The Indian Libertarian

Summary

The April 15, 1961 issue of The Indian Libertarian (Vol. IX, No. 2), edited by D. M. Kulkarni and published by Libertarian Publishers, Bombay, opens with three editorials surveying foreign and domestic affairs: Louis Fisher’s New Leader proposal that India and Pakistan move toward confederation, the use of preventive detention by Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri after the Jabalpur communal riots, and what the editors call Nehru’s likely concessions to Ayub Khan over the Indus waters and Kashmir. The issue then carries M. A. Venkata Rao on the historical origins of democracy and the limits of majority rule, M. N. Tholal’s polemical ‘Nehru Facing Both Ways’ on India’s drift toward bloc politics, and a reprinted Stephen Pearl Andrews essay defending the sovereignty of the individual against the protective state.

The centerpiece is a four-page Economic Supplement built around a libertarian ‘Declaration Of Principle And Policy’ for solving the land problem through a single tax on the annual value of land, illustrated by D. M. Kulkarni’s account of land-value taxation in practice (citing Henry George, the Australian states, and New Zealand) and a Land and Liberty piece distinguishing ‘just’ from ‘wrongful’ taxation. A Delhi Letter on the Congress rout in the New Delhi municipal elections, a Tom Jones review of Henry Hazlitt’s ‘What You Should Know About Inflation’, press gleanings on Morarji Desai’s tax proposals and the scapegoating of the press for the Jabalpur riots, and News & Views items on Tibet, the Soviet Union, U.K. trade-union investments and the 1962 general elections complete the issue. The advertising back-page lists books by Bakunin, Proudhon, Rocker, Borsodi, Von Mises and Sitaram Goel from Libertarian Publishers’ catalogue.

Essays

Editorial — Confederation with Pakistan; Jabalpur Riots and the Home Ministry; Nehru’s Further Concessions to Ayub Khan?; India and America

The lead editorial reviews Louis Fisher’s New Leader proposal that India and Pakistan move toward a confederation, noting the historical precedent of West Germany seeking talks with East Germany at Soviet urging and the Macmillan line on European unity. The editors are sceptical that such a venture can succeed under present conditions but argue it deserves serious British and American attention. The companion editorials criticise Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri for continued reliance on the Preventive Detention Act after the Jabalpur riots and warn that Nehru’s London talks with President Ayub Khan signal further concessions on the Indus waters and Kashmir, with an additional note on the visit to India of an American officer named Arnold Harrison and its diplomatic implications.

• Editorial endorses serious engagement with Louis Fisher’s confederation-with-Pakistan proposal while remaining sceptical of its near-term prospects.
• Criticises Lal Bahadur Shastri for keeping the Preventive Detention Act in force after Jabalpur, calling the law a denial of fundamental rights.
• Frames Nehru’s London meetings with Ayub Khan as the prelude to further Indian concessions over Indus waters and Kashmir.
• Reads the India-Pakistan-America triangle through the lens of Cold War alignments and Kennedy’s new administration.

What the Voter Should Know — The Historical Origin of Democracy

By MA Venkata Rao

M. A. Venkata Rao opens a serialised civic-education essay on the historical origins of democracy, tracing the idea from Greek city-states through the medieval English struggle against arbitrary monarchy to the modern parliamentary state. He argues that the modern voter inherits a tradition in which kingship was first limited by a feudal nobility, then by an enfranchised middle class, and finally by universal suffrage, but warns that political democracy alone is insufficient without an underlying ethic of self-government. The closing section on the limitations of majority rule cautions that majorities can be as tyrannical as kings and that Indian democracy must take care to protect minority opinion, free association and the moral autonomy of the individual.

• Traces the historical evolution of democracy from Greek city-states through the English constitutional struggle to modern parliamentary government.
• Argues that civic capacity, not formal franchise, is the substantive condition of self-government.
• Warns that majority rule, unchecked by liberal principle, can reproduce the tyranny it replaces.
• Frames the Indian voter’s task as a moral as well as political responsibility.

Nehru Facing Both Ways

By By M. N. Tholal

M. N. Tholal accuses Nehru of facing both ways in foreign policy: courting the Soviet bloc rhetorically while seeking Western economic aid, and posturing as a peacemaker abroad while accommodating Chinese encroachments on Indian territory. Tholal contrasts Nehru with Sardar Patel, invokes Patel’s deathbed warnings about Chinese intentions, and argues that the government’s reaction to the loss of Aksai Chin and the McMahon line dispute shows a chronic unwillingness to take a stand. The essay ends by asking whether India is heading toward a military alliance or a non-aligned bloc of its own.

