Makers of Modern India

by Ramachandra Guha

  Wanted: Independent Thinking

  In this next excerpt, from an article published a few months later, Rajagopalachari speaks of how the overwhelming political dominance of the Congress had led to the decline of independent thinking within the party and in the citizenry at large.2

  The political organization that successfully fought the British power in India was, at the close of that struggle, put in power by the latter. The British Parliament not only acknowledged the independence of India but transferred the reins of executive authority to the Congress Party to start with. This party continues to govern the affairs of the country after ten years of that event. It is well known or, to use the safer journalistic phrase, it cannot be denied that there is considerable searching of heart at the present moment among the leaders of the Indian National Congress. All is not well, it is felt, but no remedy has been found that meets the situation and consequently the customary attitude in similar situations in the case of individual sickness is adopted, to say that there is nothing very serious to worry about.

  It is, for anyone—and much more so for one who has spent the best part of his life-time serving the organization and who owes many honours and kindnesses to it—an undertaking of some degree of delicacy to examine into the cause of the present discontent about the Congress. If he avoids vagueness and visionary language and touches the true roots of the malady, he may ‘come near to persons of weight and consequence who will rather be exasperated at the discovery of their errors than thankful for the occasion of correcting them. But in all exertions of duty something is to be hazarded.’ I have found the words in the writings of one of the greatest political philosophers of modern times, and in that mood I venture to criticize.

  As a result of tacit submission on the part of the people of emancipated India, a few good persons at the top, enjoying prestige and power, are acting like guardians of docile children rather than as leaders in a parliamentary democracy. Mutual encouragement has led to this condition of affairs. Men in a state amounting to tutelage have no chance to develop towards maturity. This was Milton’s emphatic opinion and it is as true today as in the days of Cromwell and as true in one country as in another. Although men are ‘fallen’, to use the poet’s expression, they retain enough of the original gift of God to grow towards freedom. But a chance must be given to them to discover the precious gift that lies hidden within themselves. The sort of tutelage that now prevails gives no such chance.

  No theory of civil life, no ’ism will work satisfactorily unless the citizens in the democracy are willing to undertake the responsibility of thinking and judging for themselves … Instead of independent thinking and free judgment, the manners of parrots have been growing among men, even among those rightly credited with intellectual capacity of a high order. They repeat the words uttered by the established guardians without paying thought to the meaning and the implications. I am not objecting to any particular opinion but to the parrot culture that has seized the country.

  For instance, and only for an instance, there is more than one road to national welfare. The Welfare State was the first formula adopted by the leaders; it was soon followed by the ‘socialistic pattern’ and then came the socialist State. Did people who successively re-uttered these phrases follow the various meanings of the various phrases? Has there been any known public or even private discussion of the merits of the various ideals connoted by these terms? Do men and women who repeat the word ‘socialism’, as a name for what is claimed to be the straight way leading to welfare, remember what Gandhiji said about it—Gandhiji whom they profess not only to admire but also to follow in all things? Do people, who now accept national socialism, do so after having considered and rejected the doctrine of trusteeship which Gandhiji told his disciples was his way and was preferable to the egalitarianism of the socialists and the interference by law with ownership of property, and its traditional incidents and obligations, which socialism meant? Have men thought about the matter and all its consequences including the concentration of all economic power and influence in those who, for the time being, wield authority? Have they even thought about whether the management of things by men is likely to be carried out better when they have a proportionate interest in the good stewardship and in its result, or when they do it on salaries and on behalf of the State? Or has socialism been adopted only as parrots learn to speak?

  This is only an instance. What I plead for is a climate of independent thinking among citizens. It is no good imagining it is there when we see no sign or symptom of it. Without this essential accompaniment, self-government through democracy will prove itself to be a house of cards.

  The reason for a gradual collapse of independent thinking is the confusion in the people’s minds between a political struggle against foreign domination and its discipline, and day-to-day government: between revolution and administration. The figures of speech employed in appeals and manifestos, oral and written, encourage this confusion between battle and government and between the respective disciplines required for them. The long reign of popular favourites, without any significant opposition, is probably the main cause for the collapse of independent thinking. ‘You have not gone far enough’, ‘you do not mean what you say’—these are the only criticisms that some people venture to offer. No one dares to say ‘your policy is wrong and must be re-examined’. The opposition is at best a charge of inefficiency in carrying out policy or a suspicion of insincerity. There is no attack on the policy itself.

