Society and The Individual

A revaluation of the relationship of the individual and society, in the context of present conditions and in the perspective of modern ideas, is called for in our country. There have been here such radical and revolutionary changes in political, economic and social conditions that hoary and established ideas and institutions are tottering down, as buildings do in an earthquake. But some of us continue to be under the dominion of the past, and are unable to discard outmoded ideas.

Man has been described by one of the earliest of the Greek philosophers as a social animal. He is a community-building individual, impelled by instinct to live with his fellows. Most animals live in flocks or herds. Very few live alone. The earliest unit of human society was the family. Then came the tribe, during the period of man’s nomadic life; afterwards, the settled community of the hamlet, the village, the town, the city and the nation. Side by side, although much later, arose the religious groups, the trade guilds, the professional or artistic societies, the social or sporting clubs, etc. While man shares the gregarious instinct with animals, his craving and capacity for social life are altogether different in quality. A man’s society is not limited to physical contact; nor is it limited by time. He is capable in one sense of joining the society of the past and that of the future. His gregarious instinct can operate mentally and emotionally. While living in a village, he may feel himself a member of a large religious group spread allover the country, or even a citizen of the world. He can live alone, and never feel less alone than when alone. He may, on the other hand, feel isolated in a crowd. This is because he is at once an animal and a spiritual being. Further, he has the capacity to effect changes in his social organization. The complicated modern society today, which has evolved out of primitive communities, illustrates this truth. In the animal world, however, there are no such changes to be seen. We are born into society. We are parts of it. We eat the food it gives, play with it, are educated by it, adopt its customs and tend mostly to think its thoughts and feel its emotions. But we are at the same time individuals. As units of an organized society, there are in us two struggling impulses: one prompting us to be with the herd, and the other dragging away from it. There is the pull of solitude, and there is the put of multitude.

I shall begin by stressing the value of the individual. To use the words of D. H. Lawrence, “Each human self is single, incommutable and unique. This is his first reality. The fact that an actual man, present before us, is an inscrutable and incarnate Mystery, untranslatable: this is the fact upon which any great scheme of social life must be based. The living self has one purpose: to come into its own fullness or being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a world into spring-beauty or a tiger into lustre.” But the individual, in order that he may attain his highest ends and fulfil himself in all ways open to him, must live in society: If not in physical contact with society, at least in mental association. And, in order to live in society, he must live subject to certain conditions imposed by society on him. Social life involves obligations. If you have rights you have corresponding duties: that is where moral obligation comes in. I cannot live with others unless I do or abstain from doing a number of things. Otherwise, they know how to make me unhappy, and prevent me from fulfilling myself. But, just as the individual may seek to rebel against social obligations, society may tend to impose unnecessary fetters. I shall refer to these matters again later.

I shall now refer to the several modes of social organization. For convenience’s sake, roughly speaking, human society can be said to be organized, according to the purposes of organization, politically, economically, religiously and socially. Society politically organized is called the State. In early times, the State looked after the religions of the people who composed it. The State was often identified with a particular religion, and was hostile to heresy. We refer to such States as theocratic States. They are inconsistent with the modern outlook. Now no civilised State thinks of identifying itself officially with any particular religion, and we can, therefore, deal with social organization for the purpose of religion as a separate type of organization. Then, as regards economic organization, the State today is tending to cover this kind of organization too to a considerable extent. Democratic institutions inevitably are driven towards economic equality. As Laski says:

“The survival of political democracy is, all over the world, definitely impossible unless it can conquer the central citadel of economic power.”

Democracy cannot survive without some kind of socialism. The Welfare State today, therefore, is concerned with the economic organization of society. Time was when the State was content to keep law and order. But today the State is extending its activities into several fields of human welfare. Economic planning may necessitate regimentation, and that may lead to too great an interference with individual liberty. There is the danger of its trying to order our lives in all directions. If the old governments did little for ordinary men, the governments today perhaps incline to do too much. Under the impact of democracy, the limits of political interference are being perhaps unduly extended.

Then, as regards unofficial economic organizations, we find them in the now obsolete guilds, in partnerships, companies, cartels, trade-unions, etc. Professional organizations to perhaps may be put under this category. Under the category of organizations purely for social purposes, we might put organization for the purpose of amusement, pleasure, culture, art and language. We must note, however, that none of these categories is absolute. We may observe, too, that each kind of organization tends to enlarge its area of activity and its hold on the individual. In primitive society, the king was not only the ruler but also the vice-regent of God. And religion was not only concerned with faith, rites and morals but also with social and domestic behaviour. Our caste system, for instance, treated by the rulers and the ruled as being of the highest sanctity, may be described as a social organization not merely for religious but social and economic purposes alike. The caste system regulated and determined our education, our profession, our mode of life, our status in society and our hopes and aspirations in regard to economic security, professional achievement and social respect.

Now, each one of us, we may notice, incidentally, lives in a number of cross-sections of society at the same time. One is a member at once of so many kinds of social groups. One consequence of this is the frequent clash and conflict in one’s mind of competing loyalties. Every social unit from the family upwards is guided by innumerable written or unwritten standards of behaviour handed on to generation after generation by custom which may be described as ‘the government of the living by the dead.’ The pressure of these standards upon the individual is very heavy and often operates in opposite directions. This pressure is independent, of course, of the pressure within the individual: of his own impulses, passions and desires.

