走进更美好的明天

ONWARD TO A BETTER TOMORROW

走进更美好的明天

作者：M.P. PARAMESWARAN 翻译：诸众之貌团队

＊＊＊＊

Dear friends,

We are today at the cross roads of the history of humankind. If we chose the wrong path we are doomed. If we don’t take any path at stand still, the current of history will carry us along its hither to path. There is a famous social scientist named Eric Hosbawm. He wrote a book called ‘The Age of the Extremes” seven years ago. Therein he warned us: we cannot go forward any more along the way we have come so far. That will spell disaster for the entire humanity. We have to cut open a new path.

亲爱的朋友们，

现在我们站在人类历史的十字路口。如果选择错误的道路，我们注定灭亡。如果站在原地不动，历史将会把我们推向其轨道。著名的社会科学家Eric Hosbawm七年前写过一本书，名为《极端的年代》，他在书中警告：我们不能再按老路走下去了，不然会为整个人类带来灾难。我们必须开辟新的道路。

World over people are at this. One of the earliest attempts to cut open a new path was the experiments of the 20th century to build socialism. These experiments failed. People are learning from the failure and are attempting, in various ways to cut open new paths. And they are exchanging such experiences. For the last four years these oppressed and exploited people of the world have been gathering together annually, in what is known as World Social Forum. The latest such gathering took place in Mumbai. The common, shared, belief of all the people assembled there was that “Another World Is Possible” and that it will be a better world. Democracy, equity, plurality, sustainability, etc are some of the key concepts in this world. We believe that we can make such a new world. The present one is not acceptable.

世界范围内的人们早已经行动起来。最早尝试开辟的新道路是在二十世纪建立社会主义的实验。虽然这些实验都失败了，但人们从失败中学习经验，进行交流，并试图通过各种方式开辟新道路。 在过去的四年里，这些被压迫、被剥削的人们每年齐聚一堂，也就是我们熟知的世界社会论坛。最近一次论坛在孟买举行。与会人员持有共同的信念“让另一个世界成为可能”，且这个世界将更加美好。民主、公平、多元化和可持续性等是这个世界的主要理念。相信我们可以创造这样的新世界。现今世界让人难以忍受。

The resources on this earth, its forests, its coal, steel and other minerals all are getting exhausted. Even clean water is becoming scare and conflicts are increasing. Global pollution, in spite of repeated resolves, is going out of hand. Its first impact – the capriciousness, irregularity and unpredictability of weather – is quite obvious. More and more resources are being wasted in manufacturing weapons of limited and mass destruction. The so called developed countries, with USA at its head, however, are dragging the entire humanity along the path of destruction. They are becoming richer and richer, in fact vulgarly rich. It is not progress, it is cancer. The poor are becoming poorer and poorer. They are tricked into fratricidal wars in the name of caste, religion, ethnicity, leader loyalty and what not.

地球上的资源，如森林、煤 炭、钢铁和其他矿物质等都趋于枯竭，清洁水也变得越来越少，冲突正在不断增加。尽管经过了反复治理，全球污染还是慢慢地失去控制。其首要影响——天气变化无常、无规律和不可预测——非常明显。越来越多的资源浪费在制造限制性和大规模杀伤性武器中。然而由美国引领的所谓发达国家正将整个人类拖入毁灭的深渊。他们变得越来越富有，实际上越来越庸俗。这并不是进步，而是癌症。穷人变得越来越穷。他们被骗以种姓、宗教、种族和领袖忠诚等诸如此类的名义进行自相残杀。

Are all these inevitable? Unalterable fate of humanity? No. We humans as a species have today all the knowledge necessary to eradicate hunger and poverty, illiteracy and ill-health. We have in India and elsewhere all the resources to provide education, health care, housing, clothing, food and water to all, literally to all. Today we need work only a few hours in a week to produce all the goods genuinely needed by us and to give us enough leisure to pursue truly human avocations. Yet more than two billion people live in abysmal poverty, live like pigs or even worse. The rich say that the world’s resources are theirs. They say that scientific and technical knowledge is theirs, that it is their Intellectual Property and that we have to pay to purchase it from them! Can there be anything more immoral than this? To call knowledge a private property? And allow children, our children, children all over the world in Asia, in Africa, in South America die like flies? No. We cannot allow this. Nobody can keep knowledge a ‘private property’. Everybody can have it without any body losing anything. And this knowledge can be used to raise ourselves, to free us from poverty and want.

