Hindustan Times, January 27, 1962
Between ourselves, honest voter, these private monopolies created by the pernicious system of permits, licences, quotas and controls (to be extended now even to foreign capital which voluntarily comes into the private sector) make the Congress Party's rich friends richer, and the poor poorer. It is a close conspiracy; we have a battle between money and liberty, between dharma and atheism, between freedom and communism clothed in Congress robes.
The Republic is meant for the people and not the people for the Republic. So also are the Plans meant for the people, not the people for the Plans. The standard of living should not be measured, by how much we spend but by how people spend what they spend. The quality of life is more important than the amount of expenditure that goes into the average account. But let me not use up the space given to me by the kind Editor on an anniversary day, for detailed election talk. Let me take up some permanent though insoluble questions and if possible draw some lessons, may be even for the present elections.
The contradiction between man’s free will and God’s omnipotence is immemorial. It has not been solved by any of the theologians who have applied their acute minds to it. In one of the books of Paradise Lost, Milton’s great organ voice puts forth the Christian explanation in splendid rhythm; but it does not convince. We have the old, old Semitic explanation of the Devil opposing the Omnipotent and tempting man. It is only a restatement of the problem and no solution. As an alternative to the Satan theory, we have the Aryan explanation of lswara leela which too is only the same mystery put in an agreeable form. It is no answer to the query but only a semantic opiate.
Again, we read great modern scientist-philosophers descending from atomic science to discuss chance and free will. But they too lead us to no better conclusion than this—that free will is an illusion and no reality—that when the event is pleasant we imagine that our free will and free action has brought it about; but when the event is unpleasant we deny free will and attribute it to the pre-determined result of unalterable forces. That man’s free will is mere illusion does not leave us satisfied but more unhappy.
Why does the all-merciful, all-good Master of the universe tolerate evil and pain? Shall we then deny God? But even that would not solve our trouble. We are in an immense universe without an explanation for its existence.
As far as we can see with our human understanding, without pain there can be no sensation of pleasure whose desirability we do not question. We cannot have a pleasant breeze if we did not have unpleasant heat, indeed we could not have any breeze at all if we didn’t have heat. We cannot have East, unless we have West, we cannot have Good unless we have Evil—to which Good is opposed and indeed from which positive Good issues. Good and Evil are polarized even as positive and negative electric forces issue out of something which otherwise is a neutral nothing. We cannot have a positive something in this world without its opposite coming into existence. Even the structure of atoms conforms to this law.
Coming to the immediate affairs of the nation, we could not have the Swatantra movement if we had not the attempt of the Congress to perpetuate itself in a regime of Permits, Licences, and Quotas, denying the people’s freedom, to which Sri Nehru gives the fine name, Plan.
But for the totalitarian drive of the Congress, we could not have this whetting of the edge of freedom undertaken by the Swatantra Party—the edge of freedom dulled by too long control of affairs by a single political party and its High Command. No nation can produce anything except by individual energy accumulating into a national endeavour. Which individual will find his energy and bring it out unless there is incentive for exertion and profit in endeavour? The mathematics of the total should help us not to forget or ignore the units which go to make up that total. The natural laws that govern the activities of each one of those units must be kept in mind to produce any total. All this is clear enough but for the confusion of slogans and the fog raised by the personality cult.
