Freedom, Democracy And Politics

 

1. Freedom in a democracy does not mean the absence of hurdles in the way of misappropriation or misuse of public money by you or me but it means the freedom to use our bodies, minds and wealth according to our united social will without causing any harm to others and allowing all other members of the society an equal opportunity to acquire wealth, education and knowledge.

2. Liberty is good so long as it does not harm the common interests. If your freedom hurts others, you are not free. One’s liberty ends when it becomes a curse to his neighbours.

3. The concept of freedom cannot be and should not be construed to mean harming the common interest but to ensure freedom to all others in the society to have an equal opportunity in all walks of life.

4. The present state of India is that of a rudderless independence. In post-independence era, we have allowed the problems to accumulate and fester and today they have become insurmountable and repelling. All our actions and efforts will go in vain if we do not give a right direction to our social energies. At present we live with an ad hoc attitude in our lives, from day to day, hour to hour, without any distinct horizon. This is a very dangerous situation as living without far-sight and fore-sight is quite perilous both for an individual and the nation.

5. Modern age is the age of profound transition and is not the time for complacency. Whether we like it or not, science and technology are making huge inroads in our age-old accepted beliefs and the good old days are going out fast, never to return. The pattern of our economy, the web of our social and family relationship, the mood of our people and the values of our life, are all being thrown into the melting pot of the modern transition. With the acceleration of the pace of the scientific progress, the centuries old monolithic vestiges of our feudal society are being profoundly disturbed and the newly achieved social mobility is fast breaking down the caste and all other old and obsolete forms of our social relationship and the sanctions behind them. Virtues that sustained a static age are now found to be utterly inadequate to meet the demands of a dynamic society. Everywhere we witness the crumbling down of the old values, old edifices and old social and economic structures. And since this is just the beginning, we can very well envisage, from the experience of Western countries in the last century, what disturbing effects it is going to have on the mind and face of our old society. It is very much essential for us to visualize the consequences of such a root and branch revolution that is in prospect in all aspects of our national life and mobilize our national wisdom to meet its challenges, intelligently and effectively.

6. Our present state is due to our inability to understand the significance and failure to assimilate the values of citizenship of a free country. Two great values are predominant in such a citizenship namely, freedom and responsibility. If freedom is not fortified with a sense of responsibility, it may be destroyed as well. True freedom cannot come as a free gift, we have to earn it and make ourselves fit for it. There can be unfree minds in a politically free state, similarly there can be free minds in an unfree one. Vivekananda, Gandhi, Tagore and many others were free men in an unfree India. We have alas many unfree minds in free India today! We have taken our freedom for granted without making any effort to grow into it. We have tied up citizenship only with age and freedom with only external political freedom. Such a thinking is capable of destroying both the citizenship and the freedom as well.

7. Freedom without a sense of responsibility makes for psychic immaturity; and responsibility without freedom makes for ineffectiveness.

8. The concept of social-responsibility enshrines an ethical value or dharma which is basic to all social-health and human well-being, and along with individual freedom is the source of all other citizenship virtues and graces. Out of this sense of responsibility arises a sense of duty, punctuality, mutual trust and obligation, work-efficiency, a capacity for teamwork and a sense of dedication and service. A citizen in a democracy is one who not only lives in a democratic society, but also works for it. He is not only a free individual but also a responsible individual. The combination of the twin values of personal freedom and social responsibility in a human being gives us a democratic citizen, who is the finest product of social evolution. It is painfully evident today that since our independence, we have not only failed to produce in adequate numbers men and women of this type but on the other hand have turned out on mass scale people of opposite type who demanded and secured freedom without corresponding responsibilities, rights without corresponding duties and monetary gains without putting in any honest work through various anti-social activities. This has resulted in the dangerous tilting to one side of the ship of our nation foreboding imminent fear of national disaster. It needs to be brought on to the even keel as no society can move without the healthy balancing of freedom with responsibility and rights with duties.

9. Our exclusive stress on fundamental rights has resulted in a general clamour by individuals and groups for rights and privileges from the nation, drowning in it the great humanistic and ethical values of duties and responsibilities. It is the time that we correct this imbalance. Even in America one of its thinkers has suggested that the ‘Statue of Liberty’ on the east coast must be supplemented by a ‘Statue of Responsibility’ on the west coast.

10. Freedom of the individual is fundamental to human growth and socio-political order in a democracy. But that freedom becomes a menace, as much to the individual as to the nation, if it fails to inspire itself with the sense of social responsibility along with virtues of self-discipline and a humanly oriented will. This constitutes character, the character centred in a socially oriented will.

11. Without responsibility freedom becomes its own enemy. Only when you combine these two, you get true citizenship – enlightened citizenship. Though we got political freedom yet without any sense of responsibility it has led to so much misbehaviour, indiscipline and breach of law by the people which weakened our body-politic in spite of our immense manpower, high level of intelligence and steady spread of education. Now we have to inject this sense of responsibility in our people through proper education, as our democratic state also rests on our shoulders and not only on the shoulders of our political leadership and bureaucracy alone. We have been nurtured in an atmosphere in which all responsibility belonged to the king, and to the people no responsibility belonged. This sense of guardianship and childish dependence on the kings has to be given up now as we have grown to become sovereign citizens today with no king above. Responsibility is the sign of human growth, of psychic maturity. Our citizenship attitude is not asserting itself because that growth and maturity has not yet taken root in us.

12. In the enlightened democratic citizenship, individual freedom is all the time wedded to social responsibility. In it we stress on the common goals and interests more than our own egos, profits and pleasures.

13. Our status becomes that of a mercenary without the consciousness of our status as a citizen. Living with the mentality of helpless subjects (Praja), we have developed a mood of resignation to evils which says, ‘whether Rama rules or Ravana, it is all the same for us.’ While the majority of the people hold this view, there is a minority who thinks otherwise. As rulers need people to run their reigns and to look after their personal interests, they call for the services of this section who gladly accept the opportunity for their personal benefit unmindful of the interests or well-being of the people or the nation. They have no other interest except their personal well-being and this is how we can call them mercenaries. Having failed to redress the sufferings of the masses even after five decades of political freedom, we can only conclude that we have not yet been able to shed our mercenary attitude and still require to imbibe the much needed citizenship awareness relevant to the new situation and that our people still very much lack in the sense of social responsibility and national belonging.

14. Though we have lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 years, but it is equally important that along with it the possibilities of psychic maturity are also activated by instilling in our people a sense of social responsibility. It is very much possible for one to be physically mature and grown up, while still remaining mentally immature. Unfortunately, we have a lot of such people in our country. This is the dark legacy of our centuries of slavery when all responsibilities belonged to the ruling power. Political subjugation, if continued for a long time, leads to the loss of sense of dignity and responsibility. Such people tend to disown personal responsibility and pass the buck on to somebody else. They do not have the courage and self-confidence to accept their shortcomings and failures. Even after more than five decades of political freedom, most of our people lack in these precious human qualities and values.

15. Age cannot be the only criterion of the maturity of a citizen unless it is accompanied by a psychic maturity, expressed in a sense of responsibility. Political maturity combined with social responsibility inspires a citizen to work for the welfare and well-being of the people. If the boats of life of our people are launched on the present turbulent water of our national life with this attitude, not only they will not suffer any shipwrecks themselves but will also save many others who have failed to make their voyage successful.

16. Our people, due to long periods of reigns of the kings and subsequently of the foreign rulers, have developed a fatal habit of leaving everything to the rulers and hence could not develop any sense of self-rule and governance over a long period of time. Therefore, having been entirely dependent on the rulers for everything and never caring or required to exert themselves for the common good or self-defence, they became gradually destitute of strength and wisdom. This long period of dependence and protection by others is one of the main causes of our present plight.

17. We have to now make the people feel that freedom means not only liberty but also responsibility. Though, freedom and responsibility are the twin aspects of citizenship in a free society; yet till today we have not adequately realized the importance of responsibility in our country. There was a time when we could do whatever we liked as we had no responsibility and could put all blames on the rulers. No doubt we have achieved great things after independence; but in view of our sufferings and humiliations in the past, this freedom should have given us much greater inspiration to work hard and achieve even greater things. Our achievements till date are inadequate, when viewed against the background of long suppressed urges of the people longing for fulfillment. This explains the political and social tensions and turmoil of our national life today.

18. The combination of freedom and responsibility constitutes an ideal citizenship and not freedom alone. After political independence we are now solely responsible for the happiness and welfare of our people, for the success and failure of our democratic experiment.

19. After independence we are not only free to dream but also to work for the economic, political, cultural and spiritual fulfillment of its masses, a majority of whom live and have been living at sub-human level of existence. It is an urgent task not only because of broad human values but also for preservation of our newly won freedom and for stability and peace of our society.

20. Though we have implanted in our constitution the great ideas of dignity, freedom and equality for all but we did not imbibe this idealism in sufficient measure in our practical lives. We treated these as sacred sentiments and allowed them to remain on the pages of our constitution and did not take adequate steps to make them the moving force in our hearts. But to have the ideal is one thing and to apply it practically to the details of daily life is quite another. We helplessly saw the steady decline, year after year, of the idealism and patriotic fervour of our pre-independence days but took no steps to arrest this national decadence.

21. Whereas other nations under similar circumstances have sacrificed everything to protect their political freedom and worked hard to ensure all-round development, we, on the other hand, became quickly complacent, neglected the cultivation of heroic virtues and opted for an easy life. The demon of laziness, meanness and hypocrisy has usurped the whole of the country. We sadly neglected to cherish and nourish that freedom which we have gained after centuries of slavery. We have to realize that our responsibilities as citizens do not end with casting of our votes in elections but that we have also the responsibility to ensure the health and vigour of our democracy by being alert and sensitive, intelligent and effective. We have to see that our democracy expresses itself not only in our constitution but also in its administration, in the functioning of its political parties and social groups and in the awareness of its citizens. We have also to keep in mind that political democracy becomes a sham if it does not strive to transform itself into economic and social democracy.

22. The political freedom achieved in 1947 should not remain at the political level alone otherwise it will stagnate and destroy itself. Political freedom is best when it marches on to achieve the heights of economic, social, cultural and spiritual freedoms as well.

23. Political or social freedom is well and good but the real thing is spiritual freedom. That is our national purpose.

24. Our ecstasy of freedom slowly evaporated after a little effervescence of a few days because we failed to understand the implications of being citizens of a free democracy. If, during our post-independence period, even our educated sections would have realised and assimilated the meaning of citizenship of a free nation, we would have achieved a great measure of social, political and economic strength leading to all round national progress. Now, commensurate with human situation around us we have to learn to be enlightened citizens and not mere politically adult citizens which requires certain changes in our attitude and behaviour namely, a sense of public-spirit, national-responsibility, a measure of self-discipline and law abidingness. We have got political freedom but that in itself does not make for citizenship; besides freedom, there is need for a sense of responsibility to make a citizen.

25. A sense of complacency with its offshoots, stagnation and colossal lack of the sense of dedication and national vision descended upon us within a brief period of our political independence. Our freedom did not lead to any change in our attitudes. Freedom ought to have made a sea of difference in our thinking as the difference between subjection and freedom, but that is missing in us. In fact our joy of freedom turned out to be a temporary emotional experience. Though we were longing for freedom for ages but when freedom actually came, the spiritual quality and intensity of that emotion soon fizzled out and millions of our educated people quietly settled down to seek and enjoy personal profit, power and pleasure. After a very brief spell of post-independence national enthusiasm, the honeymoon spirit set in and the sense of urgency vanished. We soon settled down to squeeze the fruits of freedom and silently adopted the motto, ‘each one unto himself and the devil takes the hindmost’. Every person and group in the nation started to think that since others would be working for the nation selflessly and patriotically so a bit of self-aggrandizement on his part would not matter, would not be detected as has happened in the story of the king who ordered all his courtiers to put a glass of milk in a big tank where finally it was found that it was all water and no milk. What is this due to? We have since independence cared more to exploit our freedom for selfish purposes than to serve its cause or enhance its value. We have tried to weaken our nation by advocating regional, linguistic and other narrow claims, backed by organised movements often of violent nature. At the birth of our independence, only a few thought like that but their numbers began to increase year after year, until selfishness and self-seeking became a habit with most of us, bringing our national morality to its lowest ebb. There is obviously something wrong in our mental make-up which prevents us from experiencing sustained national enthusiasm and patriotic fervour. It is this weakness in our mental constitution which we have to tackle today.

26. When our country awoke to freedom at the stroke of midnight on the 15th of August 1947, and entered into its ‘tryst with destiny’, there was a sense of joy and hope all-round. But within a short time, the ecstasy of freedom evaporated, the poetry of life and adventure became converted into the prosaic business of seeking money, power and pleasure. Something went wrong with our nation, bringing in its wake social evils like corruption, various malpractices and lack of concern for common man and his welfare.

