SWATANTRA—JULY 5, 1947
To Americans, Washington the first President of the United
States remains an important national symbol, but he is no longer first in their
hearts. That place, according to competent estimaters, belongs to Lincoln
except in the South where Lee is the enshrined idol. Washington is great
because, after winning freedom for his people, he was offered a crown and
declined it, refusing to take any personal reward. Lee is great because he
learned magnanimity of spirit through defeat, the most difficult of all feats
for poor, pride-fed, prestige-ridden human nature which is apt to become most
vengeful and rancourous when baulked. But Lee, after doing what he thought was
his duty, and failing under heart-rending odds, exhibited remarkable gentleness
at the hour of failure, and threw himself heart and soul into a mission of
repairing all hate and malice. Lincoln is great because, wielding the power of
a czar on account of the desperate war in which he was engaged, he never forgot
his love for the common people of both the warring sides, and at the end of it
all, he put away all power and gave their government to the people.
* * *
These founders of American
democracy had an unerring instinct for the most valuable of the requisites of
democracy not to be got at by theoretical definitions or the phrase making
skill of constitution-framers. They realized that democracy must cope with the
“eternal oppositions of power and life, authority and liberty, public spirit
and private interest, brute force and humanity.” They bridged these oppositions
with exemplary manifestations of renunciation on their own part. No attempt was
made to convert the power and victory of the patriotic forces that they handled
into consolidations of personal positions for themselves. How very different
from the methods being employed at the hour of national liberation by our own
leaders today!
* * *
A pattern of tyranny is taking
shape out of all the anti-imperialist effort so nobly led for so many years
hitherto by our patriots and heroes under the banner of the great national
organization, the Congress. What distinguishes the tyrant from the democratic
leader is not the volume of power held. It is the derivative source of the
power. One takes his authority from the free will of a free people allowed
without hindrance to express spontaneously their preferences in the matter of
leadership by means of free voting by ballot. The other bases it on some
mechanism of force unrelated to public opinion. Taking power as a gift of Lord
Mountbatten, Congress leaders (turned administrators) show no disposition to
acquire democratic status by going to the polls for ratification.
* * *
The whole trend of Congress policy nowadays is in the direction
of avoiding the verdict of the people. As a contrivance of British power in a
hurry to leave, the Constituent Assembly is all right, but it is being reshaped,
on the ashes of the Central Legislature, into virtually a hand-picked body of
the dominant Congress leaders without any reference to a popular vote. Nobody
speaks of adult suffrage now. Elections are dreaded. It has become the be-all
and end-all of existence for the Congress High Command to step into the shoes
of the retiring imperial power, set up a regime filled with puppets and
nominees of their choice, and postpone for as long as possible the evil day of
a possible change by avoiding elections.
* * *
This is not freedom. It is a
monstrous caricature of it. Millions of people forming a vast majority of the
population not admitted the vote yet, are denied the political right of having
their say as to who shall rule them, and on foundations of mass disfranchisement,
the old system is being indefinitely continued under a new name. Here in Madras
it has installed as administrators a clique of pinchbeck fascists several of
whom dare not even move among people without special bundobust arrangements.
Their energies are exhausted in defensive and self-protective operations. There
is little surplus left for constructive planning. The province has become a
paradise for rack-renters and black marketers. The Premier is content with
spectacular demonstrations of personal participation in temple-entry campaigns,
receiving high chits of commendation from New Delhi Olympians for that feat,
while in the far-flung area supposed to be governed by him, famine holds
terrible sway and millions of people are without hope of near redemption, subjected as they are to horrible privations in the course of their unending daily
struggle for the bare necessaries of life.
A large part of the prestige
acquired in half a century of sturdy political effort is already being lost by
the Congress. If it is not to be thrown back on the pitiable fate of having to
depend entirely on military rule, the wisdom of the wisest patriots among the
present wielders of power must come swiftly into play. Force is no substitute
for wisdom. In the present arrangements installing unacceptable persons in
authority over unwilling people, there is a dangerous element of force that can
be resolved only with an immediate election helpful towards a fresh
reconstruction on better lines of the whole miserable machinery of legislature
and executive that was made a hash of as a result of the intrigues that have
permeated our public life since the C.R.—Nadar conflict. An immediate reference to the poll must test the democratic validity
of every remnant of the administrative structure of the past, and every
decision tentatively arrived at by the present extremely defective Constituent
Assembly.—(July 5, 1947) S A K A.
No comments:
Post a Comment