Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Vandana Shiva : Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom [Sous-titrée en Français]

[Music]

My grandfather was part of the freedom struggle.

A group of five friends realized that if we only fight for freedom

and when we'll get freedom we won't be prepared.

So they decided, even before independance,

to start working for the post-independance period.

And he said

The part of India that's been most crashed

Is women and the education.

And I'm going to dedicate my life to the education of rural girls.

He started to start schools

The school where he was

very very happy

wanted to become a college.

In those days in Gandhian days, you went on a fast

for a social purpose.

Like Gandhi used to go on a fast for peace

and harmony, all the time.

My grandfather went on a fast

and he died

during that fast.

The next day the president came

to declare it would be a college.

One day too late.

I was born here

And my parents were in the valley up that way, Chakrata.

When my mother was expected to deliver

They rush down to this valley.

My mother had me.

I've grown up in these mountains

But even in these mountains

while traveling with my dad on horseback and walking

because he was a forest conservator.

In the librairies,

in the rest houses,

in these forests,

there used to be books

And with the lanterns, we used to read the books at night.

I was particularly touched

by a book

of Einstein's essay

on society and science.

I said, this is the kind of person I wand to be:

To have knowledge to serve people.

My heart got set on physics

I went to school where they did not teach physics.

But I still followed.

I did my PhD on the foundations of Quantum Theory.

But before leaving,

I decided to go up for a short treck

I was in Delhi,

I got my visa,

I was set to fly.

I said before going let me go to the mountains once

Carry it in my heart.

And the forest I visited up in a valley

on the Ganga side

The forest was gone and be converted into an apple orchard

The stream, that used to come out of it

A really full stream

Was now a trickle.

I was so disturbed

I felt parts of me had been cut

because I really grew up as part of the forest.

I felt amputated.

I was so disturbed,

I was talking to this person on a roadside making tea.

And I talked about how disturbed that I was,

how I walked these areas on foot.

He said: "But now there is hope,

The Chipko movement has started."

Chipko was the movement to hug trees

And the women of this region

stopped logging in the high mountains

I took a pledge that every holiday I'll give to Chipko.

I'll do my quantum theory

But I'll come back

And do my Chipko volunteering.

Chipko made me so deeply aware of

how rich our country was in biodiversity,

how rich

people were

in knowledge of biodiversity.

Women who'd never been to school

Were as good as give me a talk

that was like a PhD thesis.

I always say I went to the Chipko University

for biodiversity and ecology.

I learned my activism there.

I learned to respect indigenous knowledge there.

I learned how to defend with love with an embrace all of life in diversity.

When Punjab erupted in violence in 1984

and the Bhopal disaster took place the same year

where a pesticide plant killed thousands of people in the city of Bhopal.

Punjab violence killed 30,000 people.

I was working then

for the United Nations University

on a program called "Conflicts over Natural Resources"

as part of a bigger program on peace and global transformation.

I said something is going on here I need to go deeper into it.

Will you let me?

Because still then, I was looking at forest conflicts,

river conflicts, land conflicts, typical environmental conflicts.

They said : "Sure !"

I wrote the book called "The Violence of the Green Revolution"

As part of the United Nations University Program

I wrote a book on ecology and the politics of conflicts

"Politics of Survival"

But it's that book on Punjab

while researching for it

I learned three things :

- First, that we were told that the chemical agriculture

called "The Green Revolution"

Produced more food.

I realized that the Green Revolution does not grow food.

It grows commodities.

This green deserts of just rice in one season and wheat in one season

sprayed with poisons, fertilized, irrigated

getting farmers into debt.

The soil is dead.

The rivers are dying.

The ground water is dying.

There is a cancer train that leaves Punjab

called "The Cancer Train"

It did not hang right.

I wanted to know: Where these chemicals come frome?

Why do we even use this?

Because my mother

even while she had me

she had become a refugee in this terrible partition of India.

Absolutely engineered by the British

as part of their dividing rule

and sadly

it has been carried on, even today.

All these years after our independance.

So my mother was trapped

because my grandfather was so committed to education.

He'd given total freedom to my mother to study.

She was the first in the community to do post graduation.

She became an inspector of schools.

She was in a camel in a desert

inspecting schools in what became Pakistan.

She was rescued.

Because my father happened to have been before that in the army.

When the person who went to save her

was being caught

he started to yell my dad's name.

The captain on duty at Amritsar trade railway station

Happened to have served under my dad

in the Burma War,

in the World War.

He said : "Did you serve Major Shiva ?"

He said: "Yeah"

He said: "Don't worry, we'll rescue Mrs.Shiva"

My mother was saved.

That's how I'm here !

But the partition

Had so devastated this land.

But my mother had been highly educated.

When she came here, she came back.

You know, people were being given equal jobs.

If you were a government servant, you became a government servant.

If you were inspectors of schools, you became an inspector.

She said : "No, I have broken every glass ceiling,

now I want to be a farmer again."

She started a farm.

I used to play on the farm,

and the farm used to look like this !

So, for me

chemicals in farming were a mystery.

Where did they come from?

I was busy studying my physics

going to school,

going to university,

becoming a science scholar.

I had no idea what happened behind my back

in 1965 when I would have been in the tenth grade.

Then I realized the chemicals came from Hitler's labs.

They came from IG Farben.

All the companies who control our food

Today

born

of IG Farben.

I did a lot of research

both of how agriculture is thaught

to respond to chemical farming.

And I realized they teach nonsense

like the soil is an empty container

when it is the amazing ecosystem

so rich in biodiversity.

But I also learned more about these companies

that had only one skill:

the skill to kill.

The skill to kill can't be a life science.

It cannot be the basis of how to take care of life

which is agriculture

how to take care of the Earth.

- I also learned at that point that basically

chemical agriculture called the Green Revolution

was neither green nor revolutionary

because in my view green means

"Of the Earth"

"According to the Earth"

Where the birds you can sing

Where the bees you can see

You're not in competition with them to exterminate them.

