Suggestions for a Rural Philosophy

Suggestions for

A Rural Philosophy

BY S. V. RAMAMURTY, M.A., I.C.S.

I have been led to think of a rural philosophy mainly because of the movement for rural reconstruction that has come to the fore in this country. Some think the movement to be a fad. But it can hardly be so in view of the widespread interest it has aroused and particularly in view of its having been taken up by responsible bodies which have done effective practical work in other directions. Others consider it a movement of reaction. But that can hardly be the case in India where urbanization has not been strong enough to produce a reaction. Others still think it a movement of despair on the part of men who could find no place in the economic life of towns and therefore seek to go to villages. But the movement is essentially a movement of hope. It concerns itself primarily not with a criticism of the past but with hopeful work for the future. It seems to me there is a deeper significance behind the movement than its critics realize.

We know that in this country some 90% of the people live in villages. Yet a large part of the thought and effort of educated men is devoted to improving town life rather than village life. It is largely true to say that if our universities, our hospitals, our railways, our trunk roads, our factories are abolished, village life will not be appreciably different from what it is. We have received European knowledge through our universities. But most of us are content with deriving monetary gain for ourselves and do not seek to apply it for national growth. Our hospitals hardly serve more than 5% of our villagers. Roads and schools are more conspicuous by their absence than by their presence in villages. The conveniences which machines provide for us are practically confined to towns. There is little sign indeed in villages of the benefits of modern civilization. It is unfortunately true that a large proportion of our villagers live in hovels by the side of filth, wear scanty clothing and have not enough of food to eat. There is indeed need to reconstruct the village.

But, why reconstruct the village at all? Why not abandon it? They have done it largely in Europe. In England, half the people live in towns. They are doing it even more in the new countries like the United States and Australia. But urban people are beginning to feel unhappy. It was the Industrial Revolution that gave a large impetus to urbanization. Men who were free in a little way in the village left to serve machines. Large economic groups were formed which often crystallized into towns. They could not produce the large amount of raw materials which were needed daily by the machines and hence they had to get such materials from other populations which continued to be rural. But as competition increased among the owners of machines and as rural populations began to defend themselves against the greed of machines, the men who have lived on the profits of machines have fallen on evil days. The result is that almost every unit of urban civilization is suffering from unemployment and a generally unstable economic life. It is not a hopeful prospect therefore if rural life were to be abandoned for urban life. I read the other day of the saying of a big business man in America that perhaps the most stable organization of industry was that of handicrafts.

The world was predominantly rural till the era of science started in Europe three centuries ago. The large extension of urban life has been the result of applied science. While science like any other form of truth may be said to be the possession of all, applied science is definitely regarded as the possession of a few through an ingenious device called patenting. Suppose a scientist is able to make a machine which enables its owner to make a large amount of wealth, prospective owners would be willing to pay the scientist considerably for it, in order to make a much larger gain for themselves. Applied science has tended to apply science to make a few men very wealthy. The result is that applied science has produced an economic hierarchy with kings of steel and bacon in the place of a large spread of small industries.

On the other hand, the extension of democracy, which has been, rendered possible largely by the use of applied science, has been producing a reverse effect. Its effect has been towards abolishing political hierarchy. Thus this age, which is an age of science, has been producing contrary effects in politics and economics–abolishing hierarchy in one and creating it in another. Pure science itself started with Newton on the basis of matter being arranged in a hierarchic system. In the Solar system, the Sun is the controlling centre. Round him are the smaller entities, the planets. Attached to the planets are things and lives dependent on them and subject to the central control of the Sun. This view has now changed with, Einstein for whom the Sun is no more the centre of the Solar system than you or I, and there is only "an organic interdependence of mutual service" among matter as among men.

The movement towards an economic democracy has also arisen in the last few decades in the shape of the co-operative movement. Applied science has made a few men or nations wealthy even to the extent of economic princedom but it has not improved the condition of the majority of men. While people have been lulled into believing that life was arranged on a democratic pattern, the whole tendency of applied science has been to produce an anti-democratic pattern in economic life. This is not the fault of science or of its application; It is a defect in organization. It has not been recognized that scientists can be rewarded by the many as richly as by the few. Authors have learnt it when they exchanged the patronage of princes for that of the general public. Applied scientists have yet to learn it. The economic organization through which the many can each gain a small benefit from applied science and yet make a large enough gain in the aggregate to pay the applied scientist is the co-operative organization. This for the many takes the place of joint-stock marketing for the few. Thus there are three types of democracy–political, economic and scientific. The authors of the three types are Rousseau, Raffeisein and Einstein. Democracy made its appearance first in politics, then in economics and last in science. This is not a comforting thought for the scientist who is apt to consider himself the forerunner of truth.