这些都是不可避免的吗？是人类不可改变的命运吗？不。作为一个物种，现今我们人类拥有消除饥饿、贫穷、文盲和疾病的所有必要 知识。不夸张地说，我们在印度和其他地方的资源能为所有人提供教育、医疗、住 房、衣服、食物和水。现在我们只需要工作几个小时就能生产出一周所需的所有产品，而且有足够的休闲时光来追求个人爱好。然而，还有二十多亿人的生活处于极度贫困，活得像猪一样甚至连猪都不如。富人说世界上的资源是他们的。他们说科技知识是他们的，他们拥有知识产权，我们必须付钱才能向他们购买！有什么比这更不道德的吗？把知识称为私有财产？而让孩子，我们的孩子，亚洲、非洲、南美 洲等世界各地的孩子像苍蝇 一样死去？不，我们不允许这样。谁都不能将拥有的知识作为‘私有财产’。每个人都可以拥有，而不需要购买。我们可以用这些知识提升自 我，摆脱贫困。

Our country, India is one of the poorest in the world. It has got the largest number of poor and starving people in the world, largest number of sick and illiterate people in the world. But the country is rich in natural resources, rich in knowledge. A few people say, they own it. They use them for themselves and become richer and richer day by day. They exhibit their richness extremely vulgarly. Five star hotels and americanized living styles are becoming increasingly popular amongst the rich. Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore all are aspiring to become ‘world class’ cities. The villages are languishing without resources for roads, sanitation, water supply for all basic necessities. Day by day the rich-poor gap is increasing. This shall not continue – We proclaim. We believe that there is no need to suffer like this. It is not fate.

我们的国家——印度是世界上最贫穷的国家之一，拥有世界上数量最多的穷人、饥饿人群、疾病患者和文盲。但国家的自然资源很丰富，知识也很丰富。有少数人说他们拥有这些资源和知识。他们将这些资源和知识为己所用，变得日益富有，并庸俗地展示这些财富。五星级酒店和美国化的生活方式在富人间日益风行。德里、孟买、加尔各答、金奈和班加罗尔等都渴望成为 “世界级” 的都市。而乡村，由于缺少道路、卫生设施和水等生活必需品而日益萎缩。日复一日，贫富差距越来越大。我们宣布——这一切不会再继续下去。我们相信，再没有必要遭受这样的痛苦。这并不是命运。

In our own humble way we have been fighting against this. We understood that we lacked one important weapon- ability to acquire more and more knowledge. Being illiterate we were unable to share the experience of others. So we began with literacy. We mounted one of the largest of all mass literacy campaigns ever held in the world – not because any leader asked us nor because of any social upheaval. We, in fact you, did it. You came not in thousands or lakhs but in crores. More than a crore of volunteers and ten crore of learners participated in it. This was the first battle against our present state of affairs. Though we have not fully won it, though illiteracy has not been eradicated from India, there was an unprecedented increase in literacy, thanks to your efforts. The battle is continuing. But it had impact on other fronts too. The demand for children’s education became stronger. Enrolment went up. Class rooms could not contain the children. Unfortunately our governments have not been able to or did not put enough effort to, cope up with this increased demand. What they gave to our children, to your children was ‘second rate’ education. Unqualified, ill-trained and poorly paid teachers in dingy class rooms- that is what they offered us. The rich poor gap in education has been existing since long. But now it has become a declared policy of the government – an imperial education for those who can pay for it and a slum education for the poor. While your children go hungry day after day, the rich man’s child spends hundreds of rupees as pocket money. Their parents spend thousands of rupees per day on themselves They are ready to sacrifice the interests of our country and of her poor people so that they can have everything that the world can offer.

一直以来，我们谦卑地与之斗争。我们知道，我们缺少一件重要的武器—— 不断获得知识的能力。由于不识字，我们无法分享别人的经验。所以我们开始识字。我们兴起了世界有史以来最大规模的全民扫盲运动之一——并不是因为领导人要求我们这么做，也不是因为社会动荡。事实上是因为你们，我们才这么做的。你们并不是成千上万个或十万个，而是以千万计。上千万的志愿者及上亿的学习者参与其中。这是针对我们目前事态的第一场战斗。虽然我们没有完全胜利，虽然印度没有扫除全部文盲，但由于你们的努力，识字率得到前所未有的增加。战斗仍在继续。但它也对其他方面造成影响。对儿童教育的需求变得更加强烈。入学人数上升，但教室容纳不了那么多儿童，而我们的政府没有能力或没有尽力来应对这种增加的需求。他们为我们的孩子提供的是“二等”教育。昏暗的教室，不合格、缺乏训练和低工资的教师——这就是他们为我们提供的。长期以来，教育中的贫富差距就一直存在。但现在，它已然成为政府的一项既定政策—— 富人享受帝国教育，穷人只能接受贫民教育。当你们的孩子每天挨饿的时候，富人的孩子却花着几百卢比的零花钱。他们的父母每天为自己花费数千卢比。他们已经准备牺牲我们国家和穷人的利益来获得要得到的一切。

The war is going to be a long, long one. Literacy and education is only just one front in it. There are many more fronts. Women form nearly half of the population. They have been continuously discriminated against, socially, culturally, economically and physically. Resistance movements have been growing world over against this. We too have joined them.

