The Juggernaut of Avadi

By MA Sreenivasan

Summary

‘The Juggernaut of Avadi’ is a satirical free-enterprise polemic by M. A. Sreenivasan, reprinted by the Forum of Free Enterprise from the Commerce Annual of 1956. Sreenivasan casts India’s commitment to a ‘socialistic pattern of society’ — adopted at the Congress’s 1955 Avadi session — as a great religious Juggernaut: a bedecked, gigantic idol dragged through the land by faithful devotees while the agonised cries of its victims are drowned in festive din. The dominant ikon, he writes, is the ‘big-bellied Nationalisation’ idol, worshipped for its supposed threefold blessing of Utopia, Panacea, and the Midas touch.

Using the nationalisation of the Kolar Gold Mines as his central example, Sreenivasan argues such measures were unnecessary and unjustified, conceived ‘in the cockpit of local politics’ rather than national interest, and contrary to the Government’s own professed policy. He marshals the authority of Dr. John Matthai — former Finance Minister and first Indian Chairman of the State Bank — who held that nationalisation was ‘not supported either by socialist thinking or socialist practice’ and that the Kolar case was singularly unsuited to it. Sreenivasan deplores the growing intolerance of criticism, the reckless reliance on deficit financing dressed up as ‘Brinkmanship’, and the depreciation of money he labels ‘D.M.’

The essay’s deeper theme is the danger to individual liberty from an ever-expanding State. Sreenivasan warns against idolatry of rulers and the apathy of citizens, invoking Dryden, the parable of the terror-stricken pedestrian who thanks the robber for taking only his nose and ears, and Gandhi’s phrase ‘the violence of the State’. He closes with a call to vigilance: nine years after winning freedom, Indians must safeguard their liberty from gradual, unnoticed erosion and never become ‘a casualty of mass-hypnosis.‘

Key points

• Sreenivasan personifies India’s post-Avadi socialist programme as a religious Juggernaut idol dragged over its victims by devoted worshippers.

• The chief ‘ikon’ is ‘big-bellied Nationalisation’, credited with a false threefold blessing of Utopia, Panacea, and the Midas touch.

• He uses the Kolar Gold Mines nationalisation as a case of an unnecessary, politically motivated measure contrary to the Government’s stated policy.

• He cites Dr. John Matthai — ex-Finance Minister and first Indian Chairman of the State Bank — that nationalisation is unsupported by socialist thinking or practice and Kolar especially unsuited to it.

• He attacks reckless deficit financing (mocked as ‘Brinkmanship’) and currency depreciation, and the official intolerance of criticism.

• The core concern is the erosion of individual liberty by an expanding State and the apathy and idolatry of citizens.

• He closes with an appeal to eternal vigilance: freedom won nine years ago must be guarded against gradual, unnoticed erosion and mass-hypnosis.

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