I shall begin with the family which, as I said, was one of the earliest, smallest and strongest units of society. It arose not only out of the need for society but because of the helplessness of the human infant and its need for assistance over a long period. It was a sort of a political, social and economic organization. Its head was the absolute ruler of the group. The religion he professed was the religion of the family. He had the lives of every member at his mercy. The wife–and, in some societies, the wives–and the children were his chattels. The then current code of morality emphasised respect for the rights of the father and reverence for the institution of the family. The relationship of man and woman, of parent and child, was determined by the then social and economic conditions. Obedience to the father was the highest duty. Loyalty and fidelity were the greatest virtues. The individual member had no recognition and few property rights. He had to depend for his resources generally upon the good graces of the father or of the eldest male member. The Hindu joint family, which is slowly dying out under the impact of modern ideas and conditions and legislation, represents some of these features. The family was also a social unit helping in the prevention of crime and disorder. The head of the family was responsible to society or to the ruler for the behaviour of its members. If its members injured other people, the head of the family or the whole family was answerable. The family had to pay compensation to the injured from outof its property, or suffer punishment.

At one stage of social development, it was inevitable that these conditions should prevail. But conditions have gradually changed with the realisation, among other things, of the importance of the individual and of the need for self-expression. Naturally, the old restraints and conventions are losing their hold, as the old notions are yielding place to new. One of the important changes in recent times is what has been called the emancipation of women. With the advance of civilisation, some of the forces which rendered the family a necessary unit of society, for several purposes, are losing much of their strength. When there was no organized public assistance to the poor or the helpless, no old age pensions such as are provided in some countries today; no form of social insurance, the family had to afford refuge in poverty, in old age or in infirmity. Modern conditions, to a certain extent, have all rendered or are rendering these aspects of family obligation unnecessary. There is also the further fact that people lived in the old days, generation after generation, in the same neighbourhood, and in close contact with each other. Today the family of the old type is often only a notional unit. But even today, the family is a necessary form of society to the individual. So far as the child is concerned, this is obvious. No child can be happy except in domestic environment. The community cannot replace the family in this regard. In particular, the need of a child for affection and sympathy, its need to be needed, can never be satisfied except in the home. As an eminent modern psychologist has observed: “In the family situation are provided the setting, the stimulation and guidance which determine, very largerly, whether the child shall develop into a personally well-adjusted and socially useful individual.” There is also the individual’s feeling for home, for a place where one is limited to the company of persons who take a personal interest in one, where one’s emotions can find full play, and where one can be one’s self.

But the old days of unquestioned domestic authority are over. A father has long ceased to have the power of life and death over the members of his family–as in the days of Theseus. He cannot, and if he is wise does not, insist even upon disposing of his daughter in marriage. His wife is not compellable to stay with him as she had to, of old, even under intolerable conditions. Whatever the Scriptures are supposed to say, just as a son need not obey his father implicitly, a wife is not a perpetual bond-slave to her husband. Modern attitude does not favour the undutiful or cruel husband, nor does it worship the too submissive, the too yielding wife. The law of marital relations has been changed at the instance of progressive minds, and with it the attitude to marriage is changing surely, although, perhaps, slowly. In some of these matters, we are making the laws first, depending upon the sentiment in favour of the law to grow later. We realise today that sometimes even children need to be protected from their parents. The State, for instance, enjoins, or is trying fast to enjoin, compulsory education, compulsory health measures, immunity from premature employment, etc. These Legal measures necessarily affect the foundations of domestic life. No sensible man, however, ignores the necessity for recognising and encouraging family ties, but they must not conflict with, but be consistent with, progressive ideas as to individual rights and social consequences.

I shall now very briefly refer to the village community. It is, in my opinion, wrong to think that communal life in a village is just like communal life in a city or a town, but only on a smaller scale. The fact is that there is a difference in quality. The smaller the group to which a man belongs the greater is the weight upon him of social pressure. In a village community, people tend to be more conservative than people who live in a city or town. Every inhabitant of a village is your neighbour, and a very close neighbour. His eyes are on you. You cannot go out of step without being noticed. And the punishment for unusual and unorthodox behaviour is swift and certain. When you feel that the lives of you and those for whom you care could be made miserable by the community in which you live, you are naturally careful to observe the customs and conventions which the communal consensus of opinion dictates. In a city or town, conditions are different. You may not even know your neighbour in a big place. In a city or town, residents of even adjoining houses are miles away from you, so far as neighbourly amenities or associations are concerned.

