This post is inspired by this one by Heather Michon.

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 In the 2003 book, "Empire of Tea", the authors Alan Macfarlane and his mother Iris Macfarlane have written an engaging account of the remarkable history of tea, "the plant that took over the world." The book opens with a chapter titled "Memoirs of a Memsahib" written by Iris.

She has written about the preconceived notions of racial and cultural superiority with which she arrived in India in 1938 at the age of 16. And she has described at length her gradual awakening to the reality of India, especially the hardscrabble existence as well as the quiet grace of the  poor workers who worked on the tea estate that her husband managed.

By the mid 1950s she had started working to improve the living and working conditions of the laborers by providing them education and healthcare. She appealed to the Company doctor  for more hospital amenities. She writes,

The Company weren't keen on family planning, he said, the more the merrier - it was a mechanism for keeping wages down. With trade unions now compulsory by law, there were a lot of clever dicks around advising the labour of their rights, the best thing was to have a great many people desperately looking for work. However, I would be allowed, within reason, to give family planning advice as long as I didn't expect the Company to pay for the rubber doo-dahs.

When I read this memoir, it was 2003-2004, a time when the debate about abortion was raging in this country in the run-up to the 2004 election.

Having grown up in India, and being no stranger to the scarcities of opportunity (education, health, leisure) and resources (space, food/water, clean air) that go with having a large population, I firmly believe in family planning. However, I had tended, up to this point, to see the anti-choice agitators as somewhat misguided, but essentially moral people who were willing to work hard for their most cherished beliefs. In fact, I could even persuade myself, in my more generous moments, that there was something admirable about people who placed a higher value on life (even of the the as-yet unborn) than they did on the comforts and conveniences and sheer practicality of having small, manageable families.

But, after reading Iris' account, a light-bulb went off in my head. I came to see that the "Company" - read present day corporations - has a vested interest in having a large population of eager workers. Even though at the time,  "globalization" was seen as a new, beneficial at best, and benign at worst, phenomenon (made palatable by Thomas Freidman's "Lexus and the Olive Tree" - "Flat World" would come later), it was not so new after all. The British East India Company, going back to the 1600s, and its offshoots like the company that operated the tea estates in post-Independence India, were really in the business of labor arbitrage: taking advantage of the large numbers of workers to keep wages low while also,  by design and neglect (aided by the ignorance and superstition of the workers themselves) ensuring the availability of an almost unlimited supply of workers in perpetuity.

On this background, it was not a great leap to note that religious teachings that advocate against family planning, are essentially operating a) in a model of the world when infant mortality rates were high and life expectancy was low,   b) against the interests of women as well as men, and c) to strengthen the hand of the holders of capital, i.e., the corporations.

I came to see that when religions - systems of belief about a higher power, about sin and punya (loosely defined as merit, the Hindu concept that is the antithesis of sin)  and about the afterlife - concern themselves more with the hereafter than with the here-and-now, they are actually bound in a most unholy alliance with the moneyed interests and the corporations. The focus on the hereafter comes, too often, at the expense of the here-and-now. 

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As a naturalized American, I admit I am guilty of  a certain zeal of the converted. I believe that the "pursuit of happiness" enshrined in the Declaration of Independence was a most original concept not just for its time, but even for current times. Contrast this concept with notions such as sacrifice, duty and suffering which are the preoccupations of Eastern religions, and the emphasis on guilt and sin which are central concepts in the Abrahamic faiths.

Similarly, the idea of the separation of church and state - that is, separating organized religion and civil government - was a truly revolutionary concept. It asserted the belief that the definition of morality in the context of community and government need not be the purview of religion alone.

In light of the insight I gained from "Memoirs of a Memsahib", I have come to believe that the founding fathers did not go far enough. Corporatism was the real scourge of their time and it is so of ours. How else to explain the wanton risk-taking and extreme profiteering on Wall Street and the subsequent protection for the perpetrators in the halls of government? It was corporatism that found justification for slavery, and it was corporatism that found justification for colonialism. What's more, this justification was provided by religion. For, close behind the corporatist raiders were the purveyors of religion. As shown in the Emmy-nominated documentary, Traces of the trade, slavery was made more palatable by converting to Christianity  the Africans held in slave forts in Ghana while they "waited" to be shipped to the New World.  

"Memoirs of a Memsahib" makes it clear that the debate about abortion is, at its core,  nothing more than a convenient distraction. The gullible among us may think it is about higher moral values, and about the hereafter. But the powers-that-be have no illusions. To them, it is very much about the here and now. It is first and foremost about ensuring ample desperate and cheap labor.

What we need is a new Bill of Rights, to bring to fruition the grand experiment launched in 1776. Pursuing happiness, yes. Through separation of Church and State? Not quite.

Separation of Corporation and State, anyone?