Swarajya, January 25, 1964
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.
Bangalore is making preparations for the Swatantra Party’s National Convention of February 1 and 2. It will not be a show of pomp and splendour— for this party has not come to sit on the throne of the Moghul Emperor but is meeting to conduct the business of the party. Still, it will be a fairly large gathering people interested in preserving democracy against the present tendency of the ruling party to shape it into a totalitarian regime, in all but its external form. We understand the words Swaraj and democracy as we were taught by Gandhiji to understand them. We do not believe in a swaraj wherein the individual is degraded into an indentured-labourer for the State. We do not believe in a democracy wherein the fundamental rights that were guaranteed in the National Charter on November 26, 1949 are withdrawn. We hold that the Constitution intended fully to preserve the rights and the significance of individual citizens; and this intention was inscribed in the original Article 19. The subsequent whittling down of these rights, to validate the dogmas and policies of those who were placed in authority, is not in order. These fundamental liberties were not newly conferred on the citizens. They were liberties enjoyed from immemorial time and solemnly affirmed in the Constitution.
Those who will meet in the National Swatantra Convention in Bangalore and those whom they represent will strive, with all the power they can command, for the restoration of the Constitution to be in conformity with the original intention thereof, and to build up a national Opposition to the political oligarchy now in office, which utilizes that position, and in particular the economic power it has secured, to perpetuate its power. We should rouse the people from hypnosis to conscious realization of their inalienable power to free themselves from the tyranny imposed on them, a tyranny which by arbitrary decree has converted all producers and distributors into a criminal tribe to be kept under surveillance by the State, and instead of allowing consumers to have the advantage of a free competition among producers and traders and others who serve the national economy, appropriates for itself, or gives to licensees of its choice, monopolies worse than any conceivable private monopoly accruing out of sheer power of resources. In addition to all this the party calling itself socialist seeks by nationalization to convert all free workers now enjoying the right of collective bargaining very soon into a labour army under State control and subject to the discipline of civil and military service under Government.
The Swatantra Party meets in the Bangalore National Convention to gain fresh strength to conduct its campaign for the reversal of this intolerable scheme and for the restoration of the democratic order contemplated in the Constitution which the people of India gave unto themselves on the 26th November 1949.
