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Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist An Orientalist Liquid Modern Fable-- B.CHANDRA SEKHAR

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist

An Orientalist Liquid Modern Fable

                                                                               B. C h a n d r a  S e k h a r[1]

Paulo Coelho’s best seller The Alchemist is a sensation in the literary world. It was first published in 1988 in Portuguese and the response was not promising, but its English version (1993) was soon listed in the best seller inventory in USA. Afterward, it had been translated into about 66 languages and found 100 million consumers that ushered it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Paulo Coelho (pronounced Paw-lu Co-el-o) is a Brazilian Roman Catholic Christian. His novel pampers Christianity. In its Orientalist perspective lurks an element of degrading and subjugating stance towards Muslims. It articulates a penchant for individualism, and discards community bonds in favour of self aggrandisement that has been brought in by Modernity. It adores, to use the phrase of the scintillating sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity. In the backdrop of anachronistic pre-Modern setting and in the guise of incongruent pseudo philosophical sayings, the novel deploys an army of letters in the service of the yellow devil. He was honoured by the highest bodies of Christianity and capitalism.

I

There have been tensions between them (West and Islam) since the seventh century—that is, since Islam emerged as a political and ideological power able to challenge Christendom.

                                                                     Rana Kabbani, A letter to Christendom

Santiago, the hero of The Alchemist, was named after one of the disciples of Jesus namely, Apostle James known as Saint Santiago Matamoras. The Saint proselytized people in the northwestern Spain and was killed in AD 44 by a Judaist Palestinian king. Christians believe that a few years earlier Magdalena appeared to him at a place in the northwestern Spain. The place was later to become Santiago de Compostela, one of the sanctimonious pilgrimage centres. It has received, by a Papal ordinance long ago, the religious significance that is held by Vatican and Jerusalem. In an interview to www.lifepositive.com Coelho said, ‘My turning point was my pilgrimage (500 miles on foot) to Santiago de Compostela’. After that he could realise his long cherished dream of writing the best-seller by publishing The Alchemist. Earlier his life trajectory was quite different: consigned to mental asylum in his teens by his parents, from where he escaped to become a hippie and propagated free sex; addicted to drugs and thereafter found himself attracted to black magic. And of course, there was some period in between when he worked as a lyricist in a rock n’ roll band.

What kind of inspirational kick does the name Santiago offer? Saint Santiago was not just a proselytizer. He was a warrior with undaunted courage and was accredited with the honour of fighting beside the King Romero-I in decisive battles against the Moors. Thus, he is celebrated as Saint Santiago-the Moor-Slayer.

People of Morocco and Algeria are called Moors in the West from times immemorial. Moors were North African tribes of Berber and of Arab descent. They invaded Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal) and christened it as Al Andalus and ruled it entirely or in part between 8 AD and 15 AD. After the invasion of Christian kings from the North, the down fall of Moor Caliphate in the region dawned slowly. It was total with the loss of Granada province in Spain in 1492.

Saint Santiago –the Moor Slayer had been the inspirational figure in all the blood spilling and spine chilling battles against Moors. His ferocious image of killing the Moors riding on his white horse aroused Christian armies to kill enemies. Though, by the time of Saint Santiago Muslim religion was yet to come into being, in the later period as the Moors embraced Muslim religion, he had become a metaphor for slaying Muslims. Not just that. In 17^th century the Spaniards successfully frustrated Papal endeavor to bestow sainthood on Sister Teresa, who proselytised people in the same region. Spaniards felt that only Santiago should be their saint. Thus, the Moor slayer has been associated with the Modern Spanish identity with all intensity.

The racist term ‘Moor’ was employed many a time in the novel to describe the Arabs. Though the expression was initially applied to African Arabs by Europeans, by the Middle ages it evolved as a synonym to all black (African) Muslims, and later, to all Muslims. It was continued to be used pejoratively ever since. Even in Portuguese, the mother tongue of Coelho in which the novel was penned, Moor means tanned. It is synonymous with black person in all Spanish speaking countries.

 The hero of the novel hails from Andalusia, the hot-bed of battles between Christians and Moors. It is the earliest place conquered by the Arabs [Moors] in 710. After crossing Gibraltar Strait from North Africa, one has to step into that region to enter into Iberian Peninsula. The hero crosses the Strait, in a reverse order, at the Andalusian port city of Tarifa to enter into Moroccan city of Tangier. At Tarifa, he remembers the invasion of Arabs: ‘As he walked past the city’s castle, he interrupted his return, and climbed the stone ramp that led to the top of the wall. From there, he could see Africa in the distance. Someone had once told him that it was from there that the Moors had come to occupy all of Spain’’ [p.25 – all page numbers as per HarperCollins’ forty eighth impression of 2010].

After his hero entered Tangier, Paulo Coelho could no longer conceal his intolerance towards Muslims. It is writ large in the reaction of the hero on seeing the religious practices of the Muslims. In a busy street in the city ‘In just a few hours he had seen men walking hand in hand, women with their faces covered, and priests that climbed to the tops of towers and chanted—as every one about him went to their knees and placed their foreheads on the ground.  ‘“A practice of infidels,” he said to himself’’[p.32]. Here the word ‘infidel’ has no pliable sense—person of a religion other than one’s own, but it was used in the pejorative sense-- religious renegades, those who breached religious trust. The term literally means one without faith and ‘it was used by Christians to describe those who are perceived as enemies of Christianity, especially Muslims’ [The Free Encyclopedia, Wikipedia]. With all scorn in his mind the hero thought of the ‘infidels’ for they were immersed in praying their God. 

The rancour is more palpable afterwards. After saying to himself ‘a practice of infidels’ Santiago remembers Saint Santiago—not as a disciple of Jesus, nor as a pacific Apostle or non-violent proselytizer: ‘As a child in church, he had always looked at the image of Saint Santiago Matamoras on his white horse, his sword unsheathed, and figures such as these kneeling at his feet’ [p.32]. The novelist was comparing the Muslims who knelt down in religious devotion with their fear-struck ancestors who stooped down before the Moor Slayer of utmost religious importance. The author has deployed a metaphorical language under the pretext of venting the memories of the hero. That is not all. ‘The boy felt ill and terribly alone. The infidels had an evil look about them’ [p.32].  How come the hero found evil look in the Muslims who were immersed in religious devotion? The author has the temerity of a hate preacher. To cull out the author’s lurking self I am tempted to risk a reference to St. Martin Luther: ‘Who fights against the Turks [Muslims]…should consider that he is fighting an enemy of God and a blasphemer of Christ, indeed, the devil himself….’ (E. Grislis, ‘Luther and the Turks’, The Muslim World, Vol.LXIV, No.3 –July 1974).

