Surrendering to Communism

I still think it's an honest man pursuing an impossible, ruinous, illogical system - not a selfish monster, but a despot on principle, which entails the use of the worst acts, the worst agents, and the most monstrous consequence of ills.

- Thackeray in a letter to his mother, about Louis Napoleon

Mr. Walter Lippmann, in his interesting articles in The Herald Tribune in New York and in The Hindu of Madras has with refreshing candour set out an important though unpleasant truth. What he has recently said about the futility of fighting fire with fire in relation to the American approach to the problem of containing communism applies with equal force to the fighting supposed to be going on in India between the Congress Party and the communists.

     The illusion about fire being strategically and usefully used to fight fire, ends not in the extinguishment of the unwanted fire, but in a conspiracy and a joint fire. In a free society like ours, says Mr. Lippmann, a policy is bound to fail which deliberately violates our pledges and our principles, our treaties and our laws. The ultimate reason why the Cuban affair was incompetent is that it was out of character, like a cow that tried to fly or a fish that tried to walk.

     The attempt in India that is made by the Congress Party to fight the communists by adopting the very policies of expropriation which the communists want, cannot succeed; and it must to the extent of its success end in the Congress becoming a communist instrument and not in a victory over communism.

     In India, as in America, as Mr. Lippmann has stated in, clear terms, in the struggle with communism, we must find our strength by developing and applying our own principles, not in abandoning them. We must rediscover our faith in the fundamental guarantees about the freedom of person, property and occupation with which we began Independence and not abandon that principle and hope to fight fire with fire. We cannot sacrifice free economy in order to fight the communists.

     If the sacrifice of free economy is to be the strategy of the war against communism, the battle ceases to have a motive. If unintentionally done, it is a stupid betrayal of faith. If deliberately persisted in, it becomes a conspiracy between the Congress Party -and the communists. The lafter are licking their lips with glee seeing how this conspiracy is progressing. It was the same when in meeting the violence of the British Government, we sometimes thought violence should be met with violence and found our mistake.

    We must adopt a way of producing progress and economic development through a free economy, not by losing faith in our own principles and surrendering to the totalitarian methods of communism called by another name.

     The goal of progress must be reached by the way we have chalked out for it in the Constitution. Any shortcut by way of the communist path would be betrayal of our pledges and principles, and a surrender to our enemy. Let us not in our eagerness to march fast integrate India with the communist empire.

     The Swatantra movement is a movement for liberation of the citizen from the maw of the State. The fight for liberation is not less important or less sacred when it is to be fought against a swadeshi organization that has seized government and seeks, to be a totalitarian dictator than when the struggle was against an alien organization which ruled us from London. The substance of freedom is located in the daily lives of citizens, not in the external affairs department in the secretariat. Are the lives and occupations of citizens in liberated India as free as they can reasonably be? Are the restraints and regulations imposed on the citizens by the Congress Party such as must be borne by citizens in every free democratic country? Are these restraints and regulations conducive to justice and fair play and to the more equitable distribution of the means to happiness?

     The answers to all these questions are in the negative. The restraints and regulations are such as to create undue advantage to favoured individuals. They are such as must destroy initiative and discourage enterprise, and generally act as deterrents of the creative effort of the human units that really are the nation. Other countries in the world have got on very well giving full play to the energy of the people in the direction of industrial and agricultural production. These restrictive regulations and their consequences in the material plane have had a devastating effect in the moral and spiritual plane as well. Individual greed has grown along with all the other evils associated with it. There now prevail more fear and more slave mentality than when the British were running a purely police government. The citizen is gradually losing his soul -without knowing it. And this is more disastrous than even a fall in material standards. There are some worthy souls who began with the Gandhian idea of socialism, who believed as much in freedom as in general material welfare and progress but who have got tired of the processes of freedom and come to believe that material progress should have priority over freedom. They have thus, in effect, gone over to the side that now holds communists and Congressmen in one doctrinal net. These socialists keep their party apart just by force of habit imagining that thereby they help to keep off the danger of communism without losing the electoral advantage of offering paradise to the underdogs.

     Those who believe in the path of compulsion for bringing about material progress, and who would give the latter priority over freedom, should join the Congress, so that the issue of freedom may be kept clear and political goals and the forces behind them may be properly polarized. There should be no confusion in the popular mind and the issue of freedom shorn of ambiguities should be put before the voters. It should be either Swatantra or perrnit-licence-raj. Other party ramifications confuse the question and serve to give adventitious advantages to the party which runs permits, quotas and licences. I hope some day we shall see Indian politics polarized between the Congress and Swatantra and all minor variations absorbed on either side. We shall then have balanced administration, vigilance, democracy and impartiality. The 'outs' will be as useful to the nation as the 'ins' and sometimes do more service when out than when in.