Darryl D’Monte, Indian writer and journalist, specialized in environmental issues.
In December 1998, Indian farmers burn cotton plants that had been genetically modified using knowhow provided by the U.S. multinational Monsanto.
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Peace is not just absence of war, and non-violence is not just absence of violence. Non-violence and peace are very much dependent on the practice of active compassion. Violence and non-violence cannot be distinguished from external factors alone. The real test of compassion is our correct motivation and how we conduct ourselves in daily life and not what we merely say or do physically. The Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Laureate 1989, religious leader (1935-) |
On the whole the media have been supportive of the KRRS, which is portrayed as David battling against Goliaths which are often backed by the state and powerful multinationals
The leadership
of an Indian farmers’ movement against transgenic crops says it embodies Gandhian
principles but critics wonder whether it is being manipulated
In December 1998, when farmers in the south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh
and Karnataka torched cotton plants bred with knowhow provided by the U.S. chemical
multinational Monsanto, their activism was cited internationally as an example of
grassroots Third World opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Their
action against the plants, which were being tested for their resistance to pests,
won particular note from Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), which
has been at the forefront of the worldwide movement against GMOs and coined the term
“Terminator Technology”.
The farmers belonged to the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangh (KRRS), a movement that
regards the spread of transgenic breeds as “a new imperialist assault” on the Third
World. Today the KRRS claims to have 10 million members in Karnataka, whose total
population is 60 million.
This was not the first time that the KRRS had taken direct action against a multinational
seed business. In 1992, for example, its members occupied and ransacked the offices
of the giant U.S. seed company Cargill, in Bangalore, the state capital, and its
administrative building in Bellary.
The KRRS was formed in 1980. Its founding president, Prof M.D. Nanjundaswamy, told
the Courier that at first “the farmers tackled conventional grievances like debts,
agricultural prices and discriminatory taxes. Within a year, however, they had spontaneously
developed a comprehensive ideology to address issues raised by Green Revolution technology.”
D.S. Kalmat, a farmer from Sindhanoor, a village in Karnataka’s Raichur district,
where Monsanto’s GM cotton was tried out on a tiny quarter-acre plot, described for
the Courier some of the events leading up to a crop-burning operation.
Outflanking
traditional political parties
“We had read many articles
against genetically modified varieties,” he said. “Prof Nanjundaswamy telephoned
me in December 1998 to find out where the trial was being conducted. We discovered
that the seeds had been provided by an Indian company. The government’s Agriculture
Department had no information about the trial, and the farmer himself had no idea
of its implications. He was willing to co-operate with us till the Bharatiya Kisan
Sangh [a movement affiliated to the party heading India’s coalition government],
asked him to resist any action by our organization. Then Prof Nanjundaswamy arrived
with two activists from Spain and Germany and we burned the crop.”
Kalmat was one of 400 farmers, half of them from Karnataka, who in May 1999 went
on a month-long trip to Europe organized by the KRRS to press their case. “An International
Caravan travelled through Europe and was in Cologne to protest at the European Union
Summit and the G8 conference,” says Nanjundaswamy.
Opposition environmental movements like the KRRS have often outflanked India’s traditional
political parties. For example, no party in any Indian state has come out openly
either for or against GMOs. The mainstream parties have excessively rigid structures
and rely on their own farmers’ organizations, which are reluctant to launch spontaneous
actions and wait for diktats from the central party leadership, often based in New
Delhi.
Non-party mass movements like the KRRS have often shown up the shortcomings of the
conventional political system and its inability to comprehend the linkages between
economic liberalization and threats to freedoms on many fronts. Such groupings are
much looser, ideologically and structurally, than traditional classic parties and
draw their support from an assortment of farmers, urban activists, academics and
sometimes international environmental NGOs.
One reason why a mass movement against GMOs has risen in India, a country where 750
million out of the total population of one billion live in the countryside, is that
it is easy to whip up passions against technologies that are reminiscent of the oppressive
rule of British colonialists.
Nanjundaswamy says his movement is “based on Gandhian ideology.” Mahatma Gandhi saw
the Indian village as a keystone in his non-violent struggle against British domination
in the first half of the 20th century.
“In the Indian village,” Gandhi wrote, “an age-old culture is hidden under an encasement
of crudeness. Take away the encrustation, remove the villager’s chronic poverty and
illiteracy and you will find the finest specimen of what a cultured,
cultivated, free citizen should be.”
The Gandhian lineage of the KRRS’s ideas has also been stressed by a famous Indian
environmentalist, Vandana Shiva, who has given the movement much of its intellectual
rigour.
For Shiva, non-violence means that “we live ecologically and at peace with all species.
In India, the Earth community has never been seen to be dominated by humans. A species
are part of Vasudhaiva Kutumbhakam, the Earth family. Leaving space for others is
a measure of non-violence. . . . Genuine non-violence and democracy call for pluralistic
coalitions and multiple responses, rather than monopolization and manipulation of
movements. The horizon for activism is very wide.”
However, KRRS violence in destroying GM crops and the offices of multinationals has
been criticized by hard-core Gandhians who emphasize that means are as important
as ends. Nanjundaswamy defended KRRS actions against this accusation when he told
the Courier that “It is similar to burning British goods during the freedom struggle.
During the Quit India movement against the British, Gandhi was asked whether burning
cargo trains constituted violence and he said it didn’t, unlike passenger trains.”
Rhetoric
and symbolism
Critics are also sceptical
about the KRRS’s credentials as a mass movement. They say it is restricted to a few
agitating farmers and to their urban leadership, which seeks support from the media
and the courts rather than organizing action by even relatively small numbers of
farmers who tend to be among the better-off, with larger holdings. They also point
out that the KRRS has a traditional hierarchical structure, with a President, two
General Secretaries and a Treasurer in Bangalore, and that it is dominated by its
founder, who is said to behave autocratically. They also maintain that the complexities
of GM crops are in any case usually beyond the comprehension of the peasant. They
point out that Monsanto spokespersons in India cite other Indian farmers’ organizations
which have enthusiastically supported the introduction of GMOs.
As for last year’s European trip, the KRRS leadership emphasized that the farmers
paid their own air fares, though it is hard to imagine poor peasants being able to
do this. Obviously these were comfortably placed farmers, although Kalmat, who owns
just 6 acres, denies there are any of these in Karnataka because of land reforms.
On the whole the media have been supportive of the KRRS, which is portrayed as David
battling against Goliaths which are often backed by the state and powerful multinationals.
It is certainly true that much of the rhetoric raised against these technologies,
and Monsanto and Cargill in particular, is couched in nationalist terms. Demonstrations
against multinationals often attract nation-wide TV coverage. The media are always
keen to sniff out conspiracies, and the threat to farmers and food security from
powerful Western commercial interests is the stuff of many stories, not all of them
accurate.
In some ways neo-Gandhian movements like the KRRS are open to accusations of being
high on rhetoric and symbolic action but low on delivering the goods in international
and national fora. From all accounts, leaders like Nanjundaswamy are today somewhat
isolated and may not be able to sustain a movement against GM crops and the introduction
of other farm technologies into India for much longer.