It is to be observed that economic democracy which has made considerable strides in the last 5 to 10 years through large scale co-operative marketing has arisen mainly among agriculturists. The, producers of wheat in Canada, the dairy farmers of Ireland and New Zealand, the fruit growers of New Zealand and California, who have taken to economic democracy generally by a voluntary effort but sometimes by legislation permitting the economic rule of the majority, are generally men from rural areas. It is with reference to agricultural co-operation that Irish co-operators have raised their slogan of better farming, better business and better living.

It seems to me that the instability of modern democracy is due to its being mainly political and not also economic. Fascism therefore has tried to restrict political democracy by creating a dictatorship, the internal structure of which is democratic. Bolshevism has tried to replace an economic hierarchy by an economic dictatorship, the dictatorship being vested in the political democracy. But the method it follows involves too high a price, by continuing and emphasizing the subordination of man to the machine. In an economic hierarchy, the machine is the servant of a few and the master of the many. But in the economic dictatorship of the Bolshevist, the machine is the master of every individual in order to be the servant of the community. Both Fascism and Bolshevism are based on the same idea as underlies the making of a large machine. The idea is that power, in order to be effective, should be in a large and concentrated form. To use modern jargon, the quantum of political or economic power is believed to be too large to be vested in the average individual. Democracy denies this. There is, I believe, an alternative way to Fascism and Bolshevism by which democracy can be both economic and political. This involves an organization of life which is both rural and religious. That such an organization would be stable is instanced by India and China–India even more than China. They are the oldest civilizations which are yet alive. The ruins of Mahenjo Daro have shown that some 5,000 years ago, there was art which could be matched only by that of Greece, that Saivism which has made powerful contributions to Hinduism all through historical times and is yet alive in India is the oldest living religion. Contemporary civilizations in Western Asia and about the Mediterranean basin are dead. But India and China have yet retained the original nature of their system of life more or less unimpaired. It has puzzled me long what is the cause of this stability of Indian and Chinese life. India and China are not only mainly rural but are also religious, though in China religion often shows itself in its truncated form of ethics. It seems to me that the longevity of the system of life that is Indian is due to two beliefs–a belief in the Earth and a belief in God. Man is derived from the Earth and is to be merged in God. Man is a becoming bounded by two beings–Earth and God. A civilization which keeps itself in touch with Earth and God cannot lose its bearings.

Let me give, through an analogy, a picture of a civilization which is both rural and religious. A house has a floor and a ceiling. It has a minimum of walls and pillars. The house of human life has the Earth for the floor and God for the ceiling. The walls and pillars are such men and things as are necessary to connect the floor and ceiling. If a house is choked with an excess of walls and pillars, it ceases to be. So too in human-life, the few men who have to lead have to justify themselves. Hence, at the basis, the instinct to stone prophets is a healthy instinct. So also the instinct to stone machines. Prophets and machines, dominating men and dominating things, have all to justify themselves like pillars. They must be strictly controlled by the architectural needs of life. Pillars, though they reach the ceiling, are yet rooted in the floor. The tallest pillar cannot fully rise to the ceiling, unless all the floor rises too. So too, no man can fully achieve God unless all his fellowmen do so too. And, it seems to me that, in some way, man cannot achieve salvation for himself unless he achieves it for the Earth too and for all that there is between the Earth and man. The Universe is not a bundle but an organism. You cannot send your finger to Heaven while leaving the rest of your body on Earth.

