The First Year of Our Freedom

WE have now had one ‘fear of freedom and it is but natural and appropriate that we should ask ourselves what this has really meant to us, and in what respects our condition today is different from what it was a year ago.

The answer we get to these questions is not one on which we can as yet congratulate ourselves. For, freedom has not brought to us increasing joy and happiness. So far, it has meant increased responsibilities and difficulties, and the creation of many problems which had not been foreseen by us and for which we had no solutions previously thought out. On the whole, the year has been one of trial–and error and blunders of a serious character–and we cannot yet say whether there is a fair prospect of our successfully emerging out of these trials. Our openly consolation is that we are now in a position to know where we are, on whose friendship we may count, and against whose hostility we have to take effective measures. A correct and real understanding of our difficulties is the first and the most important step in solving them. The first year of our freedom has given us this understanding.

This does not mean that we have no solid achievements to our credit this year. We have several such achievements and can also be proud of some of them. But it is wisdom to know that, compared to what, we have still to achieve, that which we have already accomplished is not much.

Among our achievements, the first place was undoubtedly to be given to the constitutional linking up of the States and the Provinces as units in a single federation for all practical purposes. Hyderabad alone stands aloof from this linking up, but very soon it too will have to enter the federation. What would have been the condition of Free India if this linking up had not taken place is best brought out by the following observation made by Prof. Coupland who studied the Indian constitutional problem some years ago and who, like most Englishmen, was an advocate of Pakistan. His words are as follows:

“An India deprived of the States would have lost all coherence. For, they form a great cruciform barrier, separating all four quarters of the country. If no more than the Central Indian States and Hyderabad and Mysore were excluded from the Union, the United Provinces would be almost completely cut off from Bombay, and Bombay completely from Sind. The strategic and economic implications are obvious enough. The practicability of Pakistan must be admitted; but the more the separation of the States from British India is considered, the more unpractical it seems. India could live if its Muslim limbs in the North-West and North-East were amputated, but could it live without its heart?”

The British plan was to deprive Free India of its heart. It was implicit in their declaration that paramountcy could not be transferred to the National Government of India, and that with the withdrawal of their power the States would become fully sovereign and independent, with complete freedom to accede to the Indian Dominion or keep away from it. But the statesmanship of Sardar Patel–the Iron Man in the Indian Cabinet–the patriotism of the princes, and the national sentiment that prevailed among the peoples of the States averted this catastrophe, and today the States are as much an integral part of Free India as the Provinces.

The significance of this achievement is pointed out in the White Paper on the States recently issued by the Government of India. It says:

“The accession of the States to the Dominion of India was a momentous event in Indian history. The full significance of this important development can be appreciated only if it is viewed against its most unpropitious ground. For over half of a century, the States had been a sealed book so far as the leaders of public opinion in British India were concerned”. High walls of political isolation had been reared up and buttressed to prevent the infiltration of the urge for freedom and democracy into the Indian States. Disruptive tendencies had been sedulously cultivated and encouraged, and proposals for not only one but several Rajasthans were in the air. There were not a few who nursed the hope that, overwhelmed by the combined weight of the partition of India and the disruption of the States, the Government of India would go under. In the context of these heavy odds and handicaps, the consummation of the ideal of a Federal India comprising both the Provinces and the States, was not a mean achievement. For the first time after hundreds of years, India became welded into a constitutional entity.”

This, taken along with the merger of the small States into the neighbouring Provinces, the grouping of several of them into Unions, and the introduction of democratic responsible government into almost all of them are steps which give the hope that Free India would also become a completely integrated India capable of making a solid contribution to world peace and prosperity. How happy the nation would have been if, on the first anniversary of the attainment of freedom, Hyderabad also had acceded to the Union!

Another solid achievement of Free India in the drafting of a Constitution which is in conformity, in most essentials, with the requirements and needs of a modern State. The fundamental rights which it contains and the objectives of State policy which it enunciates open up a new prospect to the downtrodden and to the common men and women of the land. Everything that a written Constitution can do to secure liberty and equality to the citizen and promote a feeling of fraternity among the people is to be found in the Draft Constitution. It has also set at rest many controversies which have been unnecessarily engaging the attention of the public, distracting them from work of a much more essential character. By providing for a purely secular State, by creating a federation with residuary powers in the Centre, by the introduction at one stroke of universal suffrage, by creating a Parliamentary government as distinguished from the Presidential and the Swiss type of governments, and by giving to the country an independent judiciary, it has done much to place Free India among the progressive democracies of the world. It is quite possible to criticise the Draft Constitution on the ground that there is nothing in it to remind the people that Mahatma Gandhi was the ‘Father of the Nation’ and nothing in conformity with national tradition and genius. But one should not forget the realities of the twentieth century world, and the Constitution takes into consideration these realities. Time alone will show whether the Draft provides us with a workable machinery or whether it demands too much from the average citizen and from the professional politician who is now enjoying a monopoly of power. In spite of considerations like these, the framing of the Draft Constitution within such a short period of time may be taken as one of the achievements of the first year of freedom.

