Whose is Wealth? The First Verse of Isha Upanishad

If all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever."--said Mahatma Gandhi. With a brief introduction to Isha Upanishad and its unique place in Indian literature, this lecture will focus on just one phrase of this verse: "Do not covet, whose, after all is wealth?" Going through John Locke's philosophical justification of private property and its critique by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, the lecture will question the very idea of private ownership of wealth. It will try to argue, in order to provoke renewed debate,  that whatever we own we actually owe to society and other human beings.