Swarajya, October 20, 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.
I have often explained in the pages of this journal that in the application of principles, political parties which differ from and vigorously oppose one another often, in actual application and practice, cross the borders of their ideals and creeds and modify them so that the common man may wonder at their mutual opposition when they come so close to each other in practice. Just as a mariner keeps his compass and constantly refers to it, although he may deliberately swerve from his direction for definite reasons of expediency arising in the course of his voyage, so should we keep our fundamental principles of governance clear in our minds and remind ourselves of them every now and then, so that we may keep to our course in the long run, whatever may be the diversions necessitated by circumstances in actual life. The fundamental principles of the free way of life for which Swatantra stands are different from those by which the present Congress Party and its comrades, the communists, are governed. Whether it is totalitarian control, or State-capitalism, or decentralized communism in its prospective form when the State will have ‘withered away’ according to them, and each commune takes full and independent collective charge of its population, the final issue is: which is better for society—forced labour, skilled and unskilled, on a rigid plan; or on the contrary, freedom given to each individual to earn his wage through work and labour of his choice from time to time? The question is whether it is good or wise to seek to put on adult men and women the compulsions which we necessarily put on children by reason of their immaturity.
Even if it be granted—what is by no means true—that a better quantum of Work will result under planned compulsion, what happens to the mind in the course of producing such bigger out-turn? The mind of the individual must get atrophied in the process: can that atrophy of the individual mind be good for society which in every sense is no more than the sum of its individuals?
On the answer to this question rests the claim of collectivism to serve national welfare, be it the collectivism of Congress socialism or of the communist brand. The Swatantra Party answers this important question in the negative. It stands for freedom and stoutly opposes compulsion. There are some compulsions and planned operations necessary, arising out of the changes and complications in modern life, but these regimentations should be limited to the unavoidable boundaries thereof, if we wish to develop and preserve the stamina and the full potential of the individuals composing society. If the cells of the body degenerate, the whole body degenerates.
The analysis assumes and grants in favour of the opposite position that the authoritarian State organization, for which the coilectivist stands, is capable of maintaining common morality and efficiency, which by no means is true. Any system of collectivism and State control must delegate authority to various doubiful agencies through permits and licences. The party in office—assuming that the system of parliamentary democracy survives in some form—will be a corrupt incubus settled permanently, like the Old Man of the Sea, on the shoulders of the people who have to slave under its direction. The moral rot will be insufferable as we have seen already; but assuming that nature is conquered and everything runs in a healthy way the slow and steady atrophy of the individual mind is certain and unavoidable. The individuals in the party cadre will, of course, preserve their mental machine fairly intacat, for it is necessary and is exercised for party purposes. But this would be only partial and biassed preservation. The hierarchy in the party will be too active a force for the thinking mechanism of even the party members being fully preserved.
In the net result we shall have the nation divided into rulers and ruled and help in the survival of the feudal system in a new form—divested of the grace and kindliness that mitigated feudalism—made more ugly and less sufferable by reason of total allegiance to materialist aims without any spiritual leaven to soften authority.