And it's not a revolution because

revolution as you know in France

Comes from the bowels.

They rise from the bottom.

This was a top-down project

to continue a market

for leftover war chemicals

and agriculture became like war.

Then I realized no wonder

Pendjab was like war of 30,000 deads

No wonder

Bhopal was turned into a concentration camp,

thousands deads.

This is happening all the time in agriculture

whether there is a debate on glyphosate

or there is a debate on glyphosate linked cancer deaths.

Everywhere.

Basically, Hitler's project is continuing

in our fields,

in our farms

and in our gut?

It must end.

It will only end

that facism legacy

when we end chemical farming.

- The third thing I learned

while doing this work

The corporation were ready to bring the next technology,

the biotechnology.

In 1987 when I get invited to a meeting

in Geneva and France in Bogève

The meeting has this "poison cartel" as I call them

and they say: "We are too small

we got to get bigger."

And they are so big

At that time they said "We'll be five companies

controlling food and health by the year 2000."

They are now four.

Food and health.

Let's not forget that the same companies

give you poisons that give you cancer.

Same companies like Bayer which bought Monsanto

then give you cancer drugs

patented.

They talked about owning life.

They talked about patents on seeds.

They talked about GMOs necessary to own life.

They never said GMOs to feed the world.

1987

it was we want to own life to collect rents, to collect royalties.

These royalties will be our future profits.

Because it's not enough we do it in Europe and America.

Because these companies were largely European and American

We have to have an international treaty

that imposes over the world.

That's how intellectual property enters the GATT

The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs

enters the WTO.

That's what put me on the path of

creating Navdanya,

saving seeds,

spreading freedom.

[Transition]

Our collective consciousness has created

the world where we live.

In the beginning of this part,

Vandana enlightens beliefs

that have structured

our way of living

and our perception of the world.

Every part of the assumption

that the prosperity of society

is the accumulation of wealth

is wrong for two reasons.

The first reason is

Prosperity of society is based

on the vibrance, the abundance of Nature.

The minute we start destroying the Earth,

we are destroying the prosperity

in my view of 75% of humanity

most of Africa, most of Latin America,

most of Asia

and I would say all of the human citizens

because ultimately they depend on Nature

for the air,

for the water,

for the food,

for the identity.

But the second reason it is wrong is

accumulation of wealth

in the hands of five billionaires

who control half the wealth of the world

is at the cost of taking away prosperity of ordinary people.

Otherwise you wouldn't be having protests on the streets of India right now,

you wouldn't be having protests every day on the streets of France,

you wouldn't be having protests in England

you wouldn't be having protests in Chile

you wouldn't be having protests in Lebanon.

You wouldn't be having the level of protests everywhere

if people

were feeling they have prospered under the new liberal policies of

taking away from society.

What is neoliberalism ?

Two elements:

- deregulate commerce, allow money to be made at any cost.

- austerity and structural adjustment.

Make the people pay

for this project of accumulation of wealth by the billionaires.

Just like the chemicals came from the war

even the measure of economic prosperity

as growth comes from the war.

The word GDP

and GNP

the "Gross Domestic Product" and "Gross National Product"

are inventions of the war to mobilize resources for the war

by taking away resources from people.

It's in the definition of growth

to rob society, to finance militarization.

It should have ended when the wars ended

but they've made it permanent

as a result of which we get dispossession of people on a very large scale

and the division and polarization of society

between the 1% and the 99%.

But most seriously,

as I say in my book oneness versus 1%,

the new styles of accumulation

are actually a return

to the old brute colonization

as the womb of contemporary capitalism.

It is about invaders

defining an area

as their territory and colony

by force and violence

And then saying:

"You, the original people, will pay us rents

So we get rich sitting in London,

we get rich sitting in France,

we get rich sitting in Brussels,

we get rich sitting in Amsterdam.

We do not work

but we collect rents

by creating colonies

of rent collection.

If you look at the top ten billionaires

about whom I've talked in the book

beginning with Bill Gates

but the likes of Mark Zuckerberg

How did these 10 billionaires become so rich?

Because in the facts they're doing

the same as what Columbus did

the same as

the East India Company

that was created to colonize India did.

Take our land,

Colonize it

and collect Lagaan

which is the tax

from the people whose common property it was in the first place.

So, if you think of patterns on seeds

which is what started me on the Navdanya journey

it's a new form of Lagaan.

It's a new form of tax on seed

on life.

Life renews.

The seed will give birth to seed.

And you want to say :

"No seed you will take my permission to renew.

I will cause to you, not just to society."

I call this bioimperialism.

So growth

is not just an illusion.

Illusions just make you

behave stupidly.

But these illusions are born of

two

violent projects :

colonialism

and Hitler's extermination camps.

They are based on ecoside and genocide.

That's why it's not an accident today

that ecocide and genocide

are what are destroying the world.

The sad thing is the people who fight ecocide

The people who fight human rights

for human rights

are a different community.

It's when we return to the Earth

we realize it's one right.

The rights of the Earth and the rights of people are one right.

If it was true that

more power and more

accumulation

will bring you happiness,

look at the faces of those who have

the highest power economic or political right now.

Make a collage.

You are the artist !

Make a collage

of the new dictators !

So unhappy, they look.

They don't look happy.

Their eyes have no message.

Separation is the heart of the illusions

of dominating, colonizing, extracting

civilization.

As Gandhi said it would be a good idea

it's not a civilization because

to have a civilization you need to be civilized.

Brutality is not being civilized.

A separation was created

when

colonizers left Europe

to invade into other people's place.

They separated themselves

from their home and responsibility

to create justice at home.

But they also forced people through violence

to separate them from their land,

their homes

and exterminated 90% of

the First Nations of America.

It was built into the science that developped

to justify

the colonizing of the Earth.

This was the science of Newton.

