BY P. NAGARAJA RAO

The Chinese philosopher, Confucius, narrates a very significant incident which gives us an insight into the value of individuality. As he was passing by the Mount Thai, he came across a woman who was weeping bitterly by a grave. The Master quickly went to her and said, "Your wailing is that of one who has suffered sorrow on sorrow." She replied that it was so, and continued, "Once my husband’s father was killed here by a tiger. My husband was also killed, and, now my son has died in the same way." The Master said, "Then why do you not leave this place?" The answer was that there was no oppressive government there. Oppressive governments are indeed more terrible than tigers. Such is the experience of all sane citizens living today under totalitarian regimes, be they of the Left type or the Right.

Individuality is a tender plant, most potential in its power, and needs careful fostering. Freedom is the air of the spirit and it is the soul of the individual. It is freedom that makes life worth living. It helps the law of self-development. Its denial is a denial of all that makes life worth living. When we have it we do not realise all that it means to us. We realise its value only when it is denied to us. It is just like health and oxygen to us. To provide the nourishment to the soul and allow it to grow to its full stature is to give value to human life. All the religions of the past have defended the sacredness of the individual and have treated the individual as an End and never as a Means to the production of the Super-Man or the efficient community. The individual is not to be treated "as a drop of blood in an ocean of racial purity, nor as a cog in a proletarian machine, nor as an ant in a social termitary, but as an End in himself with a right to happiness and a hope for immortality." The Upanishads declare that there is no more sacred verity than the spirit (Purusha).

The modern scientific rationalist treats the individual as a piece of mechanism to be experimented with. He resolves the individual into a few Pounds of carbon, a few quarts of water, some lime, and a little phosphorus and sulphur, a pinch of iron and silicon and a handful of mixed salts. While resolving the individual into these substances the scientist forgets that this scheme of analysis is the creation of man. Is not then the individual a miracle though he is a product of natural forces? This in essence is the mystery of man. Hence the sacredness of the individual. The supreme effort of education and society should be the production of the real and splendid individual and not a mechanically efficient society. "Statesmanship unlike philosophy is the art of the second best." Politics can at best prevent deterioration and not bring about the betterment of the individual. Modern political theories are essentially unspiritual in that they do not respect the principle of the sacredness of the individual. They are out to crush the individual and make him a robot in the community. Standardisation of culture, systematic suppression of any opinion contrary to the State, militarist nationalism, supreme faith in armaments, retreat of reason, superstitious faith in race superiority, rule by revelation and governance by guile are characteristic features of Fascism, Communism and military democracies with rickety institutions and narrow class-bound statesmen at the head of the State.

The spiritual principle of politics ought to be the preservation of the sanctity of the individual. He is the representation of the highest in the universe. The ultimate principle that the individual is an End in himself has to be intuitively apprehended and not logically established. Disagreement with this postulate is not impossible nor is there any method of establishing it through the help of empirical logic. The sacredness of the individual is the Postulate of all philosophy in the East and the West.

It follows from this that political organisations should function in such a manner as not to violate the individual or his growth. Neither Fascism nor Communism act in such a friendly manner towards the individual. Fascism identifies the individual with the State and makes him a mere cog in the State machinery. It makes him, through terror and execution, a slave with no life. Justice and Hitler’s will are identified as one and the same thing. They glorify war, adore violence, and delight in rearmament programmes. They think that men are desperately wicked at heart and weak in the head. They speak the language of Burke and refer to the swinish multitude. They distrust the average man and his ability to participate in governmental affairs. So they substitute security in the place of self-government, and active foreign policy in the place of economic competence.

Fascism and Communism in fact pay no attention and exult in the concentration of power. Lord Acton’s warning that power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts is borne out by the broad testimony of history. They believe that power alone can do many things. Naked power with ruthless capacity to manage things is the fundamental tenet of their creed. They have no use for wisdom. They are fired by the primitive lust for dominion and not by a civilised standard of values. They do not see that power without wisdom is useless. It is absolute wisdom that is harmless and not absolute power. It is in view of this principle that Plato put philosophers (men of wisdom trained in the Academy in the arts of Mathematics, Music and Metaphysics) at the head of the State. Modern Communism and Fascism have entirely ignored the Platonic formula for determining the leader and have merely taken in the principle of leadership. Plato tempered power with wisdom. He did not respect the naked power of the Fascist nor the revolutionary power of the Communist. Both Communism and Fascism are attempts by a minority to mould the opinions of the individuals forcibly in accordance with a pre-conceived pattern. The result of such a forcible manipulation is not the passive adaptation of the individual to the said pattern but the morbid and distorted growth resulting in the grotesque. Such an oppressive tyranny produces either monsters or rebels and never sound citizens.

Democracy is comparatively a better type of government. It works on the principle that every individual has a share in political affairs. It believes rightly that political liberty is necessary for the growth of the individual. The modern Communist, with more than the ordinary zeal of a partisan, points out that the political liberty ensured to the citizen in a democracy is just sham in the absence of a just economic context. Political liberty is just twaddle, ‘sound and fury signifying nothing,’ says the Communist.

The argument of the Communist is narrow. Political liberty is a good in itself and it has the supreme value of fostering the individual. It is not an impediment to economic security as many a Socialist imagines. On the other hand, it is the pre-condition of economic security. It is the presence of political liberty that has helped the propagation of the Socialist doctrine and the Socialist movement. But for it the elementary rights present in a democratic State would be nowhere. Thus, in the most wide sense of the term, "Liberalism is not a foe to Socialism but only its ally." Political liberty is the indispensible condition for the growth of the soul.

Democracy is not the last creed in politics. The governance of men is an endless art. Democracy is the least objectionable form of government. It admits of improvement and safeguards. It is likely to degenerate into a kind of party dictatorship. There is a strong feeling today that in the most democratic country, England, parliamentary democracy is tending towards a narrow party dictatorship. Governmental power ought to be tamed and tempered with moral ends. The democratic temper must be nourished. The democratic temper is the scientific temper of mind which refuses to sway towards dogmatism or complete scepticism.

The organised life of a community and its economic scheme are things to be valued, not on their own account but as devices that help the individual to grow.

The great rational social analyst of our times, Bertrand Russell, points out that for those to whom traditional religion is no longer possible there are other avenues of self-realisation. Some find what they need in music, some in poetry. For some others astronomy serves the same purpose. When we reflect upon the size and antiquity of the stellar universe, the controversies on this rather insignificant planet lose some of their importance and the acerbity of our disputes seems a trifle ridiculous. "When we are liberated by this negative emotion we are able to realise more fully through music or mysticism, through history or science, through beauty or pain, that the really valuable things in human life are individual, not such things as happen on a battle-field or in the clash of politics or in the regimented march of masses of men towards an externally imposed goal."

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