• Charges Nehru with strategic doublespeak: non-alignment in words, dependence in practice.
• Invokes Sardar Patel as the counter-example of a leader willing to name the Chinese threat.
• Reads the McMahon line dispute and Aksai Chin as exposing the limits of Nehruvian foreign policy.
• Questions whether India can sustain non-alignment without either an alliance or a bloc of its own.

True Conundrum Of Government

By By Stephen Pearl Andrews

A reprint of Stephen Pearl Andrews’s nineteenth-century essay ‘True Functions of Government’ argues that the only legitimate function of government is to protect the sovereignty of the individual. Andrews develops a Protestant analogy: just as the Reformation asserted the individual’s right of private judgement in matters of conscience, modern political liberty rests on the individual’s right of private judgement in matters of social and economic life. He contends that government overreach in regulation, taxation and ‘protection’ of industry inevitably produces the very disorders it claims to prevent.

• Argues that the sole legitimate function of government is the protection of individual sovereignty.
• Draws a Protestant analogy between religious conscience and political liberty.
• Treats economic regulation as a category mistake about what government can usefully do.
• Reprinted from a nineteenth-century American source as a foundational libertarian text.

Economic Supplement — Declaration Of Principle And Policy: For the Solution of Land Problem by Libertarians

The Economic Supplement opens with a ‘Declaration Of Principle And Policy: For the Solution of Land Problem by Libertarians’, a Georgist programmatic statement. It holds that the economic, political and moral condition of any people is ultimately determined by the system of land tenure, and proposes that the equal right to land be secured by an annual tax on the unimproved value of land, with simultaneous abolition of taxes on labour, capital and trade. The declaration condemns regimentation, import controls and protective tariffs as breaches of personal liberty and as obstacles to a ‘progressing civilisation’.

• States that the system of land tenure determines a society’s economic and moral order.
• Proposes a single tax on the annual value of land in place of taxes on production and trade.
• Condemns import controls, tariffs and protectionism as infringements of liberty.
• Frames the libertarian land programme as a path to ending involuntary poverty without redistributive coercion.

Economic Supplement — Land Value Taxation In Practice

By By D. M. Kulkarni

D. M. Kulkarni’s ‘Land Value Taxation In Practice’ surveys real-world experiments with the Henry George idea. He cites the State of Pennsylvania’s graded property tax, the Australian states and New Zealand, the city of Vienna under Henry George’s son, and post-war German municipalities, arguing that wherever the system has been seriously tried it has improved building activity, broadened revenue and discouraged land speculation. The essay positions land-value taxation as the practical bridge between the libertarian declaration of principle and contemporary Indian fiscal reform.

• Documents Pennsylvania, Australia, New Zealand and Vienna as practical laboratories for land-value taxation.
• Argues that taxing site value rather than improvements rewards building and penalises speculation.
• Treats Henry George’s programme as administratively practical, not merely theoretical.
• Reads the Indian land problem through the same lens — speculation, monopoly and obstructed development.

Economic Supplement — Just Taxation And Wrongful Taxation

A reprinted Land and Liberty (London) piece, ‘Just Taxation And Wrongful Taxation’, distinguishes between taxes that fall on socially created values (land rent) and taxes that fall on individual effort (income, sales, customs). The argument is that taxing wages and goods is wrongful because it confiscates the fruits of labour, while collecting the rent of land is just because it returns to the community a value the community created. The author warns Indian readers that the Finance Bill’s continued reliance on excise and customs is exactly the wrong direction.

• Distinguishes ‘just’ (land-value) from ‘wrongful’ (labour and consumption) taxation.
• Argues that taxes on wages and goods confiscate the fruits of personal effort.
• Treats site rent as a socially created surplus that may justly be reclaimed for public purposes.
• Reads Indian fiscal policy as moving in the wrong direction on this distinction.

Delhi Letter — Congress Rout In New Delhi (From Our Correspondent)

A short Supplement essay titled ‘Socialism and Democracy Evaluated’ contrasts the libertarian conception of social order, in which voluntary cooperation between individuals produces harmony, with the socialist conception, in which a centrally planned authority assigns roles and rations rewards. The essay holds that human progress rests on individualism and that no government has a moral right to impose a uniform economic plan on dissenting citizens. The ‘Consequences Born In Individuals’ section argues that democratic and socialist principles cannot indefinitely coexist in the same constitution.

