed a ‘strategy of state-society synergy’, designed to engage the energy and imagination of citizens and communities in the co-production of services as a way of enhancing the state’s ability to deliver services without having to demand more scarce material resources from society.

notes
(1) Sen, Amartya, The Argumentative Indian, 2005: 194-195
(2) ‘Why the political parties are losing it’, The Hindu, May 25, 2006.