PANCHAYATI SWARAJ

Second Freedom; when my village becomes self-responsible

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3 Cultural Freedom
This freedom indicates the thirst and yearning for the aesthetic sense in man—his passion for excellence. This is a measure of how intellectually and spiritually sound a village is; it is a measure of the quality of its freedom. It deals with the merits it possesses with which it protects the rights of its citizens. It deals with how well it nurtures its human resources. It is a measure of the ease with which it overcomes any divisive influences. It is a measure of its maturity in dealing with problematic situations and conflicts.... It is also a measure of its patronage for arts, crafts, sports and games.

The totality of this can, even now, be experienced in the environs of a village. To those compulsively lost in the arithmetic of material possessions and development, much of this will sound meaningless. However, completeness and fulfillment in life lies almost exclusively in these aspects of culture. If any particular sub-group in a village experiences fear because of its label, if criminals act fearlessly and with impunity, if there is adharma or a lack of rule of law and if there is unashamed corruption and a lack of the sense of nobility, then all these indicate that a village has not evolved intellectually, spiritually or culturally.

The vision of Rabindranath Tagore aptly describes how that environment has to really be.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

For a start, every village has to ensure that all the children in the village are put through the formal process of basic schooling. It should coordinate with the neighboring villages to establish institutions that a single village cannot afford. It must support efforts of the government and private agencies at setting centers of learning in the taluka or district neighborhood of the village. It must participate actively, through the parents of the students and through the village elders, in shaping that part of the syllabi in schools which has to do with indigenous culture and values (all secular). In a holistic sense, education is the totality of culturing that happens from birth to death. It is not just about what is taught in schools. A village should therefore develop its own vision of total education and implement it in a way such that its human resources are upgraded constantly. Click here for more details.
The village must ensure that there are enough skills in the village to ensure two things. First, each individual must be skilled enough in one way or the other so that if and when he is confronted with the need for earning his livelihood, he must not have any difficulty. And second, the totality of skills available in the village (in its various citizens) must be adequate to provide all the basic services needed for the village to thrive. The village must strive to ensure that there is no monopoly in any of the required skills. Click here for more details.
The village must ensure that it upholds and provides continuity for its traditions and at the same time have the flexibility to gel with the present age and times. It must take up those activities that have been transferred through the generations and ensure patronage for them. This includes traditional sports schools, temple festivals, art forms, festival rituals, conflict resolution methods, temple dances, storytelling, dramas and other activities based on the scriptures. Upholding the traditions also relates to the values a village cherishes with respect to a host of things like marriage customs, the elderly, women, children, spouses, teachers, guests, monks, government agents, etc. But even while traditions are upheld, human rights must also be protected. Click here for more details.
Art must be considered as an integral part of the existence of the village community. It must sponsor art-related events to the highest extent possible. It must ensure that all children are groomed in at least one of the arts from an early age. As such, it will ensure that teachers of the arts are patronized in the village and that every attempt is made to help the teacher take that particular art to its spiritual heights. When creativity and art merge with daily work, it also lays the foundation for economic success. Click here for more details.
The village must resonate with the spirit of vasudaiva kutumbakam (the world is one family). It must place the commonality in man to be bigger and far more important than all differences; if the spirit is substantial and is one in everybody, then the differences of race, sex, caste, religion, tribe, thinking and physical attributes are far less important than the oneness of spirit. In brief, the village must facilitate its citizens to realize that the spirit is more important than the material. It must practice the principle of ‘specific religion in private and secular spiritualism in public’. It must also ensure the timeless principle of separation of religion and polity; authorities in religion and polity must be different individuals, and the teams that manage each of these should be separate and independent. And yet, the actions of all political leaders must be guided by secular spiritualism. Click here for more details.
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