  Democratic civil life calls for independent thinking among the citizens—among the governed as among the governors. Criticism and reply, and counter-reply make for health in the air. Diseases of corruption and intrigue are by a process of natural hygiene driven out in such an atmosphere. Burke said he liked ‘clamour’. ‘I am not of the opinion,’ he said, ‘of those gentlemen who are against disturbing the public repose. The fire-bell at midnight might disturb your sleep, but it keeps you from being burned in your bed.’

  If subservience and slavish adulation take the place of independent thinking and criticism is never resorted to but with fear and trepidation, the atmosphere quickly breeds the political diseases peculiar to democracy. If we have not the free and critical atmosphere of a well-balanced democracy, a Welfare State is most favourable soil for the growth of the weeds of careerism, intrigue and various types of degrees of dishonesty. An Opposition is the natural preventive for such poisonous weeds. An Opposition is therefore the urgent remedy indicated by the symptoms—not mere psycho-therapy. ‘You are all right. Indeed you are better than you were. Don’t believe you are sick. You are not sick!’—this cannot restore a fractured leg. We need an Opposition that thinks differently and does not just want more of the same, a group of vigorously thinking citizens which aims at the general welfare, and not one that in order to get more votes from the so-called have-nots, offers more to them than the party in power has given, an Opposition that appeals to reason and acts on the firm faith that India can be governed well as a democratic Republic, and that the have-nots will not reject sound reason.

  It is not the quality of true faith in democracy to fear that truth will not succeed with the electors. What will lead to permanent welfare the voters will accept, if not at once, at least in course of time. We must have the faith that they will see through the corrupt offers of immediate gains at the cost of injury to the general welfare. On such faith an Opposition should come into being that will set a proper balance to the authority of the party in power and put our free Commonwealth on its two feet.

  Such an Opposition, even if it should not succeed in ousting a powerful majority from its seat, may at least see that its power is not absolute power, which corrupts absolutely, but something controlled, so that the evils that flow from power may be kept within limits.

  Some people, frightened by the hopeless prospect of bidding against a socialist Government for the favour of the have-nots, believe that the only course open is to wait for the fading away of the Congress b
y reason of its own weakness and diseases and then to form a new political party on right lines. This cannot be done. No party can issue out of chaos except one backed by physical force and terrorism. If we desire a parliamentary party to come into being for steadying the machinery of government, it must be accomplished when the government is running under Congress rule. It would be fatal to wait for its disintegration which will result only in rule by force.

  The Case for the Swatantra Party

  Finally, Rajagopalachari decided to take the initiative himself in fostering a political and ideological alternative to the Congress Party. This was the Swatantra Party, whose first manifesto, drafted by its octogenarian founder, is excerpted below.3

  … The Swatantra Party stands for minimum government and minimum State interference, for minimum expenditure in administration and for minimum taxation, for minimum interference in the private and professional affairs of citizens and for minimum regulation in industry and trade. As against this are the declared policies, intentions and tendencies of the Congress Party in favour of what has been called ‘socialism’ which is State control of everything. The thesis of the Congress Party is that welfare and social justice can be secured only by increasing State control, as against the antithesis that prosperity, welfare and justice can be more effectively achieved by minimizing State interference and enlarging individual incentive and fair competition. The Swatantra Party stands for the latter proposition and all that follows from it under modern conditions.

  The Swatantra Party does not deny the need for regulation, but holds that regulation must be limited to requirement and not expanded to the point of killing individual incentive. Aggregate wealth and production depend on individual incentive and production. State management and State investment involve maximum waste and maximum expenditure, as against the frugal conditions accompanying all individual enterprise and decentralized effort. Responsibility is reduced if the individual disappears and multiple ownership and delegated authority take over the management.

  The Congress Party has so far run without a true Opposition. It has run with accelerators and no brakes. It has put into effect policies and plans that have increased administrative expenditure and caused inflation. Prices have gone up all round and taxation has reached the breaking point. The waste associated with State management is brought to light on every occasion when a window is opened. Widespread dissatisfaction over these things is undeniable and there is no need to give details.

  The basic need for prosperity is adequate food production. It is admitted on all hands that attempts at egalitarian distribution of wealth would be utterly foolish before the deficit in food production is set right and much more production all round is assured. Egalitarian distribution of distress and poverty is not what anybody wants.

