POST-INDEPENDENCE VALUES
By BASUDHA CHAKRAVARTY
The
political independence of which the people of
Yet
independence has affected our sense of values in the shape of a yearning for
greater realisation and fulfillment of life. There is of course around us
enough evidence of sordid satisfaction with material gain; but that
satisfaction would not have appeared sordid except to sensitive minds yearning
for something more tangible and abiding. Before independence, the struggle for
independence satisfied the people’s need of idealism. All moral and spiritual
values were requisitioned by the aspiration for independence. Thousands of people dedicated their lives. Countless careers were
sacrificed, and innumerable families were involved in ruin in
freedom’s cause. Ideals of sacrifice and dedication ruled. The contrast with
that idyllic state of things is all the more glaring
in the self-seeking apparently prevalent today. Freedom and independence, one
cannot avoid feeling, should have immediately raised our mental and moral
level. But let that alone, even the ideals of living and suffering for one’s
country which prevailed so short a while ago are today hardly to be met with.
When values have admittedly gone topsy-turvy, a sense of infinite values is
awaking. It is a sense of self-transcending realisation, of abiding fulfillment
of life, of a quest of immortality. To describe it thus is to tread on
dangerously emotional ground. But that is the apt way to describe the subtle
working of purposeful minds.
In
Not
long ago this feeling sought a ready refuge in Communism. Therein however a
recession seems to have occurred, partly because of the impression caused by
events in Communist countries that Communism has reached its anti-thesis in the
suppression of human individuality, and partly because Communists at home have
been doing too much with makeshifts even in passing political matters to offer
any free and assured outlet for the overweening urges of life. And then hope
derived out of schemes of development embodied in the Five Year Plans has begun
to fill the vacuum that Communism has ultimately failed to fill. Criticism from
adverse sources is often traceable to an inferiority complex in
regard to achievements that cannot be denied. If only through expansion of
industrial activity and community projects in rural areas, the development
plans have begun to infiltrate into men’s lives. There is still
much unemployment; standards of living have not gone perceptibly high. Yet
there is greater security of living, greater diffusion of opportunity than
before. Also there has been an ideological accession to the concept of freedom.
The very fact that the official policy of the country has steered clear not
only of conflicting ideologies but of the two ideological world blocs, has
imparted a sense of additional personal freedom. What passes under the general
name of Gandhism sets the background for untrammelled, unobtrusive acquaintance with life.
Altogether the mental stage is set for a really humanistic
outlook on men and things. Historically speaking also the avowed secular nature
of the State has, as it were, canalised
the stream of life in accord with the synthetic civilisation of which our past
in arts and architecture bears so much evidence. For individual minds also it
has been a release and a relief. The scope it has left for the free quest of
knowledge and life has served as a compensation for all the stress and strain
communalism and the resultant partition of the country have caused. The organised efforts undertaken by the Government to further
the pursuit of the arts and the sciences have also given a fillip to individual
and collective urges to that end. The recent revival and culture of classical
music is an example. A sense of unity and uniformity also pervades the progress
in all these spheres in different parts of the country. Politically also the
very broad canvas of civil liberty under which life in the country is allowed
to function, the protection such liberty has received at the hands of the
judiciary, and the public vigil over civil rights and liberties preserves a
mood of moral and physical reassurance. There is of course no gainsaying that
individual option both in ideological and behavourist
spheres will depend on the success of the measures for an equitable
readjustment of society unto full individual right and freedom. The number of
people who believe that it is possible of realisation on ordered, evolutionary
lines, and that within the confines of the present socio-economic system, is
still not large.
Meanwhile
however hope of a steady way of life emerging out of the somewhat haphazard
plans with which the nation is groping, already impinges on the sense of
frustration and un-fulfillment that grew deplorably early in the wake of
independence. It is remarkable that the very fact that our country and our
Prime Minister are steering clear of dogmatic ideologies and have actually
given a sort of lead in favour of the co-existence of
ideologies, has served to direct our outlook on humanity at large rather than
on any specific social system. There are those who think that this approach
will get bogged in the present system. But we are not in a static system
either, and far-reaching social and economic reforms have been taken in hand.
It remains to be seen whether these are of the right type and adequate, and
whether they will succeed in placing the individual in proper relation to
society without impinging on his freedom. Today however the emphasis is on the
individual man and woman. It is they that have been asked to find their fulfillment
in collective endeavour. The response is not very
spectacular. It is also circumscribed by the self-centred
outlook largely prevalent today. Slowly but surely the prospect opens before
young men and women of integration with the stream of human civilisation and of
efforts at contribution thereto. It explains the increasing sale and study of
foreign literature, the widening desire to learn and study foreign languages
and to go abroad. It would be crude to ascribe all this to a desire to advance
personal careers. Personal careers wait to be adjusted and assimilated unto a
general movement towards self-discovery and progress in the country and the
world. Hence we find around us many examples of concentrated effort at
development, of determined endeavour to fall in line
with the progress of human knowledge and civilisation. We are increasingly
reaching out for cultural exchange with other countries and incorporating their
music and literature into our intimate lives. Today our passions and strivings,
stresses and tensions throb in unison with movements in the wide world. In all
this we feel we have again found some meaning in our lives. It is for the State
and Society to harness every bit of energy on well-ordered lines and to build
up a social organism calculated to achieve that end. If, on the other band,
social inequality persists in its present form, the resultant imbalance will
endanger all chances of ordered procedure. But to the extent that there is a
purposeful drive against suffering, and an attempt to transcend it into
creative effort in all compartments of life, there is hope.