Poverty

[kellner at ue.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp]

Sadhunathan Nadesan wrote: 
>Another point worth considering is that the existence of beggars 
>does not necessarily connotate poverty, and reveals a difference
>between Eastern and Western attitudes.  In the West, the mentally
>ill, and various disabled persons unable to care for themselves are
>often put away in homes or institutions.  In India, they have the
>honorable profession of begging.  They get more fresh air and sunshine.
>The populace is taught the benefit of giving alms.  In fact, begging
>and the care of beggars are both highly spiritual acts when taken
>as part of sanyasa ashrama, the fulfillment of old age.  The whole
>point of the editorial that triggered some of this interesting thread
>is that poverty is in the eyes of the beholder.  The many wandering 
>mendicants and sadhus of Indian are materially poor by choice, but 
>spiritually rich.  The same might be said of devadasis (often 
>miscalled prostitutes), poor brahmans (who may actually be dedicated
>servants of God who choose to live by the generosity of others), etc.

To me, this is a highly problematic viewpoint. First of all, there is a huge
difference between conscious, deliberate poverty (i.e. refrain from having
money or other worldly possessions, because, for some reason or another, you
think it is a bad idea), and
passive, inflicted poverty (i.e. being deprived of basic needs, and
definitely not
being satisfied with that situation or deriving any spiritual benefit from it). 

The economical, ideological, political etc. problems under consideration
apply to the
latter (viz. non-deliberate) poverty. Let mendicants and sadhus be
spiritually rich, but their (apparent) material poverty is not a political
question, for after all, it was their own choice. 

To state that the mentally ill can have the honorable profession of begging
(unless I miss out
on a huge portion of irony in this statement) amounts to blurring precisely
those boundaries of
poverty I tried to outline above. In both (stereotypically displayed)
societies, the "West" and "India", the mentally ill are outcasts, and
somebody else decides on their lives. In one case, they are locked up in
clinics, in the other, they are locked up in the paradigm of being beggars.
Getting sunshine and fresh air is no doubt a good thing (unless we consider
Ozon and other disadvantages of sunshine). The social stigma, nevertheless,
remains the same (or the social ignorance & arrogance, for that matter). And
how does the "poverty" as defined through the "eyes of the beholder" apply
to the mentally ill in the first place? Are you saying that, because some
mentally ill people might not be aware of being poor, they are not? That
reminds me of the famous fallacy of concluding that a certain object does
not exist, because you don't see it (fallacious, because you might be
asleep, passed out, behind the seven mountains or otherwise "handicapped"). 

I suggest that the term "poverty" should be made more specific: For
instance, as a term to describe an involuntary deprivation of basic needs &
basic human rights (the one entailing the other). A subject-centered account
of poverty (i.e. "the eyes of the beholder") obliterates discussions rather
than stimulating them. 








Birgit Kellner
Institute for Indian Philosophy
University of Hiroshima