Leaving aside the analogy of a house, this is how we may envisage life that is rural and religious. Let agriculture be the primary occupation of men. The majority of men will thus live in villages. Let every industry which can be worked on a cottage industry scale be so worked. Then let the rest of industry which can be worked as minor industries be so worked. Let only the balance which can be worked only as a large scale machine industry be so worked. This is just the reverse of how men are now economically organized. Every man who can control a large industry seeks to do so. Then come minor industries. Last are left the helpless people who can do no more than work in a cottage. It may be asked, is this possible with the enormous pull which applied science gives to the large scale machine industry. I put it to you that applied science gives such a pull because we have let it do so. But that is not necessary. Authors used to write books mainly to please princes. They no longer do so. They now use their ability to please the six-penny and shilling reader. It is in fact difficult for princes to get authors who will cater only to their needs. That perhaps explains why modern Poet Laureates are rather a poor lot. As with authors, so with scientists. There is no reason why scientists may not apply their knowledge to help primarily the large number of small producers who can each benefit but little, but in the aggregate achieve a large gain for the nation. Such small men use small machines–machines with little or no power derived from coal or oil, machines perhaps run mainly with hand-power. Why should not scientific intelligence be used to improve hand-driven appliances so that each worker may gain a little more than he does and the whole group get sufficiently more to make it worth while to the scientists to apply their science for its good? It seems to me that there is no a priori reason why large scale industries run by a few men should on the whole produce greater gain than small industries run by many men; That they have done so in the past is, I think, a historical accident due to scientists keeping applied science on the side of steel kings and bacon kings, just as priests have kept applied religion on the side of political kings. A time may come when scientists will not care to work for millionaires.

Men flock in towns because the machines are there and the machines gather in the neighbourhood of what feeds them–namely, coal and oil. It has indeed been held that European civilization has been built on the surplus energy furnished by coal and this process has been called the "coming of coal". We in India have little coal and oil on which we can build our civilization. But the one category we have in large quantities is men. It is not un-reasonable to hope that as God spent more time in making man than He did in making coal, some engineer may yet arise who will evolve from man his hidden energy as engineers have evolved the energy hidden in coal. It seems to me that the service which man renders under an ethical and religious impulse is a form of energy which corresponds to the heat given out by coal. I venture to think that an access of fresh energy to India may yet result from the "Coming of Man". If men are sources of energy even as coal and oil, men may evolve it where they are, in villages, instead of clustering in towns round where coal or oil is.

Religion gives not only stability but also stature to life. A civilization which is only rural and not also religious is like a floor with pillars and walls but no ceiling. It does not last long. A civilization which is religious but not rural is also unstable. A civilization which is rural and religious but has little of energy which tries to connect man from the Earth to God is restricted in scope. A house without pillars can but be small. I imagine for India a civilization with a maximum of agriculture and cottage industries, a moderate amount of minor industries, and the minimum of large scale machine industries. The political life of such a people may be democratic, its economic life co-operative. There is no need to communize economic power because it is already divided into small packets, and it is such a division that is the ultimate purpose even of a communized economic power. Such an organization was indeed the basis of the traditional life of India. Men lived mainly in villages, and on the basis

of economic functions, groups were formed. But the means of communication between different places being difficult, every villager had to compel the presence, say, of a carpenter, a blacksmith, a fighter or a priest. The way to do it was found to be through making function hereditary. But now with the means of communication so largely improved, there is no need for such economic conscription. A carpenter in one village may serve other villages without a carpenter. If a house were a group of small unconnected structures, each structure has to have a pillar. But if they are all connected into one house, a pillar at one place serves all its neighbourhood. The defect of the caste system has been its compulsory nature. Avoid the compulsion, and we are left with voluntary groups with economic affinities which reinforce territorial affinities–position and function acting as the warp and weft of life. Democracy, like cloth, seems to need both a warp and a weft–political and economic–to make it strong.

It has been said that democracy is a vast dissolution. But then it is equally true that religion is a vast synthesis. A religious democracy is indeed a mighty rhythm of analysis and synthesis. And a democracy that is not only religious but is also rural makes of man a rhythm between Earth and God. Within our design of a rural and religious life, let us, with the help of science, develop a democracy that is both political and economic. We shall then not only keep to the genius of our national life but also utilize the implements and methods which Europe has forged.

There is no need for us to be impatient with an India that is not as urban as Europe, that has not developed joint stock enterprise and that has not ceased to be occupied with religion. It may be the basis of our hope for the future that we are rural, that we have no vested interests to prevent our being co-operative, and that we are religious. Rural reconstruction mainly through the service of men is the revival of an instinct which has kept us alive for more years than men can often count.