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INTERIM REPORT 

Conceptual and Cultural Contexts

Chapter 1

PROJECT VILLAGE INDIA

VILLAGE is founded on the remembrance of the origin of Man and of the Culture fostered. Every culture is a unique configuration. No culture is cast in stone. Culture is selective. Culture is patterned. No culture utilizes more than a fraction of the total range of human knowledge. Cultural heritage has a higher ontological value. Its tangible and intangible forms assume significance in everyday life. The forms dissolve in time, yet remain like salt in a pond of water. In truth, the process of dissolution is more fulfilling in its function than structure. Cultural heritage is not the frozen property of a particular people of a particular place; it transcends its emperical segregation and individualization to become part of a larger human heritage.

Today, culture is viewed in terms of "development", development is defined in terms of technology, and technology is idealized as an instrument of mass production related to profit and loss. The city culture of consumerism is actively propagated and higher values are eroded. The thrust of the technocentric model of development is clearly toward uniformization, homogenization and globalization. It is unconcerned with the fact that there are other systems of knowledge and other models of growth. Taking itself as a universal frame of reference, it declares all other rationalities and all other worldviews false. It claims that technologically controlled economics and science-supported aspirations alone constitute the true model of development. In its own final analysis, the modern system is infallible and the cosmologically designed and morally ordered pre-industrial societies are backward. The upshot is plain: all cultures must be reduced to a single pattern to fall in line with the "modern" world system. This view is challenged by the traditional ontology of village India.

There can be no mistaking the uniqueness of India. With 18 official languages, over 300 dialects, one billion people and 5,64,000 villages, it is a real "global village" with a single class of cultural heritage. Faced with the danger of "free-wheeling" culture borne along with the imported high technology and conspicuous consumerism, as evident in the urbanized population, India is earnestly searching for development alternatives. This project is directed to that end.

We set as our goal the study of India’s cultural heritage, the pole about which the true life of the people revolves. Our objectives and working methods are clearly of a socio-cultural nature.

Objectives

* Exploring a new approach to village study.

* Identifying the trends of technocentric development.

* Determining the inner potentiality of village life.

* Suggesting the use of cultural heritage as a tool for development.

* Mapping India’s cultural heritage zones.

* Drawing up a technical document for development planners and researchers.

Unit of study

* The village.

* 100 villages from all the 25 States and 7 Union Territories, taking only one village in States/Union Territories with less than 50 lakh population, and more than one in others, depending on eco-cultural pockets and other variables.

Selection procedure

* Average size, about 1,000—3,000 people.

* Sufficiently distant from mega-cities.

* Significant ecological (i.e hills and forest, riverine tracts, coastal areas), social (i.e. caste, community) and religious (i.e. Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian) variations.

* Uniqueness in terms of ethnic (e.g. tribal village), occupational (e.g. fishing village) and cultural (e.g. shrine village) peculiarities.

Collection of data

* Collect data from persons belonging to the highest caste, a caste in an intermediate position, and a member of the lowest caste.

* Collect local names for tools, products and processes (glossary of technical terms used by the villagers).

* Collect data on rituals, beliefs and values associated with various aspects of life.

* Collect data on traditional expressions (proverbs, metaphors), specialists’ knowledge (e.g. in ethnobotany, ethnomedicine), creation-myths, human nature, people’s view of the city culture, of Gandhi, of the God of the poor.

* Illustrate your data with maps and sketches of house types, tools and other elements of material culture.

Time frame

* Not more than 2 months.

Resource persons

* Contact a good number of informed persons at the State capital and the District headquarters.

Status in September 1999

* Two consultation meetings were held with UNESCO and UNDP in New Delhi in August 1998 and November 1998 to discuss the project profile.

* Two pilot studies (one in North India and the other in South India) were taken up between December 1998 and January 1999.

* The third meeting was held in New Delhi in March 1999 to finalize the project guide book in the light of the findings of the pilot studies.

* The fieldwork is planned in two phases: First phase, North India; Second phase, the rest of India.

* Co-ordinators were identified and were authorized to select field investigators. Among the co-ordinators currently associated with the project we have distinguished anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, agricultural scientists, ecologists and artists: M.C. Behera, N.K. Behura, A.C. Bhagabati, Ajeya Jha, C.M. Jha, Poonam Mathur, R.L. Maurya, S.N. Mishra, A.R. Momin, R.S. Negi, Rabindra Kumar Pathak, D. Patnaik, Onkar Prasad, Sachchidanand, Ahmad Saghir Imam Sastri, T.B. Subba and D.S. Tyagi.

* Field studies carried out in different parts of India (Map 1) and quantum of work done (Table 1.1) between January and September 1999.

INDIA OF THE VILLAGES

We have to make a choice between India of the villages that are as ancient as herself and India of the cities which are a creation of foreign domination. Today the cities dominate and drain the villages so that they are crumbling to ruin. My khadi mentality tells me that cities must subserve villages when that domination goes. Exploiting of villages is itself organized violence. If we want swaraj to be built on non-violence, we will have to give the villages their proper place.

- Gandhiji

Village India 

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