Swatantra Party’s Chances

Sometime ago I had a long meeting with the special representatives in India of The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun and the Time magazine who put me many questions provoking loud thinking. This led me to see clearly the fundamental fact that if I had no faith in the Upanishad text Satyam eva Jayate there was no meaning in a man of my age and infirmities starting the Swatantra Party.

     Here is an organization which has an unbroken history of 40 years, even discarding the pre-Gandhian period, which has built itself during the difficult struggle against Britain, and which has further consolidated itself after attainment of Independence, taking over complete State-power during the last 14 years with all its consequent advantages.

     All this strength, over and above the halo round a party which was the instrument for liberation from foreign rule, a halo which though totally irrelevant for holding the government in its hands is still a real halo. And this party is determined to hold on to power. It has the advantage of undivided and unquestioned leadership.

     Neither the party nor its chief envisaged when it declared for socialism that this would bring enormously more concrete power to the party. The controls and regulations which are the corollaries of socialism gave enormous powers and opportunities to the party in office to accumulate strength so as to make itself practically irremovable.

     These powers and opportunities have fully and without any scruples been utilized by the party bosses.

     No new party started in 1959 without any of these advantages-of a great halo, of time to build up and, more than all, of State-power-could hope to find the task of opposing such a party easy. The venture is comparable to an Everest expedition.

     What are the Swatantra Party's chances? How do you feel about the next elections? These are the questions put to me by every friend from abroad or in the country who is interested in the movement and meets me.

     Would a question of the kind have been put to Churchill when Hitler's forces were at the height of their power? It was a life and death struggle and no such questions would be relevant. Even so it is now for democracy in India.

     If at the next elections the Congress is not humbled, if its feathers are not plucked and its strength mauled, if not totally defeated, the fate of democracy is sealed. This is the issue : totalitarianism or democracy.

     I was not unaware of the tremendous nature of the task that I proposed. The difficulty indeed was also the measure of the absolute need for such opposition. The difficulty was only the concrete expression of the totalitarianism which we had to resist.

     Neither money nor workers nor the confidence issuing from power were available for a new party. What then induced me to take up this task or to ask my colleagues to engage themselves in it? Faith in the scriptural assurance. Satyam eva Jayate is the only answer.

     Can we afford to sit silent and let this one-party-rule become absolutely irremovable and see our country go irretrievably totalitarian? If it is our national duty to resist and fight totalitarianism, it must be done without thought of success or defeat- even as Britain or Russia fought Hitler.

     The heroes of the great war, Churchill, and Stalin fought because they must, not because they calculated and found they could defeat Hitler. Our case is not different, if we do not want totalitarianism in India.

     We must fight whatever the difficulties. At my age, no other guiding principles or motive could make me undertake this task. We must believe in God and His Grace and in the power of satyam and dharma-and fight.

     The good soldier's duty is to fight evil whatever its strength. Where the enemy is strong, that wicked strength is the very reason why the soldier of dharma should make up his mind and resist. It is not a reason for giving up the battle.

     The struggle may not give us the results we desire. We may fail to achieve even some sizeable results. But it is a battle for freedom which once it begins will go on until victory is won, whether A or B is there to share in it or not.

     The essential issue is freedom as against the Congress's Statism. The Congress will not give up Statism. It is not a question of mere dogma or faith about policy. Statism not only kills the soul of the people but it gives power, absolute power, to the party in office.

     The appetite for power grows with the feeding on it. So the party becomes a hungry leviathan. The Congress Party and the communists are both Statists. Our battle is therefore against both of them. All those against Statism should realize the compelling nature of the struggle.

     The Congress Party in spite of its power and money, and the support it gets from its very victims, is conscious of the greater power of satyam and is therefore extraordinarily busy in defense as it never before was. It has seen the potential might of the revolt that has been raised.

     Out of the Congress Party's declaration of what it calls socialism has emerged the issue of freedom for individual enterprise and energy as against a regime of regulation and control which kills all incentive, extinguishing all personal responsibility. But in addition to this, in consequence of the Statism that has emerged as an inescapable corollary to this socialism, and the opportunities it gives to the party in office to perpetuate that illegal power, what may be considered a more deadly danger than State socialism itself has arisen.

     Democracy is threatened with extinction, all but the presence of it in external shape. A single party rule for all time, every year of office augmenting that party's irremovability, is not democracy. It is a replica of Soviet conditions.

     These two issues, freedom and democracy, stand before the electors to decide whether to vote for or against the Congress. To put the Congress again in office is to discard freedom and to banish democracy for ever.

     A vote for Swatantra is a vote for keeping freedom and democracy alive and, when given irrespective of what others do, it is a witness to one's faith in Satyam eva Jayate.

     We fight for permanent values, not for power. May the genius of the nation assert itself.