The Indian Libertarian

Summary

This 15 September 1959 issue of The Indian Libertarian (Vol. VII No. 16), the Bombay fortnightly edited by Kusum Lotvala, opens in the rendered pages with an editorial on the Nehru-Ayub Khan meeting at Palam, weighing the prospects of an India-Pakistan settlement against long-standing distrust. The bylined articles in the rendered pages press the journal’s liberal, anti-statist and anti-communist line: M. A. Venkata Rao’s ‘In Place of Panchsheela’ calls for a sterner alternative to the discredited Panchsheel doctrine after Chinese aggression, and M. N. Thölal’s ‘Nehru Undermining India’s Freedom’ argues that Nehru’s policies erode India’s liberty from within. The bound Economic Supplement leads with Prof. G. N. Lawande’s ‘Co-operative Farming: The Path To Serfdom,’ an attack on collectivised agriculture, and continues with G. T. Olarenshaw’s ‘Finance is not Money’ and P. Spratt’s ‘Diamat’ (on dialectical materialism). Standing departments (Delhi Letter, Book Reviews, News Digest, Letter to the Editor) round out the issue.

Essays

Editorial: Nehru Ayub Khan Meeting

The unsigned editorial assesses the much-discussed Nehru-Ayub Khan meeting at Palam aerodrome. In the rendered pages it notes that the talks proceeded without a formal agenda yet produced expressions of goodwill and a willingness to settle outstanding Indo-Pakistan differences, and it cautiously weighs the factors for and against a durable settlement given the two countries’ long hostility and the looming Chinese threat.

• Centres on the Nehru-Ayub Khan meeting at Palam aerodrome.
• Notes the talks had no agenda but yielded goodwill and a war-renunciation gesture.
• Weighs factors for and against a lasting Indo-Pakistan settlement.
• Reads the rapprochement against the backdrop of Chinese pressure.

In Place of Panchsheela

By MA Venkata Rao

M. A. Venkata Rao’s ‘In Place of Panchsheela’ argues that the Panchsheel doctrine of peaceful coexistence has been exposed as hollow by Chinese aggression on the Himalayan frontier. In the rendered pages he urges India to abandon the illusions of Panchsheela and adopt a clear-eyed policy of national defence and realistic alignment, treating the betrayal in Ladakh and Tibet as proof that liberal democracies cannot trust totalitarian neighbours’ professions of friendship.

• Declares the Panchsheel doctrine discredited by Chinese aggression.
• Calls for a realistic defence and foreign policy in its place.
• Reads Tibet and Ladakh as proof of totalitarian bad faith.
• Frames the lesson in liberal-democratic terms.

Nehru Undermining India’s Freedom

By by M. N. Tholal

M. N. Thölal’s ‘Nehru Undermining India’s Freedom’ contends that the gravest threat to Indian liberty is not external but internal — the drift of Nehru’s government toward centralised, statist control. In the rendered pages he argues that the Prime Minister’s economic and political direction, his handling of dissent, and his accommodation of socialist and fellow-travelling forces are steadily hollowing out the freedoms independence was meant to secure.

• Locates the chief threat to Indian freedom in Nehru’s own policies.
• Criticises centralising, statist economic and political direction.
• Faults the government’s treatment of dissent.
• Casts internal illiberalism as more dangerous than external foes.

Economic Supplement

By G N Lawande

Prof. G. N. Lawande’s ‘Co-operative Farming: The Path To Serfdom,’ the lead piece of the bound Economic Supplement, attacks the official drive toward co-operative and collectivised farming as a step toward servitude. In the rendered pages he argues that pooling land and joint cultivation would destroy the peasant’s incentive and independence, that the food problem cannot be solved by such collectivism, and that Nagpur-style resolutions point India down a coercive, anti-liberal road in agriculture.

• Attacks co-operative/collective farming as ‘the path to serfdom’.
• Argues collectivisation destroys peasant incentive and independence.
• Denies that collective farming solves the food problem.
• Reads the Nagpur resolution as a coercive, anti-liberal turn.

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