The novel exhibits racist tendencies towards even Gypsies. The hero gets frightened on seeing the Gypsy women, a fortune-teller. ‘People said gypsies spent their lives tricking others. It was also said that they had a pact with the devil, and that they kidnapped children and, taking them away to their mysterious camps, made them their slaves. As a child, the boy had always been frightened to death that he would be captured by Gypsies, and this childhood fear returned when the old woman took his hands in hers’ [P.11]. [Here, ‘people’ and his informants are his own people –‘The We’, and on the other hand Gypsies, a la Muslims, are the Other, who ‘had no flocks of sheep’ but indulge in travel. They do not have fixed assets and defy sovereignties and travel across countries and hence in the European psyche they have always been suspect, says Zygmunt Bauman elsewhere]. What did the hero do? Rather what was the course offered to him by the novelist to come out of the nervousness? Santiago did what he would be later doing when he got ill and terribly alone on seeing the Muslims offering prayer: ‘But, she has the Sacred Heart of Jesus there, he thought, trying to reassure himself. He didn’t want his hand to begin trembling, showing the old women that he was fearful. He recited an Our Father silently’ [p.11]. Either it was fear of Muslims or Gypsies the hero tries to get rid of it by invoking Christianity.

The hero even shows linguistic bigotry. After finding evil look in the Muslims the novel reads thus:  ‘Besides this, in the rush of his travels he had forgotten a detail, which could keep him from his treasure for a long time: only Arabic was spoken in this country’ [p.32]. Of late several European juridical forums have been expressing similar irritation towards non-European languages by holding that they are non-tariff barriers on the free flow of capital and goods and thus to economic integration and globalization. Paulo Coelho nurtures the linguacidal view point of the Empire as his hero’s worry of Arabic is rooted in his treasure hunt.

The Alchemist is an example of the Orientalism which is an attitude of the West (Occident) towards the East (Orient) expressed in looking down upon it, and to reform and finally subjugate by overwhelming it. For Edward Said raison d’etre of European novel is the Empire: ‘The values that enabled empire and imperial exploitation also shaped not just the fiction writers like Kipling, Foster and Conrad but the novels of even those figures we rarely associate with imperialism, such as Austin, Dickens, Hardy and Henry James’. He proved in his magnum opus Orientalism that there would be no European novel had there been no imperialism.

The Alchemist is no exception since Paulo Coelho has internalized the values and the culture of the Empire. The language, time and setting of the novel and the subject-matter and its outlook are in accord with it. He has made the colonial parlance his mother tongue. He has grudge against Arabs but no grievance against Portugal for occupying Brazil and mutilating its indigenous culture, and wiping out their languages and gods. With Papal blessings the 1494 Treaty of Tordesilas pacified Spain and Portugal, the rival colonial claimants contending for the world domination, by vertically dividing southern part of Americas and confirming right to occupy the eastern part to Portugal and the western to Spain. The consequence was the invasion of the eastern part of South Americas by Portugal and christening it as Brazil. These had been the ruthless consequences that followed the discovery of American continents by the Spanish sailor Columbus in 1492.

Orientalism sees its Other as culturally inferior, uncivilized, ignorant and in the dark. More particularly it is suffocating in community bonds. The West is its opposite --culturally superior and civilized. It meant knowledge and light. It is the saviour of the Orient. These ideas convey hatred towards the African, South American and Eastern peoples in general and especially Muslims in the present global scenario. The hullabaloo of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations is all about precisely that.

This trend has grown in the movies of the Hollywood with Delta Force, Indiana Jones series and in myriad TV serials this tendency has continued this trend with much vigour. True Lies is an irrefutable instance of this. All these depict Muslims as heinous evil doers prone to violence and this precisely,  earns for them their ability to be exterminated. Black-headed Orientals (especially Muslims) and white heroes (especially Americans) fighting against them is the usual trait of these ill movies with a climactic brutal slaying of the Orientals. Coelho’s novel is no exception. But, the white hero of European origin fights no battles but subjugates the Orientals under his spell and continues his treasure hunt. Of course, his mission is also a civilisational one.

The Satanic Verses of Salmon Rushdie in 1988 heralded new wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in fiction writing, says Ismail Isa Patel. Though The Alchemist was published in the same year it gained currency in the years to come coinciding with the triumph of globalization and the military subjugation of the Muslim world by the Empire. It did the job of Salmon Rushdie quietly as well as rudely.

Modernity is the mother of racism of the Orientalist genre. White racism that was very elementary at the time of Renaissance has grown up with the rise of colonialism and spread its tentacles to the four corners of the globe. While attributing cultural inferiority to the Muslims Orientalism never keeps in mind their attainments -- the knowledge gained by them in astronomy and logic, their intellectual contribution in  developing medicine as a science and their inputs in algebra. Orientalism is pure hatred. It portrays Arabs (for that matter all the eastern peoples) as slothful and inert who spend their time in the same place, incapacitated to develop and ahistorical and hence poised to be uplifted by the West. Their role in the making of history is negative. A la Santiago, the Orientalist Whites are quite aware of their potentialities. They are optimists. They feel, says Said, that they are always capable of defining their supremacy and the inferiority of the Arabs. Orientalism has grown in the hatred toward those who are outside to/ opposed the Modernity. The hero compares his parents with sheep, and in the Arab world-- ‘In that strange land, he was applying the same lessons he had learned with his sheep’ (p.42). Orientalism is not just the theoretical expression of the unequal power relationship in between the Orient and the Occident, it is its very originator.

The Alchemist runs  a parallel world  to Samuel Huntington’s as the Spain-born hero passes through the North Africa in search of treasure. One is Occident and the other Orient. Here Occident is the European Spain. Orient is African Morocco and Egypt. One is Western, Christian, white world (white is Coelho’s favourite colour and he started writing the novel after he found a white feather in a shop), and the other is the Muslim world, ‘Moorish’ (black) world. The first one, Andalusia (Spain) is green rich. There are no troublesome people in the region except the Gypsy woman. The Second one (Morocco, Egypt) is a sand stricken desert inhabited by ‘infidels’ who, to the chagrin of the hero, speak only Arabic. They are tribes who fight primordial battles without reason. Some of them are thieves and tricksters. All are community-bound, and rotten with ignorance and are to be uplifted by the white-skinned hero.

Santiago is the enlightener of the unenthusiastic crystal merchant who lives in the same place and experiences the same days. He shows path of development to the merchant. He is the one who  whips up money-making spree and develops his shop. He teaches him how to live. With all gratitude the Muslim merchant says to the hero: ‘I’ll have to change my way of life’ …… “You have been a real blessing to me” [p.55]. Later, the hero remembers his accomplishment while leaving Tangier, and ‘he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world’  [p.59]. In the next page he once again reminds his achievement: ‘He was more confident in himself, though, and felt as though he could conquer the world’ [p.60]. Later, he could perform miracles in the desert and astounds the Arabs under his magic spell. ‘For generations thereafter, the Arabs recounted the legend of the boy who had turned himself into the wind, almost destroying a military camp, in defiance of the most powerful chief in the desert’ [pp.145-146]. At an oasis camp he warns the Arabs of a impending danger and earns riches. His is a cosmetic cant of mission civilisatrice and suits Rana Kabbani’s remark in another context: ‘The image of the European colonizer had to remain an honourable one: he did not come as exploiter, but as enlightener.’ (Imperial Fiction: Europe’s Myths of the Orient).

