Swarajya, July 1, 1961
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.
The scandals which have been moderately expressed in the public press about the Orissa elections must open our eyes to a very grave danger. What has transpired in this connection is probably an under painted picture. The reality probably is worse than what Mr. Ashoka Mehta and others have stated. Such abuses are grave enough to form a battle-ground and a cause for displacing a party in power, apart from anything else. The Constitution itself will become a mockery and wither away if such practices are tolerated without challenge. The entire fabric of parliamentary democracy will go into smoke, if crores of rupees are collected by a party in power, by exploiting the dependence of people on the party's pleasure for carrying on their economic activities, and if such money power is openly utilized in the elections for continuing in office. It is a crisis in democracy graver than many red-herrings drawn across the track, and demands urgent attention. Castes and communities, poverty and illiteracy cannot be abolished in a day, but this corruption of democracy is an advancing monster far too proximate to be indifferent about. Long-standing maladies and long due reforms are irrelevant in this context of a grave menace to democracy. The monster can be defeated and honesty restored if all those who want democracy join and give battle.
Our Prime Minister came to an abundant inheritance of love but, I fear, and I say it with sorrow, he has wasted it. He has let slogans take the place of sanity. He has allowed the party he had the privilege of leading to become a party of careerist sheep. He has passively encouraged congressmen to become corrupt until the whole countryside has come to feel it and, what is worse, he has allowed the corrupt machine to grow into an impregnable fortress sustaining itself on its spoils.
An issue of primary importance, which is an issue of morality and a problem of grave constitutional importance, has developed out of the disclosures in the Orissa mid-term elections. These disclosures are no surprise to me or to others who have watched anxiously the trends and the activities of the ruling party during the last few years. But what has happened in Orissa elections is enough to open the eyes of even the most sleepy and the most deluded citizens whose simple faith in the Congress has been systematically exploited. The flagrant manner, completely free from all sense of decency or delicacy, in which the Congress Party and its chosen agents in the States, including men holding most responsible positions in the party and in the government, have been using their position and the power behind them to make or mar businessmen, in order to raise immense amount of money, and using that money to destroy democracy at the base, has raised a question of urgent fundamental and overriding importance.
There can be no free or fair elections if this power to raise unlimited money, and spend it to capture votes, is allowed to be exercised by the party in office. The People's Representation Act has been rendered into nullity and the Constitution is rapidly becoming meaningless. It has been converted into a self-sufficient mechanism to establish the dictatorship of the party in office.
This party has in the name of socialism organized a state machinery (supported by legislation and rules) to distribute private monopolies and create milk-cows for the party. There is no chance for any other party, whatsoever its declared policy or ideology, to oust the dictatorship of the Congress Party. Money has replaced political debate and made irrelevant every other consideration. All the other parties in the country should realize the danger and face this crisis in our democracy.
The communists have become aiders and abettors in this process of destruction of freedom. They are waiting like kites and crows for parliamentary democracy to die as a result of the open immoralities and flagrant evasions of the law by the Congress Party. The policies and propaganda of the ruling party will have prepared the field completely for occupation by communists when that time arrives. Indeed the Congress will have by then quietly transformed itself into a communist party already in power and ready to absorb the official Communist Party wholesale.
Meanwhile we shall see the spectacle of men like Mr. Patnaik in Orissa, who are standing refutations of socialism and symbols of big business and money power, being made into heroes and leaders for the worship of misguided men.
It would be of considerable interest it the Chief Secretary to the Government of Orissa could inform the public in how many departments Mr. Patnaik held substantial interests in contracts for the totalitarian Congress which has thrown all delicacy and what contracts he holds in Mr. Krishna Menon's ministry in New Delhi. This is the first time this type of person, one who is thoroughly experienced in making money through Government contracts, has become Chief Minister of a State.
It is no longer possible for honest men to be apathetic and allow this dictatorship to grow impregnable and become permanent. It is no longer wise to be engaged in disputations over dogmas and remain disunited intellectuals, leaving the field free for the totalitarian Congress which has thrown all delicacy and sense of right and wrong to the winds, and is openly and without fear of question using its power to collect immense sums and using that money to nullify parliamentary democracy. Those who bask in the sunshine of favours, from the ruling party are abetting this process of destroying the Constitution, and bringing India also into line with other Asiatic nations whose independence has not developed into freedom but has lapsed back into autocracy.
The gravest issue now is, shall we allow this rape of the freedom of parliamentary elections? It is a constitutional, fundamental and moral issue. It is not socialism for which the Congress stands but a mechanism to feed power- greed. Money has been installed on the Throne at Delhi. It must be resisted if we wish freedom to survive, if we do not desire that Independence should rot into foul corruption.
Whether the Swantara Party wins or loses in this unequal combat, whether the people will rise above the satanic power of money and economic terror, and disprove its arrogant assumption that everything will go down before that power, I am determined, if God permits it, to continue to give battle even if I have to do it all alone against this immorality and fraud that stalks under the name of the Congress. Because, in all humility, I believe in the ultimate truth of the Upanishad mantra embodied in the crest of the nation, Satyam eva Jayate na anrtam. It is anrtam that holds power and threatens to hold it for all time. Let us see if satyam will ultimately fail. I am sure it will not.