This was the science of Bacon

who''s called "the Father of Modern Science"

and he has said so clearly

in his book "The Masculine Birth of Time"

The idea that we are part of Nature

and we can know her through participation

is an effeminate idea.

« I'm going to create a masculine knowledge

that will dominate Nature and subjugate her

and conquer her

to create a class of superheroes. »

Well, it's the class of superheroes who made a mess of the world.

That's separation

was a construct

It was fine

for putting cannonballs

and shooting.

It's very good

way of describing how a cannonball moves

but It's a bad way of describing

how nature works.

My PhD in quantum theory

was my deep understanding

of non-separability as the very nature of Nature.

Even in physics.

Of course our life is indivisible.

But even in physics through quantum theory we know

mechanical physics is a hundred years outdated.

We're still using it as

the dominant way of framing the world.

Quantum theory tells us

that everything is connected.

Nothing is separable.

Two particles

that have been one

even if you separate them

they're never separated.

There's action at a distance.

It's not just action by collision and force.

Non separation

is the nature of reality.

Non-separability as science

is the authentic science of understanding reality

from the quantum world

to the living ecological world.

It's the illusions of those who would be masters of the universe

who construct a Science

with a capital "S"

as their knowledge of domination

but it's not knowledge of how nature works.

Knowledge of domination is not knowledge of

how the dominated works.

Knowing how to be violent

and creates through instruments of violence

is not any sensibility

of how the one you're shooting dead.

Things lives is happy or sad.

This is so much

a part of the illusion and ideology of separation

because in

Indian philosophy

including the Buddhist stream

We breathe in

And then I breathe out

This is called Prāṇa, life.

The act of breathing in and breathing out

is called Prāṇāyāma.

Central to yoga.

When we say we are meditating

and saying

Soham.

You are

therefore I am.

In these times of crisis,

humans tend to escape the reality

by using technology gadgets,

green brainwashing,

or fake altruism.

In this part, Vandana distmantles

those illusions

one by one.

The destruction that we are facing

where are literally on the brink

and we are going to

be pushed off the precipice

if we don't change our ways.

This is now so clear

the IPCC's of the world

the climate change panel

to the biodiversity panels

just people on the streets who are leading

all kinds of movements.

The idea that

this system which is totally deeply

interwoven,

its instruments of technological context,

its instruments of economic extraction and exploitation,

its instruments of absolute

undemocratic

centralized

power

and

governance through militarized surveillance forms.

This is one piece.

I can't change one element of this

and keep the rest of the piece together

and expect it to suddenly become "green".

Just like the Green Revolution

destroyed the content of the word "green"

as meaning ecological.

The new green technologies,

the new green economies

are doing exactly the same

as what the Green Revolution did.

The Green Revolution destroyed the heart of Agriculture

which is culture

of the land.

This is destroying the heart of economy

which means the art of living.

Here we're sitting.

We are a solar panel.

This amazing sun is shining

in our beautiful Doon valley.

That sun is shining on every leaf,

on every grass.

In Monsanto's view

these beautiful plants

- many of which are medicinal -

are stealing the sunshine.

That's how someone had used to talk about the Roundup-Ready crops

in the UN negotiations

on the Convention on Biological Diversity.

I'm talking of the early nineties

because in 1992 the Convention was signed.

Plants steal the sunshine.

It should only come to my

intellectual property protected solar panel.

First of all,

let's understand that the solar part of it

might not come from fossil fuels

but your aluminium,

your big infrastructure,

your distribution

is all coming

by extracting from the Earth in non sustainable ways.

Look at a simple metaphor of today.

When the Copenhagen

was undermined by President Obama

ganging up with the group of polluters

who've again killed

the Madrid summit

saying "No we will not be regulated.

We have a right to pollute.

We have a right to trade and make profits and pollution."

When Copenhagen collapsed,

for Copenhagen I had written my book "Soil not Oil"

showing how agriculture

industrially based on poisons and fossil fuels

is 50% of the problem of climate change.

Farming done with Nature, biodiversity,

Sun through the photosynthesis

not through a solar panel

is the big solution.

At that point when obama undermined

the Copenhagen summit,

the heads of states were still inside the negotiating room

and Eva Morales caught up and said

"We were here

to negotiate the rights of Mother Earth

We were not here to negotiate the rights of the polluters.

Whatever the five did

is not what we subscribe to.

I am going back to Bolivia

and I will call a global meeting

of people of citizens of the world

on rights of Mother Earth

and climate change."

Which he did

and I became part of the core group

that evolved the

the draft declaration on the Universal Rights of Mother Earth.

What happens this year?

Lithium is found in Bolivia.

Central

to electric cars.

which are being sold as a green miracle by everybody.

"I'll ride a car but I'll ride an electric car."

if the electric car needs lithium

and if Eva Morales says

"I will not give the German companies the rights.

It'll be a national assets."

There's a coup.

So the "green economy" of violence

and continued colonization can come over.

I do feel

the reductionist environmentalism

and technocratic environmentalism

is a big part of the problem right now

because that's where the big money is moving.

A lot of people who've been brainwashed

to think

that the tools of conquest

will be tools of healing Mother Earth.

They really need to take a step back and say

"Let's take lessons from the Earth and

and not from the billionaires."

For me this

issue

of

technology and innovation

are part of the way the old colonization

which needed a "civilizing mission"

you can't just go and murder somebody.

So the civilizing mission then was

"We are Christians, we are civilized.

You're not Christians, you're barbarians.

I have to civilize you.

I have a burden

to civilize you

and if I have to kill you in the process

I'll kill you to liberate you

because this my civilizing mission."

All of the genocide of the first colonialism

was done on the notion of the superiority

of the Christian religion of Europe.

There were Christian religions all over the world

long before Europe became Christian

including the Orthodox Christianity.

But our kind of Christianity

where the Pope

tells king and queens

through the papal bull:

"Go conquer the lands not ruled by white Christian princes."