Fatima is the only named female character in the novel. In Arabic it means ‘the one that is shining’. She was the daughter of Prophet Mohammed. Muslims believe that she is the mother of their Prophet and Imams. Muslim cosmology portrays her as personification of moon goddess and epitome of piousness. She is the counterpart of Jesus’ mother Mary in the Muslim world. What is the significance of Santiago’s love affair with Fatima? Is it not allegory of the dominance of the Western masculinity over the Muslim femininity? If feminine is considered as embodiment of nature, the novel ends up with the Western opulence subjugating it. Fatima assumes she was part of Santiago. “You taught me something of the universal language and the Soul of the World. Because of that, I have become part of you” says Fatima to him [p.92] and adds, “And I am part of your dream, and part of your destiny, as you call it” [p.93].

With all cleverness the novel brings in biblical characters. Through Melchizedek, the Biblical King of Salem (Jerusalem), the novelist preaches the hero of the philosophy required for treasure hunt. He presents him with two precious stones –Urim, Thummim who, according to Bible, express the will of God Jehovah. By introducing the king of Salem and the Biblical stones and Fatima (also a Christian pilgrimage city in Portugal) and of course by the Orientalist anti-Muslim stance Coelho has sent enough feelers to the Christian world for their owning up the novel.

The Alchemist has had its own impact on the sales of the novel in the Christian world. It evolved as an indispensable gift not only during Christmas but also on every festive occasion in Europe and USA. Paulo Coelho received special Papal honour in Vatican in 1998.

II

The sale of the sheep had left him with enough money in his pouch, and the boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone. (p.33)

                                                                                           The Alchemist

This reflects the kernel of the novel and the philosophical foundation of its hero’s gold rush. Novel itself is his treasure huntsman’s travelogue. Though the theme is set in per-Modern era, evidently it celebrates the modern and liquid modern values. The popularity of the novel is a testimony to the blatant manifestation of the liquid times. Liquid modernity is the term coined by Zygmunt Bauman to portray the phase of Modernity of the globalisation era in contrast to the solid modernity of the earlier version symbolized in his view by steel and concrete where as the liquid modern metaphor is cyber space. Unlike in solid modernity mobility becomes the hallmark of life in the liquid modernity. Like Alice in the Wonderland if you want to be in the same place you have to run and to move forward you have to run twice faster than you are. Uncertainty rules the roost and loneliness and insecurity is all pervading. Life is liquid and it flows, melting all that is solid. ‘Like all liquids they do not keep their shape for long’. It assumes any form but can not hold it any longer. The liquid modern individual is confined and prefers to remain in his/her shell [self] after getting out of the communitarian bond.

In tune with the globalization, postmodernism declared the death of all meta-narratives. Of course, there are two exceptions -- globalization, postmodernism.  The hero of The Alchemist has no illustrious goals. He just dreams of a hidden treasure and never cherishes any transformation of conditions of the world nor brings in any revolution of any kind to ameliorate the mundane suffering. We may be wrong in finding fault with the hero or his progenitor, but, we are at loss to understand how the progeny of this acclaimed philosophical novel does not even think of helping even a leper dog before or after finding the treasure. His hero is the one who has undertaken a selfish exasperating journey. He is an atomistic individual who defines the world for his own sake. Exalted in the novel is his expedition to become affluent by appropriating the hidden chest of gold and jewels. It is the readers’ turn to get beguiled by the dexterity of the author in mixing up this fable with sham philosophical aphorisms. ‘When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it’ (P.21). But, the one aspired by you should be the aim of your life. You should move towards the destiny following your dream with all fervor and should never give up the hope. Paulo Coelho mentioned this many a time as the leitmotif of the novel.

In the novel the author never says that the aspiration is a qualified one to be successful. It need not be a noble, respectable or upright one. No moral tags or normative taboos are attached. Melchizedek preaches to the hero that if the aim is yours—the one chosen for you by the universe, the soul of the universe conspires to make it happen. Don’t ask what is this soul of the universe and why is its intention a conspiracy. The king of Salem tells Santiago: “Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it is because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.” The docile hero has an innocent query: “Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?” The mythical king’s response is thus: “yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation. All things are one …..And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” (p.21).

Whether you are an atom-bomber in the World War flying in the high skies over Japan or an Al Qaeda militant hijacking an aircraft to attack Twin Towers or torturer in Guantanomo Bay or a NATO bomber in Afghanistan it is immaterial for the universal soul. It ‘conspires’ to see that your mission is accomplished. It cooperates with you in achieving your goal even if it were a wicked one. If you vie on dollar currency and turn out to be a coolie in the Cyber Valley leaving your motherland and parents, it is quite unobjectionable for the soul to cooperate. You are certainly a perfect match of the novel hero. The grate great soul will be behind you. You need not think about the economic crises. You are the sole monarch of your destiny in the company of the conspiring universal soul. What is to be done by you is very simple. You should not distract from your goal. Universal self is your insurer. You would soak in the dollar rain. If failure slaps, you must realize that you had not pursued the aim chosen for you by it. Believe! You haven’t dreamt your own dream. It is your personal failure. Failures are individuated and the success is universalised in the novelist’s philosophy.

What would be the course offered by this perception if two contrary aims are juxtaposed? Would the universal self conspire to get the opposing duo come out with success? Paulo Coelho has no answer.  If we search a way out in the words of the leader of the caravan the whole basis of the novel would get deconstructed. To a query as to when the tribe wars in the desert would come to an end he replies that as Allah was on both sides the war might last longer. If the universal self conspires to realize the opposing aims what would happen? The author has not recognized this short coming in his ‘philosophy’.

The novel gives enough kick to those on either side of the Atlantic, the one in the race of Modern life and yearning to reach the shore of the Atlantic, and craves to be swept away in the dollar current. The selling of the novel rose with the raise of the globalization ideology. It preaches that one should be ready to change him/her self and reorient the self in the process of searching for riches.

There is uninterrupted mobility in the novel. It starts with the mobile hero driving his sheep in the Andalucian country side and ends up in his rushing towards his beloved after finding the treasure chest at the same place   from where he started. In between he encounters several surprises. Being mobile is a trait of the liquid modern life.  ‘Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit,’ says Paul Valery. The novel depicts this ideology.

The hero is ahistorical.  He never feels affection for his native culture. Even if a little bit of it is there, he needs to distance with it to pursue his goal. He is an atom cut off from his past like his peers --modern individuals were born during the Industrial Revolution. For them past is a nightmare, a frightening bond. Freedom precisely begins when you chuck out of it. Father, mother, native village and its culture and nature --- all are a liability and jinxed. The more you are away from the past, the more   modern you are. And of course you may employ the past occasionally to serve your modern objectives. Modernity has no past. Its very foundation is the destruction of the past. Mobility makes one move out of the past and adapt to modernity. The hero many a time derides village life. He comes out of his village with the initial aim to travel for the sake of seeing various places. But, soon it is modified into an expedition for treasure. He is mobile for yellow metal. To become rich is the avowed object of his devout long march.

