When our hearts hearken unto the history of injustice that is metastasizing in our global body politic today what do we learn? We find the greatest crimes are those committed by pseudo-civlizations against indigenous civilizations. The propounder of PROUT, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, developed the novel but natural vision that in fact, civilization does not depend on the sophistication of one’s material lifestyle. Civilization can be judged by the level of social harmony and peace and that in this sense the indigenous peoples in Africa, South Asia and elsewhere are the truly civilized people.

“PROUT seeks to revive this legacy by uniting all indigenous peoples in the world to fight against the maddened rage of the dying beast of global capitalism.”

With characteristic candour, Shrii Sarkar said that those pseudo-civilized nations who use atomic weapons and threaten others with them, need to sit at the feet of indigenous people in India and elsewhere and learn how to be civilized. Academic studies of the most peaceful societies in the world have found the majority of them to be indigenous societies as the online Encyclopedia of Peaceful Societies shows. Yet we find all over this planet of ours, story after story of indigenous peoples being robbed of their lands and being killed when they resist. These indigenous peoples who are known by many names such as First Nations, adivasis, etc are what is called the Fourth World or people with no nation. And the rudimental mission of PROUT is to form a world government based on regional economic democracy to end once and for all the cultural, economic, social and military violence against these higher civilizations.

Ashis Nandy has commented that there are two contrasting social polarities: first there are people with history (i.e. culture, language, etc) but no geography (no place of their own) and second there are people with no history but who have geography. The later especially refers to nations like the USA, Canada, Australia and the other nations that mimic them such as in Europe and new nations in the Third World. And so we are realizing that the campaign of linguistic, cultural, economic, political, ecological genocide by the pseudo-civilizations of our era is the heart of what Arundhati Roy has referred to as nations (and hence the global body politic) eating their own nether parts.

Doctrines that advocate and celebrate such genocide can be found in the scriptures of the four main Aryan religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism (the Vedic-cum-Puranic religious matrix). Therein we find prophets of genocide like Moses and Samuel as well as avatars of genocide like Parashurama in the name of jihads that are based on the belief that God is the actual killer through these fanatics. Based on these scriptures, thousands upon thousands have been killed and thousands more will be killed in the current global religious wars. However it is the indigenous peoples who are the primary target as they are the easiest to convert, rob, rape and murder. By far the oldest legacy of this juggernaut of global indigenous genocide is found in the Indian subcontinent.

Religious Origins

In the Vedic scriptures right from the earliest Rg Veda we find the earliest forms of racism in world literature. We find in this and later Aryan scriptures celebrations of heroes like Indra who hate and kill the dark-skinned savages. This is why Shrii Sarkar has said that despite the benevolent parts of the Vedas, a new India cannot be built on the legacy of the Vedas, because they are full of racial sentiments. This racism continued in later scriptures and is prevalent in modern day India where indigenous Indians are encouraged by the media to buy face-whitening creams. This racism mushroomed during the series of invasions of Iran and India by Aryan tribes. While contemporary scholars date these invasions to 1500 BC and Hindu fundamentalism engage in Aryan Holocaust denial, Shrii Sarkar puts the date of the start of the Aryan invasion at approximately 5500 BC. It is from this time that the peaceful indigenous Indians (adi Bharatiyas) of the Austronesian, Oriental and Dravidian (mixture of Austric and African) races faced the onslaught of Aryan imperialism and genocide. These indigenous Indian in fact were highly civilized not just socially but also in Tantra yoga as Shrii Sarkar has shown in the treatise, “Tantra and Indo-Aryan Civilization”. The victorious Aryan enslaved the surviving indigenous peoples as shudras which, as Shrii Sarkar says, means, “slaves of a black complexion”. It is from this first Aryan conquest that the legacy of human imperialism began and while this legacy was partially lost during the Buddhist age, it was re-incarnated with a vengeance in the succeeding Puranic or Hindu religion. As Shrii Sarkar says,

In the varnáshrama [caste] system, women and Shúdras as groups were segregated. That was a dark chapter in human history indeed. Human beings conspired against their fellow humans to deprive them of their legitimate human rights. It can be said that the seeds of exploitation, imperialism and colonialism were sown at that time. (Discourse 10, Shabda Cayanika Part 2)

