WE have now had one ‘fear of freedom and it is but
natural and appropriate that we should ask ourselves what this has really meant
to us, and in what respects our condition today is different from what it was a
year ago.
The answer we get to these questions is not one on
which we can as yet congratulate ourselves. For, freedom has not brought to us
increasing joy and happiness. So far, it has meant increased responsibilities
and difficulties, and the creation of many problems which had not been foreseen
by us and for which we had no solutions previously thought out. On the whole,
the year has been one of trial–and error and blunders of a serious
character–and we cannot yet say whether there is a fair prospect of our
successfully emerging out of these trials. Our openly consolation is that we
are now in a position to know where we are, on whose friendship we may count,
and against whose hostility we have to take effective measures. A correct and
real understanding of our difficulties is the first and the most important step
in solving them. The first year of our freedom has given us this understanding.
This does not mean that we have no solid
achievements to our credit this year. We have several such achievements and can
also be proud of some of them. But it is wisdom to know that, compared to what,
we have still to achieve, that which we have already accomplished is not much.
Among our achievements, the first place was
undoubtedly to be given to the constitutional linking up of the States and the
Provinces as units in a single federation for all practical purposes. Hyderabad
alone stands aloof from this linking up, but very soon it too will have to
enter the federation. What would have been the condition of Free India if this
linking up had not taken place is best brought out by the following observation
made by Prof. Coupland who studied the Indian constitutional problem some years
ago and who, like most Englishmen, was an advocate of Pakistan. His words are
as follows:
“An India deprived of the States would have lost
all coherence. For, they form a great cruciform barrier, separating all four
quarters of the country. If no more than the Central Indian States and
Hyderabad and Mysore were excluded from the Union, the United Provinces would
be almost completely cut off from Bombay, and Bombay completely from Sind. The
strategic and economic implications are obvious enough. The practicability of
Pakistan must be admitted; but the more the separation of the States from British
India is considered, the more unpractical it seems. India could live if its
Muslim limbs in the North-West and North-East were amputated, but could it live
without its heart?”
The British plan was to deprive Free India of its
heart. It was implicit in their declaration that paramountcy could not be
transferred to the National Government of India, and that with the withdrawal
of their power the States would become fully sovereign and independent, with
complete freedom to accede to the Indian Dominion or keep away from it. But the
statesmanship of Sardar Patel–the Iron Man in the Indian Cabinet–the patriotism
of the princes, and the national sentiment that prevailed among the peoples of
the States averted this catastrophe, and today the States are as much an
integral part of Free India as the Provinces.
The significance of this achievement is pointed out
in the White Paper on the States recently issued by the Government of India. It
says:
“The accession of the States to the Dominion of
India was a momentous event in Indian history. The full significance of this
important development can be appreciated only if it is viewed against its most
unpropitious background. For over half of a century, the States had been a
sealed book so far as the leaders of public opinion in British India were
concerned”. High walls of political isolation had been reared up and buttressed
to prevent the infiltration of the urge for freedom and democracy into the
Indian States. Disruptive tendencies had been sedulously cultivated and
encouraged, and proposals for not only one but several Rajasthans were in the
air. There were not a few who nursed the hope that, overwhelmed by the combined
weight of the partition of India and the disruption of the States, the
Government of India would go under. In the context of these heavy odds and
handicaps, the consummation of the ideal of a Federal India comprising both the
Provinces and the States, was not a mean achievement. For the first time
after hundreds of years, India became welded into a constitutional entity.”
This, taken along with the merger of the small
States into the neighbouring Provinces, the grouping of several of them into
Unions, and the introduction of democratic responsible government into almost
all of them are steps which give the hope that Free India would also become a
completely integrated India capable of making a solid contribution to world
peace and prosperity. How happy the nation would have been if, on the first
anniversary of the attainment of freedom, Hyderabad also had acceded to the
Union!
Another solid achievement of Free India in the
drafting of a Constitution which is in conformity, in most essentials, with the
requirements and needs of a modern State. The fundamental rights which it
contains and the objectives of State policy which it enunciates open up a new
prospect to the downtrodden and to the common men and women of the land.