Santiago has no good memories of his childhood. He never feels sorry for leaving parents and his village milieu. He thinks of his parents only in the context of what he calls monotonous life in villages where all days are spent in the same way. ‘His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and there by a source of pride for a simple farm family’ (p.8). But, he refuses to be so and opts out to travel across the country. His father says that foe the poor Shepherd is the only means to enable travel. He purchases sheep with the money [some coins] given by his father, and assumes mobility, leaving his parents, village and later even his country. He gets freedom from the community in which he was part of.  Freedom presupposes the question where from, says Bauman. For the hero, it is from community and consanguine bonds. Afterward, everything is individuated and throughout the novel he has never been part of any community.

 

The affiliation of the hero with the sheep is liquid but not solid one and it is meant for his mobility. So also was his shepherdness.  “A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep’ says the king of Salem to him (p. 31). But, soon after he forgets the sheep and is no more a shepherd. It appears at one point that he had some solid bonding with the herd. He talks to them, he responds to their vows. He reads out books to them. But his loving relationship is akin to that of a modern with consuming goods and means of mobility like cars and motor bikes. He has only a ‘fleeting coalition and floating bond’ with the sheep. He puts them on out-and-out sale for procuring funds to his treasure hunt. His inheritance was initially transformed into a transport-friendly sheep and then into liquid cash. Thus, ceases his fragile corporeal bond with his family and village. It is also the end of his brittle bond with the nature. ‘It was as if some mysterious energy bound his life to that of sheep’ (p.4). And hence he writes away the account.

Having no solid relationship with anyone and ever ready to leave one bond to enter into another gratifying one are the striking feature of the liquid modern world. Whether it is friendship, love or commerce there are only, to use Bauman’s phrase, until further notice-relationships. Not only with the village, parents and the sheep but also with his maiden lover, anonymous daughter of a dry fruit vendor the hero had only such a liquid relationship. He worries that her memory might distract him from his treasure and abandons the route to her place. Earning riches necessitates discarding his lover. He nurtures justifications. ‘Maybe the girl had already forgotten him. Lots of shepherds passed through, selling their wool’. “It doesn’t matter”, he said to his sheep. “I know other girls in other places” (p.6). The author must have felt that deserting lover is a virtuous quality of the liquid modern. The tie-up with Fatima is also not solid than his yearning for money. He leaves Fatima and moves forward in the treasure hunt. By then Arabs had gifted him enough money and he can lead a comfortable life. Still he decides and continues in his dangerous path of treasure hunt. Desert women can wait unendingly for their men with obdurate chastity. Santiago loves it. Her chastity is his property. Nothing is left to remain solid except with the yearning for money. Nothing should be allowed to be a solid relationship causing impediment to mobility. Everything is liquid that flows eluding captivity and changing its form and course. Everyone is a mobile atomistic being.

Village life is anathema to liquid modernity. It is better qualified to be a holiday posture but not inhabitable for long. ‘In the village every day was like all others’ (p.5). For the daughter of the dry fruit merchant ‘every day was the same’ (p.26). While talking to her ‘he recognises that he was feeling something he had never experienced: ‘The desire to live in one place’ (pp.6-7). It is against the desire to be mobile of the liquid moderns. ‘‘His purpose in life was to travel’ (p.7) with preparedness for change (p7), ‘seeking out a new road to travel whenever he could’ (p.9).

There is no communitarian life in modernity. Society in liquid modernity is also a zombie category. The novel symbolises this as the hero is not made part of any community or society. This reminds the famous statement of Mrs. Margaret Thatcher in the British parliament in late 1980s: ‘Show me where is society? There are only individuals’.  Society has been degenerated into networking, and human relations are reduced to the status of being in “touch”. Unlike ‘relations’, ‘kinships’, ‘partnerships’ and similar notions that make salient the mutual engagement, in a network, connecting and disconnecting are equally legitimate choices that are exercised by the hero. He has no friends except one with whom he has fleeting relationship that ends up with sale-purchase transaction (Hero keeps his sheep with him and later sells them to him). ‘The boy knew a lot of people in the city [Tarifa]. That was what made traveling appeal to him---he always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life’ (p.15). It is the contemporary city-style life which denotes the flippancy of human relations. Even in Tangier he has no in-depth relationship with anyone. The novelist designates the Salem king and the Gypsy woman as ‘solitary individuals who no longer believed in things, and didn’t understand that shepherds become attached to their sheep’ [p.25]. But the same is truer in case of the hero. With everyone the hero likes to have the same tangential rapport like the hero in the Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis has with lodge boys. Having such marginal tie-ups is not a quandary to the hero unlike in Kafka’s story but depth in the relationship is. There cannot be any blending of biographies. This reflects the trajectory of human relations that moved from solid to liquid modernity. Either in Andalusia or in the Tangier with people the hero has only monetary relationship. He is in a cash nexus.

Liquid modern society is more consumption oriented than production oriented. The hero never comes across a farmer in his entire journey across Andalusia. On either side of Gibraltar Strait the scenario is identical.  The novel mentions nothing about any production process. Shops, sale transactions, the materialistic hanker of the hero are the regular features the reader encounters in the novel. Buying the sheep and selling its wool to the dry fruit merchant, having contractual relationship with the Gypsy fortune teller, selling the sheep and paying money to the Salem king for his services, purchasing ticket to cross Gibraltar Strait, purchasing drink in the Tangier bar, shops and finding men and women indulged in buying and selling on the busy streets of Tangier, the commerce in the crystal shop, establishing tea kiosk and attracting consumers to the crystal shop---are the conspicuous happenings in the travelogue of the hero. Of course, there are the Arab betrayers, violent clashes and blood  flows .  All through the hero’s impervious gold rush continues.

The hero utilizes books as pillows and thinks that voluminous ones are better pillows. He learns more from the sheep than books, says the novel, but after he converted the sheep into cash, he has not learnt any thing from the books and if at all, only alchemy that is relevant to his treasure hunt. ‘He had attended a seminary until he was sixteen’ (p.8). Seminary training left no traces on him. His daily itinerary does not include praying the Almighty. He never counted any pious Sunday. He uses Christianity only to get rid of fears of the Other in his journey for riches. These are traits of the liquid moderns.

Being mobile and readiness for change and trekking new paths is the running thread in the novel.  Change is not a natural one. It is quite achievable by the self, the individuated ‘I’ that is the driving force of the change. This philosophy is typical of Western individualism. Money earning is the anchor sheet of the preaching of the Salem king. The example given by the king to exemplify the role of determined effort without losing self confidence is also that of a person who goes on mining to get emerald. This parable inspires the hero more determined to pursue his goal which is again treasure hunt.

When his father had given blessing at the time of his departure, ‘the boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world—a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having had to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life’ (p.9). Here, the father works as a metaphor for pre-modernity while the son for Modernity. What the writer wanted to drive at is that the pre-moderns have modern aspirations but they got killed as they could not venture to realize them. Pre-modern people have animal-like craving only for food water and shelter and devoid of any pleasure. ‘They (parents of the hero) worked hard just to have food and water, like the sheep’ (p.8). This looking down attitude towards the villagers is repeated time and again in the novel. ‘In the village each day was like all others’ (p.5). Immediately he says to himself that in villages there was no change and every day is same.

The Modern atomistic individual sees money as compensatory to the loss of community. What the community gave earlier has now been replaced by the market and hence money makes him secure. The hero Santiago abandons his first lover as he felt she was a hurdle to pursue his treasure hunt. ‘The sheep, the merchant’s daughter, and the fields of Andalucia were only steps along the way to his destiny’ (p.27). He converts the sheep into money. Then the novel declares: ‘The boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone’ (p.33).