Just as analysts have explored the imperialism of Christian and Muslim imperialism through a story from their scriptures so we are now exploring the story of King Vena as a symbol and metaphor for the violence against indigenous Indians – adivasis – that has plagued India for millenniums. According to the earliest Vedic legends and the later Puranas, Vena was the first King of the world. However he was considered a wicked king because he did not bow down to the high priests (brahmins) but rather tried to make them bow down to him. In addition King Vena stopped all performance of yajinas. Yajinas are complex ceremonies of ritual animal slaughter. As per Vedic religious beliefs, the entire structure of the universe depended on this “sacred” violence or himsa. Shrii Sarkar has commented on these yajinas as follows,

In the Vedic era, the Aryans used to steal food grains and animals from the non-Aryans to perform their sacrifices and rituals (yajin’as). In retaliation, groups of non-Aryans used to attack the Aryans to recover their possessions while they were performing their rituals. These attacks were grossly distorted in the Vedas, which gives the impression that the Aryans were good while the non-Aryans were evil. In fact, the non-Aryans were forced to attack the Aryans to recover their food to ensure their survival. Did the non-Aryans do anything bad? No, they did the right thing. (“Religious Dogma”, PROUT In a Nutshell Part 16)

We can note that the same drama happens today as mining companies and other corporations steal the land of adivasis and when the adivasis resist these yajinas of “development” they are called anti-national terrorists. In any case, for these crimes of refusing to worship the upper caste priests and refusing to commit mass slaughter of animals, King Vena was killed by the brahmins. The brahmins then churned the body of King Vena from which came an ugly, black dwarf named Nishada who was banished to the forests and mountains. Nishada was the ancestor of all the adivasis of India and in fact in the Indian scriptures, Nishadas are the name of a non-Aryan tribe. Also from the churning of the corpse of Vena came fair-skinned Prithu who was the first Aryan king who respected the brahmins and conducted the yajinas. To end a famine caused by the “sins” of Vena, Prithu chased the earth goddess. The goddess changed into a cow but finally was cornered by Prithu. Then Prithu milked the goddess (now called Prithvi) who gave all the trees and other vegetation and all the food crops as her milk.

This is indeed a profoundly revealing myth. We see the racist demonization of the indigenous Indians as well as the exploitation of the Earth by the Aryans. Today the holy cow of Mother Earth and Mother India have been milked to death in the rampant ecological destruction that is prevalent in every state of India. Those who oppose such destruction are routinely murdered. However, the high priests of development only demand further sacrifices as they now start to slay the famished but fattened (on steroids of urbanization) calf of Mother Earth.

Children of Vena

With the existing corporate regime again restored to power, in 2009, there began a rush to hand out the remaining undeveloped lands of the country to the highest bidder either openly or covertly via payoffs to government officials.Today, this government is widely regarded as perhaps the most corrupt in Indian history. That in itself, is a major accomplishment. While the colossal corruption of various ministers to the tune of tens of millions of rupees is widely condemned, the relentless land-grabbing both legal (by paying off the government) and illegal, remains the real corruption that no one talks about. This is because the seizure of land goes to the very heart of the structural violence or himsa upon which Indian society functions. As the great French revolutionary Blanqui said, society is nothing more than organized cannibalism. And there is perhaps no other country on earth to which this saying applies than India. To seize an adivasi’s land is practically a condemnation to starvation, exploitation and routine violence that is part and parcel of life for the landless tribal and lower castes in India. Dr. Binayak Sen has said that there is more than enough food and money to feed all of India’s people and that the current malnutrition and starvation (worse than most African nations) in India is a deliberate genocide. For this, and for protesting the government violence against adivasis in Chattisgarh, he was thrown into jail for sedition in one of the many fraudulent cases against justice activists that India is famous for. To add to the misery of the adivasis, there are Maoist movements in these regions. The presence of these Maoists justifies routine rape and murder against adivasis by the government forces. The Maoists despite their militancy remain faithful to Indian tradition by the fact that all their leaders are only upper-caste hindus. So the adivasis are caught between upper-caste, venial, government violence and upper-caste maoist violence. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor who some years ago visited Chattisgarh remarked that though he had been to Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places, he had never ever seen a people more completely without hope and crushed spirits like in Chattisgarh.