Today's civilizing mission

is the billionaires saying:

"We're going to find new tools

to conquer

and if you don't have that tool,

you're a barbarian."

In our country,

India just like in the first colonialism

the East India Company

was the lab of creating the first cooperation.

It was a lab for creating

the big rent collections.

It was the lab

for creating a whole new economy

based on the naturalness

of the rights of the conqueror.

India is a lab

in this colonization

of the civilizing mission being tools.

Tools have never been civilizing mission,

they're pathetic means.

We should have ten tools

When I used to trek with my dad

up in the mountains,

he's always have his lantern

and his petromax

and a few candles.

And in some rest houses

there would be electricity.

My dad used to say:

"You should always be prepared

with plurality of tools."

And that's how we grew up.

So, I never take a tool as superior.

I see a group

imposing a tool

I say "new civilizing mission"

because I want the freedom to write with a pen,

to write on a paper,

to maybe write a message

on a dumb phone.

Why do I have to be forced

into

the global Empire of

the Bill Gates,

the Mark Zuckerberg,

the Bayer and Monsanto

and they are becoming one

with the new convergence of information

technologies and bio technologies

as I've written in my book "Oneness versus the 1%"

But even the word "innovate"

they keep thinking

as if

just as that time

it was assumed we have superior religion.

It's now assumed we have superior brains.

No Mr. Gates,

you stole the "Word Program",

the BASIC program.

You did not create anything.

You did not.

Even Zuckerberg

from his friends

stole the party

making network.

None of them are creators.

They thieve.

Just like in the first colonialism:

who were the group of people

who became the East India Company ?

The merchant adventurers.

They used to be called "pirates" in those days.

Films are made on pirates.

they were pirates.

Today's fellows are also pirates.

They steal.

The word "innovate"

doesn't mean to create new

It means to renew.

When the seed goes into the soil,

it is innovating.

When I get up in the morning fresh,

I'm innovating.

Life is an innovation

because it is under constant renewal.

Innovation does not mean

to invent a new chemical

or a new machine

or a new GMO.

They have hijacked

not just

the old vocabulary

of the old colonialism

and civilizing missions.

They're trying to hijack

our words,

our imagination,

our ability to think.

And that to me

is

the final colonization.

It's as human beings

will be able to say "No".

This is what makes me human.

And say your definition of me

as a human being

is basically

a definition to empty me of my humanity,

to empty me

of everything that makes me

part of larger hole.

I'm sorry I will not cooperate.

Every time I realized that something

is causing harm to the Earth

or local communities with all my work.

I ask myself:

what is it that I can do

to heal?

The billionaires and

the colonizers of today

who have brought the world

to the brink,

what are they prescribing?

When we escaped from Europe

in the first colonialism

we messed up the Earth

extinction is inevitable

let's escape to Mars.

Why is this so wrong?

It's first wrong

because you don't understand

This Earth is the only living Earth

No matter how much research you do

on Mars.

You might find five drops of water.

The rivers are here,

The oceans are here,

The rain and the climate is here

This is the living planet

as often people say

There is no planet B.

You're blind to the reality

of your own home.

Secondly,

you've already admitted

as Elon Musk did.

"I'm going to take a billion

dollars for the fare to Mars

and maybe a million will escape.

Are you then saying

the six billion

can be allowed to be exterminated?"

I would say to the billionaires:

"Get into a plane today

and go to Mars

and leave it to us

to heal the Earth."

Partly because

I've grown up

for a large part of my life

in the forests or solving

quantum equations.

Everything that is doing harm

to me

has come

through solidarity

and

wanting to find out

where does this harm come from.

For example,

because of Chipko

I started to look at

why was rich India with

so many diversity of trees

planting Eucalyptus?

Then I found behind the World Bank.

I always say

"I found the World Bank hiding behind a eucalyptus tree."

There's not much to hide

behind such a pathetic linear tree.

I would not have known about the World Bank

without the disaster of eucalyptus monocultures.

I would have not known

about Bill Gates and his role

without the disaster

of his imposing the Green Revolution in Africa

and Africans reaching out to me

and saying:

"You worked on the Green Revolution.

Tell us what it does."

Then I find out he's imposing it

on a continent level scale

after it has destroyed

the state of Punjab in India.

We have all the data of what it does.

It's chemical,

it's water intensive,

it's capital intensive,

it leaves the soil desertified,

it mines the water

and now

with biotechnology and with partnerships with Monsanto

it's mining genes.

Bill Gates gives money

for

CRISPR,

the new technologies.

He's created this field

with his "philantro-capitalism"

at a time

where genetic engineering is failing

as a project of genetic reductionism.

We know

the world is interconnected.

In four years time,

according to him,

it is ready for commercialization

even though the scientists

the original scientists who do the work,

say:

"For every edit we do of one gene,

there are 1,500 unpredictable changes

in the genome.

We got look more about what's going on."

We don't have to wait.

We'll deregulate,

we'll commercialize.

His militarize mind doesn't stop there.

He joins with the Defense Research Agency of America

of Pentagon

and elevate this

absolutely undeveloped untested

gene editing technology

to put it on

hormones

and say now we will do gene dries.

Gene dries is by deliberate modification

pushing species to extinction.

We have the beautiful amaranth on this farm.

He wants to push the amaranth to extinction

because the genetic engineering of the first generation

has made amaranth

a super weed in American farmlands.

It's totally tolerant to glyphosate.

You have a super resistant glyphosate tolerant

amaranth.

Now he wants to push amaranth to extinction.

They have a footnote:

"It might have impact

on India's food security

because they amaranth."

No we don't just eat amaranth.

It's nutritious.

If we ate amaranth

we wouldn't need golden rice

and a sacred.

Golden rice a project started in the year 2000 failed.

It was wiped out.

How did it become alive now?

Bill Gates money.

How did the BT eggplant,

the aubergine

which was rejected by Indians,

a moratorium was put on it.