The novel reflects anthropocentrism which is one of the greatest tragedies the Modernity had brought in. Essentially it distances humans from nature. The latter is used as a tool to serve human ends. Nature has no other business in the novel except to ‘conspire’ to enable the individuals realised their desires or dreams. Coelho’s novel exposed to the danger in defining the whole universe in terms of humankind. This perspective has enthroned the individual self that is freed from the community in the sovereign epicenter of the universe by dethroning the Natural/ Divine. Here community is not just community of humans but a community in which not only humans but also all animate and inanimate objects – all creatures, all the mountains, rivers and the flora and fauna, and also the mythical figures and the umpteen varieties of memories and instincts converge and co-exist. Bringing out the human from all this cosmic community and projecting man’s self and reason as the grand narrative is the act of Modernity. This has been eulogized as humanism. This phenomenal movement of man from nature to ‘human’ has been celebrated by the novel.

A former president of USA was caught reading the novel. Hollywood actress Julia Roberts extolled the novel. Paulo Coelho wrote about these in the foreword and he knows that the alchemy of the book selling. The Alchemist has become a textbook in several business schools in Europe and USA. Dreams are divine language, longing for money is fine, pursuit of money could be one’s legitimate life goal, and capitalism is quite natural: chief messages of the novel. Coelho is the real alchemist who could convert words into money. He is the invariable special invitee to all the Davos summits of World Economic Forum, the foremost organisation of the world capitalism.  It felicitated him with its prestigious Crystal Award in 1999.

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[1] Author is a senior advocate based in Guntur, AP and Spl. Public Prosecutor in the High Court of AP.

Email—bcsekhar@lawyer.com

NGOs and Colonisation of the South

The Story of Continuing Conquest for over a Century

1

Of late, NGOs have been intruding more and more into the social sphere of our country. This is ensued as part of global expansion of their activities after the World Bank has began promoting the concept of social capital for globalisation’s sake.

             The social base of the left politics in the country is being uprooted with the advent of NGOs on the scene. Their programmes include social welfare measures and helping victims of calamities, and in some cases as social actions targeting social evils to ‘uplift’ dalits, tribals and women and other vulnerable sections of the society. Some NGOs champion the cause of political democracy. In all cases, they employ jargon of human rights. Their actions, in all cases, are directed against nation-state as nation is considered as an obsolete concept of ‘conventional unit of development’[1] by neo-liberalism, the force behind globalisation. They run after the WB, state agencies, the corporate companies, and individual philanthropists for funds.

By the time the causes and the consequences of the Ngos have become problematic, their activities augmented. People are perplexed whether to have camaraderie with them or to contest them and whether they are good or bad. However, the luxurious life of the executives of NGOs makes people suspect their intentions.

By the time the society could ponder over mushroom growth of NGO sector, engrossed in it is a mass of left and liberal intellectuals. It made most of the talented academics serving its agendas in the name of projects, conferences, workshops, seminars etc. Under the guise of academic activities varieties of intellectual cuisine is primed by the university academics catering the needs of the voluntary organisations. No sooner the concept of social capital entered the Western agenda, the study of civil society has become a commodity adding dollars to the money-purses of academics with pulse of our social life mailed to the North particularly USA. Though not directly part of the NGOs, some of the intellectuals who have commodifiable social perception find it attractive air travel, star hotel accommodation and remuneration offered to their oral and written presentations in NGO conferences. Of late, NGOs have been targeting artists and men/women of letters.

As the discourse of NGOs has been passing off as an activity to achieve progress and development, and eradication of evils for common good of the people, left/liberal intellectuals felt it convenient to associate themselves with NGOs as social service and personal enrichment that were hitherto viewed as mutually exclusive, are coalesced into a single one.

NGOs are setting a harmful trend by commodifying social service and gradually obliterating voluntaryness whatever left in it. They established high-tech human rights shops a la corporate offices branding their managers as leaders of social movements. NGO sector brought in a tendency of paid social movements. It is now showing up its gauche face with gluttonous and dishonest managers masquerading in the name of social activists.

According to the information available in the files of the Union Home Ministry:

1. 22,924 associations stood registered under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 1976 as on 31^st March 2001.

2. 638 associations were granted prior permission to receive foreign contribution during 2000-2001.

3. 14,598 associations filed returns for 2000-2001.

4. The receipt of foreign contribution during 2000-2001 amounted to Rs. 4535.23 crores. This represents a 15.56% increase over the amount received in the previous year (Rs. 3924.63 crores).

5. Among the states and union territories, Delhi reported the largest amount (Rs. 763.05 crores) followed by Tamil Nadu (Rs. 649.45 crores) and Andhra Pradesh (Rs. 589.52 crores).

6. The United States of America (Rs. 1492.62 crores) heads the list of donor countries, followed by the United Kingdom (Rs. 677.59 crores), and Germany (Rs. 664.51 crores).

7. The leading donor agency was World Vision International, USA (Rs. 80.43 crores), followed by Foster Parents Plan International, USA (Rs. 76.37 crores), and Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, USA (Rs. 68.11 crores).

8. The largest recipient of foreign contribution was Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust, Andhra Pradesh (Rs. 88.18 crores), followed by World Vision of India, Tamil Nadu (Rs. 85.42 crores) and Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society India, Maharashtra (Rs. 74.88 crores).

9. Among the purposes, the largest amount was received for Rural Development (Rs. 547.74 crores) followed by Health care & Family Welfare (Rs. 432.98 crores), and Relief for natural calamities (Rs. 339.77 crores).[2]

The funds received by the NGOs from UNO and its various organs, and the World Bank group organisations such as IBRD, IDA, IMF, and IFC and some other organisations related to them, and ADB, IADB, ADB, CDB are not included in the definition of ‘Foreign Contribution’ under Sec.2 (1)(e)(ii) of The FC (Regulation) Act. Therefore, the foreign contributions received by Indian NGOs may far exceed the figure given by the Home Ministry.

In recent years, NGOs are getting more funds from our governmental sources than a decade ago. In the Seventh Five Year Plan, they were allotted Rs.380 crores. The Next one (1992-97) stressed on the need to use their services more and more in providing social services and in getting people involved in the preparation of micro level plan. In 1994 central Planning Commission held a 2-day conference to improve liaison between the state and NGO sectors. Some principles of co-operation and strategies were evolved out of the conference to guide programmes of action.

There is no discussion worth mentioning on NGOs.

2

Nongovernmental organisations are also called as voluntary organisations. Some times private is suffixed to them and they called PVO. Until the first half of the last century in USA, it was called so. In Europe and Canada NGOs are in vogue from the beginning of the last century. In both the continents of Europe and in America they are commonly referred to as non-profit organisations (NPOs). Non-profit sector is also in usage. As NGOs work for development, they are also called as nongovernmental development organisations (NGDOs) or developmental NGOs (DNGOs). Those, which take up environmental issues, are called environmental NGOs.