• Sets libertarian individualism against socialist planning as competing first principles.
• Argues that voluntary cooperation produces social harmony more reliably than central direction.
• Concludes that democracy and socialism are constitutionally incompatible in the long run.
• Closes the Economic Supplement on a polemical note that anticipates later libertarian writing.

Book Review — What You Should Know About Inflation by Henry Hazlitt (Van Nostrand Company Inc.)

By —Tom Jones

The Delhi Letter, signed ‘Balanced Living’, reports on the rout of the Congress in the New Delhi municipal elections and reads it as a verdict on the Nehru government’s drift. The correspondent describes how the Jana Sangh, the Swatantra Party and independents combined to defeat Congress candidates, profiles Acharya Kripalani’s role, and discusses K. M. Munshi’s intervention in the campaign. A companion section reports on the Fellow-Travellers’ Council and on the proposal for a ‘Borderline of Welfare State’, a moderating reformulation of welfare politics.

• Reports the rout of Congress in the New Delhi civic elections as a political turning point.
• Names Acharya Kripalani and K. M. Munshi among the figures shaping the opposition campaign.
• Reads the result as a verdict on Congress complacency rather than a coherent rival platform.
• Adds a column on the ‘Borderline of Welfare State’ debate as a moderating reformulation.

Gleanings from the Press — Morari Proposes ‘Morton’s Fork’ to Tax-Payers; Local Press Made the Scapegoat of Jabalpur Riots; ‘Favourite’ Wife of the White-Capped Congress Rulers

By —Behar Herald

Tom Jones reviews Henry Hazlitt’s ‘What You Should Know About Inflation’ (Van Nostrand, 1961), summarising Hazlitt’s argument that inflation is caused by government expansion of the money supply rather than by wage demands, monopoly pricing or speculation. The reviewer endorses Hazlitt’s case against Keynesian remedies and recommends the book as a corrective to confused popular thinking on the subject. The review is paired with a ‘Visit to America’ cartoon strip on the realities of life in the United States.

• Endorses Hazlitt’s claim that inflation is a monetary phenomenon caused by government policy.
• Reads the book as a deliberate corrective to Keynesian conventional wisdom.
• Recommends Hazlitt as essential reading for the lay public on inflation.
• Appears alongside a ‘Visit to America’ satirical cartoon on American life.

News & Views — Donkey-Driver’s Budget; Over One Crore Rupees Down The Drain of SBS; ‘Brain-Washing’ of Tibetan Youths; A Peep Hole in the ‘Iron Curtain’ in Russia; U.K. Trade Unions Go ‘Capitalistic’; Bravado; Military Alliance or Bloc?; Christian Bombs with Pagan Names; Next Five Years Crucial for Democracy in India

‘Gleanings from the Press’ reprints two short items. The first, from a Raj Sabha report, criticises Finance Minister Morarji Desai’s ‘Morton’s fork’ approach to taxation, where the burden is squeezed alike from those who spend and those who save. The second blames the local press at Jabalpur as a scapegoat for the communal riots, defending the press against the government’s hostile reading of its coverage.

• Criticises Morarji Desai for a taxation logic that punishes both spending and saving.
• Defends the Jabalpur press against being made a political scapegoat for the riots.
• Reads government press criticism as part of a wider pattern of state pressure on the media.

Essay 12

The News & Views column covers the donkey-driver’s budget, the disappearance of over a crore of rupees from the State Bank of Sikkim, the brainwashing of Tibetan youths in Communist China, a ‘peep hole in the iron curtain’ on Soviet daily life, and U.K. trade-union experiments with investing pension funds in equities. A closing item argues that the next five years will be decisive for Indian democracy, with the 1962 general election as the test case for whether the country’s constitutional ethos can survive Congress dominance and continued planning.

• Surveys events in Sikkim, Tibet, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom from a libertarian angle.
• Reports U.K. trade unions moving into equity investment as a ‘capitalist’ development.
• Frames the 1962 Indian general election as decisive for the future of constitutional democracy.
• Maintains the issue’s running theme that planning, central direction and Congress monopoly are mutually reinforcing problems.

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