Swarajya, March 28, 1959
A strong government and a loyal people no doubt make a good State. But a deaf government and a dumb people do not make democracy. Democracy is not just a statutory entity. A knitting together of people's hearts makes democracy, the hearts being not of sheep but of men.
I have had forty years of contact with the saint (Gandhiji) who came to show a new way of life and an altogether new way of resistance against evil. The sieve of time has of course dropped many impressions and many details but what remains has by that process become all the clearer and firmer:
That happiness, either of the individual or of the body of thinking and feeling men and women called the nation, depends on character, not on material possessions or on the prospects of getting them later on.
Again, that reform must always come from within; and that loyal devotion to God is the spring of all reform from within and compulsion or violence, of any sort, makes no reform.
We have to conserve what we possess of virtues. As in art, so also in government, the artist or the ruler must fully feel and put himself in harmony with one's land and people. Then only can good results be achieved.
Today our rulers have strayed away from this axiom. They feel as if they belong to a higher race and have a mission to impose their convictions on the people. Their language is far too reminiscent of foreign autocracy. The musician's of India are even now in perfect tune with the land of their birth and its people. So the music of the musicians continues to give joy. In contrast with this, the disharmony of the Government is striking.
Whatever the nature or the system of government may be, the two essentials- work and compassion-make for prosperity and true happiness. A BBC Panorama recently broadcast a lot of important facts about China. Human labour can hardly ever have been employed since the days of the Pyramids with such insect-like profusion as in modern China.
“Thirty years ago it was Japan that sold cheap consumer goods to the world. Now China is competing with much lower prices, in the markets of South-East Asia,” said Mr. Richard Harris of the editorial staff of the London Times.
May be, it is there done by compulsion and indoctrination. But that is not an essential. Our men can and must be made work-minded. Our rulers must be liberated from the machine obsession. If together with this we have the doctrine of trusteeship, that is, of compassion and a sense of reality, we can solve the antinomy of individual and society. We can make a paradise of free men in India.
A strong government and a loyal people no doubt make a good State. But a deaf government and a dumb people do not make democracy. Democracy is not just a statutory entity. A knitting together of people's hearts makes democracy, the hearts being not of sheep but of men.
I have had forty years of contact with the saint who came to show a new way of life and an altogether new way of resistance against evil. The sieve of time has of course dropped many impressions and many details but what remains has by that process become all the clearer and firmer:
That happiness, either of the individual or of the body of thinking and feeling men and women called the nation, depends on character, not on material possessions or on the prospects of getting them later on.
Again, that reform must always come from within; and that loyal devotion to God is the spring of all reform from within and compulsion or violence, of any sort, makes no reform.
The problem of national happiness consists in nothing so much as in a change of heart. That should be our real ten-year plan. It does not need any annual confirmation by parliamentary vote at budget time. It calls for a nation-wide movement, for it is based on something more than a majority vote, the nature of man, something permanent.
Happiness does not depend on competition either among ourselves or with other nations. We cannot catch up when we are behind other nations by centuries. Indeed why should we 'catch up' if our aim is not show but welfare and happiness? And if catching up depends on external aid, it is a temptation and a trap; we shall be entangled in a voluntary moral subjection worse than military occupation.
We have to conserve what we possess of virtues. We must keep off new attractions that do not add to, but undermine old virtues. The inner urges and the unquestioned religious convictions which form the framework of action are far more important and effective than laws and regulations which the State may seek to impose. Nothing should be done to sabotage those urges and those convictions that have issued out of age long co-operation and experience and the climate of a particular national life. As in art, so also in government, the artist or the ruler must fully feel and put himself in harmony with one's land and people. Then only can good results be achieved.
Today our rulers have strayed away from this axiom. They feel as if they belong to a higher race and have a mission to impose their convictions on the people. Their language is far too reminiscent of foreign autocracy. The musician's of India are even now in perfect tune with the land of their birth and its people. So the music of the musicians continues to give joy. In contrast with this, the disharmony of the Government is striking. The activities of the Government being in disharmony have brought into being a sense of uncertainty and insecurity and have destroyed initiative. They have created disincentives for work and thought, which alone add to national wealth. Men and women have come to look upon the State as they look upon the stars and planets whose decrees of fate decide and which they cannot hope to change.
Two things are essential, a movement to make all people work hard whatever their place or their job, and a movement to make the rich feel they are trustees of what they hold beyond what they need for themselves These can be sought to be brought about by extreme compulsion, but by far the most efficient way is by a movement for voluntary acceptance of these essential and right conditions for progress and happiness. They are in the tradition of our people. They will preserve the graces of life and spread joy both spiritual and material.
Whatever the nature or the system of government may be, the two essentials- work and compassion-make for prosperity and true happiness. A BBC Panorama recently broadcast a lot of important facts about China. Human labour can hardly ever have been employed since the days of the Pyramids with such insect-like profusion as in modern China. "Forty-five thousand Chinese men and women, toil from sunrise to sunset on the building of a new dam, and they do it all without any kind of earth-moving machinery or equipment in fact practically with bare hands," said Mr. Richard Dimbleby in this BBC programme. "Men and women are working like this all over China," said Mr. Gerald Clark, London editor of the Montreal Star, in confirmation of Mr. Dimbleby's statement.
'The same methods of mass, unskilled labour that are putting up these huge twentieth-century earthworks are being employed also in other aspects of the drive for more industrial power, added Mr. Dimbleby.
What are we doing? We thirst and hunger for foreign exchange to import machinery and run family planning propaganda, and distribute contraceptives among girls who mix with ardent boys. Manual labour, the tortoise, wins the race in China against the hare, foreign machinery, in India.
“The backyard blast furnace is really the symbol of modern China. It is her industrial revolution, the great leap forward into the twentieth century," said Mr. Gerald Clark.
We in India are planning to invest astronomical figures of rupees in the founding of an atomic power station.
“The Chinese communist philosophy is 'Don't wait for the big factories, use your millions, let industrialization rise in the cottage and the village workshop"', said Mr. Dimbleby in this BBC Panorama. "There are from 3 to 7 lakh backyard furnaces throughout China," confirmed Mr. Gerald Clark.
“Thirty years ago it was Japan that sold cheap consumer goods to the world. Now China is competing with much lower prices, in the markets of South-East Asia,” said Mr. Richard Harris of the editorial staff of the London Times.
We are constantly and irrelevantly reminded that we are in the atomic age. What has the atom got to do with our progress? Nothing. Our large population of two-handed human beings is relevant and that is either ignored or deemed to be a handicap. In China they use these hands.
May be, it is there done by compulsion and indoctrination. But that is not an essential. Our men can and must be made work-minded. Our rulers must be liberated from the machine obsession. If together with this we have the doctrine of trusteeship, that is, of compassion and a sense of reality, we can solve the antinomy of individual and society. We can make a paradise of free men in India.
