Third Way, The Hindu Way

The Third Way, The Hindu Way is a socioeconomic philosophy propounded by Shri Dattopant Thengadi, a veteran trade union leader and the founder of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh.

It was called the ‘Third Way’, as it was considered an alternative to both capitalism and communism.

His thoughts have been explained in his book “The Third Way”.

He believed that the workers, by contributing their labor to the business, should be entitled to become shareholders and thereby should be given participation in the ownership of the industries.

Ecology is given a lot of importance in his writings. He believed that Nature should be “milked” but not “exploited” or “killed”. The ‘Third way’ believes that education, ecology, economics and ethics—all four must be taken into consideration in an integrated manner for any economic activity.

As has been believed by Gandhians, here too it is believed that material wealth is to be acquired with the object of serving the society.

Consumerism is challenged as not the ultimate goal of life. Thengadi believed that consumerism was not compatible with the spirit of the Hindu culture.

There are two dominant systems of development today. They are capitalism and communism. Both of them are of western origin. Therefore, they advocate the western world view. Capitalism strongly believes in a free market economy. It argues that people should be totally free to follow any economic activity. Individual economic freedom should be maximum and state intervention should be minimum. Capitalism strongly advocates private property. According to the advocates of capitalism, a free enterprise and a free market economy, always ensures rapid economic development of the country and maximum welfare. Communism on the contrary advocates total state control over all productive resources. It is strongly against private property and private enterprise. It advocates maximum state control over economic activities and minimum freedom to the individuals. Thus capitalism and communism appear to be diametrically opposed to one another. However, on a closer scrutiny capitalism and communism are one and the same. Both of them consider man only as a bundle of desires. Nothing more than that. Both of them are materialist in the sense that satisfaction of physical needs is considered to be the only objective of human life. Artha and kama are the only two Purusharthas, according to them. Dharma and moksha – the spiritual aspects of human life are totally ignored by them. Both of them lay emphasis upon material wealth. The difference between them is restricted only to the question as to who should be the owner of wealth, the individual or the state. If your answer is individual, you are a capitalist and if your answer is the state, you are a communist. Hence communism is dubbed as state capitalism. Further both of them are `Homocentric’. They believe strongly that man is the centre of creations. Everything in Nature animate or inanimate is created for the enjoyment of Man. Thus capitalism and communism are the two faces of the same coin. Capitalism has a history of about 200 years and communism of about 80 years. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Mecca of communism – communism as a model of development has totally collapsed. Even China has bid good bye to communism. It is only namesake communist country. The Global Financial and Economic crisis started in the U.S., the Mecca of Free Market Capitalism – in 2007, and spread like a swine flu to cover the whole world. Today even western economists have started arguing that the global economic crisis is a crisis of the system, rather than the crisis in the system. Thus today, communism is dead and capitalism is dying. Today the whole world is facing the question, - Which is the third way? What is better alternative System of development? The world is at cross roads. It is in this background of the global crisis, we have to understand and discuss Sree Dattopanth Thengadiji’s classic work – `Third way’.

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