27. We were promised ‘Ram-Rajya’ when the British departed from India; and when freedom came, we were enthused and expectant with the idea that we would have ‘Ram-Rajya.’ But what we actually saw and got was ‘Ravana-Rajya.’

28. Our celebrated ‘tryst with destiny’ is turning out to be a rendezvous with despair and misfortune. Freedom from alien rule was by all reckoning an important achievement; but much important than that is the use that has been made of that freedom. It would not be unfair to say that the people of India are paying the wages of freedom to the members of its political class. The latter has taken advantage of the spread of democracy to further their self-interests and to feather their own nests. Though participation in democracy has spread but the ethos of democracy has not struck roots.

29. All of us must ask this question and find the answer as to why, after more than five decades of political freedom, we are unable to banish poverty, illiteracy and backwardness from our nation whereas other countries have achieved this far more quickly and impressively than our country, even some of the newly liberated ones also. What is the reason for our backwardness, for our still remaining in the category of the undeveloped nations, in spite of vast natural and human resources? We have intelligence and youthful energy, but something vital is lacking  the spirit of intense love for the nation and dedication for its development. We experienced a great ecstasy of freedom on the 15th of August 1947 as all free people do. But our ecstasy of freedom lasted only for one day; from the next day onwards, our long ingrained slave attitude overtook our sense of freedom and we started to weaken our new democratic state by putting self and group interests, interests of caste and creed, language, region and religion over the national interests. We began to concentrate only on one single pursuit, of making as much money as possible, by any means whatsoever without taking any care of national interests which resulted in the proliferation of anti-social attitudes and practices. And the heaven we experienced on 15th August 1947 became steadily converted into a hell, where nobody is happy or satisfied, where everybody is a bureau of complaints against the state, God and everybody else. If we have the power to convert an heaven into an hell, we have also the power to re-convert this hell, which is our country today, into a heaven once again. In hellish conditions, our enthusiasm dries up at the borderline of self-interest; and heavenly conditions begin to set-in only when our enthusiasm overflows that borderline and makes us work with zeal and zest in all fields of national endeavours inspired by the humanist and service motivation. Everyone must feel that authority given by the state, is not to be exercised over the people but for (the service of) the people, to make their lives brighter and richer. The chair of authority is the symbol of the state’s dedication to the welfare of the people from whom the real power of the state flows.

30. Despite enormous natural and human resources, millions of our people are still poor and backward living in dismal sub-human conditions. It only shows that the most vital resource, the patriotic and humanistic impulse, with its spirit of service and dedication and the sense of privilege of working for one’s motherland, is missing in our people, even in the educated ones. After independence, by negation of ethical and human values we started to convert India, the heaven that it was, into a hell year after year. We failed to realize that in the absence of increasing human integration in the nation, mere industrial development or increase of wealth in the pockets of a few would not transform India into a heaven. This is self-evident by the phenomena of increasing crime, delinquency, corruption and steady erosion of moral values in our society.

31. Politics of power, weakened by the lack of true patriotism, scruples and high principles, have worked havoc with our democratic state faced with its mounting human problems of colossal poverty and backwardness. Politics is certainly the pursuit of power; but not definitely of power for its own sake. It is for the service and democratic education of the people. The nation is in dire need of such politics of service inspired by the patriotic dedication.

32. Politics and political power by itself alone cannot infuse the life-giving spirit of devotion, heroism, character, amity and sacrifice in the people as these are spiritual qualities. Today, we lack in character, mutual respect and trust and the spirit of service and dedication. This can only come by spiritual growth. Without these qualities all political activities degenerate into mutual hostility which ruins the national fabric. Bereft of these, political parties become a breeding ground for disruptive forces and fissiparous tendencies.

33. Since our independence, we seem to have developed a mood of complacency, an inordinate love for money, ease and comfort and suicidal political tendency to indulge in parochial interests and petty issues. We have begun to take freedom for granted and indulged in its sacred name in every conceivable form of indiscipline for individual and group interests, receiving applause from the ignorant and selfish people. We have not learnt the lesson that self-discipline is the mark of a free man whereas indiscipline that of a slave and eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. No sermons can teach us these sterling virtues more than the harsh living experiences of real life. We must learn to forge a new character and destiny for ourselves. Let each one of us resolve to put first things first – the freedom and integrity of our nation and happiness and welfare of the millions, and let us once for all realize that citizenship of a free country is made of sterner stuff and requires abjuration of the desire for selfish gains and love for ease.

34. If we can reverse the current dismal trend towards selfishness, exploitation, corruption and nepotism into a steady movement towards light, progress and well-being of our masses, our country will achieve a great measure of economic strength and social and political stability. This must be our national endeavour. The people will be initiated into it if they just take a dip in the Ganga of inspiration of our age-old spirituality.

35. The amount of complacency that has gripped our minds in our post-independence era is weakening us individually as well as a nation. Our actions have been tending more to weaken and disrupt our freedom than to strengthen and consolidate it by encouraging centrifugal forces.

36. The lack of same degree of interest in our national affairs as in our personal ones has failed our nation in converting the ecstasy of freedom, a brief emotional effervescence, into a sustained national enthusiasm and struggle for tangible developmental work. It is our general experience that when we work for our own cause, we work heart and soul but when it comes to public work our enthusiasm sags and fades away. Public enterprise in India is nobody’s enterprise, public building is nobody’s building, public property is nobody’s property. The thinking, that it is national loss and not our own, reflects a narrow outlook. This type of feeling only takes us and our country down. We have not risen to that level of citizenship awareness and naturally lack in the sense of social responsibility. Though we have read the Gita for centuries, we have unfortunately failed to grasp its teachings. We had lost our political freedom in the past and remained slaves for centuries because of our self-centredness. We overcame that narrow outlook during our freedom struggle and the nation became free. Now if that freedom has to be preserved and made meaningful for our masses, then we have to develop the attitude of a free and enlightened citizen. Let us re-learn to put India first and ourselves as an integral part of it. The spirit should be that my country must live and progress. It must be healthy and strong, its masses must be raised to human level.

37. Responsibility of citizenship should become our natural trait and we should not be required to be forced or coaxed into it by censures and awards. We have all the political trappings of Western democracy but the civic senses and virtues that sustain it in those countries are conspicuous by their absence. The body is there, but the enlivening soul is missing. We lack in spirit of energy, dignity of labour, team-spirit and human concern. Enfolded in enlightened citizenship we shall be able to raise in our country not only an enduring and strong edifice of political, economic and social democracy for one sixth of human race but also on that very base, raise the beautiful super-edifice of man’s higher spiritual life as expounded in Vedanta and all great religions.

38. Today our nation is free and united under a democratic constitution. But if we let this opportunity go and continue to think and act in terms of personal aggrandizements, petty jealousies and small loyalties, we may not only jeopardise our freedom but pawn our future as well. We have to constantly remember that we are free only if India is free; “if India goes down; where are you and where am I?” This we sometimes forget that all our national ailments after independence have come from our parochial attitudes and frenzied actions and that these are absolutely irrelevant today. What is relevant is the cultivation of a broad national attitude, the spirit of service and a sense of national belonging, which are the essential hallmarks of a citizen in a free society. As citizens of free India we must realize that we are all involved in the problems and prospects of our country.

39. What we need is an education and religion that will give us character-efficiency and will make us active, energetic, patriotic and dedicated and will help our people to respond to the human situation around them, a situation compounded of misery, oppression and injustice for millions of our people for hundreds of years on one hand and the mounting hopes and aspirations of our people for a good life, in the wake of our political freedom, on the other.

40. Political freedom would be of no avail till the masses are well-educated, well-fed and well-cared for. It seems that in post independence years the central issues of poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease have not been addressed as they should have been. Satisfaction of hunger and other basic necessities of our people is our main task. Our success and failure is only to be judged by our achievements on this front – of giving each citizen two square meals, a place to hide his head, sufficient clothing, adequate medical facilities and proper education.

41. We cannot progress until all the one billion of us combine as a nation, unless we have faith in ourselves and love for the country. Today, we need people who are brave and noble enough to sink their self-interests and personal differences for the sake of the country and not selfish cowards with their nonsense lip-patriotism. When we have men, who are ready to sacrifice their everything for the country, sincere to the backbone, when such men arise, India will become great in all respects. It is the men that make a nation.

42. The greatest challenge to our nation today comes from the malady which afflicts its mind and heart. Cynicism, self-centredness and utter unconcern for others are more deadlier than the most deadly physical diseases for they are eroding the nations resolve to be truly free, to be united and to march onward and forward to progress. We have to take more care of the national interests while protecting our personal interests. We have to reconcile good of self with the welfare of all. Enlightened self-interest constitutes – looking to one’s personal and family interests in the wider context of the interests of the society as a whole.

43. Today, even international relationship between the states is being inspired by the philosophy of enlightened self-interest. It finds expression in the active concern of the economically developed nations working for the development of the less developed ones. But this philosophy needs to find more pervasive expression in inter-human and inter-social relationship within the nation itself, where service should be installed as the prime motivation in place of exploitation.

44. People should be imbued with the right philosophy to check their self-centredness and to identify themselves with the joys and sorrows of their fellow beings. A spirit of self-discipline, harmonious adjustment and co-operation for all round development should be inculcated.

45. This genuine feeling of identity born out of the oneness of the inner-self is the real driving force behind our natural urge for human unity and brotherhood. Thus it is evident that word unity and human welfare can be made real only to the extent, mankind realise this common inner-bond which alone can subdue the passions and discords stemming from materialism, broaden the horizon of human minds and harmonise the individual and national aspirations with the welfare of mankind.

46. We need not to forgo all concern for ourselves and become ascetics; we are just called upon to put this concern for self in a wider context of concern for others. This changes the whole concept of our life and work. This is called enlightened self-interest. It is self-interest but with a touch of spiritual enlightenment, resulting in the recognition of mutuality, inter-dependence and spirit of service as the truth of all healthy social intercourse.

47. The capacity to overlook personal convenience for public interest is the essence of all social discipline and work ethics. One who does not do so or does the reverse is either a child or a criminal. But the psychological difference is that the child does it innocently and the criminal does it knowingly and there is a law to take care of him. But the child is to be tackled not by law but by proper education. We have a small percentage of criminals but a large number of physically developed and psychically underdeveloped children who are bereft of any sense of social responsibility and only care for themselves. Unfortunately, many among our elite and educated people belong to this category. We have too many of them in present India who are slowly gravitating to crime, in the sense of intentional anti-social behaviour like bribery, smuggling, tax-evasion, theft, robbery, cheating and murder and swell our criminal ranks.

48. Today, most of us have no wider horizon beyond the small circle of our profit and pleasure. We have become bundles of opinions, leading to vain gossiping, instead of becoming dynamic centers of a few well-thought out convictions leading to effective social actions. Our people will have to be inspired to develop a positive attitude for using their bodies and minds to alleviate the sufferings of the people. They should be infused with the idea of enlightened self-interest.

49. Many of our elite and educated people live only for themselves and have forgotten to live for others or the nation and are more dead than alive. They are using their undoubtedly high intelligence only to advance themselves in total disregard of the nation. They are forgetting that such lives are empty and in spite of money or power, ‘such people’, in words of Swami Vivekananda, ‘are more dead than alive’. They should realize that private affluence with public squalor in our country is a standing libel and challenge to our political system and social conscience.

50. Our people seem to be half-dead, without any interest or zest in the national life. They are bags of complaints and frustrations. What is it all due to? The answer is that it is due to a wrong self-centred philosophy of life, a philosophy which always complains and demands, but never satisfies and gives. We always complain that the nation has not done enough for us but never ask ourselves that what we have done for the nation or for the millions of our fellow-countrymen who are sunk in poverty and ignorance for centuries? Naturally, frustration arising mainly from an insensitive and self-centred attitude has become an universal experience today, and this is a more tragic death than physical death, according to Swami Vivekananda – ‘man dying mentally and spiritually, even while being very much alive physically!’

51. Progress of the nation and its people on a grand scale is the responsibility of our people particularly of those who call themselves educated and who form the higher classes, because their high status carries increased responsibility. But unfortunately, the higher classes in India are greatly devoid of social or political wisdom. They have ruined the nation by their misdeeds for centuries together. They could have helped to build a great nation here, and there would not have been any foreign invasion, had they cared for the upliftment of the common men. They never did so. They only exploited their own common people for years and so in turn were exploited by the foreign conquerors. But today, after achieving independence, the magnitude of self-centredness that has crept into many among our upper classes is quite amazing.

