I Am Unrepentant

There is no doubt a great defeat amounting to a rout has been inflicted on me and the Swatantra Party in Madras. In some other States, the party has not done badly, and in some places it has done very well. All the same the over-all picture is a resounding victory for the ruling party. But let me say at once I am unrepentant. We had hoped for a miracle but it did not fructify. The Leviathan proved too tough for us. Everything was against us except reason, and reason proved of no avail in the ballot. Our party lacked everything that was needed, easy conscience included, for a victory in this election. No election results, however brought about, can convince me that I was wrong in pleading for the maintenance of fundamental rights. I feel, in spite of all the election scores, that I was right in starting a party to oppose Permit-Licence-Raj.

The course I took was for the preservation of democracy, and for changing the regime into one consistent with the principles for which Mahatmaji stood. What the present Congress Party is maintaining, viz., a government that intervenes in every activity of the citizen and runs a Statist economic policy, a regime wherein the routine administration is daily interfered with by party bosses and wherein the once courageous body of officials are being converted into servile tools, is entirely opposed to the government of Free India as Gandhiji had visualized. I still hold the view in spite of the overwhelming victory of the Congress at the polls, that without a strong Opposition, Congress Party rule with all economic power concentrated in its hands is not democracy. It leads steadily and swiftly to totalitarianism. The success of the Congress Party at the polls has been brought about through means that do not help any change of view in me.

If the people of India do not want the dictatorship of a single party, if we desire to preserve democracy, if we wish to restore public morality, if we want good government, we must rally our forces and give battle again. If we do not, there will be neither democracy nor good government. The permanent services will deteriorate, the voters will get more and more used to being purchased. All round degradation of values will prevail if the evil is not resisted. Ballot-box-bribery is no better than a mean and cowardly form of violence. Fascism— organizing to seize power through force—is bad but perhaps it is better than Fascism through money. We must eschew this at whatever cost; we may have to lose many elections, but there is no good trying to hasten victory by using the power of money to secure poor and miserable people’s votes that turn the scales—even if we had the money as some other parties have.

For the Congress to be the recipient of power in 1947 was easy and to get a renewal of the charter from time to time was easy also. But when, later, economic power was added to the inheritance, the perpetuation of the Congress Party’s political power became all too easy. The task of those who have vision and see the double evil of single party rule, and of over-government, has thereby become extremely difficult, and will be still more so as the years pass. All the same, every evil must one day reach a climax and, by a natural law, the remedy must arrive.

Some people hold the view that we have incapacitated our-selves permanently by reason of the adoption of adult suffrage when the people were not ready for it. I believe however that the mischief was not in adult suffrage. Uncorrupted, the adults of our country, poor and uneducated as the bulk of them may be, would distinguish between right and wrong. The fatal mistake was committed when intelligent and good men thoughtlessly gave sanction to a party to seize total economic power. This makes it very difficult to retrieve the position. But retrieve we must. If people make up their mind, nothing is impossible; they have to be educated to do it.

There is a large body of intelligent people in our Congress hypnotized country, especially in the section over which Permit-Licence-Raj has thrown its darkest shadow which thinks that India must rest content with what has been called an inner-party democracy’, that is with an opposition inside the party instead of an effective Opposition in Parliament. This belief in party discussions conducted more or less secretly, about which the public have to rely for enlightenment mostly on columnists and reporters writing from Delhi to rich journals in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, is pathetic. Every one knows that these ‘inner democracy’ discussions and debates all end in careeristic competition for accord with Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru and take things nowhere in democracy. It is a harem business. At best, these debates are ‘struggles for power’ which will be put down with a ‘strong hand’. There is no hope for parliamentary democracy in India unless there is effective and public opposition instead of competition for the Prime Minister’s favour.

The battle for freedom should not be given up in consequence of our having fared badly in 1962. The issue of freedom and minimum government, and the ending of concentrated economic power obtained through controls and Iicences, is the only issue and the nation should organize an Opposition to the ruling party on that issue. Opposition based on other issues cannot save democracy. If the leaders of the people get lost in a hunt for personal careers or advantages, they will betray the nation. We cannot let Gandhiji’s principles go to the wall and allow Statism to envelop India as the ultimate condition of political and economic life, as in Russia or other communist countries.