Chattisgarh is a historical place of PROUT revolution. Right from the 1960’s when there was open killing of workers by corporations, the founder of PROUT, launched a cultural, economic and political movement to liberate the area from exploiters from other parts of India. Shrii Sarkar referred to the exploitation there as psycho-economic exploitation as it involved crushing the people’s language and local culture in order to crush the capacity to resist. This is why Shrii Sarkar worked to create a renaissance in the Chattisgarhi language and give the people pride in their culture and heritage. Shrii Sarkar also demanded that the many tribal languages of Chattisgarh and elsewhere be preserved through education. Shrii Sarkar famously said that to deprive a person of their mother tongue is akin to strangling them. Chattisgarh is the home of the Gonds or the most ancient Indians from whom the word Gondwanaland came. Their language is spoken by over two million people in India. Shrii Sarkar also gave programs to make Chattisgarh economically self-reliant based on the principles of economic democracy.

Today, in Chattisgarh, the violence has reached levels unprecedented in Indian history as the state government (ruled by Hindu fundamentalists) has created government militias like those in Colombia that routinely rape and murder adivasis with impunity. When social workers like Binayak Sen and Himanshu Kumar have protested these crimes they have been either imprisoned or made to flee by violence. When adivasi women are raped the government both state and central brazenly claim that the women were immoral women like most of tribal women.

To understand this culture of blaming the tribal victim for being raped, we can again refer to another ancient legend in the ancient Indian epic called the Ramayana. Surpanakha was an adivasi who was the sister of the Dravidian King Ravana. While she was young, her grandmother, a “demoness” had been killed by the young Prince Rama whom Shrii Sarkar has called, “the apostle of Indian capitalism and Aryan supremacy”. Later when Rama was exiled to the forests where Surpanakha lived, according to legend she is supposed to have sexually propositioned Rama and his brother Laksmana. When she would not take no for an answer, Laksmana cut off her nose and this sparked the epic war between Rama and Ravana.

We can also note that on February 6th 2011, a 16 dalit (untouchable low caste) girl had her nose, ear and part of her hand chopped off as a punishment for resisting rape. We can also note that in the month of October there were 19 rapes of dalit women in just one state of Harayana. We should also note that as per investigators, 90 percent of such rapes are not reported. In such states as Rajasthan the conviction rate for such rapes was less than ten percent. Finally we can note that Surpanakha lived in Dandak Aranya which is presently located in Bastar District of Chattisgarh and is the epicentre of the government and maoist war on the adivasis. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International have all issued detailed reports on the crimes in Chattisgarh.

In the state of West Bengal, in what is called Jungle Mahal or the tribal populated regions of Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore Districts a people’s revolt began in 2009 against the rampant violence of the ruling communist party (CPIM). The revolt began in Lalgarh. This movement saw women taking up arms and for the first time saw ordinary adivasis liberating their lands from outside exploiters and setting up their own social welfare programs. The response was to send in Central Governmental troops. Currently reporters who do not toe the new government’s line are prevented from entering Jungle Mahal. What reports that do emerge show the violence has abated and the government has tried to buy the people with poverty ration cards but the exploitation and violence against those who resist still prevails. West Midnapore was another pioneering area in which the propounder of PROUT, Shrii Sarkar, worked so hard for so many years presenting new facts about the culture of the general region of Rarh, creating newspapers and countless farming and educational service projects as well as economic plans based on participatory economic democracy. Shrii Sarkar has called these tribals as the primal Bengalis or Adi Bangali.

Also in 2009 there began another adivasi liberation movement in the nearby state of Orissa. In Orissa, it is estimated that nearly ten million adivasis have been driven off their ancestral lands and made to wander homeless and a prey to economic predators. We should also not that this part of Orissa has suffered from chronic starvation deaths for the last thirty years. The great novelist in Oriya, Gopinath Mohanty, has chronicled the rich culture and exploitation of these adi Oriyas. In 2009 adivasis in part of Koraput decided that the violence and plunder had become unbearable. An adivasi organization called Chasi Muliya Adivasi Sangha seized back lands occupied by corrupt exploiters.

The government response was to send in the military and a police massacre at Narayanapatna occurred. This organization has been suppressed but still the endless fight goes on against such companies as Vedanta. The colossal corruption of the state government has been revealed for the first time in November 2012. We can note that Shrii Sarkar used to take daily reports about the suffering people in these areas. Shrii Sarkar also demanded that this region which has a separate language (Sambalpuri) should form a separate state so that the local people are no longer exploited by outsiders. At present PROUT activists in this area are mobilizing the people in the area to fight the exploitation and violence of the state government.

