Knowledge is traditional

Traditional knowledge is what has come down from the time man was able to communicate with other fellow human beings during the past four-billion-year-old web of life. The first form of communication could have been by paintings or line drawings, and what remains today are only those left from some of the cave paintings. Traditional Knowledge was passed on via all art forms, songs, poetry, drama, folk tales and paintings.

In the beginning all knowledge was Traditional, and it could be argued, that it still is. It began to change when greed and hunger for power took over man's mind. Knowledge became a weapon, to gain more power and wealth, to retain such power and wealth within their family or kin group. There were others who did not want to share their knowledge for fear it would be abused or misused, or because they doubted the ability of the common people to grasp such knowledge.

Later knowledge became a commodity, to be sold at the highest profit. Knowledge was used to exploit man and nature for the benefit of a few, and all the arts also were used to distort traditional knowledge, or used by a few people for their own personal benefit.

Traditional Knowledge developed for the primary needs of safety, food and sex. In the beginning it would have been those who had the traditional knowledge who survived. But then nature played a very dirty trick on mankind.

As man's greed increased, those who survived at the top were the more powerful, more cunning and more unscrupulous. Thus it was not the more intelligent, more learned, more humane humans who passed on their genes and memes, or who survived. Transmission of TK from parents to offspring, from generation to generation, and also lateral transmission to some extent would have been controlled and limited.

We are all aware and accept now why we need to gather and preserve TK and develop defensive Intellectual Property strategy to prevent exploitation. When the commercial interests took over Knowledge became a commodity, to be sold at the highest profit. Knowledge came to be monopolized, patented, copyrighted. From the temple archives, knowledge came to be locked up in universities and private organizations. University of California is holding more than 125 agricultural biotechnology patents up to a few years ago. Today the count would have gone up. "Three-fourths of new biotechnology products are controlled by the private sector" said Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Institute.

The threat of exploitation of TK has been with us for a long time. Sometimes openly. Sometimes in more subtle ways. It is not copyrights or patent rights we need for TK, but Moral Rights. Because when we gather TK, we could be invading the privacy of individuals or communities. Do we have a moral right to gather and publish such TK in the public domain, sometimes without the consent or knowledge of those who possess it? Knowledge that would have been kept within a family or a small community for hundreds of generations. Do these people have a moral right to keep their knowledge to themselves?

Collecting, studying and publishing Traditional Knowledge should be in the best interest of the people holding such knowledge but also of all mankind. It does not belong to an individual or even to a group. Such knowledge is universal, and cannot be monopolized using the modern patent and copyright laws. These new laws were brought in by man not in the best interest of mankind or Mother Earth, but in the sole interest of earning money, out of greed, and sometimes vanity.

The involvement of WIPO could also be counter productive, because it deals with Intellectual Property and patents. But what is required is to cover TK under Human Rights. Another major threat to TK is the TRIPS agreement, Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, which only benefits the global business community. The product patent regime as formulated by TRIPS takes the new products beyond the reach of the original possessors of this knowledge.

We have to use all TK from around the world to keep mankind healthy and happy. However almost all Traditional Knowledge depends on nature and natural resources. If we destroy the natural environment, TK would be totally useless.

We should also prevent any virus infecting our mind, through distorted TK. Traditional Knowledge should never be used to create conflicts and raise hatred among mankind, to try to prove one race, one caste, one religion is superior to others. TK should be used to build racial, religious and ethnic harmony among all human beings for the benefit of all life on Mother Earth. It is with the growing awareness of the importance if Traditional knowledge, that the SAARC Cultural Center, Sri Lanka had organized a Regional Seminar on Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expression, on April 29 - 30 at Sihigiriya. There were participants from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives and Pakistan.

The Sihigiri Museum as the venue was a perfect choice, because there is a vast amount of knowledge around Sihigiriya, from pre-historic times, through the development of the monasteries and the period of Kashyapa and after. The delegates from the SAARC region had an opportunity to see architectural wonders and the hydraulic technology in the water garden, and development without disturbing nature in the boulder garden and the world's first poetry anthology and social network, on the mirror-like wall. The visit to the indigenous orthopedic medical center at Horiwila too displayed how far ahead and advanced our indigenous medical knowledge has been, when compared to machine and technology dependent western medicine. The steps taken by the SAARC Cultural center, Colombo should be admired and appreciated, for bringing these issues to our attention and also facilitating research on Traditional Knowledge.

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