Everything that a written Constitution can do to secure liberty and equality to
the citizen and promote a feeling of fraternity among the people is to be found
in the Draft Constitution. It has also set at rest many controversies which
have been unnecessarily engaging the attention of the public, distracting them
from work of a much more essential character. By providing for a purely secular
State, by creating a federation with residuary powers in the Centre, by the
introduction at one stroke of universal suffrage, by creating a Parliamentary
government as distinguished from the Presidential and the Swiss type of
governments, and by giving to the country an independent judiciary, it has done
much to place Free India among the progressive democracies of the world. It is
quite possible to criticise the Draft Constitution on the ground that there is
nothing in it to remind the people that Mahatma Gandhi was the ‘Father of the
Nation’ and nothing in conformity with national tradition and genius. But one
should not forget the realities of the twentieth century world, and the
Constitution takes into consideration these realities. Time alone will show
whether the Draft provides us with a workable machinery or whether it demands
too much from the average citizen and from the professional politician who is
now enjoying a monopoly of power. In spite of considerations like these, the
framing of the Draft Constitution within such a short period of time may be
taken as one of the achievements of the first year of freedom.
There is nothing else which can be placed on a
level of equality with the solution of the States problem and the drafting of
the Constitution. It is true that various issues as between India and Pakistan
arising out of the partition of the country–issues relating to cash balances,
loans, military stores, imports and exports, and the treatment of refugees–were
settled by negotiation without any need to refer them to the arbitral tribunal.
It is also true that steps have been taken to raise a national cadet corps; to
provide State Insurance Relief for all factory hands and accident, sickness and
maternity benefits for women; to eatablish a National War Academy to train
officers, to raise a territorial force of 130,000 men on zonal basis as a
second line of defence, and to start a number of projects like the Damodar
Valley project. Note also may be taken in this connection of the establishment
of special corporations for providing finance to industries and for the
resettlement and rehabilitation of the refugees. But compared with the work
that has to be accomplished in all these respects, that which has actually been
done is little.
One special feature of the work of the Government
in the first year of freedom is the enunciation of its policies in three
important spheres of public life. Pandit Nehru has taken occasion to indicate
the broad lines on which free India’s foreign policy would be based. His
Government also made a declaration on the question of economic policy. There
have also been pronouncements on the course which education should take in
future.
There is an important school of thought in the
country at the present day which wants that, in matters of foreign policy,
India should align herself with one or the other of the great powers. There are
those who advocate that the country would gain most by intimate relations with
Britain and America, and there are others who are positive that it is with
Soviet Russia that she should come into closer relationship. There is one point
in common between these two schools, and that is that India should not adopt an
independent line of foreign policy but that she should join actively one or the
other of the power blocs. They point out that the failure to join these blocs
was responsible for the debacle over the Kashmir issue in the Security Council
and the pro-Muslim sympathy shown by Britain and other members of the British
Commonwealth, as well as by certain sections of American public opinion. Pandit
Nehru has emphatically declared that India should completely keep aloof from
world group-alignments and power politics and observed in that connection:
“The ultimate aim of foreign policy was to find out
what was most advantageous to one’s only country. They might talk of
international goodwill. They might talk about peace and freedom...but, in the
ultimate analysis, a Government functioned for the good of the country it
governed….In this present context, we
propose to look after India’s interest in the context of world
cooperation and world peace, in so far as world peace can be preserved. We
propose to keep in the closest terms of friendship with other countries unless
they themselves create difficulties. We shall be friends and intend
co-operating with America. We intend co-operating , fully with the Soviet
Union.”
This approach of being friendly to all States is
perhaps what a country, which has newly won freedom, should try to cultivate.
There is however a doubt whether this friendship will be reciprocated and
whether this will give us the capital goods, the technical experts, and the
military equipment that we need in the immediate future. But the enunciation of
an independent foreign policy is a symbol of the self-confidence and courage
animating our leaders.
Pandit Nehru’s Cabinet has also made its position
clear in regard to the economic policy it proposes to follow, The main issue
here is between nationalisation as advocated by the Socialists and the other
Left Parties, and empirical policies advocated by the others. Although Pandit
Nehru was at one time a left-winger, he has now become much sobered, and in a
Cabinet dominated by persons who belong to the ranks of industrialists there is
no possibility of complete nationalisation being adopted. It is a cautious
approach to it that forms the basis of the policy of the Nehru Cabinet. Only a
few industries will be nationalised. The large majority will continue to in the
hands of private individuals–in some cases for a period of ten years and in
other cases for longer periods. The characteristic of this policy is that it is
flexible and liable to be revised from time to time in the light of experience.
One reason perhaps for the caution displayed in the matter of nationalisation
is that Government is not satisfied with the kind of administrators and civil
servants that it now has, and it has not been able to replace them by others.
There is a universal complaint that civil servants are not only given to
red-tapism and to unnecessary delays, but that they have become very corrupt in
recent times, and that consequently it would be risky to place them in charge
of industries. This may not have been the decisive factor which influenced the
Government, but it may be taken as one of the strongest forces. One of the
members of Nehru’s Cabinet went to the extent of saying that corruption in the
ranks of Government employees has become a national scandal.
