Revisiting Dharampal

 Revisiting Dharampal  https://www.samanvaya.com/articles/revisiting-dharampal  Our work with the village community coincided with the bloom of Globalization in India which resulted in further transfer of ownership of even the industries in the metropolis to that of ‘foreign investors’ which were the modern corporates. One of Dharampalji’s oft repeated quotation was how the then American President in the 1940s wrote to the British Prime Minister, seeking that the British ensure ‘’India remains in the Western orbit’’. Globalization renewed Indian subscription to western orbit through diverse treaties, agreements, opening up to investments in all kinds of areas, subsidies in terms of land, resources, manpower and market privileges provided to such investors while imposing restrictions on our own industries, relaxing of regulatory regimes to suit profit making of foreign corporates and calling all of these as “development” and “progress”. Whether it be the medium of instruction, choice of careers, technology, defence, development, economic power, policy or even a sense of what constitutes dignity, if India merely subscribed to the Western orbital idea post Independence, the globalization agenda made us own up to the identity of being modern and western completely. Once in a conversation someone mentioned, ‘’but Dharampalji our people are employed in NASA and other big technological establishments’’ to which he responded, ‘’but what do they do? Can they actually change the way NASA or any of these companies work? Can they have a say in what gets done in the societies they live in or are they in these positions only because they are hard-working employees?’’.