Of late, Ngos are also referred to as grassroots organisations (GROs), civil societal organisations (CSOs), community based organisations (CBOs), and social action groups (SAGs). Northern Ngos having activities beyond the country of their origin are called as International NGOs and also referred as funding agencies as in most of the cases they provide financial support to most of their southern counterparts.

The sum total of the activities of the NGOs in the world is termed as global social movement (GSM) by the World Bank, IMF and the UNO in recent times. Global society, global civil society, international society, world citizen politics, Tran national Social Movement Organisations (TSMs) and Global Social Change Organisations (GSCOs) are also intended to describe the NGOs and their manifold activities. At least in the sense of World Bank it is so. Ngo sector is also called as third sector. State and market are the other two.

Whatever may be taxonomy of these organisations and their activities, none of them suggest the total activity of the NGO sector. Moreover, sometimes those names sound different to the essence and the characteristics of NGOs.

All the NGOs are not non-governmental organisations. There are government sponsored ones labelled as GNGOs which is a contradiction in its own terms. Almost all the western NGOs that act as funding agencies of the southern NGOs get state grants, subsidies, tax concessions, and act as surrogates of their home governments. The organisations and the individuals who finance them cannot be said to have no profit motives. There may not be immediate profits but there are long term and indirect profits. All the NGOs will not work for development. Some provide immediate relief to the victims of natural calamities or other circumstances. To describe only NGOs as civil societal organisations is also not recommendable as non- NGOs like caste organisations and trade unions also operate in civil society. Educational institutions are also considered part of the civil society in Gramscian sense of the term. However, NGOs claim themselves to be the sole representatives of the civil society at international forums. Such propaganda is convenient to the UNO and World Bank. We have been witnessing NGOs, claiming themselves the civil society, putting the nation-states in the dock before the international bodies. All NGOs will not work at the grassroots level nor have social action groups as their base, nor all social action groups are NGOs. That is why the different names given to the NGOs such as PVO, CSO, DNGO, NGDO, CBO, SAG, GRO and the name NGO itself create mystification in their own ways.

Organisations affiliated to the political parties which do activity akin to that of NGOs, are not identified as NGOs, nor the commercial organisations or trade unions. Even some philanthropic organisations, unless they are run with or state funds are also not called so though their activities are identical with those of NGOs.

NGOs are organisations that take up non-class issues—gender inequality, environmental problems, caste discrimination etc. They are different from working class and peasant movements.

They depend for major part of their funds on corporate sector or governments. Northern NGOs and their home governments finance their Southern counterparts. There is a lot of difference between NGOs and organisations called as people’s organisations. Executives of the NGOs are paid employees belonging to the middle-class and upper middle-class. They have no connections or little connections with militant movements. Their leaders are not elected but selected and appointed. There is no or nominal internal democracy in the NGOs. They are not accountable to the people among/ for whom they claim they are working. Their report to their donors who are not in many cases within the boarders of the country they are operating. Thus, they have cross border accountability. Most of them working in the South are responsible to foreign forces on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Those organisations, which are in common parlance called as people’s organisations, are kept out side the definition of NGO even by the UNO. UNDP sees the striking difference in their organisational form. Democratic organisations represent the interests of their members and are answerable to them. NGOs in most cases have ‘bureaucratic hierarchies without the democratic characteristics or accountability of most people’s groups’.[3] They adopted unfair labour policies vis-à-vis their employees/activists and executives long before this trend has set in the country. ‘While the government has so far not adopted over ‘hire and fire’ policy even in the era of globalisation but many NGOs working for ‘grass roots governance’, ‘gender equality’, ‘pro-people’s policy’, ‘empowerment’, ‘people’s power’ have adopted this principle since the beginning matching that with the corporate houses.’[4]

NGOs are described as non-political organisations in two senses: frontal organisations of political parties are not called as NGOs; NGOs involve in no political activity. Nevertheless, both are incorrect as such an understanding conceals their actual praxis. In a wider sense, activity of NGO sector is a political activity. It is considered as ‘welfare imperialism’, ‘philanthropic imperialism’ and is in tune with the foreign policies of Western states. In addition, there are NGOs who have direct and indirect link with political activities. We come across these types of Goss in Latin America and Central America and Philippines. In Germany, each mainstream political party has a foundation, which acts as a funding agency to NGOs in other countries. In Netherlands each big NGO has the blessings of either ruling or opposition parties.

The association of Christianity with colonialism has resulted in its intimate ties with NGO sector. Last year newspapers brought into limelight the funding of Hindutva forces by some corporate giants of USA through an NGO based in Washington.

3

None of the strange developments in social and political arenas in our country are left untouched by intellectuals. However, they have not subjected the phenomenal expansion of the NGO sector to any real criticism. It is neither critiqued nor studied in depth nor analysed in a way to understand objectively the swift mushroom growth of the NGOs in our country or else where. Social critique has been hijacked by NGO sector and it is against their interest to have a critical analysis of their origin and growth. Almost all the intellectuals who are known for their critical attitude and analytical skills, started cooperating with it uncritically to their monitory advantage, and some of them even started their own NGOs. This situation shut doors to the essential assessment of NGO phenomenon. There is little amount of comprehensive appraisal of the NGO activity worldwide. According to James Petras and Henry Welt Mayor, destruction of left movements by the NGOs after replacing them and co-opting left think tank into their ranks are two important reasons for this pathetic situation.[5]

We failed to comprehend the process of colonisation and its different shades. The political and intellectual forces that are influencing the social milieu have never taken up it as a special area of study. Furthermore, these forces have themselves been colonised to large extent. Due to that, there are no in-depth studies on NGO sector.

Modernity and Westernisation are not identified as the other forms of colonisation that lead to globalisation whose components and logical predecessors they are. We are much influenced by colonial human rights perspective that perceives freedom only in Modernity and oppression in conditions of pre-modern social life. We left the  ‘swadesi’ to the monopoly of Hindu fundamentalist Sangh pariwar that are quite modernist. We, being victims of western intellectual tradition lost our selves as our intellect grew like concrete structure. We ceased to belong to our land, cultures, traditions, modes of existence, and philosophies of life. We, knowingly or unknowingly, search for and adopt the solutions shown by the foreign capital to the evils breathing in our tradition and culture. As we understand/identify problems with colonial perspective, there remained no scope for nativity in our thinking and praxis.

NGOs structures their activities aiming at elimination of conventional values and make people partake in the mission of Modernity for the sake of being drawn into market relations. They contribute to the development of private sector and subject them to the influence of the market in the fields of healthcare, education, and production.