How did it come to Bangladesh?

Mr. Gates.

An observation field

to see how the crops perform

in the ground

and at the market.

Seeds are made available

for wide spread distribution.

My name is Hafizur Rahman

I'm from Konabari, Tangail District

I have cultivated BAR Bt Brinjal 2 and 3 for the first time in Tangail.

Fruit and shoot borers used to attack the local varieties

I grew in the past

those plants required a lot of pesticide.

It was costly.

Now I can save money by seiling Bt brinjal

and it's very beneficial.

Wherever Mr. Gates

gives his philanthropy

is an actual reality and investment.

An investment

for a world

where he is part of the master of the universe.

Otherwise,

if I have stop earning,

and I'm only giving.

My bank account will keep getting lower.

I will then become a hundredth richest man.

How does Bill Gates constantly stay the richest man while giving?

Surely

His money is working for him.

Where's the money working for him?

Because his philanthropy capitalism

is carving out the new colonies

where rent collection

will keep making him rich

and powerful.

My biggest critic of him:

this is what really got consolidated

in Paris during the climate summit.

He was strutting around on the stage

with all the heads of state

announcing what will come out of Paris.

The heads of states, a head of state.

He is a billionaire.

He is not part of elected representatives.

What's going on?

A large part of the book

grew out of that observation.

He's pushing geoengineering

to totally alter the planet.

He thinks

he's totally master of the Earth.

More importantly,

even more importantly,

He is now thinking his billions,

Neoliberalism crushes people.

It takes away employement,

takes away pensions,

takes away job security

But on nations,

the same neoliberalism

and structural adjustment

crushes countries through privatization

and austerity.

Governments don't have money.

He comes with a dangling 1 million

and says:

"Do this your health program"

And he runs our health policy.

"Do this in agriculture".

He runs an agriculture policies.

"Do this in your finance.

Ban your cash.

Force it to be digital so I can collect the rents

on the Microsoft software."

"Force one uniform tax on your country,

the GST.

I'll sell the software to you

and lock your companies in."

Those are the things that are crushing India

and our GDP,

a bad measure

but whatever measure it is.

Bill Gates is dangerous

because he's taking,

he's usurping

what little space of democracy

exists

and establishing a naked dictatorship

of the new Columbus.

Now that Vandana has pointed out

the irrelevance of technology

or philantropism

to help humanity.

She explains what is the root of human sufferings.

The roots of human suffering

are of course

ego, separation.

Not transcending

the reality of life's ups and downs.

The fact that there will be pain,

there will be suffering,

there will be illness

and there will be death

as Buddha woke up to the fact.

You can't overcome death

But you can overcome the pain

that from the separation of death

through becoming part of a larger

worldview

becoming part of a larger universe

in your consciousness.

Humanity has been

through periods of

those in power enhancing human suffering

because they've defined their power is absolute.

Otherwise we would have not a Christ

who had to throw the moneylenders

tables in the temple.

He too was rebelling against

the abuse of economic power.

You wouldn't have had

the Guru Nanak

preaching peace and equality.

Today across the world

these temples of Sikhism

are giving food to anyone

without asking:

"Are you Christian?

Are you Jew?

Are you Muslim?

Are you Hindu?

Anyone

who comes

gets the gift of food

because the gift of food is a gift of life.

Suffering

was

Imposing suffering was justified

you see suffering is inevitable in life

but impose suffering

began in a systematic way

globally with colonialism

I am not saying all societies were perferct.

The thing was

a tribe that went wrong

went wrong within the tribe.

It just messed its own situation up:

it over exploited,

its nature went extinct

created hunger

died of famine.

For the first time,

we created instruments of

global imposition of suffering

through colonialism

and full of powers

As Gandhi said

a small island nation,

England,

could destroy the whole world.

What I see happening today

is that

with the wars,

with putting the genocide of Hitler behind us

and putting institutions like the United Nations in place

We now have regimes in power

who have brought the colonial mode of governance

back as the fashionable economics.

They call it "neoliberalism",

"deregulation".

It's nothing but recolonization.

Everything that was done

in the colonial periods

is being redone now

not just to the other out there

but to the others in your society

Everyone is colonized.

I'm increasingly feeling,

even those who feel

we are part of the game.

"I got my smartphone.

I'm doing my Facebook,

I've got friends."

They too are colonized

because we are the new raw material.

For the Zuckerberg of the world,

we are the raw material.

Whose

mind is being mined

to fuel hate campaigns for politicians

and keep them in power.

We are in a mess

and the only way

we can get out of this suffering

is first to realize how

it's being perpetrated

in the worldly level

and then to understand

we are part of a bigger world

And the two together

is what will allow us

to have the power that comes from Oneness

the power that comes from solidarity among human beings

which is what the UN system

is supposed to be about

But also the deeper part

that comes from the realization

we are part of a universe,

a very loving universe.

In this part, Vandana will lay out

concrete solutions

that would lead humanity of freedom.

Gandhi has been a source of inspiration for Vandana.

He is a source of inspiration for many people

in his way of resisting

using non-violent tools.

One of these tools is called "Satyagraha".

"Satya" is "Truth"

"āgraha" is "The force of truth"

and acting

from the truth

against injustice

against

violence against the Earth

is Satyagraha.

The Satyagraha of the mind

is not participating

in the militarized mechanistic

monoculture of the mind

that is allowing the destruction of the Earth

and

the injustice to society.

Gandhi used of Satyagraha

began in South Africa in 1906

exactly as on the streets of India right now.

People are marching

against compulsory

registration,

the threat of compulsory registration

through a national registrer.

That's exactly what the apartheid regime

was bringing to bear.

The Bristish

had

taken over parts of South Africa.

They had before that

brought the indentured labour from India

as slaves

to work on the plantations.

The blacks worked in the mines,

the labour of India worked in agriculture

Of course traders went

and lawyers like

Gandhi

who had studied in England

went there to deal with some legal cases

He was thrown out of the first-class

compartment

though he was a lawyer

and his ticket had been bought in first class

and he first woke up to race.