The left-wingers have not been satisfied with this
policy announced by the Government. This is shown by the large number of
strikes that occurred in the first year of our freedom and the fall in
industrial output which is one of the causes of the phenomenal rise in prices.
The remedy proposed by Government for strikes is an industrial truce for a
period of three years. Although even the representatives of labour have agreed
to such a truce, there has not been much fall in the number of strikes.
Inflation is also working havoc and steps have been taken to arrest it. All
these goes to show that the Government should revise its view on economic
policy and adopt a bolder and more courageous attitude in dealing with private
industrialists and profiteers. This is all the more necessary, as the
capitalist class has shown by its reaction to the de-control policy of
Government how unscrupulous it is. There is an urgent need for a most energetic
and determined Government in the country.
The policies announced by the Government in the
field of education, are on the whole sound. A system of education appropriate
to a free and independent India is being evolved. It has come to be known as
social education. Citizenship training, in the most comprehensive senses of the
term, is its keynote. Education is also being altered so that it might become
activity-centered, as recommended by Mahatma Gandhi. The principle of his
Wardha scheme is now accepted, and basic schools are being started for the
purpose. Steps also are being taken to do away with separate communal schools
and universities. The regional language is now the first language in every
Province, and provision is being made for learning Hindustani–the national
language–in Provinces where it is not the regional language. There is thus a
new orientation given to education. But, here again, the general impression–for
which there is much justification–is that the policies are not being as
vigorously pursued as they ought to be and the pace is too slow.
There is a general feeling that, so far as the
masses are concerned, freedom has not brought about any improvement in their
condition. When they require is food, clothing, house-room, health and
elementary education. Not only has there been no improvement in the supply of
these essentials of life during this year; there has also been much
deterioration, especially in regard to clothing. Freedom therefore has meant
nothing to the common man, though every person in authority talks as if he
exists only for the sake of the common man. Here it is not good intentions and
schemes that are wanting. They are to be found in plenty. But there is a total
absence of results. The refugees–five million in number–complain that very
little is being done in practice to rehabilitate them. The workers and the
peasants have similar complaints. The fact that prices and rents of houses have
gone up by four to five times shows that the complaint is not baseless.
The question, however, is whether it is the apathy
of the Government, or its pre-occupation with graver and more serious issues
that is responsible for the paucity of results. If it is the latter, is the
Government adopting the right policy to face these issues? These are legitimate
questions which the public are asking, and no satisfactory answer has been
forthcoming. It is this that has created a real crisis in our country today.
We are not as yet really free. The conquest of the
country by the British was made possible by the divisions that prevailed among
us, and their rule lasted as long as it did because of these divisions. The
British withdrew from the country in 1947, not so much because we offered a
united front to them but because, in consequence of their having had to fight
two world-wars within a generation, they became so weak that they found it
impossible with their limited resources in men and material to hold their
empire any longer. They withdrew not only from India but also from Burma, from
Ceylon, and from Palestine. It would have been quite different if the
withdrawal had been brought about by our united strength in a revolutionary
war. But, as it is, to British withdrawal did not mean the disappearance of
those division in our country on which their rule rested. Communalism which was
fostered by them continues to exist. The spirit of the Muslim League, which was
responsible for the first disintegration of the country, is not dead. It is
alive not only in Hyderabad but also among certain sections in the Indian
Union. It is now being encouraged by Pakistan. But this is not the only kind of
communalism that is eating into the vital of our political and social order.
There is the communalism of the Harijan, of certain sections of caste Hindus,
and of other groups of people. It is this that has to be completely destroyed.
And until this is done, we cannot see the end of our troubles, and we cannot be
certain that we have got freedom and are able to maintain it. In the first year
of freedom has done anything to us, it has done this: it has shown that the
communal and sectional forces are still alive, and that they will not be
satisfied until and unless there is disintegration of the whole country.
What we immediately need is a Government which is strong, energetic, and resolute, which is able to place the whole nation practically on a war footing, and which is determined to root out our enemies at home and abroad. When our Constituent Assembly was first convened and when discussions were taking place whether it could frame a Constitution of its own liking, we were reminded of the famous Tennis Court Oath taken by the National Assembly of France in 1789. It is I better that we remind ourselves today that the honeymoon period of our bloodless (?) revolution is over, that we are in the same position as the French Revolutionaries were in 1791, that we have both ‘reactionary’ and ‘radical’ enemies at home and abroad ready to help these domestic foes and kill the freedom we secured a year ago. It is only a Government capable of rousing the enthusiasm of the whole nation, and organising it for an all-but sacrifice for upholding the independence and freedom of the country, that can save the situation. Vigour, energy, organisation–these have to become our watch-words