这是一场旷日持久的战争。识字和教育只是其中的一个方面，还有很多其他方面。妇女占近一半的人口，她们在社会、文化、经济和生理方面一直受到歧视。这类抵抗运动已经席卷全球，我们也加入了。

Nearly two-thirds of all learners and volunteer teachers were women. Through Samata our women organized themselves. And this movement has produced our Ushas, Pushpas, Ashas, Kannammas and thousands like them. We organized ourselves in SHGs and NHGs, started our own micro-credit and micro-enterprises. One can see, here and there, symptoms of a larger fight. Whatever we have done so far, viewed through the optimists eye is amazingly large. But compared to what we have to achieve, it is very very small. As the famous Tamil saying from Thirukkural goes : “What we got is just a handful of soil. There is the whole world to gain.”

近三分之二的学习者和教师志愿者为女性。妇女们通过Samata自己组织起来，而这个运动也创造了我们的Ushas（印度的黎明女神），pushpas，Ashas和kannammas及成千上万像他们一样的神。我们组织SHGs（自助团体）和NHGs，开启了自己的小额信贷和微小企业。人们可以看到，到处蕴酿着更大的战斗。在乐观者看来，我们目前的成就已经非常惊人。但与我们想要获得的相比，这点微不足道。如著名的泰米尔古拉尔箴言所说：“我们得到的只是一把黄土，而想要获得的是整个世界。”

Yes, friends. there is a whole world to gain, a world for us to build. A world of equity, a world of diversity and plurality, a world of tolerance and mutual respect, a world which is just and sustainable a world which has eliminated illiteracy and poverty, a world which ensures us both work and rest.... This is the “Another World” we are striving for. The small small progress we make in our neighbourhood, in our basti or village, the solidarity and emotional bondages we build up, caring for and sharing with others, questioning, learning, fighting injustice, liberating ourselves and others from casteism, respecting cultural differences, tolerating other beliefs, all this will add up to make the great movement for this another, better world. The neighbourhood groups we have formed, the continuing education centres we have established, the libraries we set up, the Samatha centres which we will be building up – all are centres of resistance and laboratories of creation.

是的，朋友们。我们想获得整个世界，一个我们建造的世界。一个公平的世界，一个充满多样性和多元化的世界，一个宽容和相互尊重的世界，一个公平和可持续发展的世界，一个消除了文盲和贫困的世界，一个能确保我们工作和休息的世界……这就是我们努力奋斗的“另一个世界”。我们对邻居、贫民窟或村庄做出的小小进步，我们建立的团结精神，关爱他人、与人分享、提问、学习、与不公正行为作斗争、将自我和他人从种姓制度中解放出来、尊重文化差异和容忍其他信仰，所有这一切都将这项伟大的运动推向另一个更美好的世界。我们形成的社区团体，建立的继续教育中心，建立的图书馆以及将要建立的奢摩他中心——所有这些都是反抗中心和创新实验室。

We have to eradicate sooner or later caste based discrimination, we have to gain access to land and other natural resources, we have to learn to manipulate them in order that we can earn a decent living, we should have schools for our children to learn and play, we should have adequate health care facilities, safe water to drink, clean air to breathe and nutritious food to eat. We too have a right to live as humans. None of these will come to us by itself. We know. We have to fight for them and get them. We are gathered here to learn that in this fight none of us is alone, that we belong to a large family of humanity, the family of hither to oppressed and exploited belonging to India, Asia, the whole world.

我们迟早要消除这种基于种姓的歧视，我们必须获得土地和其他自然资源，我们要学会操纵它们，这样我们才能过上体面的生活，我们的孩子才有学习和玩耍的学校，我们才有足够的卫生设施、安全的饮用水、清新的空气和营养的食物。我们也有人类生存的权利。我们知道，这些不会凭空而来，我们必须战斗才能获得。我们聚集于此是为了明了，在这场战斗中，我们并不是孤军奋战，我们属于人类的大家庭，这个家庭包含印度、亚洲及整个世界受压迫和剥削的人们。

Once we know this and once we know how this became so, then no force on earth can stop us, let it be an external aggressor or an internal oppressor. United we march forward. The day of victory is far away. We know. But with each step forward it becomes nearer.

一旦我们知道这些以及产生的原因，就没有任何力量可以阻止我们，让它成为外部侵略者或内部压迫者吧。我们团结一心向前进。我们知道，胜利的日子可能有些遥远，但每前进一步，我们就离它更近一步。