MAYA AND THE MARKET PLACE contd..

Globalism and the Vedic Vision

It needs to be emphasized that the global outlook is not a Western patent! From the dawn of human consciousness, whenever true spirituality illumined the caverns of human psyche, it created a cosmic vision. Contrary to the attempts to equate Hinduism with the Indian subcontinent, the Vedic vision is essentially Earth-centred and truly global. In contrast to this, the "global" aspect of the new economic order seems spurious. As a matter of fact, it is safe to assume that no materialistic programme or model can ever be truly and justly universal. What pretends to be "global" is essentially an ethnocentric project packaged as 'global' so as to co-opt the rest of the world into it.

From a spiritual perspective, the material world is a mirror, as it were, of the spiritual world. The spiritual vision of a united world, free from the dividing walls that splinter human unity, therefore, finds its reflection on the material plane as well. The irony, of course, is that when a culture gets alienated from the wisdom of the spirit, people will seek to realize spiritual goals through material means. Thus a spiritual vision gives birth to a materialistic project. Globalism as conceived by the west parallels the triumphalistic version of Christianity with its project of converting the whole of the world to that faith by 2000 AD. But that was not to be. Instead the world is being converted into materialism without as much as a whisper of protest from the "spiritual East". In that sense, the emerging global order is a "migration". It is the migration of Mammon, the idol of materialism, from the West to the rest of the world.

This realization is now growing upon us. And on the west too. "World Faiths Developmental Dialogue" (WFDD) that the World Bank has initiated is, very likely, an outcome of this unease. It is also an explicit admission that development and well being in the human context cannot afford to overlook the spiritual and social dimensions of the human situation. Poverty, in sofar as it stifles the total unfolding of the human being, is a spiritual, not less than an economic, issue. Also, it is when economics is guided by spirituality that development becomes people-centred and welfare-oriented.

Spirituality and globalism

This face-to-face between spirituality and globalism is inevitable. But there are two models in which this may take place. First, spiritual values or concepts may be admitted into the rhetoric and ideology of the globalizing process merely for purposes of legitimization: as a cover-up for its sinister and unjust features, a palliative for the pain it occasions. Spiritual values will not be allowed to interrogate the basic tenets of globalization. Their role is, by and large, to legitimize the illegitimate. Alternatively, spirituality could be a sublime subversive force within the global order that confronts this juggernaut of inequality with paradigmatic nightmares. Spirituality then becomes a prophetic presence denouncing all that is incompatible with the demands of equity, justice and compassion at the global level.

It is ironic that the initiative to import spirituality into the globalizing context had to come from the World Bank in the West, and not from the East that bristles with godmen and resounds with mantras. This is symptomatic of the sickness of our religiosity. In the jungle of our escapist, obscurantist religiosity we have lost the light of spirituality. Unlike religiosity, spirituality involves a celebration of awareness and a commitment to bring the total context into conformity with the demands of God-centredness. God is the Ultimate Reality, at once immanent and transcendent, in the whole of the created order. This is the root of our passion for justice and our capacity for compassion. The spiritual demand, therefore, is simple: all that we create or endorse must reflect the nature of God in terms of the operative values. This is the only enduring foundation for human welfare.

It is a pity that the non-western societies continue to be in a state of historical slumber. The essential colonial pattern that the West created, viz., the west manning the ship of human destiny aboard which the East sleeps, still remains to be dismantled. The West must take the initiative, in the context of globalization, even in spiritual matters, and all we do is react one way or another. Where have we lost the passion of a Dayanand Saraswati or Vivekananda to spiritualize the world? Who has robbed us of our sense of mission to fulfil the spiritual destiny of India in the global arena? Even a feeble sense of history will convince us that a people lose ultimately only when they squander their spiritual resources. The Market Migrants of the West are knocking at our door with the merchandize of materialism. Shall we not insist on a fair barter and exchange the goods of the spirit for their multinational trinkets, even if it could seem subversive to the WTO? And shouldn't we do this before the West patents our spirituality too, as they have already done with Basmati rice and karela?