Expansion of NGO sector ‘is an outcome that is consciously sought by those who hold power as they respond to [their] growing popularity. At the level of local and national power structures, it can be argued that a strategy of service delivery expansion permits the alleviation of the symptoms of poverty without challenging the causes. From this radical perspective, NGOs are seen as eroding the power of progressive political formations by preaching change without clear analysis of how that change is to be achieved; by encouraging income generating projects that favour the advancement of a few poor individuals but not ‘the poor’ as a class; and by competing with political groups for personal and popular action.’[6] According to Toye, NGO expansion is seen as complementing the counter-revolution in the development theory that underpins the policies of liberalisation, state withdrawal, and structural adjustment favoured by official donors.[7] Wood and Palmer Jones who studied the role of NGOs in Bangladesh wrote that they help maintaining status quo and create false notions about development and democracy.[8] Gerard Clarke considers them, as ‘magic bullets’ against problems of development.[9] For Rakia Omaar the dominance of Northern NGOs over Southern ones is ‘philanthropic imperialism’.[10] James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer call leadership of NGOs as ‘intellectual police’.[11] Michael Maron has described their activity as ‘trading in humanitarianism’ and  ‘help industry’.[12] Three decades ago, Felix Greene rightly portrayed activity of NGOs as ‘welfare imperialism’.[13]

The relationship between Modernity, development, democracy, and human rights, and the capitalist market and the other forces of globalisation define the relationship between NGOs and the people. Unless we understand these relationships we fail to understand how we are being colonised, and we could perceive only goodness in the agendas of NGOs.

Modernity, development, democracy, and human rights are all the four prime things that colonise our societies. They contribute to Westernisation/Americanisation and thus to globalisation. All are entwined socio-economic and politico-cultural categories. ‘Modernization and Westernisation were virtually synonyms’.[14] In political sense of the term, development means simulating Western political institutions i.e. democratisation in the Western sense; having regime based on rule of law, human rights, and constitutional supremacy. The capacity of the third world people to purchase goods and services offered by the West is the index of development. The ‘development as freedom’ concept of Amartya Sen[15] is not a different one. We should try to improve our purchasing capacity. Level of consumption defines the level of individual freedom. One is human and free only to the extent s/he consumes commodities and it indicates his/her humanness and liberty. That is development.

Right to development has its own history. Until the collapse of Soviet block, there were two brands of ‘development’ – capitalist and socialist. USA was declining to vote in favour of making development as an inalienable right of the peoples of the world until the time it was certain the collapse of socialist states. Thereafter it espoused the same right, as it was certain that there was only one possible definition for development. Today the right to development is in practice and in theory only a right to dependent capitalist development. UNO has conferred on us that right to be Westernised and colonised. The division of developed and developing nations shows a relationship of dominance. Development is also a neo-colonial discourse, says Nedervene Pieterse, and quoting this Rajni Kothari adds that development replaced colonialism but it is performing the same function:[16] ‘Where colonialism left off, development took over.’[17]

The economic and technological resources developed in the wake of Industrial Revolution resulted in their export to the South. The capital thus invaded the South developed a sense of inferiority in the subjugated nations and established Western cultural dominance to which we are still victims. In the same process, the same resources and culture had become symbols of development. A sense of universal human development and unilinear human development has occupied our minds. A ladder of development had been created which graduated us to believe that the West is developed more than the non-West and we have to attain that. The attainment had become, and continues to be, the ultimate goal of the non-west. Non-west had thus become ‘the other’ and made to remain so. The UNDP Human Development Reports of successive years are ploys to make ‘the other’ to aspire entry into the Western ‘we’.

The West has been disseminating ideology that Western values are products of progress of humanity and panacea to all the evils of non-Western pre-Modern societies. In the name of social reforms, they tried to develop capitalist social relations. This does not mean to say that this was intended cent percent and they fully succeeded in their mission and could achieve their objective to the fullest possible. Thus they gave us not only a frame of development and implanted in us self pity, cultural inferiority and accepted wisdom which informs us that there is nothing to be preserved out of our cultures and traditions. They could create Westernised social reformists, who often endorsed the righteousness of colonial domination, fighting against cruel native traditions, evils and superstitions, Brahminical domination, caste oppression, untouchability, and gender subjugation. K. N. Panikker’s ‘Culture, Ideology, Hegemony’ brilliantly exposed this process.[18] Communists who accused the capital of not accomplishing the tasks of French Revolution in the wake of Russian Revolution have not only failed to understand the colonial aims of the reforms but also praised reformers as harbingers of a new society and felt that they contributed to the success of New Democratic Revolution. Because of philosophical rootless ness in the Eastern societies, they thought in some contexts that the process was healthy. They appreciated social reformers with colonial frame of mind. Thus, they lent a hand to that process. They had not focused on the colonisation of mind the way they did about the economic facets of colonisation and analysed its wickedness.

From below Modernity entered in the downtrodden sections in Indian subcontinent in the form of Christianity, from above it was structured in the form of Hindu. Hindu religion is a colonial construct. Colonialists gave legal entity to all non-Muslims, non-Parsees, and non-Christians as Hindus and gave birth to the concept of pan Hindu.[19] They made Hindus those by then had not considered [and still has not been considering] themselves as such. (The Sangh Pariwar forces that are on one side massacring people in Gujarat in the name of Hindutwa, and on the other side selling the country to the West in complete cooperation to the process of globalisation have more in common with Modernity than pre-modern past. They are the creations of Modernity. That is why it seems inaccurate to compare the Gujarat carnage with medieval bloodshed).

The Modernity appeared to the society as vital, ideal and the ultimate, and heralded new professions. It affirmed that there is right to existence to those who had not entered into Modernity and declared death knell to Eastern, for that matter Southern, knowledge systems, and professions.  Anglican linguistic domination through the terrain of education ensued. To eliminate traditional education, caste professions, artisans, native medical practices it pressed into service all the sciences.

Initially Brahmins and later other upper caste people grabbed the fruits of Modernity and preserved their supremacy in the frame of Western dominance. Modernity had been regarded as bliss and Pre-modernity as a curse. Dalits and adivasis are those who were the worst casualty in this process. They were marginalized as the caste professions had been shattered, and traditional sources of employment were being blocked one by one. Exactly at this moment ‘philanthropic imperialism’ emerged in the form of Christianity. It consoled the destitute. It destroyed the religions of ‘thieves’. It thus modernised, and bestowed new identities on them and received them as part of itself.[20]

These phenomena have become in the later period more apparent even after the exit of direct colonialism. In the place of Christianity, Christian and secular NGOs grew as forces of philanthropic imperialism.

4

After World War-II the Phase of direct rule of imperialism came to a halt. ‘Independent’ countries came into being. The destiny of those countries was handed down to modern political leaders who joined hands with feudal forces. At least in the case of India it happened so. The consciousness against the colonial rule had not transformed into one of decolonisation but into one of allowing more intervention that is Western in tune with indirect colonialism/neo-colonialism and predestined towards Modernity following Western conceptions.

Simultaneously, in the guise of ‘development cooperation’ the West had lent money to the post-colonial countries, exported grants, and made them its indirect colonies. Precisely in the same period, Western countries recognised the need and employed NGOs more than before as their surrogates, and the NGOs had become close to the ruling classes yearning for more funds.

In no country, the Left had come up with the slogan of decolonisation after the end of direct colonialism.

Including political democracy based on universal franchise, judiciary, and executive that were introduced by the colonialists, the various Western methods and structures of governance allowed to exist unabatedly. Colonisation of mind and body, and in cultural terrains continued without any organised resistance. Not only governments with colonial mind set, similar opposition parties and left political formations having no different praxis, and Marxist-Leninist outfits engaging all their energies in fighting against feudal forces have emerged on the scene. Colonial human rights perspectives without any indigenous flavour flourished. Not only state activity but also anti-state activity has been Westernising and colonising the people. Those who could not enter into modernity through the activity of the state, market forces and modern education have been gaining entrance into it via such anti-state political activities.