- Tell me,

do you think about hell?

No

neither do I.

This man here

is a christian

and he's written that in order to believe

- Excuse me Sir,

how long have you been in South Africa?

- A week.

- I don't know how you got a ticket...

- What are you doing in this car coolie?

- I have a ticket.

A first class ticket.

- How did you get over it?

- I sent for it in the post

I am an attorney

and I didn't have time to...

- There are no colored attorneys in South Africa.

You aren't sit where you belong.

- I take your luggage back sir.

- No no no,

just a moment please.

You see

Mohandas K. Gandhi

attorney at law

I'm on my way to Pretoria

to conduct a case

findung the trading fare.

- Didn't you hear me?

There are no colored attorneys in South Africa.

Sir,

I was called to the bar in London

and enrolled at the High Court of Chancery,

I am therefore an attorney

and since I am in your eyes colored

I think we can deduce

that there is at least

one colored attorney in South Africa.

- Smart bloody cattle.

Throw him.

- Just move your black ass back to third class.

Or I'll have you thrown over the next station.

- But I always go first class !

Because in England

the whites who colonized

just were his friends

They were classmates.

But he experienced racism.

personally in Pietermaritzburg

and then when they started to basically

try and create a compulsory registration

dividing people by race

like in India

they are trying to divide by religion.

Gandhi said

we will not obey

He was supposed to come back to India

but he stayed on

to help this fight

for the deeper humanity.

He said: "We're one citizenry

united in our humanity.

We will not be divided by race."

That Satyagraha

was his training ground

of how not to cooperate with unjust law

He said as long as the illusion exists

that unjust law will be obeyed

so long slavery exists.

The minute

you take that illusion out of your head,

Satyagraha emerges in a very natural way

saying:

"What's the higher law

for which you must

not obey

that pathetic law?"

When he came back to India

He was called by the people already fighting

against the forced slave conditions

of Indigo.

Indigo used to be planted

for export to England.

Indigo was the blue dye.

It used to be exchanged for a sack of indigo in a sack of gold

Of course the British wanted as much of it as possible.

They wouldn't let the peasants grow food.

There was a lot of discontent.

The movements were already there.

Gandhi was called.

The British said:

"We'll have to arrest you

because you can't enter this area."

And he said:

"But I have to obey the higher law."

Two years ago I did a peace pilgrimage

in a freedom pilgrimage

on the hundred years

of his Champaran Satyagraha

because Champaran was the place

where he went

on the plaque

there's a beautiful thing.

He says:

"Because my conscience tells me I must stand with my brothers

and sisters.

I cannot obey your orders

that say you cannot come.

Because my higher calling

asks me to stay here."

Then the movement grew

and our former president,

amazing leaders

worked with him.

They managed to stop indigo cultivation.

In 1930,

The British tried their next level of creating a colony:

the salt of the oceans.

Gandhi took a long march of hundred of miles

calld "The Dandy March".

He picked up the salt from the sea.

And said:

"Nature gives it

for free.

We need for our survival.

We will continue to make salt.

We will not obey your laws."

And the salt Satyagraha began.

His march was more symbolic

and he was arrested.

But on the east coast,

thousands were shot dead

for making salt.

When I started Satyagraha

for the seed

I took inspiration

from the salt Satyagraha.

And I said:

"Well nature gives these seeds to us.

Our ancestors have evolved them.

It's our duty

to protect them, conserve them, multiply them, share them

so that others and future generations

can have them

in the richness of diversity and integrity

and purity

that we have received them.

So we will not obey laws

that make it illegal for saving our seeds.

It's now

from 1987

to today

32 years

Everytime they try and bring a law

to make it illegal for farmers to save seed,

We mobilize the Satyagraha again.

I'm in the process of doing it for a 2019 seed law.

that make it illegal for farmers

to have their own seeds.

If I have to do this the rest of my life, I will.

But it wasn't just the Satyagraha

that

Gandhi inspired me in.

He also inspired me

in

solidarity

because you can only only know

the deep law of Nature

by knowing the oneness with Nature

and stand in defense of it.

Chipko the first movement I got involved in

was a Satyagraha.

So the Satyagraha has been used

by India repeatedly

and Gandhi said so clearly:

"I didn't invent it."

He was very humble.

He said: "I just saw

how India has stayed democratic

over centuries."

I do hope this legacy of Satyagraha

will stay alive to keep this country

diverse,

free,

self-organized.

In the book ecofeminism,

Vandana tells the moment of her life

when she was pregnant

The doctor told her to deliver he baby by Caesarian section.

But she decided to follow her intuition

and her father drove her to another hospital

where she had a normal childbirth.

We are sometimes split

from the intelligence of our body.

In this part,

she explains how can each of us find back his inner wisdom.

This division between experts

who don't really know

who actually cook up

systems of conquest

and ordinary people

who know how to live

is very much part of that Baconian project

of mastery of Nature

where he talks about superman

and superheroes.

The so-called experts

and even the Royal Society of England

said:

"We are created to create

masculine knowledge

of dominance.

So it was social dominance in society

and ecological dominance over Nature.

Again and again and again

in my life

I have countered

this domination

on the delivery table

and it was such a lesson

thank goodness my dear dad was

in such solidarity

"oh ! Let's find another hospital !"

and we drove furisously.

My mother who came

just in time for the delivery

She says: "Oh you had such an easy time,

I had such a difficult time."

I've seen the dominance of this

pseudo knowledge

as expertise

with the Green Revolution.

It says the soil is empty,

the plant is a machine.

The plant is not a machine.

The plant is brilliant,

self organized,

self evolution,

intelligence

working away

on a daily basis.

It's intelligence that allows it to take the sun.

I wish people would get out of solar panels

and look at the green leafs.

Of course, the green economy is trying

to appropriate that function too

But that's a different matter.