Fourth World Rising

Thus far we have seen dark symbols of exploitation. However, Shrii Sarkar has revealed another ancient historical legacy lost in legend. As per Shrii Sarkar, when the Aryans invaded India, at that time there arose a powerful Tantric yogi named Lord Shiva. According to Shrii Sarkar, Shiva was born to an oriental mother and an Aryan father. He united the various non-Aryan tribes and fought the Aryans to a standstill. Having then established a peace based on justice and social equality (sama-samaja), Lord Shiva married a wife from each of the main racial groups. He created one of the first cities near modern Varanasi where people of all races and languages lived in harmony based on inner purity arising from the practices of Tantra yoga. Song, dance, medicine, yoga were just a few of the areas in which the first renaissance in human history took place based on social equality.

Today PROUT seeks to revive this legacy by uniting all indigenous peoples in the world to fight against the maddened rage of the dying beast of global capitalism. As the elders of our human family, as the guardians of our planet, it is the mandate of PROUT that there should be a cultural, economic, social, spiritual and political renaissance of every indigenous culture in the world. Furthermore in PROUT’s regional movements to fight for economic sovereignty, it is these indigenous peoples who are to take the lead. The reason for this is that in fact the detailed socio-economic programs of PROUT are nothing but the expansion of the best of indigenous societies.

Finally we also need to understand that the roots of this kind of imperialism arise from the spiritual emptiness of our pseudo-civilizations. Indigenous societies often are rooted in a primal spirituality rather than materialistic intellectuality. As a pioneer in yogic pychology, Shrii Sarkar has noted that when a person’s mind is filled with ideas that come from materialistic existence (carbonic pabula) then this is the very seed of all forms of imperialism and exploitation. The psychic and physical germs that spread this disease are what Shrii Sarkar calls negative microvita. When the mind is dominated by ideas arising from one’s spiritual experience from meditation (non-carbonic pabula) then this is the sign of a civilized person. The struggle to end imperialism will become meaningless unless we fight the innate imperialism arising from materialistic consciousness. We can note that scientists have found that even chimpanzees conduct imperialist wars in which rape and murder is common. So this instinct is innate in human psychology and this instinct becomes malignant in pseudo-civilizations rooted in imperialism against other countries and in genocide against the animal and plant worlds. This is why Shrii Sarkar concludes that,

Imperialism is a negative force, a destructive phenomenon, which generates exploitative and unjust conditions in individual and collective life. Such a poisonous radiation of black force attracts negative forces like negative microvita. Those negative microvita intensify and escalate the demonic activities of imperialism in all aspects of human society – art, literature, education, trade, commerce, industry, agriculture, morality and social relations. They cultivate a psychology based on slavery, inferiority complex, pseudo-culture and psycho-economic exploitation, and in certain cases are the cause of nihilism and cynicism.
In order to wipe out imperialism, which is rooted deep in the human psyche Neo-ethics based on the following points is indispensable:
1) The Macrocosmic Entity must be accepted as the supreme desideratum in human life.
2) There should be happy adjustment and balanced blending between carbonic and non-carbonic pabula.
This is the Neo-ethics of the present age; a panacea for the present imperialistic social ills and a mesh of psychic disorders. The application of Neo-ethics will lead to multi-lateral salvation of human society by removing economic exploitation, political suppression, religious indoctrination, cultural imposition and social subordination…
So we are to unite the entire humanity not only of this land of India or Asia or the globe, but of the entire universe. We must not support any sort of imperialism, any rule of one group over another. If there is any “ism”, any exploitation of one group of humans over another, the peace and tranquillity of the social order is sure to be disturbed. So in the socioeconomic arena, in the spiritual arena, in cultural life – in all the different arenas, spheres and strata of life – we should be very vigilant, extremely vigilant, not to allow any sort of imperialism to invade our psycho-spiritual world by coming through the back door…
And you should also always remember that there must not be any imperialism in the linguistic field, the cultural arena or the socioeconomic sphere. PROUT is based on this fundamental principle. (“Neo-Ethics of Multi-Lateral Salvation”, Microvita In a Nutshell)