Jain Spirit 2000 03 No 03

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 45

WORKPLACE
W
live in a world with a great divide between rich and poor, the unemployed and the over-employed. While the rich suffer from stress and insecurity, the poor suffer from hunger and destitution. Mahatma Gandhi showed us a great way of solving this problem, a new economics of work and life. He felt that good Indians should recognize their own genius, and not try to copy Western culture, which was simply a tool of colonization.
Spiritual values should not
be separated from politics, economics, agriculture, education and all other activities of daily life. In this integral design, there is no conflict between spiritual and material. It is no good for some people closing themselves in a monastic order to practice religion, and for others to say that a spiritual life is only for saints and celibates. Such a separation of religion from society will breed corruption, greed, competition, power mania and the exploitation of the weak and poor.
In India, people have lived for thousands of years in relative harmony with their surroundings: living in their homesteads, weaving homespun clothes, eating homegrown food, using homemade goods; caring for their animals, forests and lands; celebrating the fertility of the soil with feasts; performing the stories of great epics and building temples. Every region of India has developed its own distinctive culture, to which travelling story-tellers, wandering sadhus, and constantly flowing streams of pilgrims have traditionally made their contribution.
According to the principle of swadeshi, whatever is made or produced in the village, first and foremost, must be used by the members of the village. Trading among villages, and between villages and towns should be minimal, like icing on the cake. Goods and services that cannot be generated within
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Jain Spirit March May 2000
SPIRITUAL ECONOMICS
The values by which we work and run our businesses have a direct impact on the economy. Mahatma Gandhi showed us a unique new way of economy which was at heart spiritual and nonviolent, explains Satish Kumar
the community can be brought from elsewhere. Swadeshi avoids economic dependence on external market forces, which could make the village community vulnerable. It also avoids unnecessary, unhealthy, wasteful, and therefore environmentally destructive transportation. The village must build a strong economic base to satisfy most of its needs, and all members of the village community should give priority to local goods and services.
Every village community of free India should have its own carpenters, shoemakers, potters, builders, mechanics, farmers, engineers, weavers, teachers, bankers, merchants, traders, musicians, artists and priests. In other words, each village should be a microcosm of India- a web of loosely interconnected communities. Gandhi considered these communities so important that he thought they should be given the status of "village republics". The village community should embody the spirit of the home- an extension of the family rather than a collection of competing individuals. Gandhi's dream was not a personal self-sufficiency, not even a family self-sufficiency, but the self-sufficiency of the village community.
By adopting the principle of production by the masses, village communities would be able to restore dignity to the work done by human hands. There is an intrinsic value in anything we do with our hands, and in handing over work to machines we lose not only the material benefits, but also the spiritual benefits: for work by hand brings with it a meditative mind and self-fulfilment.
Why do children have to
work in the modern world?