Mahatma Gandhi once used an interesting metaphor to describe his cultural position. He spoke of building a house with firm foundations, rooted in the earth, but whose windows were wide open to let the winds blow freely from every direction : "I want the winds from every corner to blow through my house but I refuse to be swept off my feet by any of them". Here in South Asia we are celebrating the 50th year of our independence. And Mahatma Gandhi is one of the persons whose life and thought are often recalled on this occasion. At the Bangalore meeting of the Alliance for a Responsible and United World, Gandhi's life and thought have become a useful focal point from where to start meaningful explorations of the impact of globalisation on the peoples of the world in general, and Asia in particular. They also help us to explore the cultural and spiritual resources from our richly diverse continent which could form the bases from which the choking embrace of globalisation can be fought.

Gandhi himself used the spiritual and cultural resources of the varied peoples of the subcontinent in the struggle against imperialism. He articulated to the people their own highly enabling cultural and spiritual resources so that they would feel empowered and capable of successfully resisting the dehumanisation and indignity that colonialism was thrusting on them.

Now, 50 years on, we find ourselves faced with dehumanisation from another quarter: the homogenising bulldozer of globalisation. We are finding ourselves strengthened in our struggle by those very same sources Gandhi brought to his struggle more than half a century ago: culture, spirituality and pluralism. The principles he employed in his struggle, such as Ahimsa (non-violence), Sathya (truth), Aparigraha (non-possession, non-grasping), Astheya (non-stealing), Sparshabhavana (freedom from social exclusion) and Swadeshi (belonging to one's own space, rooted in a local community and yet a world citizen) were not his own but selected from his cultural roots and embodied powerfully in his life.

The many spiritual and cultural traditions of Asia provide us with rich resources to create an alternative consciousness vis a vis the aridity of globalisation as a worldview. Buddhist spirituality, for example, offers us the deep awareness of the impermanence of everything, an awareness that leads to non-attachment towards material things. This consciousness together with the deep compassion for all beings makes Buddhist spirituality an enabling and nourishing resource in the struggle against the soulless consumerism that is ruining our physical and human world today. For indigenous peoples we are all children of Mother Earth. Hence a caring and nurturing attitude to nature comes naturally to them. The Christian and Islamic traditions also offer similar enrichment.

These spiritual traditions still have deep roots in the peoples of Asia. There is also the rich potential of the creative energies of the poor waiting to be released. The deeply humanising power of women also constitutes a countervailing force and the more the creative energies of women are released, the more humane a world we can create. It is now possible to see that however formidable a force globalisation appears to be with its negative impact, it is at bottom quite a fragile phenomenon and can be countered. The contours of a counter-response are already visible in the multiple initiatives and movements that mirror the deeply felt aspirations of local communities for enhanced self-expression and a life of dignity. With creativity and imagination it is possible to enlarge the already existing spaces within the broader framework of globalisation in a way that loosens its stranglehold over our lives. When these varied and pluralist movements communicate with each other, we will be moving towards a world where we celebrate the unity in diversity of the whole of humanity.

Here in the Bangalore meeting, we have come to see that all our strategies for social transformation and resistance to globalisation must spring from personal transformation, drawing upon spiritualities contained in the myriad local cultures that inhabit this part of the globe. It is in this way that we draw upon the wisdom built over millennia by people rooted in a particular place. This reliance on 'Truth experienced' rather than on 'Truth known' that characterises ideologies and theoretical systems, makes personal living and social action much more integrated, holistic and fulfilling.

We find that many of our paradigms for social transformation and development reflect the imperialism of language, of nomenclature and definition always borrowed from alien sources. We blindly label as 'poor' or 'primitive' those who have chosen to live what is really a life of simplicity and dignity. Even today large sections of the masses of Asia live simple lives largely unaffected by the patterns of globalisation, deriving their joy not from the consumption of material goods but from spirituality and human relationships.

We also see the futility of large-scale models of development and social transformation, which reflect a blindness towards human diversity. We find greater value in numerous small and culture-specific actions rather than in attempting to multiply and expand the scale of any particular model of social action, however successful it may have been in one specific place. The latter is not very different from the strategy of globalisation which, for example, puts everything at the feet of finance or capital and reduces human beings to mere 'human resources'.

In our fight against the forces of dehumanisation and homogenisation, we also find the need to articulate the life-enhancing worldview of the harmonious partnership between the genders. Far from the exclusively masculine values of aggression and competition represented in the global market place, we need to journey back to the androgynous sensibility represented by the traditional iconographies of Asia, such as Ardhanariswara (half God - half Goddess) and the Yin-Yang, if we are to regain our full human dignity as peoples.

The way we carried on our deliberations at the Bangalore meeting is also illustrative of our dependence on practices rooted in local culture. Instead of tightly and rigidly structuring it as something that is geared towards a product we have been able to go by the 'Tao' of the experience, valuing more the process and our relationships. We met as human persons and told each other our stories, something that happens under many a banyan tree in many a village square in Asia. We found this a deeply enriching experience, one that enhanced the quality of our relationship as expressed in the lovely Maori saying "love is the space you give to the other to tell his or her story". We meditated together, sang spiritual and social songs together and felt the sense of being a microcosmic living community. Thus our vision of social transformation recognises the wisdom that comes from a plurality of cultures and local communities.