The following musing is an excerpt from ‘To Prosperity through Freedom’, published in journal Incorporating the ‘Free Economic Review’ and ‘The Indian Rationalist’ Vol. 8 No. 5. The piece written by V. R. discusses and contextualizes Swatantra Party’s Philosophy and Policy which was declared at Patna on 19 and 20 March 1960.
Like Luther at Godeoburg, Mr. C. Rajqopalachari has nailed his Fourteen Points on the door of the Ruling Party in the crucial challenge. The Patna Convention authorised a statement of policy on 19 and 20 March 1960 which is issued to the general public in the form of a brochure called: To Prosperity through Freedom.
The Congress cannot ignore it any longer. The congress from the days of its founder Mahatma Gandhi has contented itself with practical programmes leaving ideology and refinement of ideals to the supreme leader. Moreover, the aim then was simple, namely, to get rid of the foreign ruler and to establish swaraj or government by the people. The governing sentiment was nationalism. The particular ideas and ideals developed by Gandhi in the course of his conduct of different campaigns had a general appeal but were not accepted by all on grounds of rational conviction. Even non-violence which Gandhi erected into an End in itself was accepted, for instance, by Jawaharlal Nehru as a Means necessary and inevitable under the circumstances of an unarmed people facing a modern fully-armed Government which could command every sphere of life and dominate every corner of the country through an all-pervasive network of government, roads, telegraphs, strategic railways and mobile military forces.
Khadi, prohibition, simplicity or even austerity of life, constructive work in preparing villages imbued by the Gandhian ideas, prayer, fasta. vows etc. were all accepted along with his theoretical notions of Hind Swaraj in a vague way. One who was a Minister in Mysore told the present writer that there was no need to think afresh on social and political ideals and policies because all that had been sufficiently and efficiently done by Gandhi long ago. He represented the closed mind so characteristic of the Congress intellectual and politician.
Today we have a similar situation in the country with Nehru as supreme leader. Congress leaders and rank and file take their ideology and policy from Nehru passively without much of heart-searching and analysis or discussion. The very constitution queers the pitch for the future by including socialistic programmes in the directive principles of policy such as levelling the disparities of wealth, providing welfare through State control, the right of the State to take over any line of business from private hands for public purposes etc. The abolition·of the zamindari was accepted without discussion as something above and beyond reasonable challenge.
The Policy Declaration of 1948 regarding industrialization laid down the dogma of State ownership and control of all key industries. This is socialism before Avadi (1955). The ideology of Nehru by way of Marxist economy has come into force from the very beginning of independent government in 1947 and has now reached proportions threatening the destruction of the democratic foundations and structure of free India.
The Patna brochure of the Swatantra party describes this state of crises confronting the country in all its aspects, both general referring to the overall psychological effects on national character and specific referring to the actual policies, economic and social. It proceeds to delineate an alternative policy and programme designed to reverse these destructive trends and set the country on the true path of stability and progress. In doing this, it takes issue in a frontal manner with the basic doctrine of socialism and traces the of congress policy to the blind way in which the Soviet pattern of industrialisation with its undue stress on heavy industries and neglect of consumer goods and agriculture is being put into force despite all warning by knowledgeable persons both Indian and foreign.
The Swatantra party is doing a genuine and much-needed service to the country by forcing a rational discussion of the philosophy and economy and polity of democracy in the light of our social and historical conditions. Democracy is goverment by discussion and it cannot be established accurately without the development of an unusually large class of persons in all walks of life taking part in the discussion of public affairs in different degrees. A free press and platform and the habit of discussing public events and policy proposals should be fostered in a democracy. So far the Congress Government is pursuing policy as if it were a private matter of the party and of its leaders. Publicity is sought only for approval and endoroement by the masses. Criticism is not welcomed, Day by day, the press is finding increasing pressure for conformity with ruling views.
In such a situation, the brochure of the Swatantra party as well as the challenging speeches of Sri C. Rajagoalachari, Mr. M. R. Maoani, Mr. K. M. Muhani, Prof. Ranga, Mr. Ratnaswamy and others have initiated a debate on the fundamentals of socialism vs democratic freedom as governing principles of national reconstruction and progress consistent with stability.
As regards the general aspect of the situation, the brochure points out that the great aspirations natural to a great country with a historic culture and civilisation imposes a special responsibility on the Government. It holds that the Congreos governent has not risen to the occasion but has caused a deterioration in the national fibre by its conduct with wide gaps between high professions and demoralising slackness in administration. Nor has the lot of the common man improved in spite of huge expenditure on grandiose projects and industrial establishments. The middle classes in particular are being wiped out under conditions of great hardship and frustration due to the growing difficulty of maintaining their standards of education and simple comforts. A small group of Congress leaders has come to exercise an excess of governmental authority irresponsive to public opinion, banking on the past services of the Indian National Congress. Other Statist parties like the PSP have become but satellites of the ruling party with similar socialist ideals borrowed unintelligently from abroad.
In the last section, the brochure discloses the mission of the Party of winning for the individual citizen freedom in the context of democratic life, which the struggle for national independence won for the nation. It declares that it will train the country for freedom, continuing the work of Gandhi and claims that the Swatantra party is a party that the country needs in order to fulfil its destiny-the party of ordered progress in and through freedom. Like the Congress, therefore, the Swatantra party also claims to be a movement for building a society of free individuals and realising greatness for the country in the comity of nations and fulfilling the promise inherent in the greatness of past culture and civilisation.
Man does not live by bread alone. He needs some overflow feeling, some overall objectives beyond bread and butter, some horizon to expand his outlook and yield large aims for his immediate activities. Hence we find the Westerner referring to the white man’s burden. Even the South African Boer has the ideal of preserving Christian white civilisation. The Nazi dreamt of Nietzsche’s goal of supermen lording it over the earth by virtue of superior aristocratic blood. Mussolini dreamt of reviving the glories of the old Roman empire. The communists have the heady goal of ruling the whole world and transforming the whole of human society into the pattern of a New Mass Man in a New Mass society in which Government fades away after producing self-sustaining Plenty. Gandhi dreamt of Hind Swaraj. a republic of autonomous villages living an Arcadian life of simplicity close to nature.
Nehru has the vision of socialised society with industrialisation carried to its apogee, full of science and technology. To these glamorous visions, the Swatantra party opposes its own picture of a free society functioning in accordance with the principles of free economy with a minimum amount of social, political and legal regulation. Voluntary associations fill the scene in a free society with the State confining itself to the limited sphere of law, order, and justice. Perhaps it may pioneer industries in case of the unreadiness of voluntary groups to take them up.
Free self-realisation through self-chosen activities in all the spheres of knowledge and action, art and science, industry and commerce, transport and communications, education, amusement and relaxation and happy associated activity in excursions and fellowship of various kinds; this is the picture presented by the Swatantra party. Hegel proclaimed that the goal of human society and civilisation is the attainment of Freedom. Karl Marx (the perverse student of Hegel) also had some dim notion of Freedom as the culmination of his communist society the State withering away, all class oppression vanishing and everyone doing his best for State and Society and every one obtaining from State and Society everything needed for human satisfaction and growth.
It is in the picture of proximate ideals, of actual governmental policies that social goals come to have vastly differing impacts on the day-to-day lives of the people, giving them the exhilaration of expanding freedom or cribbing, cabinning and confining them into narrow grooves charged with pain and frustration.
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