The Quest for Freedom & DignityVishal Mangalwadi

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture I
May 2007
The Quest for Freedom & DignityVishal Mangalwadi
199 Pages

Mangawaldi’s book is about power and how it has been used over others in the world’s largest democracy. He makes certain strong assertions and sought to support them with reasoned stories from within the community. According to Mangalwadi, India’s cosmology created, affirmed and supported an “invisible civil war.” It is a theological and political hegemony that has spawned matrys across the Ages, 320 Million Hindu gods have not improved the lot of a single Dalit and it is impossible to be Hindustiva and patriotic because , the essence of the Hindu religion drives division. The caste division makes India a society “left almost without a conscience”’ Hinduism creates a culture with no moral absolutes, a society in which pragmatism overrides principles. These are dramatic statements about a culture and a way of life that affects over a billion souls.

Mangalwadi writes about pre-modern justice system and the humanizing influence of Christianity. This influence turned prisons into palaces of thought, it turned dungeons into reformatories. Mangalwadi separated between power and law. Indian culture upholds the rule of power not the rule of law. Mangalwadi asserts that liberty of expression cannot be a gift from the leaders, it must be a right from God.

Mangalwadi interpretes the term Messiah literally, he translates it to mean “liberator and champion of the oppressed.” True spirituality for him is denominated in liberation for the oppressed. True liberation must not assume inequality, it must rather discover its context in the society for which we seek liberation; social engineering must be superceded by social transformation. Agents of Social transformation must be aware that they will disrupt the status quo; that they will fracture the slavery of the mind. Social transformation brings truth of perception; it is enabled by the power of ressurection. Contrary to this is corruption which stifles democracy and retards meritocracy, kills the conscience and brutalise character (35).

Mangalwadi writes about the difference between lacking ability and having permision. Permission arises from belief systems. It is belief systems that make people worship nature rather than regulate them. A belief system that says man is made in the image of God gives man the permission to engage with a process of regulations God’s natural gifts (42). A changed belief system creates the permission to change mental slavery that has been internalised. It gives the permission to start irrigation systems, and build stone houses to control the river rather than worship it. It grants freedom from lies that lie at the root of misery. The transformation of India will come from the contextual application of the truth of the scriptures. There is the truth about idolatry and the need to stop worshiping false gods, there is the need to stop deifying the images that man made religiosity imposes on men to exploit them; there is the need to affirm the fact that man is the image that God has chosen to make (47)

Equal justice is a biblical idea; it is the foundation of the Magna Carta but justice will only be upheld when man learn about God. Human equality is self evident only after the knowledge of a just God is revealed through the Bible and presented as in being harmony with the principles of natural law (49). True equality of man is founded on equality of access to God’s love. Truth has nothing to do with national division or physical hegemony.

Mangalwadi describes faith as a matter of choice. He frames this in Dr Ambdekar’s famous statement: “I was born a Hindu, I had no choice. I will not die a Hindu because I do have a choice.” Mangalwadi shows that the freedom to choose what is right is directly correlated to the worldview to which a person subscribes. Interaction must be on the platform of ideas for there to be life. Interaction on the platform of profit and power only intensifies misery. Mangawaldi infers that coercion is an ineffective tool for social change, true change must come from within. The catalyst for reform are questions that results in debate and pushes the quest for truth, which in turn results in conversion and social transformation.

Freedom must be multidimensional for freedom to be transformational. A free market economy does not provide all the answers, a free thinking people with an internal freedom to question and search is critical to transformation. It is internal property that validates external property; it is when people discover that they are valuable that their future is secure.

What is the root of sorrow and how do we break it? Obviously, it cannot be through Bhudism whose primal assumption is enshrined in the first Noble Truth which states that “All is sorrow” and which sought to counteract this sorrow by Nirvana or nothingness. The root of sorrow is sin and the christian cosmology of personal, communal and national confrontation with sin is necessary to break the root of sorrow on our world.

For a thinker like Mangawaldi, it is interesting to note his assertion that resaon itself is necessary but not sufficient for transformation. To create a civilization, one has to separate between rationalism and rationality. It must be clear that the tool that creates civilization can also be twisted to affirm fascism.

I am impressed by the thoroughness with which Mangalwadi has thought threough issues that affects his community. As an African I am challenged by the fact that we often allow others to present our thoughts and are too caught up with practicalities of existence to engage with the worldview that perpetuate those practicalities. Mangawaldi provides a template for engaging with the realities of my nation. Why is there continuing instability? Why are the leadership generaly insensisitive? Why do the people acquise? Why is the church excluded from the reality of social transformation in Africa? These are questions for another time. They are questions that reading Mangalwadi has spawned.