This pseudo expertise

is exactly

what has allowed the intellectual property

in seed and patents to emerge

because

the Monsanto's and the Bill Gates

don't invent a seed.

Bill Gates actually goes around making it looks like

"We've invented a sub gene."

No.

The submergence tolerance of rice plants

is a trait evolved by peasants

in partnership with Nature.

By calling it a sub gene

which is false because

tolerance is not in the gene,

it's in the plant

and complexity of genes.

He is making it looks like it came out of his head

Intellectual property means the product of the mind.

This amazing biodiversity

are not products of Monsanto and Bill Gates' minds.

Again the hierarchy is being used

to appropriate real resources

and create what I have called

"bio piracy".

But this hierarchy now

has become a direct war

against us.

Women have experienced it

all the time

on the issue

of our bodies.

But all humans are facing

this militarized assault

and agriculture that has become like war

mimicking

Hitler's concentration camps

in our everyday act of farming and eating

has turned food

into a weapon

of assault on our bodies

and the new chronic diseases

which are the majority of diseases today.

75% of which are related to food

and the chemicals in our environment.

These chronic diseases are related to

the assault on our gut microbiome.

A rich diversity within.

There're forests and a farm within our gut.

And every instrument

of assault on Earth Nature,

on an insect,

on a plant

is also an attack on the bacteria

all the amazing microorganisms

that are making our brains functions

and our body functions.

I think at this moment

reclaiming our intelligence

and the intelligence of our bodies

is so important.

And Gandhi so recognized

inspired by Ruskin

and inspired by Tolstoï

that the only time you do true labor

is when

you basically

work with your body

as part of the Earth.

That's why they call it "Bread Labor".

Everything else

is theft of someone else's labor

or something from Nature.

All other kind of wealth creation

is based on theft.

Only working with the Earth

through bodily labor,

through the dignity of labor.

Making our hands

return

to where they came from.

This body came from the soil,

it's going to go back to the soil.

We can't live a life

as if we are separate from it.

And the day we saw a seed.

We put organic matter into the soil.

That day we are returning to the Earth

in our consciousness

and that's where we're going to reclaim.

Our deeper be,

our deeper knowledge,

our deeper wisdom.

The minute we become part of the Earth,

we become part of her diversity,

we become part of the awareness that we are

living in

a great universe

that is so self-organized and so big.

and we're a small part of it.

Humus means soil.

Humans are derived from humus.

Humility is connected to that.

It makes us humble rather than arrogant.

And then we become true to ourselves.

One does not have to look too much

beyond Bacon

"The Masculine Birth of Time"

to see

how the issues of dominance over women

and the rise of a masculinity

devoid of compassion and relationship

was needed

for the conquest of Nature.

It was a project articulated.

I'm not having to do guesswork on it.

I'm not having to say

"I think they thought this."

They wrote it.

They did it.

They implemented it.

The founding fathers of

this world view

clearly connected

an artificial masculinization

as violence and domination.

The reason I say artificial

is because I don't think men

are essentially violent and dominating.

They are made violent and dominating

by a culture

of masculinity.

These instruments were created

for destruction and domination of Nature

Then it led to all of the false theories

that Nature is dead

is just inert raw material.

I wrote an essay for the development dictionary

on resources.

How resources originally meant

that which arises on its own

that which renews.

Biodiversity is a resource,

a river is a resource.

With the mechanical mindset and the industrial mindset

resources were made raw materials

to be extracted.

Then Nature was defined as dead.

Then if you look at the economic system

that went hand in hand

with this mechanistic industrial mindset

of a dead Earth

and passive

objects in women.

You also get an economic system

which defines labor and land

labor as people

and land as Nature

as inputs into a machine

where the Creator

is the owner of capital.

As you look at

Locke talking of property

he thinks it's the man who owns

the one who works the field

and the oxen who works the field.

That person spiritual labour

is creating wealth not the oxen

and not the farmer.

So there was this dislocation

in science, technology, economics

all at the same time.

Ecofeminism is merely

recognizing

that the same worldview,

it's one world view,

whose common objective is

to subjugate women and subjugate Nature

and in the process create an Empire.

It's a colonial

idea

which nature's a colony

women and bodies are colonies

and the futur is a colony.

The positive side

of ecofeminism is

but the Earth is very alive,

she's very intelligent,

she's very creative,

she's amazingly self organized,

she's Gaïa.

She is able to create her own climate system.

The mess

is the mess

you've created through fossil fuels and chemicals

Just like if someone's body is damaged

the body's self-organizing capacity

doesn't disappear.

All it's happened is there's an invasion

of harm

the toxics that give me cancer

and I can go two ways around it.

I can start

building my body's immunity

to make the cancer regressive

or go through an allopathic treatment.

In either case what gets attacked

is the cancer cell

not the body.

In our case

what gets attacked again again again

it's poor Nature and mother Earth

and a dynamism

and aliveness.

So Nature is alive

and women actually are super intelligent

because they're intelligent in

living intelligence

emotional intelligence,

ecological intelligence,

multi-functionality.

As I have cited in my book

Oneness versus the 1%

a beautiful poem

that came out of the Andes

when this woman is saying:

"Look across the ravine professor

Can you see the hundred flowers?

Those hundred flowers are hundred different kinds

of potatoes that you can't recognize.

But each of them

is my blood and my flesh."

The woman's very aware

that her knowledge

is a knowledge

that comes out of working

with the seed,

working with the potato,

working with the soil.

And she knows every potato

like a family member,

like a child.

That is living intelligence.

One type of food.

One type of cothes.

One type of music.

Through gobalization there has been a uniformization of the word.

In this part, Vandana underlines the difference

between uniformization and oneness of life.

She also talks about her fight

to defend the unicity of life

through Navdanya,

the organic farm she has founded.

I've written a book called

"Monocultures of the Mind"

when I tried to understand

how could they see a monoculture of eucalyptus

as richer than a rich natural forest

full of diversity?