Today, ‘Swadeshi’ is the delirious out cry of the Hindu fundamentalist forces that joined hands with the globalising capital. In the name of ‘Development’ and ‘cooperation’, continuation of neo-colonial policies, and as part of it the activities of NGOs, continued.

Development, democracy are the politico-economic expressions of the capital. They develop with inter dependence. NGOs talk about democratisation and development for the growth of economic relations supportive of the forces of the western capital in third world countries. They contribute to the destruction of the communitarian being, and facilitate production of homo oeconomicus – those who could participate in the production and consumption ‘independently’, ‘freely’ (Marx was agonised about the so-called freedom in capitalism. He found pain in the process of ionisation of human beings and negation of communitarianism by the capital. His tried to solve the problem by proposing communism[21]). Western democracy is one such instrument of individualisation. Its ideas about the exercise of right to vote praises to the skies the distancing of the voter from all the pre-modern social identities like caste, religious group, village community, and family. The process of modern political democracy was imposed on the Third world countries to create the ‘sovereign individual’ who could come up alone with the power of ‘independent’ decision-making ripping off all his relations with pre-modern social formations. (Human rights activists talk about the colonial legal system and the colonial legacy in police administration but never talks about colonial political democracy). Those individuals are the homo oeconomicus, the modern humans, the secular persons, and the consumers of goods and services of the capital.

In this context, one should understand the ‘goodness’, and developmental activities of the NGOs, and their clamour for democracy, and the prop up of the World Bank to the rule of law, democracy, and human rights. Only in this context, one will appreciate that NGO praxis would prompt the colonial education that looks down the knowledges of the pre-modern societies as ignorance, illiteracy, and no breadwinner type; the modern medical care systems, and the health awareness that make people to become consumers of the western pharmaceuticals that would colonise their bodies; the democracy that will destroy the communitarian beingness; the development that make the human relations as economic ones.

“Development aid or development cooperation is not such a lovely concept that would be experienced by the employees and scientists in that field. 

   

  

      

Bibliography

1. Baxi, Upendra. The Future of Human Rights. New Delhi: OUP, 2002.

2. Chase, Robert S. “Supporting communities in transition: the impact of the Armenian Social Investment Fund.” In The World Bank Economic Review, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2002).

3. Chris, Dolan. “British NGOs and advocacy in the 1990s.” In Making a Difference: NGOs and Development in a Changing World, edited by Michael Edwards and David Hulme, London: Earth Scan, 1992.

4. Clarke, Gerard. Politics of NGOs in South-East Asia: Participation and protest in the Philippines. London: Routledge, 1998.

5. Edwards, Michael., and David Hulme. “Scaling-up the developmental impact of NGOs: Concepts and experiences.” In Making a Difference: NGOs and Development in a Changing World, edited by Michael Edwards and David Hulme, London: Earth Scan, 1992.

6. Estava, Gustavo and Madhu Suri Prakash. Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking of Soil of Cultures. New York: Zed Books, 1998.

8. Greene, Felix. The Enemy: Notes on Imperialism and Revolution. Calcutta: Prakash Publications, 1974.

9. Harriss, John. Depoliticizing Development: The World Bank and Social Capital. New Delhi: Left Word, 2001.

10. Levy, Reynold. “Corporate philanthropy comes of age.” In Philanthropy and the Nonprofit sector in a changing America, edited by Charles T. Clotfelter and Thomas Ehrlich, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

11. Maren, Michel. The Road to Hell. New York: The Free Press, 1997.

12. Morgenthau, Hans J. “Preface to a political theory of foreign aid.” In Why Foreign Aid?. edited by Robert A. Goldwin Chicago: Rand MCnally & Co., 1965.

13. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. Development Theory: Deconstructions/Reconstructions. New Delhi: Vistaar, 2001.

14. O’Brien, Robert., anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte, and Marc Williams. Contesting Global Governance: multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2000.

15. Petras, James and Henry Veltmeyer. Globalisation Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21^st Century. Delhi: Madhyam Books,2001.

16. RadhaKrishna, Meena. Dishonoured by History. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001

17. Sen, Siddhardha. “India.” In Defending the Nonprofit Sector: A Cross-National Analysis, edited by Helmut K Anheier, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.

18. Smith, Brian H. More than Altruism: The Politics of Private Foreign Aid. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1990.

19. Van der Velden, Fons., and Lau Schulpen. Private Development Aid in Transition. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 2002.

20. Zimmerman Robert F. Dollars, Diplomacy, and Dependency: Dilemmas of U.S. Economic Aid. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993.

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[1] Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. Development Theory: Deconstructions/Reconstructions. New Delhi: Vistaar, 2001. Page-15

[2] Web cite of the Home ministry of India.

[3] UNDP. Human Development Report 1993, Newyork/Oxford, Oxford University Press. Page-8

[4] Sarangi, Deba Ranjan. State, NGOs and Tribals, EPW, January 4-10, 2003 Vol XXXVIII No 1.

[5] Petras, James and Henry Veltmeyer. Globalisation Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21^st Century. Delhi:  Madhyam Books, 2001. Page-

[6] Edwards, Michael., and David Hulme. “Scaling-up the developmental impact of NGOs: Concepts and experiences.” In Making a Difference: NGOs and Development in a Changing World, edited by Michael Edwards and David Hulme, London: Earth Scan, 1992. Page-20

[7] ibid, at page-20

[8] Wood and Palmer Jones, The Water Sellers,

[9] Clarke, Gerard. Politics of NGOs in South-East Asia: Participation and protest in the Philippines. London: Routledge, 1998.

[10] Van der Velden, Fons., and Lau Schulpen. Private Development Aid in Transition. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 2002. Page-10

[11] Petras, James and Henry Veltmeyer. Ibid. Page-

[12] Maren, Michel. The Road to Hell. New York: The Free Press, 1997

[13] Greene, Felix. The Enemy: Notes on Imperialism and Revolution. Calcutta: Prakash Publications, 1974.

[14] Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. Development Theory: Deconstructions/Reconstructions. New Delhi: Vistaar, 2001. Page-15

[15] Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom, New Delhi, OUP,1999.

[16] Ibid. Page-28

[17] Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. Development Theory: Deconstructions/Reconstructions. New Delhi: Vistaar, 2001. Page-28.

[18] Panikkar, K.N., Culture, Ideology, Hegemony, Tulika

[19] The Hindu Marriage Act does not define ‘Hindu’ positively.

[20] Here ‘religion’ (either Christianity or earlier ‘religions’ of the converts into it) shall not be understood in secular terms as faith concerning to praying god. However, what I by religion is not only a belief in God but also it involves a way of life, a worldview and a normative framework. This is more true in case of Eastern ‘relions’.Faith,  xxxxx communitarian beingness, state, medicine, education, episteme all are part of it. Hence destroying those, ‘religions’ is to be understood in the sense of destroying beliefs but also obliterating all aspects of society and life.

[21] Karl Marx, On Jewish Question,