52. If our educated people can really capture the meaning and significance of enlightened democratic citizenship namely, straightening the back of the common men by helping them to experience human dignity which is one’s inborn right, the common men will get the vision and energy to welcome every opportunity to contribute for its early realization. Our common people have been suppressed too long from all side. Sense of fear, lack of self-confidence and energy and the spirit of hopelessness have been their hallmark for some centuries. All these are the relics of the past ages of oppression, exploitation and general neglect. We have to reckon with these liabilities of the past, when we deal with our human situation today. We have to achieve in the coming decades social changes on a revolutionary scale backed by a healthy attitudinal change in our people. It will comprise among other things, a little obsession with wealth and property combined with a little more concern with man.

53. In Swamy Vivekananda’s words “I call those men, who strut about in their finery, having got all their name, fame and money by grinding the poor, wretches, so long as they do not do anything for them who are no better than the hungry savages.”

54. He further said that, ‘So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated or have become great at their expense, pays not the least heed to them’, hoping that we Indians, whom he loved so much, would not commit this treason. Unfortunately today, our people do not cherish any sense of duty or responsibility. They are always finding faults with the government or the society. Everyone feels that one does not owe any duty or responsibility to the country, rather the country owes responsibility to him, as the country is indebted and owes gratitude to him for his gracious birth or habitation on its soil.

55. Today, we have a foolish notion in India that money is the only worthwhile motivation, but beyond a certain limit money does not bring any more happiness. The only proper motivating force should be that we belong to this nation and we cannot see it destroyed. We have suffered much in the past and must now guarantee that this nation shall ever remain free, and that the fruits of its freedom shall be brought to the millions of its people for whom freedom is just a name even now. This attitude of commitment and involvement is what citizenship means. We never had it in a big way in India and that is why we have developed a carefree attitude of not regarding national problems as our own, but rather somebody else’s problems.

56. We persuaded ourselves to believe, that there is only one worthy pursuit namely, money and more money. This mad rush, bereft by any sense of personal dignity, national duty and honest work, continued merrily until we generated and fostered a strange malady in our socio-political framework, which has not afflicted any other nation in history, nor our own nation in the past namely, the attitude to feel entitled to get regular salaries and wages on one side, and over-time payments on the other without doing any work. It is a very comic situation with a tragic overtone, when millions of our people say that “to get wages and salaries is our right, whether we work or not, and it is the overtime for which we only work. We need not to turn out an honest day’s work to deserve our remuneration as that must come to us anyway, since we are on the rolls!”

57. We in India, in our post-independence pursuit of materialism and worldliness forgot to develop those saving virtues of western materialism, which in spite of their over emphasis on physical and material aspects of human life, were not totally devoid of the sense of social awareness, personal efficiency, the capacity for personal renunciation and team-work for the sake of general well-being by which they raised their social life from wretchedness to a higher level of security and welfare. Theirs’ is enlightened self-interest, ours’ became sheer self-interest. This spiritual poverty is writ large in the moods and ways of most of our educated people especially of our beaurocrats, politicians, professionals and educationists.

58. Compared to other countries, which are frankly materialistic but still have captured the mood and spirit of service in their personal and social life, our country’s performance is dismal, even though we claim to be a deeply religious nation! One half of the people in India suffer from arrested spiritual-growth, while the other half suffer from arrested material-growth.

59. According to Swami Vivekananda: ‘This life is short and the vanities of world are transient, but they alone live who live for others the rest are more dead than alive’. Alas! We, have now too many ‘dead’ people and too few ‘living’ in our country. Our greatest task is to make more and more of our people ‘alive’. This can be done by an extensive diffusion of the philosophy of human excellence in all fields of our activities as this instills a sense of dignity and self-respect in man. When one is inspired by this philosophy, he will earnestly desire to do the work entrusted to him, honestly and efficiently. People in every country, and free people everywhere, understand and follow it. It is only in our country that it is neither understood nor followed. Our people shrink from their responsibilities, do not do their work honestly and properly, and do not know the virtues of punctuality and duty. In India everybody has a watch but nobody is punctual. We wear watches for status but not for helping us to be punctual. So we need a supervisor to supervise our work, and another supervisor to supervise the work of the supervisor himself, and it goes on endlessly! Free people do not need and also do not like supervision of their work by anybody else as to them it amounts to be a slight to their self-respect and honour. A self-respecting person will always understand his responsibility for the proper and timely execution of the work allotted to him. Why should any body keep a watch on him as he watches himself? Our people will develop this attitude when they cease to be ‘dead’ and become ‘alive’ and consider it as an insult to their freedom, sense of responsibility and human dignity, if somebody keeps a watch over their work.

60. Any worker in any field of life, endowed with a sense of enlightened citizenship, can be entrusted with any work as he will discharge the allotted responsibility to the best of his ability and power. But today this is not true in our country. There are too many people without any self-respect or self-discipline; who will not work but demand their remuneration. They do not realise that this is the attitude of a slave, and not of a free citizen. In such a situation, you cannot trust each other, and that erodes all types of human excellence. Excellence in work, excellence in inter-human relationship, excellence where none is watching you – all these will come but only when the sense of slavery is removed from the minds of our people and they are made to understand and experience true value and worth of freedom and dignity of their being. But this sense of human freedom, dignity and worth becomes completely lost if only one pursuit dominates the mind of men namely, how to make money and more money. Unfortunately, too much obsession for money-making, profit and pleasure has destroyed every type of human excellence in our society today.

61. Work-efficiency or excellence is the product of intelligence yoked to great social causes; consciously and deliberately, as such an awareness brings the best out of the doer; and without this stimulus of wider reference, without the consciousness of national purpose, no worker can achieve true efficiency or satisfaction. It is self-centredness and lack of concern for others that lead to corruption and nepotism and that evil is all pervasive in our society today.

62. It is here that we have to make a new dedication which does not come from money alone. It comes from something else which is very much lacking in us. Emoluments and other allowances can go up but what cannot go up, except through ones own efforts, is the personal commitment to a great national adventure of its growth and development. This sense of involvement that we are a part of the nation, that we are not only in it but also for it, immediately brings a new sense of energy which will evoke in us an intense urge to work for the nation.

63. Too long, we have associated this word ‘motivation’ with only one narrow factor namely, money or financial gains. Today, many thinkers, political and social, opine that money as a motivation is all right at the early stage; it can give some fillip but beyond that it is redundant, even counter-productive. No human motivation can be generated and sustained for long by merely paying more salary and wages. It comes as an inner-response by stirring the depths of the human spirit, which then expresses itself as, “I am a citizen of India it is a proud privilege for me to be called upon to shoulder this great national responsibility”. That is the spirit which evokes the best out of a person and inspires him for dedicated hard work. On the one side, there is love for money as a personal motivation; on the other side, there is profound spiritual and human motivation. The Gita’s philosophy of work does not ask one to ignore or neglect the former, but advices only to place it in the context of the latter.

64. There is no harm in encouraging people to work for achieving their personal ambitions or unfolding their hidden personalities but they must also be inspired and guided to dream for an ideal of human excellence and for struggling to develop a character expressing that dream and make personal ambitions subordinate to it. Ambitions not inspired by an ideal of character will make the people unscrupulous, for scruples stand in the way of unchecked ambitions and restrain them from degenerating into mischief and rascality.

65. Without sterling graces and heroic virtues, our citizenship is worth only the name. We seem to have been atrophied by the pressure of our long feudal and politically slavish experience. In past, we thought that by saving ourselves, by escaping involvement and trouble over others problems, we have done the right thing; but that is how we lost our freedom. When foreign invaders came, each group, each state thought of only protecting itself and avoided getting involved in the misfortunes of other state under the attack. This attitude had its disastrous and cascading effect in the devil of invasion swallowing up every group, every state, in fact the whole populace.

66. A citizenship backed by the shining truth of the spiritual unity and equality of all can alone confer on us character-strength, ‘deep as the ocean and broad as the sky’, in the words of Swami Vivekananda. With that awareness and strength of character, we can convert our freedom into a dynamic democratic social environment in which even the humblest citizen will experience the dignity and worth of a man. This is only possible when we eliminate the evil of jealousy which is the bane of all slavish races. The slave mentality will walk out when free citizenship awareness walks in.

67. We generally think that why only we should take initiative for common problems of the masses? It is a very narrow minded approach to think that we shall only bother for those things which directly affect us. We should get free from such parochial thinking because after all if the whole society is benefited, we would also be benefited directly or indirectly. It is our duty as well as our right to work for a common cause.

68. If each person does his bit for the well-being of all, it will be very easy to attain general well-being. So if we are keen for the well-being of India, then each of us will have to give up his indifference and contribute according to his mite. Just accusing others or the society would be of no use. An initiative on one’s part will definitely help the cause, howsoever small it may be.

69. Does our freedom mean only job-hunting, the browns filling the vacancy created by the departure of the whites? Can that be the main purpose and significance of our freedom? How can a man experience joy and elevation of spirit and achieve life-fulfillment from such a narrow interpretation of the scope of freedom of a nation? If the individuals out of short-sightedness isolate themselves from the nation, it is death for them, and if such individuals multiply, death to the nation as well. Freedom of a nation cannot be divorced from national responsibilities; and if the people do not rise to the occasion by neglecting to achieve these twin-virtues of citizenship, they will carry on with their mood of slavery, dependence and childish irresponsibility and will perpetuate with their own government the same relationship, of the ruler and the ruled.

70. By attaining political freedom we don’t automatically become less slavish. Freedom is a mental attitude which has to be cultivated. The going away of the foreign rulers was an external development; but true freedom is a spiritual development that has to come from within. It is only this development from within that can bring excellence in every department of our lives. The aim of our people is not excellence in work but excellence in money-making! If they could have the slightest sense of self-respect, self-discipline and love for excellence, they would aim at good and noble work along with money-making.

71. Instead of nurturing ourselves with inspiring ideas and striving hard to bring light and life to the millions of our people sunk in poverty, ignorance and exploitation, we have reduced ourselves in these post-freedom years to clods of ailments and grievances, ever complaining that the government does not devote itself to make us happy. What we generally discuss when we meet – mostly three “momentous” P’s namely, pay, prospect and promotion! Nothing about the country and its problems and our role in solving them! This is our normal way of behaviour.

72. Undue stress on pay, prospect and promotion makes an individual static and stagnant. The eternal glory of human spirit is not manifested in them. The remuneration one gets or the authority one wields do not express the true glory of a man. These are ephemeral; they come and go. It is the manliness in man which rises above the selfish and the mercenary in him and imparts richness and lustre to the work one does and the life one lives. Herein is the expression in man of the Atman through his body, the immortal through the mortal. Such men and women elevate and enrich the functions they perform in society through the grandeur and richness of their own personalities.

73. Our mutual jealousies, incapacity for teamwork, lack of the sense of public duty and responsibility and our lukewarm patriotism – all these reveal the continuation of the slave mentality in many of us in spite of our formal political freedom. It seems that many of us have, apart from red and white corpuscles, a third slave corpuscles in their blood! The sense of freedom must penetrate into their blood and dissolve the slavery that is embedded there, and transform them into free and responsible citizens of a free democracy. This is the re-education that our educated people need very badly today. This re-education they will get from the purifying, strengthening and unifying literature of Swami Vivekananda.

74. When we begin to live for a great cause or purpose everything can not be smooth, many challenges will come. Modern India is passing from an age of easy and narrow living to a life of exertion and expansion, adventure and heroic endeavours. The future of India will be written by lives lived in a spirit of heroism in every department of life. It is this spirit that we are lacking at the moment because in our immediate past, which is still lingering with us, we have lived a stagnant static life both individual and collective. But the scenario is undergoing a great change since our independence. We have been ushered in a new battlefield of our national life with its ups and downs. We have the responsibility to carry forward the glory of our people to new heights. For centuries together, we never faced such an ordeal; our people were extremely cozy and comfortable. In fact, our parents used to encourage this attitude by exhorting us not to take any risk, rendering us unfit for any adventure. This has lulled us to sleep. But now we have to wake up and be alert as eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

75. When we speak of the greatness of a nation, we always find that it arose out of its daring to face death, particularly death to its self-centred ego. We have cultivated it long ago and achieved greatness as a people; then we forgot all about it and became small and an object of pity for the rest of the world. This dynamic touch will never come to comfort-loving, contented, cozy and self-centred people who protect themselves from all hardships and dangers.

76. Many of us desire that our country should march forward, but mere desiring will not do. We have to put the desire into effect which means hard work and more sense of commitment. Commitment does not only mean commitment to any particular political ideology; it means commitment to the nation. There is no magic other than sincere, honest and hard teamwork for taking the nation out of the vortex of depression in which we are whirling today. Much talks, little thinking and lesser work was the policy we adopted after independence. We have to reverse it now by talking less and thinking and working more.

