Swarajya, April 7, 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.
One of the main causes for the erosion of State sovereignty and increased centralization of authority and power in New Delhi is the single-party domination all over India. The monolithism of government is supported by the monolithic character of the ruling party. The dogmas and slants of the socalled Congress High Command override the rights and feelings of the people of the States. The Congress bosses in charge of affairs in the States meekly submit to the decisions of the party at the top and explain, equivocate, procrastinate and bamboozle the people in their respective States. The slogan of ‘unity’ is used to cover up every defeat at the hands of a majority in the party. Careerist ambition serves to blunt any feelings of pride or inclination to revolt. The history of the language issue and the evolution of State finances furnish ample proof of this withering away of the principle of federation and the installation of monolithism in its place. State budgets have become a pretence. State governments now live on grants and for the rest act as bill collectors on behalf of the Planning Commission. Unity degenerates into imperialism, if through a monolithic party all power passes to a majority operating at the Centre.
The Swatantra Party should not be misled by the charge of negativism which is used to hypnotize the intelligentsia and to create an illusion of guilt. There is no crime or lapse involved in being negative, and strongly negative, against error and crime. The passion for freedom is always negative in the sense that it is a call of the human spirit to fulfil itself by resisting and revolting against external restraint. The movement for Swaraj of 1920 was also negative in this sense. The Swatantra moment of 1959 is just as negative and as necessary as the Swaraj movement of 1920 had been. We revolt now against the suppressions which form the policy of the Congress Party. The Swatantra Party is a party organized for freedom from the swadeshi imperialism that invades the farm, family and shop. The Swatantra Party should relentlessly work for the achievement of its goal, whatever name the ruling party may in its own self-defence give it.
A party that symbolizes suppression is seated on the Delhi throne and it must be dethroned. The Swatantra Party and all its units and members should engage themselves in the sacred negative task of pulling down the Permit-Licence-Raj from the throne and placing the Goddess of Freedom on the seat of authority. Honesty is negative because lying is positive. Integrity is negative because corruption is a positive evil. Free economy is negative because the present Permit-Licence-Raj is an intolerable positive evil. Let us unite and serve this great movement of freeing the nation from the leviathan-grip that every day relentlessly tightens its hold. Swatantra may be called by any mathematical name, but it is a sacred cause and we should not be frightened by words and bamboozled into inaction.
The electorate at all levels should be made to realize that government by a political party without a strong enough Opposition, strong enough to threaten its overthrow, cannot function very long as a good government. They should be made to understand that apart from all questions of alternative policies and ideologies, unless such an Opposition party is placed in position, the people cannot have just administration with due respect for the rights of the people and not looking only to the advantage of the vested interests of the party in office. The electorate should be educated on the mechanism of parliamentary government and helped to see that it is not merely a question of whom one prefers between two sides but how far one can be trusted to carry on without having the other to watch and check, and to expose neglect and misdoings. The electorate should be educated about what they should do with their votes in order to put such a balance of power in effective operation. If all this education is duly undertaken and the fallacy of the ‘negative’ charge is dispelled the Swatantra Party will have fulfilled a national duty. Success or failure does not matter.
We should long for a free economy as passionately as prisoners long for liberty. With the passion that prisoners hunger for liberty we should hunger for national life free from the incubus of this permit-licence-favouritism sitting over our chests and choking the people’s dynamism.