There is nothing else which can be placed on a level of equality with the solution of the States problem and the drafting of the Constitution. It is true that various issues as between India and Pakistan arising out of the partition of the country–issues relating to cash balances, loans, military stores, imports and exports, and the treatment of refugees–were settled by negotiation without any need to refer them to the arbitral tribunal. It is also true that steps have been taken to raise a national cadet corps; to provide State Insurance Relief for all factory hands and accident, sickness and maternity benefits for women; to eatablish a National War Academy to train officers, to raise a territorial force of 130,000 men on zonal basis as a second line of defence, and to start a number of projects like the Damodar Valley project. Note also may be taken in this connection of the establishment of special corporations for providing finance to industries and for the resettlement and rehabilitation of the refugees. But compared with the work that has to be accomplished in all these respects, that which has actually been done is little.

One special feature of the work of the Government in the first year of freedom is the enunciation of its policies in three important spheres of public life. Pandit Nehru has taken occasion to indicate the broad lines on which free India’s foreign policy would be based. His Government also made a declaration on the question of economic policy. There have also been pronouncements on the course which education should take in future.

There is an important school of thought in the country at the present day which wants that, in matters of foreign policy, India should align herself with one or the other of the great powers. There are those who advocate that the country would gain most by intimate relations with Britain and America, and there are others who are positive that it is with Soviet Russia that she should come into closer relationship. There is one point in common between these two schools, and that is that India should not adopt an independent line of foreign policy but that she should join actively one or the other of the power blocs. They point out that the failure to join these blocs was responsible for the debacle over the Kashmir issue in the Security Council and the pro-Muslim sympathy shown by Britain and other members of the British Commonwealth, as well as by certain sections of American public opinion. Pandit Nehru has emphatically declared that India should completely keep aloof from world group-alignments and power politics and observed in that connection:

“The ultimate aim of foreign policy was to find out what was most advantageous to one’s only country. They might talk of international goodwill. They might talk about peace and freedom...but, in the ultimate analysis, a Government functioned for the good of the country it governed….In this present context, we propose to look after India’s interest in the context of world cooperation and world peace, in so far as world peace can be preserved. We propose to keep in the closest terms of friendship with other countries unless they themselves create difficulties. We shall be friends and intend co-operating with America. We intend co-operating , fully with the Soviet Union.”

This approach of being friendly to all States is perhaps what a country, which has newly won freedom, should try to cultivate. There is however a doubt whether this friendship will be reciprocated and whether this will give us the capital goods, the technical experts, and the military equipment that we need in the immediate future. But the enunciation of an independent foreign policy is a symbol of the self-confidence and courage animating our leaders.

Pandit Nehru’s Cabinet has also made its position clear in regard to the economic policy it proposes to follow, The main issue here is between nationalisation as advocated by the Socialists and the other Left Parties, and empirical policies advocated by the others. Although Pandit Nehru was at one time a left-winger, he has now become much sobered, and in a Cabinet dominated by persons who belong to the ranks of industrialists there is no possibility of complete nationalisation being adopted. It is a cautious approach to it that forms the basis of the policy of the Nehru Cabinet. Only a few industries will be nationalised. The large majority will continue to in the hands of private individuals–in some cases for a period of ten years and in other cases for longer periods. The characteristic of this policy is that it is flexible and liable to be revised from time to time in the light of experience. One reason perhaps for the caution displayed in the matter of nationalisation is that Government is not satisfied with the kind of administrators and civil servants that it now has, and it has not been able to replace them by others. There is a universal complaint that civil servants are not only given to red-tapism and to unnecessary delays, but that they have become very corrupt in recent times, and that consequently it would be risky to place them in charge of industries. This may not have been the decisive factor which influenced the Government, but it may be taken as one of the strongest forces. One of the members of Nehru’s Cabinet went to the extent of saying that corruption in the ranks of Government employees has become a national scandal.

