[Letter to R Hawkins]

Summary

This short piece of correspondence, dated 5 April 1984 and addressed to R. Hawkins in Bombay, is a follow-up letter from Minoo Masani continuing an exchange begun on 2 April about how the Swatantra Party should be defined — presumably for a reference work or dictionary entry Hawkins was editing. Masani politely but firmly rejects the definition and the supporting quotations that appeared in Hawkins’s letter of 23 March, and encloses a revised definition of his own with six supporting quotations drawn from Swatantra Party literature and speeches.

The enclosure is the substantive part of the packet. Masani proposes that the term Swatantra be used, both attributively and absolutely, to designate “the Freedom Party (a liberal conservative political party) in the Republic of India from 1959 to 1972.” A parenthetical note explains that the Hindi word swatantra means self-determined or self-motivated, and that the Party’s programme accordingly stressed individual freedom and stood against collective farming, étatisme, socialism and communism. The six quotations that follow — from Masani’s own 1959 Rotary Club of Bombay address (reprinted in Against the Tide), an article in Life magazine, Swatantra Party convention speeches, Masani’s book Liberalism, and two statements by C. Rajagopalachari — are meant to demonstrate the Party’s self-description as a broad-based coalition of the middle classes and landed peasantry, pledged to social justice and individual enterprise while opposing statism.

The letter is brief and formal; the enclosed definition and quotations amount to a compact primer on what the Swatantra Party’s founders wanted the world to remember about the party more than a decade after its 1974 dissolution.

Key points

• A 5 April 1984 letter from Minoo Masani to R. Hawkins, continuing correspondence begun on 2 April.
• Masani rejects Hawkins’s proposed definition of the Swatantra Party (sent 23 March) along with its supporting quotations.
• Enclosed is Masani’s own revised definition designating Swatantra as “the Freedom Party (a liberal conservative political party) in the Republic of India from 1959 to 1972.”
• The revised definition glosses the Hindi word swatantra as “self-determined or self-motivated,” tying the Party’s identity to individual freedom and opposition to collective farming, étatisme, socialism and communism.
• Six supporting quotations are appended: two from Masani’s own speeches and writings (Rotary Club of Bombay 1959, Life magazine 1959), one from Swatantra Party Preparatory Convention Opening Remarks (1959), one from his book Liberalism, and two from C. Rajagopalachari (Sixth National Convention 1972 and Preparatory Convention 1959).
• The quotations frame the Party as a broad coalition of the middle classes and landed peasantry, pledged to social justice and individual enterprise, and opposed to statism.
• The packet is essentially a curated self-portrait of the Swatantra Party for external reference-work use, drawn from its founders’ own words.