77. One thing we notice all over India today is an incapacity to work hard. A sort of national laziness is lying heavily on us. We have not been able to shake off this sloth; and no nation can become great without hard work. That is why our progress in these five decades of post-independence is very slow. There is more talks than work in India. Everywhere there is less work and more talks. This is something unique in case of India, not found elsewhere. In India, when a man is at work, he is doing everything except work. This kind of laziness and coziness, this callous unconcern as to public responsibility is writ large in the functioning of many of the officers of the public and private enterprises in our country. It is very ominous and deplorable for a socially and economically backward country like ours.

78. In Western countries people do not talk while at work and have a sense of self-respect and dignity. “I am paid to work during the duty hours, therefore, let me discharge my responsibility; time is not to be wasted” that is their attitude. We don’t find the same attitude in our people. We waste duty time for which we are paid; in chatting, gossiping and tea-drinking.

79. There are a lot of people today who will not do a day’s honest work for which they are paid by their poor struggling nation but will treat it as their dues from the nation and yet doing over-time work are getting paid for that. In this, free India has shown its genius and creativity, since such an attitude and behaviour obtains nowhere else in the civilised world! There is callousness and inefficiency everywhere accompanied by charter of demands which continue to snowball after every settlement, without showing any improvement in productivity or work-culture.

80. The concept of democracy is a western concept. But when we have adopted it today, we have to put the stamp of our own national genius on it by giving it a spiritual orientation. The entire thought and experience of the West knows only the socio-political dimension and value of democracy and hence is experiencing its limitations and shortcomings. But we should handle it in the light of our philosophy of man; man as not merely a social-animal disciplined by socio-political process as the West understood him, but as an infinite divine Self, ever-pure, free and luminous, who understands and handles all political, social, economic, educational, religious and other human inter-actions as the means to help man to unfold the shining truth within, to liberate the imprisoned splendour. That is how we shall create a just and moral society where the majority of people will achieve a measure of this spiritual growth, this psycho-social evolution in which the poor and the rich, the weak and the strong will all become equal.

81. Today though we have taken from the West physical science and technology, democratic politics and administration as tools to build a new body politic for our nation, but at the same time we have to retain our soul in course of doing so. Our national soul is strong, bright and pure – it is immortal. We are only to reform and modify our body- politic to fit in with the ever-healthy eternal soul of India.

82. We cannot make some other nation’s wisdom our own; we have to acquire wisdom ourselves through our own experiences, through our own successes and failures. All the contemporary developed nations have not started with wisdom but have blundered into whatever wisdom they now possess through the hard way. Some of us may be disturbed by the tumult and tension in our country today and feel even anxious for its future; but such anxieties can be digested, if we can learn to view our national scene through the eyes of far-seeing leaders such as Swami Vivekananda. In him, India found the spirit of the pioneer, with tremendous courage and adventure, with intense practicality and universal vision.

83. Democracy is a powerful social force in the modern world. The common people, who were creatures of socio-political circumstances created by the power of a few, are getting transformed into repository of a great amount of socio-political powers through it. The co-ordination, adjustment and chastening of this will-to-power originating in millions of ego-centres is the problem posed by democracy today.

84. True democracy consists in enhancing the dignity of the individual and ennobling the aspirations of the people. The persistent demand of the common men for being recognised and valued as a full and free citizen finds its strongest endorsement in the ideal and practice of democracy. Political democracy with universal adult franchise as its chief source of power, serves to give back in a large measure to each of the toiling masses his share of individuality and dignity.

85. Democratic revolution works through a steady evolution, affecting social changes peacefully through education and legislative actions. If democracy fails with its policy of peaceful and orderly change, violence will take control of the socio-political urges and overwhelm the nation. No nation goes in for violent revolution deliberately. All violent revolutions are the products of social despair. They overwhelm the nation when its educated and elite class cease to become dynamic agents of social change and reduce themselves to slavery and status quo and become the tail-end of the privileged few on the top. This is the sign of lack of social wisdom on their part and their spiritual poverty which leads to social despair and apathy that bursts into violence at intervals in a society. So far, our national wisdom has saved us from this contingency but it is growing weaker and weaker day by day and this deterioration is posing a serious challenge to our political and democratic set up. Today the simmering public discontent, sense of frustration and lack of confidence in our political leadership is driving people to despair, leading to violent agitations and public upheavals.

86. The strength of a democracy lies in its democratic citizens and not in its officers and ministers. All institutions and socio-political education in a democracy must aim at producing free, responsible and politically aware citizens. Persons living in a free state, but without a sense of belonging to it and apathetic towards what is happening around them, can not be called democratic citizens. Unfortunately, this apathy is writ large in the attitude and functioning of most of us. The apathy, which gives rise to loss of self-confidence and a sense of resignation, gets manifested in despair, expression of helplessness and uproar.

87. Ruling classes will always misuse the machinery of law as far as the state of public opinion permits. The accomplice to the crime of corruption is, most of the time, our indifference.

88. The term democracy generally denotes and is understood as a system of governance by the elected members (through adult franchise) of the majority party, a cabinet responsible to an elected parliament etc. But besides these, it is more important that democracy should have a content of universal values which is something more than merely political, social or national values. It is obvious, that those values are ethical and spiritual. Physical and social forces, developed and released by science or democracy, has to be chastened and guided if they are not to oscillate between good and evil, benevolent and malevolent.

89. Democracy if it has to play its role in the drama of human evolution in India or elsewhere, it must be infused with the spirit and temper of religion, with renunciation and service as its guiding principles. If the ruling classes of a nation do not adhere to religion or morality, its people are sure to be destroyed by their oppression. If we want democracy to succeed, then the element of ethical, moral and spiritual values must come into the people.

90. By means of self-discipline alone one can digest power, be it scientific, political, intellectual or money power, and give it a humanistic orientation. By mere intellectual development alone, you can never control either power or any tendency to exploit or harm other people. But a slight growth in spirituality arising out of the sincere practice of self-discipline can make all the difference.

91. As democracy is not just a political arrangement but a social outlook and temper therefore, we will have to shed our feudal attitudes and ways and develop a democratic outlook and behaviour. Citizenship of a democratic state involves growth of ethical awareness and human concern beyond the confines of one’s family and relatives. It betokens the expansion of individual personality beyond the limit of genetic relationship. Evolution at the human stage ceases to be merely physical and organic but becomes psycho-social, ethical and spiritual. We can trace our present social problems to our long neglect of this aspect of human excellence. Public spirit, practical-efficiency, a pervasive human concern and resistance to social injustices and oppressions form a galaxy of dynamic and positive character traits which are the hall-mark of a citizen. Man in India, in recent centuries, tended more to be a bundle of negative qualities than an integrated character of positive virtues and graces.

92. The message of democracy is the message of freedom and equality. It is essentially a spiritual message though it finds its expression in political or social garbs. As such, freedom and equality can never be established on the basis of mere politics or economics. The urge for freedom and equality is a spiritual urge and never a physical, intellectual, economic and social fact. An appeal for equality can not proceed or get a response from an economic or political man; self-aggrandizement and exploitation are the impulses of man at these levels. If man had no higher levels than these, all talk of equality would have been a cry in despair. Undue emphasis on material values lead to breakneck competition and struggle causing evaporation of the content of freedom and equality. These two values can only be derived from the spiritual nature of man, the spark of Divinity in him, which is the inalienable and invariable part of him and which constitutes his real-self.

93. No one in a democracy has more than one or less than one vote. This
is called the equality of democracy. Political equality becomes a sham and a joke if it is not backed and sustained by the spiritual equality.

94. Just as in the spiritual message of Vedanta, we are asked to realize that behind all there is present the same infinite Atman ensuring the freedom, dignity and equality of all, so also in the political message of democracy we are asked to realize that behind all, the high and low, there is the one common democratic identity of citizenship which is permanent and unalienable and which ensures the freedom, dignity and equality of all people in the polity. Difference in the levels of functions will always remain in any society, but the common citizenship awareness will protect these salient features. When the course of our thinking is set in that direction, it will transform our political democracy into a social-democracy. But to achieve this, there is a need of combining spiritual growth with economic growth.

95. Continuous education of the people, institutional and non-institutional, in the sense of national loyalty and national citizenship is our only safeguard. We must give that education which helps us to discover and live by our primary identity and personality.

96. Our primary personality in India today should be that of a citizen of India and not of a doctor, engineer or any professional. To the question, who are you, the common answer generally will be denoting one’s profession or function. But these are only the functions we perform and cannot be treated as our primary being. One’s primary personality cannot be anything other than one’s citizenship of a free country. Let us mark the effect which this awareness of citizenship will have on the psyche of the people. The functions we perform vary from menial and humble to high and the mighty. Now, if we identify ourselves primarily with these functions only, then the high will be high and the low will be low. Then the mighty and high will look down upon the menial and low and the latter will look up to and crawl before the high and mighty, which we have been doing for ages. But should it continue now that we have become our own masters? But unfortunately today, due to over importance and stress on functional status of man, social inequality in our country, instead of getting eroded and abolished by political freedom, have become further nourished and accentuated.

97. Even now we don’t understand that those who live at the level of functions, become defunct when they cease to function but those who live at the plane of being never experience defunctness even when retired or old.

98. We have plenty of ordinary political citizens but very few enlightened ones. These ordinary citizens are holding great national responsibilities and high positions of power and that has been our post-freedom national tragedy, and the result is conspicuously growing injustice and corruption which is breeding tremendous frustration and discontent in our society. To remove these, there is a burning need for the spiritual growth of all our people. With physical adulthood must come the adulthood of mind – the psychic maturity accompanied with a sense of social responsibility, which unfortunately is not there in our people and even not deemed necessary. This is the reason of our failing to achieve expected progress in any field of our national activities vis-à-vis the high goals set in the ecstasy of our political freedom. We do not find a steady onward movement but a wobbly gait in our march towards progress. To solve the problems of our nation, people will have to work hard and efficiently in team-spirit for a few decades. Along with it, we also need a thorough inculcation of the virtues of enlightened citizenship in politics and administration of the country. When a person grows beyond genetic family limitations to enlightened citizenship, he will never take advantage of his position to serve his self-interests or to favour anybody as he will no more remain merely a functionary but will be a citizen called upon to perform his functions properly, not thinking of it as a burden but as a privilege. From such a citizenship will emerge a just social order which will steadily and calmly lead to the attainment of our national goals.

99. The Self of an enlightened citizen and political worker detaches itself from genetic limitations and expands in love and concern for the people which enables him to realize his responsibility. An ordinary person only occupies his chair of authority but the enlightened one not only occupies it but also adorns it at the same time. Here we can see the difference of small and great personalities. Small man is not a man doing small work but doing all work with a small mind and the big man is not man doing big work, but doing all work with a big mind and heart. There is no difference between the high and low with respect to work according to the Gita. The distinction applies to the mind or heart behind the work. Some people become great only by sitting on a high chair of power and authority; some others impart their own greatness to the chair they sit on. It is the natural greatness with its accompanying dignity, self-respect and respect for others that comes to an enlightened citizen or public functionary, compared to an ordinary one. When we have such enlightened and alert citizens, we shall automatically have alert parliamentarians, alert ministers, alert bureaucrats, alert teachers and an alert working class.

100. The efficiency of any administration depends as much on the quality of the subordinates as that of the superiors. If our people as a whole are imbued with a sense of self-respect, self-discipline and citizenship-virtues, the entire administration will undergo a revolutionary change, since the workers, both subordinates and superiors will be drawn out of that pool.

101. He who does the lower work is not a ‘low’ man. We should not think of any work as low or high, as each man’s work is as good and valuable as of the other, from the cobbler to the king. No man is to be judged by mere nature of his duties but by the manner and spirit in which he performs them. Successful accomplishment of something is not necessarily the sign of one’s greatness. Even fools can sometimes do heroic deeds when circumstances are favourable. One’s greatness is to be judged by how he performs each and every small thing in his life.

102. The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, irrespective of their choosen field of activity. Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinary well.

103. Truly big men make even small works big, whereas small men make truly big works small. It is man that imparts dignity and worth to the chair and to all objects and things. It is this revolutionary attitudinal change that must come to us today. The first revolution gave us political freedom and raised our dignity externally; and this second revolution will give us economic, social and spiritual freedom along with internal and integral dignity, and make our freedom meaningful and fruitful for all our people.

104. Let our people and public workers both strive to develop an intrinsic greatness in themselves and reflect that greatness into their functions which they are called upon to perform in the service of society. We must impart greatness to the work we do as such work will always excel.

105. Enlightenment has its meaning in attitude and not in action itself, because when any work is done by an enlightened or an unenlightened man, there is similarity as to action but not in respect to the attitude behind the action. The nursing of a sick child is done by the mother and the maid; the two actions are similar but the mind behind both are dissimilar. The mother’s act is motivated by love, the maid acts with the motivation of wages. When we peer into the minds of the people working in various fields of our national life, we can find that a very few are working out of love for the country, the rest are working only for the money part of it! Yet this rest is also meant to work for the nation and its people as they are holding important positions of responsibility and power and the country expects that they will not belie the trust reposed in them. But they do not realize it. This is what is called unenlightenment according to the Vedanta.

106. The efficiency of any polity is to be measured by its dynamic responsiveness to the urges of its people. It requires that our political workers and bureaucrats get trained in imaginative sympathy and dedication to the nation. It is self-centredness and lack of concern for others that lead to corruption and nepotism and that evil is all pervasive in our country today.

107. The people in public service must be inspired by the ideal of enlightened citizenship, the spirit of social responsibility and service. They have to totally eschew party-politics and power-politics which are the main sources of corruption in our public life. If however, party-politics can not be completely eliminated for any reason, it must be made more service-oriented and less power-oriented. Politics and politicians should not interfere in day to day administration except to do justice or correct injustice.

108. There must be an earnest and concerted effort by all to put an end to all the serious evils of our administration. This can only be achieved by developing in our people the value and need of enlightened citizenship awareness with its concomitant virtues of self-discipline, punctuality, work-efficiency, talking less and working more, dedication to human service and welfare, imaginative sympathy and impersonal loyalty to our democratic state.

109. Our common people and the rulers both must acquire and develop the quality and capacity of imaginative sympathy. What does it mean? When we come across a poor man or a suffering man, most of us will react with a measure of sympathy and compassion as we have that goodness in us. But the capacity to respond to suffering in front is only an elementary ethical sense and is not enough in case of a public worker or a responsible citizen because that reaction to suffering ends with tossing of a coin. It does not ask what is the cause of this suffering? What is wrong with our society that engenders poverty and destitution? It does not have the impulse to trace that suffering to its roots in order to uproot it by appropriate measures. It is entirely a personal reaction to a personal experience.

110. Though there is immense privation and suffering in our society yet it is not everyday that an administrator or a citizen comes across human needs and sufferings in concrete personal experience. But as our administration is meant to be the dedicated instrument of putting an end to the centuries long miseries of our people, the virtue of imaginative sympathy must be ingrained in them at all levels. As most of them sit and function in the air-conditioned rooms of the secretariats far away from the actual scene of pulsating human life, they can not have concrete personal experience of the same, yet the efficacy and effectiveness of an administration depends on its becoming intensely involved in the sufferings and joys, hopes and aspirations of the people, which is only possible, if our rulers develop this sense of imaginative sympathy. This development will bring about a perceptible change in their perspectives and attitudes when they will sit on their office-chair, which is deeply involved with the happiness and misery of thousands of their people. This sense of imaginative sympathy will galvanize that chair with human motivations and they will become effective instruments ‘to wipe out the widows tears and stop the orphans wails’ which is the true joy of human life. With it the files in front will become alive and will begin to speak about the problems conveyed by them by rousing their imaginative sympathy and desire to respond to those human problems in a humane way, which is very much essential to achieve accelerated development in our country. The sooner they will realize this, the sooner they will understand that all the glitters of life, plentitude of ill-gotten money and giving and enjoying lavish parties in big hotels, are all vain. It will help them to live and work with a constant awareness that their primary personality and identity is that of a responsible citizen of free India, deeply involved in the developmental process of the country and service of its people. This awareness will release and purify their emotional energies and immediately transform them into a living force. At this moment our emotions have become stranded in self-centredness and frantic, often indisciplined, hero-worship in the fields of politics, films and sports.

111. Feeling from the heart is necessary for a public worker. “What is in the intellect or reason? It goes a few steps and there it stops. Feel therefore my would be patriots! Do you feel that millions and millions of the descendants of the gods and sages have become next door neighbours to brutes? Do you feel that millions are starving today and millions have been starving for ages? Do you feel that a dark cloud of ignorance has come over the land? Does it make you sleepless? Does it make you restless and mad? Has it gone into your blood coursing through your veins, becoming constant with your heart beats? Are you seized with that one idea of the misery of ruin and have you forgotten all about your name, fame, wives and children, your property, your everything, even your bodies?”

112. This quality of imaginative sympathy must be accompanied and fortified with another virtue namely, the capacity for impersonal loyalty, over and above personal loyalty. We have always had the capacity for loyalty to a person; we have even overplayed it to unhealthy degrees. But that unhealthy overtone will not be there when we strengthen it with the complementary capacity for impersonal loyalty to a cause, to an institution or to the nation. For the past few centuries we were lacking in it and had to pay a very heavy price for the same. Our foreign conquerors knew this weakness of ours and accordingly they aimed their guns at the king or other leaders in the field of battle, at whose death the entire defending army melted away, because the center of loyalty had been removed. So we had multitudes of mercenaries among our commanders and leaders who switched their loyalties to new patrons to serve their own personal ends.

113. Today, we have to once again develop this capacity for impersonal loyalty to our new democratic state and its people. This is loyalty to a principle and not merely to a person, as persons come and go but the nation remains. Based on this primary ‘impersonal loyalty’, we have to cultivate the secondary ‘personal loyalty’ to our leaders or other persons under whom we have to work. Both these loyalties are needed to strengthen the nation. We come across in all parts of India today the absence of this impersonal loyalty and the tyranny of only the personal loyalty.

114. Allegiance to the nation and concern for the well-being of its people is primary, all other loyalties and concerns are secondary. Today people talk too much about their allegiance to the constitution or government forgetting that the nation is the primary entity of which constitution or government are merely the adjuncts and that the nation endures through all modifications of the constitution or changes in the governments. Ordinarily, social upheavals and revolutions may not affect the integrity of a nation, while they affect the nature and form of the constitution or the government.

115. In our country law and justice do not often go together. Law goes one way, justice goes another way. That society is the healthiest where law and justice go together.

116. Administering and dispensing law may not always be the same
as dispensing justice; and democracy cannot be well established without bringing law closest to justice. Theoretically, our law is equal for all and all are equal before law, but in actual operation, it benefits the rich and strong, not the poor and the weak. Until law become equal not only in formulation but also in operation, law has no meaning. Legal aid to poor by itself can not make law meaningful as rich and strong can always subvert legal-aid measures, just as they subvert law itself. Money and power can purchase anything and anyone in a social environment where money and physical satisfactions are overvalued. Under the philosophy of materialism, law and justice can come close only in the short run; but in the long run, law and justice slowly part company, until empty law remains. It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

117. Law is a fiction for gullible men to live by.

118. Law grinds the poor and the rich rule the law. Law today is not for justice but to give lessons in law, procedure and perseverance. Today, law punishes more the aggrieved than the guilty. Guilty people have no fear of law but the aggrieved have, because of the high cost and harassment it entails to take recourse to law.

119. What is lawful cannot, therefore, automatically become just. Many types of human relations and social practices in a feudal social context are considered lawful but cannot be called just. A just society is not made by laws passed by the legislature or pronouncements of the judiciary but by just and righteous people who have raised their level of consciousness beyond the pulls and pressures of their organic systems though the practice of discipline of mind (Sama) and discipline of senses (Dama). Of course, upright and harmonious functioning of all the three organs of our polity – legislature, executive and judiciary, can definitely help to actuate society to evolve just people.

120. A democratic state derives its strength from the people who in turn derive benefits from the state. They then cheerfully shoulder its burdens and responsibilities. We, as a democracy, are far away from it; while its benefits reach only a few, the burdens belong to many, that is its weakness, its potential source of instability. Though our constitution has tried to correct this imbalance by providing measures to broad-base our democratic set-up, by making its benefits to reach every segment of its populace but this can be achieved only when our political-democracy develops into an economic and social democracy. It is only then that it will become democracy in the true sense of the term; not just democracy in form, but also in content. It is only then that those who are mostly indifferent, apathetic and occasionally hostile, will not only be in it, but will also become of it – true citizens with a sense of belonging.

121. People will not find the stress and strain of national development difficult to bear, if there is no injustice and favoritism on large scale in the society. Shortage of goods and services, in the developmental stage of a nation, do not by themselves generate popular frustration or public wrath, it is blatant injustice which triggers these human passions and we have a plenty of these injustices around us, at all times in all walks of our personal and social life.

122. By favouring one individual or group and discriminating against another, we increase injustice in society, increase social discontent and pave the way for eventual social chaos. Partiality is the chief cause of many of our social evils.

123. True peace is not merely absence of tension but presence of justice.

124. A democratic state is weakened day by day with the increase of injustice in the society. There may be poverty, there may be ignorance, that would not weaken it, but if there is injustice on the increase then it will certainly weaken the fabric of a democratic society.

125. Theoretically, a democratic citizen is sovereign and subject in one; as sovereign he enacts laws and as subject he obeys them. As the ultimate powers and sanction behind them are deemed to be vested in the hands of the citizens; consequently the health of a democratic state has to be measured in terms of practical realization of this theoretical proposition. This realization depends on several factors, such as an educated and alert electorate, a high level of political morality and wisdom, absence of wide economic disparities and a high level of cultural refinement and humanistic impulse among the people. We are far away from these ideal conditions.

126. Law, in a democracy, has come to assume a sovereign and absolute aspect in the eyes of civilized man, instilling in his mind not merely respect but also fear. As a result, man has begun to crouch before the law, making of it a fetish. A partial view of the philosophy of law and man is responsible for this unhappy situation. It only looks on man as a subject of law. But to law, man is not only a subject but also a sovereign, the law-giver. This sovereignty and majesty of law is relative to the concept of man as subject; but the majesty and sovereignty of man as law-giver is absolute and not like the majesty and sovereignty of law which is just the creation of the former. A citizen is sovereign and subject in one and is the highest product of social evolution. He makes the laws and obeys them.

127. In a democracy people are the true judges of the parties and their programmes and as such they are the true leaders. Political leaders are their servants; not euphemistically, but in the real sense.

128. In an ideal democracy, the citizens supply the driving power to the state just as in a regimented state, the state drives the citizens. But unfortunately, at present we have left everything to the government and political parties and have abdicated our responsibilities as citizens.

129. We have established a sovereign democratic state after centuries of political subjection and social immobilization, and yet we are not very earnest and energetic to protect it from disruption. Why it is, that within a few years of our independence, we have become lost in divisive attitudes and selfish pursuits?

130. Today our democracy is certainly more wobbly in its movements, much noisy and chaotic. We are still learning our democratic lessons from our own experiences, after learning them earlier from the West. We are yet to achieve the democratic clarity of mind and steadiness of feet in our march towards the national destiny, which we have clearly envisaged in our constitution. This is the burden that our democracy puts on our shoulders and we have to shape our attitudes and actions in the light of that onerous responsibility, thereby imparting all round strength – political, economic and social to our nation.

131. It is for our political parties and the enlightened citizens to think that how to deal with important national problems; for politics good or bad, pure or corrupt, influences all other fields of life. The good elements in our political system should come together and arrive at a consensus regarding, at least, a few basic national and human issues. Our politics today is more like the soccer where players attack each other, fall and roll more then they attack the ball. Here in India, the political parties and the politicians fight each other more than fighting the problems which the nation is facing. Our politics must be transformed from the present dismal politics of power, mutual recrimination and increasing violence, into the politics bent to human service and national development. When we raise the cultural level of our politics, we will bring strength and steadiness to our democracy and save it from degenerating into a thoughtless and chaotic mobocracy.

132. India today suffers from its very democracy because of the constant squabbles and political infighting amongst the different groups of its people.

133. Our politicians should give up their hateful malice, that bickering and barking at one another like dogs in the manger. Our politicians only bark at each other and fight amongst themselves through out their lives. Any sensible men and women would feel ashamed to go on quarrelling in that way!

134. We can silence another by shouting; but we cannot convince him by this method.

135. The greatest misfortune of our nation is the role played by our politicians in face of human tragedies and tribulations. They never bury their hatchets to arrive at a minimum national consensus, so that a few unfortunate socio-political situations could be kept above political exploitation and party politics and approached from humanistic angle. Instead of educating people to shed their mercenary behaviour and act and live as proud citizens of a free democratic nation, political interference ironically tends to justify and strengthen these mercenary attitudes and anti-social behaviors to promote their short term party interests against long term national interests. It seems that something is wrong with our political functioning, if not with the system itself.

136. Unfortunately, after independence our politics, instead of alleviating human sufferings, have developed the tendency to aggravate it by infecting and distorting our education, administration, labour movements among others. As a result, we witness the spiraling of social evils like bribery, corruption, tax evasion, smuggling and a conspicuous lack of citizenship virtues like duty, punctuality, honest work and public spirit. The varieties and range of social malpractices that our people indulge in today are unprecedented not only in our own history but in human history as well. Today, along with the physical malnutrition of our millions, the spiritual malnutrition of the educated and well-fed sections of our society is writ large in every field of our national life.

137. If politics has to be subservient to human welfare then proper handling of power is imperative. In fact, the problem of politics is the problem of holding and using power. The problem before us is how to utilize power so that it does not corrupt others as well as those who wield it. Power, therefore, has to be purified and put under proper checks and balances. When unchecked, power if exercised either by a majority over minority or vice-versa, there is danger to both minority and majority as power is a source of danger to those who cannot digest it properly.

138. It is easy to have power but very difficult to handle it properly. Love of power, if it is to be beneficent, must be bound with some end other than power. When vast powers are placed in the hands of man, there must be enormous powers generated in his heart through moral and spiritual discipline.

139. To exploit others for one’s own selfish interests is the task of the career politicians today. Politics will have to be raised to the level where it will not exploit people for itself but will exploit itself for the people. We need such politics which elevates and ennobles the subjects and objects of power. We, in India, need such leaders of the people who will function as servants truly and not euphemistically. All other politics – power politics, career politics etc. compounded of slogans and catchwords, fair faces and false hearts, is not only useless but pernicious.

140. Almost all politics today is just power-politics. Formerly it was service-politics; politics of having power for the service of the people. The current tyranny of power-politics is ruining the whole nation. Let a few people get out of this selfish politics and get into the politics of service to build a new, healthy and vibrant body politic for India.

141. The general absence of the true spirit of service in our country is the proof of our political and ethical illiteracy in spite of our talking high philosophy, religion and politics. As a result we have lots of opinions and beliefs which we never cared to develop into lived convictions. We resorted to higher ideals of religion consisting of struggle for saintliness before we had built the base level of religion by struggling to achieve manliness.

142. Today, democracy in India has come to stand as a government by mobs, without the power to think and the capacity to see. We have a plethora of opinions but very few convictions. It is convictions in the heart and not opinions in the head that make for character and real human excellence.

143. In a democracy, public criticism of the policies of the state needs to be controlled by a sense of responsibility.

144. In post-independence India unhealthy politics of sheer pursuit of power has ousted the healthy politics of service. We have to infuse once again the sense of dedication for the service of common men in our politics and administration.

145. If the ruling classes are guided by an ordinary philosophy, they are more likely and may more often use their power and position for self-aggrandizement at the cost of the society. This is not intelligence but only foxy cleverness. It expresses neither heroism nor manliness. If they want to improve the life condition of the people under their charge and at the same time light up their own paths to happiness and fulfillment, they need a more than ordinary philosophy which can lead them on the steep and rough path of ethical development and generate in them human concern, energy of character-efficiency and dedication.

146. If politics has to really serve as an instrument of human welfare then people will have to be taught to restrain themselves and more especially the few who handle power. Without this idealistic temper and approach, power is sure to degenerate, sooner or later, into a snare for the wielder and a curse for the people. The history of the world teaches us that such power, bereft of moral and human feelings, is built on a shaky foundation. The whole of Europe trembled at the rise of Hitler and Mussolini but none could stop their downfall. They fell and great was their fall.

147. ‘Renunciation and service are the twin ideals of India; intensify her in those channels, the rest will take care of itself,’ – said Swami Vivekananda. These are great words, conveying a profound truth. How much we need to imbibe this message today. Every citizen, every social functionary needs to grasp this truth and endeavour to live upto it according to one’s capacity. Every political worker must live upto this truth more intensely than the average citizen because he or she is the repository of the state’s power and that power is meant to be used for general welfare. This is not possible for a man who has not risen above his ego-centred individuality, who has not set his course on the road of psycho-social evolution and has become spiritual.

148. Service becomes worship when reverence accompanies it.

149. Previously renunciation and service were our national ideals, now
renunciation of service has become our national ethos.

150. There has been enough of criticism, enough of fault finding, now the time has come for action, to gather all our scattered forces, to concentrate them into one focus and through that to lead the nation on its forward march, which has almost stopped. Let us try to find out the points of our agreement and learn to work unitedly as no great work can be done without centralization of the individual forces. This is most urgently needed in our country today.

151. Let us give up party-spirit, mutual enmity and jealousy and unite in action. The national well-being cannot be achieved by factionalism. No socio-economic development to build a healthy society can take place without co-ordinated endeavour, team-spirit and determination.

152. Education on social scale, self-discipline, hard and co-operative work and the humanistic impulse – these are the four means by which underdeveloped India will become a fully developed nation with enormous disciplined energies released from her vast population.

153. Means can never be higher than ends. Our politicians, lacking in discrimination, make means the bone of contention and fight among themselves. They lose sight of the end and hence sectarianism, quarrels and fights ensue. They don’t hesitate to bring ruin to the people for the sake of power. People often work for the same ends but fail to recognize the fact. We, all of us, are travelling to the same goal consciously or unconsciously. Different parties with their different points of view at last have only one end, the well-being of the people. Why then should we be impatient or intolerant?

154. What is needed is a fellow-feeling between different type of ideas seeing that they all stand and fall together, a fellow-feeling which springs from mutual respect and not from a condescending, patronizing and niggardly expression of goodwill, unfortunately, in vogue with many of us at present.

155. Unfortunately, many of our collective activities today end up in pointless and fruitless heated and frenzied discussions. After hours of talks we don’t come to any conclusion because of the lack of sincere concern in us for solution of the problems.

156. Discussion is the very soul of a democracy; but discussions with a view to get mutually acquainted with different point of views and with a desire to come to a correct decision, are far different from the aimless and long-winding lectures in the form of addressing a political audience that often obtain in these meetings.

157. Democracy means government by discussions but it is only effective if you let others talk. Democracy is not about showing the door to one who dares to disagree, as people to fear are not those who openly disagree with you, but those who disagree but are too cowardly to let you know.

158. “If every one thinks alike there would be no more thought to think. If everybody looks alike, what monotony! Look alike and think alike, what could we do but sit down and die in despair?” We must learn to love the man who differs from us in opinion. We must learn that differentiation is the life of thought. It is competition of ideas, the clash of thoughts, that keep thoughts alive. Differences and variety are the sauce and source of life, its beauty, why should we be afraid of it?

159. Our problems are staggering and they can only be solved by joining together of our separate wills to form an organized whole. Our national problems today demand dispassionate thinking, putting of our heads together to decide and do what is good for the nation. This can happen only when we develop the ability for calm, silent and collective thinking which we unfortunately lack very much today. There have been passion, frenzy; frenzied utterances and frenzied actions but calm silent thinking seems to have almost disappeared from us.

160. In today’s politics, it is all excitement. The politicians go and excite the people which generates nothing good for them because great things can only be achieved by calm, silent and steady work. We have so much of excitement, so much of noise and show but very little results. It is just ‘much cry and little wool.’

161. If excitement is to be the basis of our political activities, then it will tend to become an end in itself at the expense of the objects to be achieved; then side issues will assume an exaggerated importance and all gravity of thoughts and actions will be lost. Hence, such excitement is not an exercise of strength but a display of weakness. Hot heads and cold hearts have never solved anything.

162. The lesser the passion the better the work. The calmer we are, more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much of energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds and accomplish very little work. It is only when the mind is calm and collected that the whole of its energy is spent in doing good work. The man given to anger, hatred or any other passion, cannot work; he only breaks himself to pieces and does nothing practical. It is the calm, forgiving, equable and well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.

163. Concerted efforts for balanced equitable socio-economic progress require fundamental changes in the attitude, perspectives and lifestyle of the people.

164. Today, our so-called reason and enlightenment are at the mercy of our passions. One-tenth of the man consists of rationality, the remaining nine-tenth of irrationality. Progress and civilization consist in reason conquering unreason by enlarging its bounds so as to eventually become coexistent with mind and being, which is the enlightened reason, the ‘Budhi’ of Vedanta. The value and worth of democracy is that of all political forms and methods, it is the one road that helps to lead men to this consummation. But to be able to do so, democracy needs the flavour of ethics and sustenance of religion.

165. As a people we woefully lack in the capacity of organization whose basis is character, mutual-trust and team-spirit. These are spiritual qualities. Exhorting the nation to develop this capacity, Swami Vivekananda said : ‘why it is, to take a case in point, that forty millions of Englishmen rule three hundred millions of people here? What is the psychological explanation? It is because those forty millions have put their wills together and that means infinite power, and you three hundred millions have a will separate from each other. Therefore, to make a great future India the whole secret lies in organization, accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills…………….. . Being of one mind is the secret of society. And the more you go on fighting and quarreling, the further you are off from that accumulation of energy and power which is going to make the future India. For, mark you, the future of India depends entirely on that.’

166. “A society with a common heritage, common goal and feeling of oneness can do anything. With people coming together, merging their personalities in search of one common goal with mutual love is an indomitable force.”

167. Self-discipline is very important. Mere congregation of people with a common goal but without self-discipline has no power of concerted action and hence fails to achieve its goal. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

168. ‘Indiscipline is the mark of a slave’, said Swami Vivekananda, ‘and is not found in free people’. All free people love discipline and are self-disciplined. They know the art of obedience with self-respect and also commanding others without destroying their self-respect; they work hard with a sense of social-responsibility.

169. Here in India, everyone wants to become a leader and there is nobody to obey. Everyone should learn to obey before he can command. There is no end to our jealousies; and the more important a person is, the more jealous he is. Until this absence of jealousy and obedience to leaders are learnt by us, there will be no power of organisation. We shall have to remain the hopelessly confused mob that we are now, hoping and doing nothing, as no great cause can succeed without a dedicated and strong organization.

170. Obedience with independence, that is required. We are all self-important, which does not work to anybody’s benefit. Great enterprise, boundless courage, tremendous energy and above all perfect obedience – these are the only traits that lead to individual and national regeneration. These traits are altogether lacking in us.

171. In our erstwhile feudal setup we have cultivated a twofold wrong attitude, namely, cringing before the superiors and lording over the inferiors. That was the way and prevailing attitude in our feudal society, where slave-mindedness characterized the high and low alike because if you want to hold a man in the gutter, you also have to be in the gutter.

172. We must develop the capacity for obedience with self-respect. At present most of us are given to cringing while obeying without any sense of self-respect, and proud and arrogant while commanding, destroying in the process the self-respect and dignity of the one commanded. No other trait than this better distinguishes the ways of free people from the ways of unfree people. “Whatever you do, do not destroy another’s self-respect, for by that you pave the way for his ruin.”

173. The difference between a man and a brute is his self-respect. Take away whatever self-respect a man has and you can never make him a man or help him to develop his character. Men have been reduced to the level of brutes as a result of the taking away from them of their precious quality of self-respect by social neglect and social tyranny. We have destroyed this quality in our masses but we have to instil it into them once again. So the first step of our self-development is to rekindle this virtue of self-respect in our people which stands greatly damaged today because of thousand years of our slavery, and this can be very much done as our people have only forgotten but not forfeited their true nature.

174. Parliament and legislatures are the barometers of a democratic nation’s political and social health. They are the forums which call for utmost restraint and decorum, mutual respect and tolerance in the members even while they vehemently criticize each other’s policies and programmes, follies and failures. It is a matter of grave concern that the standard of our parliamentary behaviour have been falling fast in recent years. Our parliamentarians and legislators have to create and maintain the highest tradition of intellectual competence and moral integrity, courtesy and tolerance, vigilance and national concern since by exercising the privileges of free discussions and debates, fearless criticism and constructive policy suggestions, the members of both treasury benches and opposition contribute to the democratic education of the people as much as to the governance of the state. Unfortunately, over play of power and party-politics is resulting in more shouting and head-breaking than giving right education to the people.

175. We must work out a system for proper functioning of our legislative bodies wherein the perks and wages of the elected representatives will become related to the actual work done and its effectiveness, and not on mere membership or attendance. No work no pay!

176. Since past few years, we are experiencing that our parliamentary democracy has developed several undesirable features. The unruly and weak functioning of the governments both at the central and the state levels, the unprecedented manifestation of acrimony and violence in our civil life, the irresponsible and immoral behaviour of our political parties and leaders, the widespread corruption and confusion in our public and private lives, the malpractices and unrighteousness in our trade and industries and the general apathy and cynicism of our people, all these phenomena have tended to weaken the fabric of our democratic state. Many democracies have gone asunder under such circumstances. It is up to the citizens of India to strengthen their democracy, as the strength of a democracy lies in its alert and patriotic citizens. But somehow or other, we did nothing to arrest these undesirable trends all these years. We failed to be inspired by the ever tested truth that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Now though the things have gone too far, yet it is not too late to reverse this trend.

177. In India today, democracy has become the rule by a few who are well versed in the art of politics and are capable of winning the confidence of the people by any means, fair or foul. The concept of democracy as being ‘by the people, of the people and for the people’ has become only a myth in practice. We are far away from that real freedom and democracy. “Real freedom comes, not by acquisition of authority by a few, but by acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when it is abused.” We are far away from that freedom based on the power of the people. Our people are largely helpless being weighed down by the power of a callous and inefficient administration sitting on them. They are made to feel the glow of their power for a brief period only during the elections. It is imperative that all steps are taken to make the people, the source of power in our democracy, not just notionally participant as at present, but in the real sense. Democracy is meant to give strength and not to weaken people, who are its source of strength and vigour.

178. A system works well or unwell according to the men who work it out are good or bad. That is why, in the absence of men inspired with right spirit, our democracy has deteriorated into a mobocracy. Democracy is not an end in itself; it is just an instrument of general well-being of the people living under the system. We are plagued by grave social problems because we have placed democracy above the people’s interest. Consequently, it has bred the evils of self-praise and vilification of others, leading to disruption and disharmony in the society.

179. All governments involve vesting of power and authority in a few people. Democracy strives to ensure that the power and authority so vested do not stifle the freedom and dignity of the citizens and infringe upon their sovereignty.

180. Democracy was born out of reaction of the people against monarchy or oligarchy but unfortunately it is assuming hereditary character in our country today.

181. Democracy came for want of benevolent despots. In it people are
offered an equal opportunity to rise to their full stature, paving way for total social transformation.

182. Any type of government will do, if the men running it are honest and selfless. Democrats must have a democratic attitude; they should not strive for self-power all the time. A real democrat will make way for others and will not try to stick to his position of power for all times.

183. It is possible for a state to be democratic in constitution and plutocratic in government. Many modern democracies belong to this category. There democracy is nominal and not factual. If by democracy, we merely mean the forms and structure of government with adult suffrage and cabinet system etc. then it will fail in the long run as votes can be purchased and inefficiency, corruption and nepotism may rule everywhere. This does not mean that we are to bid goodbye to these dressings of democracy, as adult suffrage and ballot-box carry a great message of hope to the people. Our task is to purify democracy of its inherent defects and shortcomings.

184. In a country like ours it does not seem quite practical to me to have started straight away with our present system of democracy with general voting. People in the western democracies are more educated in this respect and less jealous of one another than us. They have learnt to respect merit. When with the spread of education, the masses in our country grow more sympathetic and liberal, when they learn to have their thoughts expanded beyond the limits of sects and parties, then and then only will be really possible to work successfully on a true democratic basis.

185. Simply because one can make fine speeches and get some fools to spread what one says and does – is it the democracy that we are looking for? It takes quite a long time to build up a healthy and strong public opinion which will solve its own problems.

186. The operative principle of a democratic administration is that man is essentially educable and not vile, and social changes can be brought about in an orderly and peaceful way. But till our masses are properly educated and enlightened, till they are made aware of their role and responsibilities, mere making them a little literate will not do. Till they are able to discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, they can be easily swayed by the baser appeals of selfishness, parochialism and vulgar inducements. Representatives elected by such an electorate would never be of a desirable type, resulting in hard suffering to the people till the next elections. And since people are now fed up after trying all of them, it is leading to disillusionment, skepticism and a deep sense of apathy towards the efficacy of democracy itself.

187. People are now fed up of all politics and politicians, their black guardianism, fair faces and false hearts, their howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath and above all their sanctified shop keeping.

188. At present, due to excessive stress on groupism and casteism, the whole of our democratic system has become so perverted that election of well-meaning and socially conscious people has become impossible. Lure of money, threats and physical prowess have become the deciding factor and all other qualifications have been thrown to the winds.

189. The present working of our democracy has proved so dismal that good people are keeping away from it, leading to election of undesirable and unwanted (of course most wanted by law) people, occupying pivotal positions of responsibility in the government. At present in a country like ours, it does not seem to me quite practicable to work further on our present model of democracy. In my opinion, we should change to a presidential system of democracy as in the U.S.A.

190. The multifarious contemporary problems of our country can only be solved by the strength of the trained minds, compassionate hearts and capable hands. Therefore, we need heart to feel, mind to think and hands to work.

191. Wherever contemplation and action, vision and implementation are combined together in a society, wealth and welfare, success and general prosperity, constant ethical awareness and reign of justice and righteousness will be there in that society.

192. Our political workers today are in a state of hopelessly disorganised mobs, immensely selfish, fighting each other. They are throwing dust in the eyes of the people.

193. Today the lives of our public workers are spent solely in accumulation of the objects of self-gratification and extension of privileged superiority over the people. They think that since there is so much idea of equality, their little privilege will not be detected.

194. Our politicians are too busy trying to mend the ways of our people. They must learn to rule themselves before ruling others. They must trample upon every privilege and every thing in them that works for privilege.

195. Our rulers today are not upright in their talks and behaviour, most of the time our politicians indulge in idle talks of idealism. They don’t work for the betterment of the people or their conditions. In their attitude, they are more involved in sweeping the place of others, taking no care of their own place; allowing filth and dirt to accumulate.

196. Today a vicious nexus has come to develop between politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and musclemen. Out of mutual need they have founded a joint-venture between themselves wherein bureaucrats, being the link between politicians and businessmen, are playing a very important role. Of late, anti-socials and musclemen have also been co-opted in view of their valuable services in electioneering and funnelling of under-world finance.

197. Our leaders are now more busy in chasing the shadow of their own glorification. Self-conceit has taken the place of self-surrender. Their thoughts, words and deeds have all become egocentric.

198. For most of our political workers public service is only a mask to further their own personal glory. Their tendency to always try to hog the limelight betrays their lack of inner-growth and weakness for self-adulation. They are more interested in public modelling and photo-opportunities than in public service.

199. Our politicians think that because they can talk in a little more polished language, they are superior to the common men.

200. True workers don’t talk; their actions do the talking. Who on earth can vie with our politicians in talking and giving speeches. ‘Show in action, if you can. Let your work proclaim and let the tongue rest’.

201. Unfortunately, our political workers do not match in words and deeds. Their thoughts, words and deeds are not in conformity. As one ounce of practice is worth twenty thousand tons of big talks so they should stop talking and not doing, but unfortunately they do the reverse.

202. The world of politics is too full of blustering talks but what we want now is a little more earnest work and less talks. Our politicians are making a great noise by their big and empty talks, adding to noise pollution, that is all what they are doing.

203. The healthier the politics, the lesser the noise and vice-versa.

204. Society is the supreme field for all enduring type of welfare activities and such activities are mostly silent and calm. To politics belongs the whole noise.

205. Lectures won’t do any good in this country. Our educated country men would hear them and at best would cheer and clap their hands in applause; that is all. Then they would go home and digest everything they heard with their meals! What good will hammering do on a rusty old iron? It will only crumble into pieces. First it should be made red-hot and then it can be moulded into any shape. Nothing will avail in our country without setting a glowing and living example before the people. In a democracy the onus falls on the political classes to lead by example and set standards of behaviour. It is always better to impart your preachings through your conduct rather than through words.

206. Today, the whole atmosphere is vitiated by inordinate emphasis on the political and economic aspects of life. Persons in these fields are being projected as the leaders and ideals of society, though the character of most of them is not worthy of emulation. How can one devoid of the urge and capacity to ennoble one’s own life show the path of goodness to others?

207. At the moment, evil people are getting all the honours of the society. The media is playing a great role in making them the heroes. It is making heroes out of the perpetrators of the most wicked deeds whereas the honest persons have no place for them.

208. As individual are after all fleeting entities in the eternal life of a nation so no individual, however great, can be the ideal of a nation except when he is great beyond greatness like Krishna, Buddha, Vivekananda and Gandhi who move beyond the confines of history of their times.

209. True heroes may not have a long span of physical life – as Shankracharya died at 32, Vivekananda at 39, Shivaji at 50, but it is they who live eternally. They have all achieved glory by their intrinsic merit. Under their guiding light and effulgence, all future generations will be able to fashion their lives, for attaining glory and immortality.

210. The truly great benefit the world as much by their death as by their life; they inspire heart searching while we mourn. It is the time that we gather up all our scattered thoughts and energies of judgment to take note of the pressing national problems in the light of the ideals and visions of those personalities who have passed away. Then, when the days of mourning are over the days of serious endeavours begin. From their lives we must learn a lesson of courage and cheer for the present and faith and hope for the future.

211. In this respect Gandhiji holds an enviable and unique place. The word honoured, respected and loved him in his lifetime and continues to do the same even today, many times more, even after five decades of his death. This is a rare phenomenon in the history with hardly any parallel. In case of Christ and many others, recognition came much later even after their death though it did not make any difference to their greatness or detracted from the fruitfulness of their thoughts and endeavors. But in case of Gandhi, the entire world of mankind mourned it as a human calamity.

212. Among contemporary popular leaders, Gandhi stands alone in his eminence and stature. He is the remarkable example of a leader who practiced what he professed, and gave out to the people only what he has tested in his own life, whether it be in the field of politics or economics, religion or personal morality. This makes it extremely difficult to place him under any of the existing categories of political or social greatness. Every great leader has a certain definite lines of burning convictions and passionate pursuits and he concentrates on those lines, sometimes even with fanatic zeal in exclusion of every other interest and he leads the people along those particular lines and there it ends. It is obvious that though political freedom of India was one of his chief interests yet he also passionately worked to increase the moral stature of the people and to better their material conditions. He struggled with single-mindedness to wipe out the stains of long-standing social injustices on our body-politic, to give cheer to the oppressed and redeem the lowly and the lost. He endeavoured to impart to the nation, the inspiration of a religion of divine love and human service. He successfully worked out programmes intended to instil courage and dignity in the two most neglected sections of the Indian society namely, women and so called lower classes. He readily responded to the individual appeals for help, advice and guidance in all fields of life, ranging from personal and spiritual problems to dietetics and health, care of the infant and the village cattle, down to the problems of the profitable utilisation of human refuse and dead cattle. In all this, if we closely study his mood and ways, we find one overriding concern to which all other concerns are subsidiary and convergent; and that is the human concern – the welfare and happiness of man and his moral and spiritual growth and development.

213. Thus, every aspect of human betterment, every problem touching human welfare, whether in the field of politics or sociology, economics or religion, in every walk of life, commanded his attention and active interest. He owed allegiance to a philosophy and outlook which expressed itself in a multi-sided approach to the many-sided problems of Indian life; that makes him an universal personality. So far as India is concerned, in the context of her political struggle and social aspirations, Gandhiji stands as a symbol, as an archetypal man. To each one of our problems, he responded with such readiness as if he and the national environments were fused into one. This type of identification with the achievements and sufferings of a struggling nation of such a vast populace is what makes him a leader of an unique type, a true representative of the ideals and aspirations of the people whom he led, without being led by their passing whims and caprices, as is the case with most of the leaders of today – a unique leader of the struggling people. This is why, if ever the word ‘leader’ can be truly applied to any contemporary personality, it is to Gandhiji and Gandhiji alone, in all that plentitude of meaning. Other leaders are more led than leading as they have people to please and critics to appease.

214. Gandhiji was the example of a leader who is not guided by the passing moods and passions of the people but who turns and guides these in the direction of the vision of human-excellence that he had experienced for himself. His stress on truth and non-violence is the only beacon light in the world enveloped in darkness of selfishness and exploitation, hatred and violence. He alone could look calmly and compassionately into the bloodshot eyes of contemporary man. By holding high his banner of love and service in his socio-political programmes and activities, and the banner of truth and non-violence in his personal life, Gandhiji has left an imperishable legacy which as years pass by, humanity in India and elsewhere will recognise as the only values capable of expressing the dignity and worth of man, as the only hope of civilization and progress and the only guarantee of march of man to all-round growth and fulfillment.

215. Both the personal and social character of a public worker must be pure and unsullied. The tendency to ignore personal character of public workers is not at all advisable. A public worker should be pure at both ends. Only giving fine speeches or going to jail a number of times for public cause can not be a reason for condoning the private conduct of a public worker, if it is detestable. They must be men of absolute purity, austerity and character even in their private lives because as the great one’s behave so do the rest of the people, without thinking as to what they are doing, just like a flock of sheep. If the leading sheep falls into the ditch, all the rest follow and break their necks. The common men and the sheep have the same propensity.

216. Reformation must be from above downward, opposite is not possible or practical.

217. The so called conduct of our politicians and people is, ‘I won’t do anything wrong when you are looking at me, when you are not looking, I will do whatever I like.’

218. His (public worker’s) character must be the same in private as in public – pure, noble, radiant and transparent so that even those who oppose him in the field of public work may not have a word of reproach or abuse about his person. In him, the flame of patriotism should be so radiant that no shadow of parochial considerations can ever come anywhere near him. The boundless affection and sleepless care of a mother, diligence of a father and the inspiring guidance of the Guru should find its culmination in that single bosom.

219. The guiding principle of a public worker should be to water the seeds of virtue in others by presenting before them a silent example of good and dignified conduct and weed out their vices and defects without parading them before all.

220. Good leaders rise beyond all laws and will help people to rise under whatever conditions they live.

221. Much of the world’s greatness is attained by riding stealthily on the back of others. But the greatness of the great ones belong to a different order, it does not lower and humble others. On the contray, it elevates all who come in touch with them.

222. A public worker should be detached, ego less, steadfast, earnest and enthusiastic. His personality should be a blend of strength and character, suaveness of speech and impeccable behaviour. It should be such as to bring people together and make them stand steadily in all trials and tribulations.

223. He (a public worker) must have limitless capacity for efforts, single-minded devotion, sterling character and unflinching faith along with matchless ability to join people together which will lead to ultimate success of his mission. He should go once more to the doors of the people with a spirit of love and service though rebuffed a thousand times.

224. When one combines power with social responsibility and both with the energy arising from character, clear thinking, dedication and practical efficiency one develops the unique synthesis of the ‘Rajrishi’ of the Gita.

225. The ideas of a public worker should be clear and his faith in them unswerving. He must have the courage to resist unworthy compromise with existing popular opinion if needed, then alone people will come round. It is the man of strong will that throws a halo around himself and brings all other people to the same state of vibration as he has in his own mind.

226. “Whether people skilled in policy praise or blame, whether the Goddess of Fortune favours or goes her way, whether death befalls today or after hundreds of years, persons of steady mind never swerve from the path of righteousness.”

227. In all critical situations, one should take the way which leads to true welfare of the people and not merely what is pleasing to them. One who follows the good gets to the goal and not one who chooses the pleasant. A fool takes what is pleasant and comes to grief in the end.

228. Our politicians, in their bid to please the people and appease the critics, take shelter under sophistry.

229. Political wisdom consists in reckoning with actual social forces and situations and formulating policies on that assessment, for enhancing the strength, unity and progress of the nation.

230. About the method and scale of work, the keynote is that the work should be started on a scale which is commensurate with the results desired.

231. He who is servant of all is their true master. One who knows how to serve, he only knows how to rule. He whose love knows no end, and never stops to consider high or low, has the whole world lying at his feet.

232. A leader has to burn himself every moment of his life in order to illumine countless other hearts. He has to cut his flesh bit by bit in order to protect the dove of society.

233. “Those who want to serve people must take their own pleasures and pains, name and fame and all sorts of self-interests and make a bundle of them and throw it into the sea.” The truly great men are not the men of wealth or name or fame, but those who testify to the truths in them and refuse to compromise whatever the cost. We may punish their bodies, refuse them comforts but we cannot buy their souls, we cannot break their spirits. Whoever possesses this invulnerability of spirit, even to a little extent, deserves our admiration.

234. But today unfortunately, the spirit of ‘cashing one’s sacrifice’, or demanding something in return of one’s service is gaining ground. The craving for name and fame, power and pelf has become the goal of public service.

235. At the moment in India, it seems that public funds are being used for private fun. These days power both – political and monetary comes from unscrupulous manipulations indulged in by the elected representatives of the people. They encourage people to follow them by conspicuous corruption.

236. Politics today has become a tug of war for power and profit.

237. What we have achieved during these 55 years of freedom? We could have banished illiteracy, even dismal poverty of our millions. But our rulers have become so self-centred that they did not care for the people. Rural areas were neglected resulting in lopsided development of the nation – a powerful nation with feet of clay. Inspite of having the best talents in all fields, we have got about more than half of our people in dire poverty.

238. In politics, there are charlatans, there are rogues, there are cheats more than any other field, why? For the simple reason that more profitable the business is the greater the number of self-seekers and cheats. But that is no reason why the business should not be good?

239. Opportunities turn even the staunchest moralist into a cheat.

240. To be great is good but to be good is great. “The world really is enriched by men – high souled, noble-minded and kind; the rest are only axes which cut the tree of the youth of their mothers.”

241. The work of the government and political workers is to protect, nourish and serve the people; their primary job is to ensure that no wrong is done and not to fire-fight endlessly.

242. “In India today oppression has stepped in, in place of protection – sucking people’s blood in place of preservation. The society has been rendered weak and debilitated to silently suffer at the hands of the rulers and as a natural consequence, both the rulers and the ruled have gone down and has fallen into the most degraded state. The rulers have forgotten that the powers and authority are only entrusted to them so that it may be used for the well-being of the people and may be spread over the whole society for its good. But instead, attributing all powers to themselves in their pride, they are looking down on the people as wretched specimen of humanity, who should grovel before them. Any opposition to their will, whether good or bad, is not tolerable to them and hence oppression steps in, in place of preservation. But if the society is healthy and strong, there will follow a fierce contest between the rulers and the ruled, and in its reaction and convulsion, will be flung away the scepters and the crowns, becoming past curiosities to be preserved in the political museum galleries.”

243. People are like earth which patiently bears incessant molestations; but they wake up one day however long that may be in coming, and the force of the shaking tremors of that awakening, hurls off to a distance the accumulated dirt of self-seeking meanness, piled up during the period of patient and silent years.

244. “Though the leadership of the society may be in the hands of those who monopolize learning or wield the power of riches or might, the source of its power is always the masses. The more the rulers distance themselves from the people, so much they are sure to weaken. But ironically, they, from whom this power is derived, by fair means or foul, by deceit, stratagem, force or gift, they cease to be taken into account by the ruling classes. When they estrange themselves from the masses, the real dynamo of its power, they will become defunct and will be thrown away. Whenever the ruling class will create a distance between itself and the people, it will get destroyed.”

245. The triumph of the masses brings down the elite.

246. The people though reservoir of all powers, whenever they distanced themselves from one another, they have always been deprived of their legitimate rights and it will be so, so long as they don’t join friendly hands in mutual help for the protection of their rights.

247. Generally a wide distance is created between the ruling and the ruled. Most part of that power which, if employed solely for the well-being of the people, might have done immense good to them, within a short time is wasted by the rulers in their endeavour to use the people to gain and sustain them in power. Slaves want power to make more slaves.

248. Today, under the slogan of ‘equality’ of opportunity, persons with greater intelligence and power monopolize the wealth and resources of the nation and even capture its political apparatus. And the common people are left only with a right to vote, which too, they are not free to use under the present social and economic conditions. The condition has degenerated so much that the high sounding concept of ‘Individual freedom’ has come only to mean the freedom of the few talented ones to exploit the common people.

249. The tyranny of the present day politicians is horrible, the wealth and power of the country gets centred in the hands of a few who do not work but manipulate the work of millions of other human beings. By their activities they deluge the whole country in blood. Religion and all other things are under their feet; they rule and stand supreme. The country is governed by a handful of Shylocks who in the name of the public good, try all the time to extract their pound of flesh and render all concepts of constitutional government, liberty, equality and parliamentary democracy as mere hoax.

250. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny, when the government fears the people, you have freedom.

251. Our people, most of them resemble man only in appearance, they are really crushed out of life by being downtrodden by their ruling classes. They are devoid of any initiative like slaves and are groping hopelessly without any future. They are only desirous of maintaining their present life anyhow, however precarious it may be. They are bereft of self-belief like one to whom all hopes are lost.

252. Today the goal of politics is unbriddled individual freedom, the language money-making, the means corruption. Some people, being comparatively powerful or sly slowly bring all others under their control by stratagem, force or adroitness to attain their own objects.

253. Wherever power is used for evil, it becomes diabolical; it must be used for good only.

254. Political power, if not properly used, gives into the hands of a selfish man, one more instrument to take away what belongs to others, to live upon the lives of others, instead of giving up his life for them.

255. The tyranny of our educated and wily politicians is much worse than the tyranny of the uneducated and ignorant. When they take to force their opinion upon others, they devise a hundred thousand ways to make bonds and barriers which are very hard to break. Like a fox, they persistently try to follow their prey (the people) and never miss an opportunity. Today politics has become very cruel and heartless by nature. That is why with the rise of politics, religion is going down.

256. In every country, the means is the same. That is, whatever a handful of powerful men dictate becomes the fait-accompli; the rest of the men only follow as a flock of sheep. Parliament, vote, majority, ballot – it is the same everywhere. The powerful men in every country are moving the society whatever way they like.

257. “Evil changes in form but remains the same in quality. Previously force ruled, today it is cunning.”

258. At present an extreme situation prevails in our country where the limits of oppression have been reached and people are undergoing acute suffering. The rulers have become autocrats, veritable monsters. Once they get elected by making extravagant and false promises, they feel secure till the next elections and then indulge in all sorts of heinous activities for their personal gains. Promises made during election campaigns are considered to deserve fulfillment only in breach without scruples on the part of our politicians. Promising and not doing has become their habit. The party with the greatest genius for the campaign of lies, pools the greatest number of votes and seizes power to use it as it chooses, in total disregard of its avowed promises.

259. Today elections have become a sham to delude people to believe that they are participating in the government.

260. Whereas ‘Satya Meva Jayate’ (truth alone triumphs) is our symbol in national life, in practice, we follow the opposite ‘Asatya Meva Jayate.’

261. Sweetmeats of the politicians are made once in five years at the time of elections and are distributed as stale for the next five years, till the next elections.

262. Today, selfless devotion for the country has been replaced by devotion to a party, language, province, caste or sect and this is being done to serve the power-game of our political classes.

263. Today, it is very easy to gather selfish people without character for purposes detrimental to society. In order to satisfy their selfish narrow ends they may be even prepared to destroy the sanctity and unity of the country. Such people can come together very easily.

264. Our leaders don’t work for the unity of our people but exploit the various problems to create more factions in order to subserve their vested personal and political ends. They only create and foster mutual enmity and party-spirit. Unfortunately, they have become the leaders of the people whereas persons of great merit, character and devotion are nowhere.

265. Politicians are playing their dirty game of dividing people more and more to achieve their narrow ends. It is they who, by over-emphasizing on petty and contentious issues like religion, caste, creed, language, region etc. are accentuating tensions and dissensions in the society.

266. Till now, we are caught up in divisive attitudes and loyalties to small socio-political groups, caste and creed groups. There is no harm in belonging to a group or party provided it does not generate jealousy and collide with other groups or sects and weaken our unity as a nation. Common loyalty to the nation must run through all other group loyalties like the thread that runs through the flowers that make the garland. The national loyalty must override all other loyalties. Let sects multiply but sectarianism must cease. But even now group loyalties and interests are so strong that this common national loyalty remains a dream. This is the source of many of our problems.

267. ‘Today, our leaders have become mad with the wine of newly acquired powers; devoid of discrimination between right and wrong; fierce like beasts, henpecked, lustful and intoxicated, having no idea of chastity and purity, not of right ways or habits, believing in matter only, with a life resting on matter and its various applications, addicted to self-aggrandizement by exploiting others by force, trick or treachery, having no faith in life hereafter, whose self is the body, whose whole life is only in the senses and comforts; they are veritable demons and are moving society the way they like and the people are following them as a flock of sheep.’

268. ‘Our politicians are like foxes with weapons like trickery, treachery and slyness; licking the dust of the feet of physically and financially strong, ever-ready to deal a death-blow to those who are comparatively weak and full of superstitions, which naturally come to those who are weak and hopeless of the future. They are without any sense of morality, swarming on the body of India, like so many worms on a rotten, stinking carcass.’

269. ‘We have politicians who in the name of politics, rob the people and fatten themselves by sucking the lifeblood of the masses. Have you not seen the shocking sight behind the acts of those politicians – that revelry of bribery, that robbery in broad daylight, that dance of the devil in man, seeing which you will be hopeless about man! Milk goes abegging, while the grog-shop is crowded; the chaste women have no wherewithal to hide her modesty while the women of the town flutters about in all her jewelery! That is the spectacle. Those who have money and power have kept the government of the land under their thumb and are robbing people and sending them as soldiers to fight, and be slain, so that in case of victory they may shine in the glory. And for the people in general? Their’s is only to shed their blood. This is today’s politics!’

270. Compulsory reservation (conscription) of the politicians and their flunkies in the defence and conservancy services is the right way to inculcate the sense of discipline and public service in them.