  The Congress Party has unfortunately resolved to tinker with the basic machinery of food production on the assumption that the fault lies there. It has resolved, on the one hand, on fragmentation and, on the other, on destroying individual incentive and handing over farm production to multiple ownership without individual incentive. This is the meaning and the effect of the proposals for putting a ceiling on the extent of individual ownership of land and placing the expropriated excess under what is called co-operative management, which in effect means delegated authority to paid officials4…

  The Swatantra Party has been born out of this conflict between reality on the one hand and inexperienced ambition on the other. The Swatantra Party stands for non-interference with the ownership of land, and against any policy that extinguishes individual incentive in that field and seeks to substitute official management for owner-management …

  [G]oing into the affairs of the political party which the Indian National Congress has converted itself into, there has been a great deterioration in what matters most, namely, the moral quality of the elements composing the party. Careerism has taken the place of character, and material desires that of patriotism. The public reputation and presumption of highmindedness which every Congressman as such enjoyed when we fought the foreign regime is no longer there. A general feeling of aversion has taken the place of the universal respect and affection which were once the privilege of the Congressman. This along with the prevailing feeling of uncertainty in all matters where the ruling party exercises authority—and that is a wide field—makes the organization of a new party necessary to restore confidence and interest in public life.

  It is not possible to improve the Congress from inside. People have tried it. But vested interests prevent this, and here the phrase has its real derogatory meaning. All the men who control the decisions of the Congress as to its composition or organization are against any changes that will alter its present deteriorated character, for they are interested in its continuing as an instrument for their own individual advantage. An external attack may however change the situation. Reform may set in as a defence.

  The Swatantra Party believes that social justice and welfare can be reached more certainly and properly in other ways than through the techniques of so-called socialism with all its accompaniments of injustice, expropriation and repudiation of obligations … It is not good for the nation to allow the State, which be it remembered must always be in the grip of some political party with its own motives and interests, to run all the beneficent activities of the nation as its exclusive monopoly, at the same time taxing the people for all the wasteful cost of that monopolized charity.

  The party believes that all the educational activities of the Government, direct and indirect, should be such as to emphasise the moral obligation of those who possess wealth to hold it in trust for society, and a doctrine of life based on that moral obligation as distinguished from seeking to establish a socialistic structure based on legislative sanctions, involving expropriation and loss of incentive for the individual to work and increasing dependence on the State and its officials in every walk of life. The party is opposed to all those policies and forecasts of future Governmental action which have created an all-pervading and deep sense of uncertainty, drying up all interest in land and factory alike.

  The party recognizes the paramount need for increasing food production and believes that it is best attained through the continuance of the self-employed peasant-proprietor who stands for initiative and freedom and is interested in obtaining the highest yields from the land. The party believes in an intensive programme of agricultural improvement without disturbing the harmony of rural life amongst the elements that compose it, and by promoting the material and psychological inducement for modern production. The party seeks to introduce a more intensive programme than is now being followed in respect of the supply of material, implements and credit to the farmer without any discrimination among individuals and without in any way interfering with the cultivator’s rights of ownership, management and cultivation of the land. The party is opposed to cultivation through organizations which are a loose kind of multiple ownership, certain to sap the incentive of the farmer, reduce farm output and end in a collective economy and bureaucratic management.

  The party stands for raising the level of life of the farmer by taking steps to maintain a reasonable and fair price for his produce. In Industry, the party stands for the increase of incentives for higher production and expansion which are promoted by competitive enterprise, with adequate safeguards against excessive and unreasonable prices, profits and dividends where the competition itself does not secure these ends. The party would restrict State enterprise to heavy industries to supplement private enterprise in that field, national services such as the railways and the starting of pioneer industries where private initiative is lacking. The party wants taxation to be kept at such a level that it does not interfere with reasonable living standards for the people, both rural and urban, and which, while being necessary and sufficient for carrying on administration and such social services as must be undertaken, is yet not so high and exacting or so ubiquitous as to prevent capital formation and investment by individua
ls; it is opposed to hasty and lopsided development based on heavy taxation, deficit financing and foreign loans out of all proportion to economic repayment-capacity, leading to excessive inflation …

  The philosophy of the Swatantra Party has thus been set out in concrete shape. It stands for the individual to retain his identity and his motives for honest endeavour and for his serving the community with a willing heart and not out of compulsion … Those who are materially prosperous should consider themselves bound to help the less fortunate. People should cease deceiving one another and begin honestly to help those who come to them. If we have no faith in our people, if we do not trust one another, democracy will be a poor make-believe and will break down with anarchy into rule by force. Social Co-operation has always been our Dharma. The State should recede into comparative insignificance and Dharma should be restored to its original position as sovereign over men, women and government.