Eternal India Encyclopedia

ETERNAL INDIA encyclopedia

WISDOM OF INDIA

sage, on the contrary, would teach the West to turn back upon the goal

stitions. Otherwise, Gandhism would have no social background and

within reach, and relapse into medieval barbarism. From M.N. Ro> India's Message (fragments of a prisoner's diary).

disappear before long. They have neither any understanding of philo- sophical problems nor are they concerned with metaphysical specu- lations in preference to material questions. As normal human beings, they are engrossed with the problems, of worldly life, and being cultur- ally backward, necessarily think in terms of religions, conceive their earthly ideals, their egoistic aspirations, in religious forms. Faith is the mainstay of their existence, prejudice the trusted guide of life, and superstition their only philosophy. Gandhism is the ideological reflex of this social background. It sways the mass mind, not as a moral philosophy, but as a religion. It is neither a philosopher nor a moralist who has become the idol of the Indian people. The masses pay their homage to a Mahatma source of revealed wisdom and agency of supernatural power. The social basis of Gandhism is cultural-backwardness; its intellectual mainstay, super- stition.... The Gandhist utopia thus is a static society- -a state of absolute so-, cial stagnation. It is an utopia because it can never be realised. Absolute stagnation is identical with death. To begin with, all resis- tance to the established order must cease. That would offer absolute guarantee to the status quo. The ruling classes would refrain from using force simply because it would not be necessary. Their power and privi- lege, being completely undisputed, would require no active defence. But this idyllic picture can be drawn only by the cold hand of death. Life expresses itself as a movement —individually, in space, and collec- tively, in time. And movement implies overwhelming of obstacles on the way. Disappearance of all resistance to the established order would mean extinction of social life. Perfect peace reigns only in the grave. Neither the preachers nor the proselytes of Gandhism, however, would have the consistency of carrying their cult to the nihilistic extreme. There would be a certain macabre majesty in such a boldness. But with all the absoluteness of its standards, Gandhism remains on the ground of the relative. After all, it prescribes a practical cure for the evils of the world. Philosophically, it is pragmatic. And the remedy suggested is the reactionary programme of forcibly keeping society in a relatively static condition. Gandhism offers this programme because it is the quintessence of an ideology which developed on the back- ground of a static society. But India's spiritual message, while still finding an echo in the ruins of the native society, can have no standing appeal to the world of modern civilisation. There, the society is armed with potentialities which preclude its falling into a state of stagnation. Modern civilisation is a dynamic process. It must go forward,. Not only the masses, but even the capitalist rulers of the West must reject the ideology of social stagnation. And precisely in this dynamic nature of the civilisation, developed under its aegis, does the nemesis of capital- ism lie. It cannot carry civilisation farther, nor can it hold it back in a static state permanently as a guarantee for its continued existence. The perspective, therefore, is an advance of modern civilsation over the boundaries of capitalism. The materialist philosophy throws a flood of light on that perspective of the future of mankind. India's spiritual mes-

The question of all questions is: Can politics be rationalised? An affirmative answer to this controversial question would not take us very far unless rationalism was differentiated from the metaphysical con- cept of reason. To replace the teleology of Marxist materialism by an appeal to the mystical category of reason would not be an advance. The cognate question is about the relation of politics and morality: Must revolutionary political practice be guided by the Jesuitic dictum- - the end justifies the means? The final sanction of revolution being its moral appeal- the appeal for social justice— logically, the answer to the latter question must be in the negative. It is very doubtful if a moral object can ever be attained by immoral means. In critical moments, when larger issues are involved and greater things are at stake, some temporary compromise in behaviour may be permissible. But when practices repugnant to ethical principles and traditional human values are stabilised as the permanent features of the revolutionary regime, the means defeat the end. Therefore Communist political practice has not taken the world, not even the working class, anywhere near a new order of freedom and social justice. On the contrary, it has plunged the army of revolution-proletarian as well as non - proletarian- in an intellectual confusion, spiritual chaos, emotional frustration, and a general demor- alisation. To overcome this crisis, the fighters for a new world order must turn to the traditions of Humanism and moral Radicalism. The inspiration for a new philosophy of revolution must be drawn from those sources. The nineteenth-century Radicals, actuated by the humanist principle of individualism, realised the possibility of a secu- lar rationalism and a rationalist ethics. They applied to the study of man and society, the principles and method of the physical sciences. Positive knowledge of nature— living as well as inanimate - being so much greater today than a hundred years ago, the Radical scientific approach to the problem of man's life and interrelations is bound to be more successful. Today we can begin with the conviction that it is long since man emerged from the jungle of "pre-history," that social relations can be rationally harmonised, and that therefore appreciation of moral values can be reconciled with efforts for replacing the corrupt and corrosive status quo by a new order of democratic freedom. A moral order will result from a rationally organised society, because, viewed in the context of his rise out of the background of a harmonious physical universe, man is essentially rational and therefore moral. Morality emanates from the rational desire for harmonious and mutu- ally beneficial social relations. Man did not appear on the earth out of nowhere. He rose out of the background of the physical universe, through the long process of biological evolution. The umbilical cord was never broken: man, with his mind, intelligence, will, remains an integral part of the physical universe. The latter is a cosmos—a law-governed system. .Therefore, man's being and becoming, his emotions, will, ideas are also determined: man is essentially rational. The reason in man is an echo of the harmony