BOOK REVIEWS

Published in Religion and Society (Oct.2011) 

Alternatives Unincorporated: Earth Ethics from the Grassroots                                                                                                                                        George Zachariah                                                                                                               London: Equinox, 2011. 183pp. ISBN 978-1-84553-689-3.

Dr. George Zachariah’s seminal work “Alternatives Unincorporated; Earth Ethics from the Grassroots” is a remarkable book on Eco theology from the Indian context. As an academician, activist and theologian who has been actively involved in the grassroot engagements of various social movements in India for the last twenty-five years, George Zachariah shares with us his vibrant spirituality of subaltern resistance and passion for social justice. By taking Narmada Bachavo Andolan (The Save Narmada Movement) as a text, he creatively proposes the contours of a contemporary earth ethics that stems out of the crucible of grassroot subaltern political practice. As his beloved professor Rasmussen comments, this book belongs to the heart, soul and mind of the mandatory effort of validating the grass-root resistances for water, food, energy and life. 

Why an earth ethics from grass-roots?  Zachariah argues that “it is the methodological commitment to recognize the agency of the victims of environmental destruction that seems to be missing in the wider discussions of eco-justice” necessitates the grassroot earth ethics. He expounds the significance of his thesis and declares that “an earth ethics from the grass-roots is a vision and praxis to interpret the reality and to change it radically from the subaltern standpoint so that a different world may become a contemporary reality.”  It is an attempt to attend, acknowledge and validate the silenced voices/ life worlds/ epistemologies of the subjugated masses that signals a new world which is devoid of all kinds of domination, exploitation and marginalization.

The first chapter elucidates how development and the neoliberal globalization continue the colonial legacy of colonizing the life world and erasing the moral agency of the subaltern communities. The author reiterates the urgency to reclaim the moral agency of the dispossessed that would be the political and spiritual power to change the world. The second chapter narrates the stories of the people and the wider community of creation in the Narmada Valley. It interrogates the modern development gaze on the indigenous people that marginalizes them from their livelihood, social space and cultural heritage. Narmada Bachavo Andolan (NBA) - the grass-roots organizational set up that provides the consolidated space for the voices of resistance thus becomes the theological crucible from which the rationale for the new earth ethics emerges.

The third chapter exposes the hegemonic nature of the regimes of truth and underscores the agency of oppositional consciousness and knowledges that stem from the subaltern social movements. Zachariah argues that the grass-root epistemologies are embodiments of resistance and transformation. Thus, contemporary social movements are theological texts that can inform us in our search for a world devoid of the axis of domination and alienation. It is here the author emphatically comes up with his new ways of doing theology and ethics that resist all manifestations of the idols of death and celebrates life in its fullness.

The last chapter is the constructive attempt to map the earth ethics from the grass-roots. Here, Zachariah discusses the epistemological, praxiological and political content of the emerging subaltern earth ethics. The book concludes with a manifesto of the earth ethics from the grass-roots, reclaiming the moral agency of the subalterns to dream and to 'midwife' alternatives that are “unincorporated.” The testimony of the book is that the content and challenge of the subaltern theology and earth ethics is to keep alive the hope of transformation in the realized epiphanies of the Slain Lamb- the Absolute Subaltern who lived out an alternative politics and spirituality yet remained eternally unincorporated. 

The book invites us to the politics and spirituality of the subaltern earth ethics and envisages a new way of doing theology that stems out of the lived experiences of the struggling masses. This book has signaled the new phase of theological engagements in India. It has posed a new direction of the subaltern politics and the social practices in India.  It is a gift to the students of Eco theology, and to all those who wish to taste the spirituality of resistance in and around us.  As Arundhathi Roy exhorts us, let us listen to the grasshoppers and sense the spirituality of the life world. It is the sense of grass-roots earth ethics that brings us the sense of infinite justice.   

The focal point of doing theology from the subaltern engagements is in fact exemplifies the epistemological shift in the discussion of theological methodology in the Indian context. It envisions a post Marxist method of doing theology that transcends the limitations of class analysis. At the same time it re-imagines an ecotheology and eco-practice that transgresses the modernist trappings of doing theology in a postcolonial/ postmodern context.  This book offers new discussions on theological methodology, epistemology and politics that determine the content and challenge of Indian Christian Theologies in the post Marxist/ postcolonial/ postmodern epistemological Indian context.

Reviewed By:

Y. T. Vinayaraj                                                                                                                        Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago