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Self Rule: Our Responsibility, Our Birthright

Review by Dr. Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva

Across our world, across diverse cultures, across different economic and political contexts, a new awakening is dawning — that freedom is ours to create, that tyranny is in our hands to resist.

Journalist Judah Freed has revisited Thomas Paine’s Common Sense for the reawakening of democracy. In India, we revisit Gandhi’s “self rule” (Hind Swaraj) for the defense of our fundamental freedoms. Corporate globalization is leading society to the ultimate slavery — the enslavement and commodification of life, the final enclosure of the natural resources that support all life. Commercial patents on life, the privatization of water, the globalization and corporatization of our food supply are different expressions of this final enclosure.

When life is enclosed, the inevitable consequence is extinguishing life, and defending life becomes the exercise of freedom. The right to say “no” springs from our duty to protect life on earth.

The resistance to patent laws for seeds through non-cooperation (Bija SatyagrahaBija Swaraj).

The resistance to water privatization flows from our responsibility to conserve and share our precious water resources. Non-cooperation with water privatization (Jal Satyagraha) stands upon the foundation of Water Democracy (Jal Swaraj).

The right to food sovereignty (Anna Swaraj) is also a duty to grow food without violence to the earth and our bodies. Saying “no” to agrichemicals and GMOs means saying “yes” to organic foods.

In these everyday acts of eating and drinking, freedom is now being redefined. It is the freedom to be, the freedom to live.

Corporations seek their freedom to take profits through “free trade,” imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank. Free Trade has become the ultimate dictatorship in which we are not free to save our seeds; biodiversity is not free to evolve; farmers are not free to grow crops; citizens are not free to eat the foods of their choice; water is not free to flow down rivers; and people are not free to access the clean water that sustains life.

We seek freedom to live through self rule, through self organization and self empowerment. I’m speaking about this reinvention of freedom as “Earth Democracy.” Judah Freed gifts it to us as “Global Sense.”

In a time of global corporate control, Global Sense is about personal and social transformation, starting with the inner self feeling a real recognition of our rights and responsibilities. The book is a declaration of our global interdependence based on the ideas of independence rooted in Gandhi’s principle of personal sovereignty.

As Gandhi said to India’s imperial rulers back in 1916, “You are our sovereign only so long as we consider ourselves your subjects. When we are not subjects, you are not the sovereign, either. So long as it is your endeavor to control us with justice and love, we will let you do so. But if you wish to strike at us from behind, we cannot permit it. You will have to ask our opinion about the laws that concern us. If you make laws to keep us suppressed in a wrongful manner and without taking us into [your] confidence, these laws will merely adorn the statute books. We will never obey them. Award us for it what punishment you like, we will put up with it.”

Gandhi taught us that self rule is our spiritual birthright and our moral responsibility. Self rule is the path to democracy.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a globally respected scientist, activist and author. Her books include Stolen Harvest, Biopiracy, Water Wars, Earth Democracy, and others. She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology based in New Delhi, India. For more information, please visit www.vandanashiva.org.

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