Swarajya, October 21, 1961
Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru returned from Cambridge with notions of how an all-governing interventionist State can force people into happiness and prosperity through socialism. He continually pressed his bias on the Gandhian Congress but failed until he came to occupy the seat of power as sole inheritor of the prestige of liberation, when this out-dated theory of governance and prosperity got its chance and was officially adopted by the Congress Party.
He sticks to his bias in spite of the demonstration of world experience against it. He imagines that those who have recovered faith in the potentiality of freedom are all old fashioned. He thinks that compulsion is the ultimate truth. Because an immature proletariat is easily beguiled into agreeing to this, he does not see that the civilized world has reverted to freedom as the better and truer way.
Mr. Nehru's illusion about his own modernity is what befogs the whole of the Congress Party. He and his party are still under the illusion of the modernity of their outdated doctrine of governance.
The conflict between values is what is at the bottom of the quarrel between the Congress dictatorship and the Swatantra Party. British Premier Macmillan put it plainly when he told his recent Party rally at Brighton that the struggle between the free world and its belief in God on the one side and, on the other, atheistic communism may last for another generation- perhaps even longer. In India Mr. Nehru asks the people to surrender at once. The Swatantra Party says 'no', even as Sita refused to accept the pressure of the Rakshasis in the Asoka garden or as Vasishta refused to give away to King Viswamitra, his Sabala, his Kaamadhenu that could give all that he desired Freedom is Kaamadhenu. Whether it is better that citizens serve the nation out of free will and free choice and in a free way; or must they be drilled, brainwashed and regimented, and work as automatons under a political party for all time in power - this is the issue.
Apart from the comparative degrees of efficiency and the obvious loss of potentiality involved in compulsion, the loss of freedom makes the result empty and void of the content of welfare and happiness.
This then is the ultimate issue between free economy and socialism - be it the ineffective tumbling Congress pattern or the brutal communist pattern. When a political party is in office with powers of compulsion, it can perpetuate itself for all time through successive Plans, and it becomes a caste and takes the place of God.
Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru returned from Cambridge with notions of how an all-governing interventionist State can force people into happiness and prosperity through socialism. He continually pressed his bias on the Gandhian Congress but failed until he came to occupy the seat of power as sole inheritor of the prestige of liberation, when this out-dated theory of governance and prosperity got its chance and was officially adopted by the Congress Party.
He sticks to his bias in spite of the demonstration of world experience against it. He imagines that those who have recovered faith in the potentiality of freedom are all old fashioned. He thinks that compulsion is the ultimate truth. Because an immature proletariat is easily beguiled into agreeing to this, he does not see that the civilized world has reverted to freedom as the better and truer way.
Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru's illusion about his own modernity is what befogs the whole of the Congress Party. Till recently he even believed he was still young. He has got over it so far as his own age is concerned. But he and his party are still under the illusion of the modernity of their outdated doctrine of governance.