How could they see a monoculture of wheat and rice

in Punjab

as richer than

the 12 crops and the nine crops that we grow?

The monoculture of the mind

is what is imposing a monoculture of uniformity.

Uniformity takes things that are different

and by force

makes them uniform.

Militaries

make people

march

and wear uniforms.

Nature

doesn't work that way.

The tiniest of grasses

is unique into itself.

Every leaf on that grass

is unique into itself.

But they're working in self-organized oneness and harmony.

So oneness

is diversity in unity

and interconnectedness

not through external force

but through inner self-organization.

Uniformity

is imposed

it's external

and it creates sameness

out of what

is diverse.

One is based on the organizing principle of violence.

The other

is based

on the organizing principle

of non-violence and diversity.

In 1987

at this meeting

patents on seed where the poison cartel was laying out his agenda

of forcing GMOs,

patents on seed

and an international

trade agreement GATT

which became WTO

and its intellectual property rights.

That's the day

on the flight back I decided

I was going to save seeds taking inspiration of Gandhi

I said if Gandhi took out the spinning wheel

to deal with the empire of cotton

what's the spinning wheel

to deal the empire of a life

that these corporations,

the poison cartel,

want to create?

The seed

came to me

as the spinning wheel of our times.

I started to save seeds

just as a seed saving movement.

It was until later

I was doing a seed collection

in an area in South India

where a bandit called Veerappan

who used to

control the sandalwood trade.

No one could enter his area.

Policemen used to be killed,

government officials used to be killed.

The Green Revolution agriculture experts

had left that area alone.

They were beautiful seeds.

So I went to do a seed collection

and there was this one field

and I'm counting the crops

I had seen the monocultures of Punjab

and every time I saw

more than one crop

I would get excited

and I said

"Wow you're growing 9 crops !"

And this tribal peasant

in a remote area

says to me

"Yes Navdanya..."

And I said

"What does that mean?"

The tribal peasant again illiterate like my sisters of Chipko

gave me

all of the knowledge

of my ecological self-substitution.

The books don't teach us.

It's in the living tradition of people

and he said:

"The nine planets"

(because in India

we have seven planets plus two constructs

to have accurate astronomical calculations).

"These shadow planets.

It's the nine planets.

These nine crops

and the diversity in my body

are one continuum of balance.

It is my duty to uphold the balance

that's what I do when I plant nine crops

which means nine seeds,

Navdanya."

This lesson then gave the name to this movement

But Navdanya

Our language is very rich.

Each word can mean many things.

And each thing has many words.

Navdanya means

"Nine", "Nava"

"Dana" is "Seed, Grain"

But it can also mean

"Nav" as new

"Dan" as a gift

And I say the new gift of Navdanya

is to reclaim the seed

as a commons,

the seed as an embodiment

of an interconnected evolutionary process

which we will continue

in our little contribution.

When I started Navdanya

I think I was the only one

saying "I'm going to save seeds to fight

this poison cartel.

After a while there were five of us

who would talk of GMOs and patenting on seed.

I think there is a whole new up search

around the world.

Especially among young people.

The two things that are inspiring them

to have energy

in this highly uncertain future

where people can go into despair

and depression.

The first is their love for the Earth

and wanting a future.

The second is

absolute intolerance to injustice

that's bringing so many people to the brink.

Vandana is a source of inspiration for many people.

In this conclusion,

she will give some advice to young people who wish to live an authentic life.

I'm in a very different place

doing very different things

from what I had imagined.

I was inspired by Einstein

wanted to do physics

and the kind of theoretical physics I chose,

I left the nuclear establishment,

I didn't carry on with that

I choose

particle physics

and quantum theory

and you could deal with a piece of paper

and pencil.

It is all you really needed

and I didn't like

to be in crowds.

I didn't like to write.

I in fact was told by my

principal

that I was failing life

because I wrote an English essay in equations

I can say it in three lines of equations

why should I use four pages of a rubbish language?

So I didn't want to write,

I didn't want to speak.

I was chosen head girl of my school

which was interestingly

started by

a woman who became a French nun

after the violence of the French Revolution.

Her two brothers were picked as revolutionaries

and then she turned to a spiritual path

became a nun

and became a saint.

Our school here

had been founded by her.

So there's a french connection.

They made me a headgirl

and I said "I will not take the assembly,

I hate to speak.

I will play records."

I played music.

I was very naughty !

I would play music that wasn't allowed.

But I wasn't ready for a public life

and definitely a world of writing and speaking.

So for the young people,

the two lessons that I learned theoretically

from my physics

and quantum theory

but learn through my life's experience

are:

- first we are all potential

and I might say "I'll be a physicist"

but here I am a

I might say

"I will not speak"

but here I'm giving speeches all over the world.

I had the potential in me,

it's just that I wanted to sit on it,

I didn't want that potential to evolve

and it's the larger circumstances

that draw it out,

out of a calling

out of saying "No

you have to."

I remember the first time my mouth open

was when I was defending

a slave laborer

who was escaping from a dam site

and how I fought for him.

I realized when I want to have a voice

I can have a voice.

I developed my voice.

I realized in the writing

that you might hate writing

but

you learn how to write

you have the potential.

So you have the potential

and your potential is not fixed

because we ar not

uniform one-dimension

entities.

We are multiplicity of intelligences.

All of those intelligences are waiting to happen.

Choose the one

that gets you very passionate

but if it doesn't work,

don't get despondent

because there are many others you can develop.

Your life circumstances

will always create new opportunities

and new potentials

to develop your full being.

- The second

is uncertainty.

The uncertainty is the nature of reality,

it is the nature of quantum reality.

We are living in very precarious,

very uncertain times.

This is the moment

to give up

the mechanical ideas of determinism

and predictability

that were part of the fossil fuel age

and the age of colonization.

Live with uncertainty,

give your best

and grow your best !