The left-wingers have not been satisfied with this policy announced by the Government. This is shown by the large number of strikes that occurred in the first year of our freedom and the fall in industrial output which is one of the causes of the phenomenal rise in prices. The remedy proposed by Government for strikes is an industrial truce for a period of three years. Although even the representatives of labour have agreed to such a truce, there has not been much fall in the number of strikes. Inflation is also working havoc and steps have been taken to arrest it. All these goes to show that the Government should revise its view on economic policy and adopt a bolder and more courageous attitude in dealing with private industrialists and profiteers. This is all the more necessary, as the capitalist class has shown by its reaction to the de-control policy of Government how unscrupulous it is. There is an urgent need for a most energetic and determined Government in the country.

The policies announced by the Government in the field of education, are on the whole sound. A system of education appropriate to a free and independent India is being evolved. It has come to be known as social education. Citizenship training, in the most comprehensive senses of the term, is its keynote. Education is also being altered so that it might become activity-centered, as recommended by Mahatma Gandhi. The principle of his Wardha scheme is now accepted, and basic schools are being started for the purpose. Steps also are being taken to do away with separate communal schools and universities. The regional language is now the first language in every Province, and provision is being made for learning Hindustani–the national language–in Provinces where it is not the regional language. There is thus a new orientation given to education. But, here again, the general impression–for which there is much justification–is that the policies are not being as vigorously pursued as they ought to be and the pace is too slow.

There is a general feeling that, so far as the masses are concerned, freedom has not brought about any improvement in their condition. When they require is food, clothing, house-room, health and elementary education. Not only has there been no improvement in the supply of these essentials of life during this year; there has also been much deterioration, especially in regard to clothing. Freedom therefore has meant nothing to the common man, though every person in authority talks as if he exists only for the sake of the common man. Here it is not good intentions and schemes that are wanting. They are to be found in plenty. But there is a total absence of results. The refugees–five million in number–complain that very little is being done in practice to rehabilitate them. The workers and the peasants have similar complaints. The fact that prices and rents of houses have gone up by four to five times shows that the complaint is not baseless.

The question, however, is whether it is the apathy of the Government, or its pre-occupation with graver and more serious issues that is responsible for the paucity of results. If it is the latter, is the Government adopting the right policy to face these issues? These are legitimate questions which the public are asking, and no satisfactory answer has been forthcoming. It is this that has created a real crisis in our country today.

We are not as yet really free. The conquest of the country by the British was made possible by the divisions that prevailed among us, and their rule lasted as long as it did because of these divisions. The British withdrew from the country in 1947, not so much because we offered a united front to them but because, in consequence of their having had to fight two world-wars within a generation, they became so weak that they found it impossible with their limited resources in men and material to hold their empire any longer. They withdrew not only from India but also from Burma, from Ceylon, and from Palestine. It would have been quite different if the withdrawal had been brought about by our united strength in a revolutionary war. But, as it is, to British withdrawal did not mean the disappearance of those division in our country on which their rule rested. Communalism which was fostered by them continues to exist. The spirit of the Muslim League, which was responsible for the first disintegration of the country, is not dead. It is alive not only in Hyderabad but also among certain sections in the Indian Union. It is now being encouraged by Pakistan. But this is not the only kind of communalism that is eating into the vital of our political and social order. There is the communalism of the Harijan, of certain sections of caste Hindus, and of other groups of people. It is this that has to be completely destroyed. And until this is done, we cannot see the end of our troubles, and we cannot be certain that we have got freedom and are able to maintain it. In the first year of freedom has done anything to us, it has done this: it has shown that the communal and sectional forces are still alive, and that they will not be satisfied until and unless there is disintegration of the whole country.

What we immediately need is a Government which is strong, energetic, and resolute, which is able to place the whole nation practically on a war footing, and which is determined to root out our enemies at home and abroad. When our Constituent Assembly was first convened and when discussions were taking place whether it could frame a Constitution of its own liking, we were reminded of the famous Tennis Court Oath taken by the National Assembly of France in 1789. It is I better that we remind ourselves today that the honeymoon period of our bloodless (?) revolution is over, that we are in the same position as the French Revolutionaries were in 1791, that we have both ‘reactionary’ and ‘radical’ enemies at home and abroad ready to help these domestic foes and kill the freedom we secured a year ago. It is only a Government capable of rousing the enthusiasm of the whole nation, and organising it for an all-but sacrifice for upholding the independence and freedom of the country, that can save the situation. Vigour, energy, organisation–these have to become our watch-words