Now, the fact that India has lived largely in village communities explains in part how we in this country have resisted social change through centuries. Every class or section of the community in a village has been observing from time immemorial its own unwritten code of behaviour. One amazing thing is that a member of a caste or a sub-caste has kept his own beliefs and modes of behaviour without wondering why members of other groups or communities behave in a different way. He does not seem to have paused to consider which is the better faith or custom. On the other hand, there has been almost a fanatical loyalty (to the extent to which the Hindu spirit of tolerance admits of fanaticism) to the faith and standards of conduct of his own section of the community. Within the limits of such a social organization there was little scope for individual freedom and, therefore, for individual development. The rights of the individual were always subordinated to those of the family, the community, the caste or the sub-caste. Unusual behaviour was always objectionable behaviour. Nobody could attempt to deviate from the rut. An innovator was an iconoclast, a rebel, a revolutionary and a source of danger. The standards of moral judgment in such communities are not necessarily the highest. When anything out of the common is done by anybody, the simple exclamation that it never happened before embodies the severest criticism. The appeal is not to standards laid down either by the still small voice within or by the scriptures, but to convention. The strength of this irrational hold of the group upon the individual must be weakened if our lives are to be in consonance with modern conditions and ideas. All standards of individual conduct and all social obligations of the individual must be constantly revised and brought up-to-date. Historic continuity with the past may be, to a large extent, inevitable. But it is not a duty. In this connection, we must remember the lines of the poet:

“Old things need not be, therefore, true,
O brother men, nor yet the new.”

I shall now deal with the political organization of our country. Our country today is a Sovereign Democratic Republic–to adopt the language of the preamble of the Constitution of India. But some people think that in our heart of hearts we are, most of us, devoted to monarchy. They say that it is echoed in our ideal of Ram Rajya. It cannot, perhaps, be disputed that our loyalities are primarily to persons and not to policies. We have a deep nostalgia for the past. And in out past there was never an occasion when there was no king. It is true that our village communities were allowed to manage their own affairs, and look after their own interests, so long as they paid Caesar what was due to Caesar. But that was no real democracy at all. Then people ruled not merely by office but by religion or caste, and their opinions were governed by custom. Modern democracy does not believe in leaving the people of small communities alone. A village cannot be left to keep itself tidy or untidy as it likes, to educate its children or not, or to deal with its criminals according to its own notions, as was done in the past. The whole of the country is interested in every part, because every part must be sound in order that the whole may be sound. Half a century ago, it might not have mattered to us if there was cholera in a far-away province. But, with the revolution in the means of communication brought about by modern science, it is possible that a plague spot in one part of the country may bring plague to another part a hundred or a thousand miles away. Local self-government is good on principle. But in a poor country like ours, where taxes are still considered odious and oppressive, there can be too much of it. It is not everybody who realises that with taxes we buy civilisation, as was said by Justice Holmes. The message of modern civilisation must be taken to every village. There are people of course who hold up their hands in horror at such a prospect, because they say people were happen in the golden age of the past than they are now. Yes People were happier, if happiness consists only in living at a level of sub-humanity, where there are no stirrings of intellectual life. Let us remember what John Stuart Mill says:

“It is better to be a dissatisfied man than to be a satisfied pig.”
At the other end, we must beware of the danger of the apotheosis of the State and the dangers of nationalism. A State is not an organism, as Hegel thougt.  The Personification of the State is not only false but dangerous. Further, nothing is easier than to exalt national pride and to create a fanatical esprit de corps. In this modern world, when humanity is menaced by extinction as the result of the abuse of the advances in scientific knowledge and technology, we must realise that up to a point we must be denationalised. In the days when men lived in tribes, xenophobia was instinctive. And perhaps it is even today nurtured by the half-educated politicians by whom some nations new seem to be governed. We must learn not to enjoy what has been called the warmth that accompanies national boasting, the powerful electric thrill of hatred. We must remember that while nationalism and war stimulate man to heroism, they also stimulate man to bestiality. We must not, therefore, encourage the manifestations of collective vanity and hatred. Unfortunately, as Aldous Huxley says, “to boast mendaciously about one’s own gang and to slander and defame other gangs are acts everywhere officially recorded as creditable and pious.” We must not imitate other nations in this respect.

One great danger to which political democracies are prone, especially where the electorate is largely uneducated, is the tendency to overvalue the opinion of the majority. Nothing is true or just or right because a majority of people believes in it. A great majority of people, some thousands of years ago, believed that the earth was flat. And a majority of people until a century , and perhaps even today, believed, and still believe, that wicked people are doomed to perpetual damnation or the everlasting fires of Hell while good people enjoy perpetual happiness. The fanatical desire for uniformity and standardization will end in the reduction of people to a dead level. The ultimate standard is justice. It is good to remember the words of Aristotle:

“There is no worse in justice than to treat unequal causes equally.”

The preciousness of the individual must be stressed. Every individual self is a unique event in the history of the world. Education, Medicine and Sociology are concerned with the individual. Some modern business methods take no account of the personality of the workers, just as some modern educational practices take no account of the personality of the individual students. They ignore the fact that all men are different. As Alexis Carrel says:

“Modern society ignores the individual. It only takes account of human beings. It believes in the reality of the universal and treats men as abstractions. The confusion of the concepts of the individual and of the human being has led industrial civilisation to a fundamental error, the standardization of men. If we were all identical we could be reared and made to live and work in great herds like cattle. But each one has his own personality.”

The same writer also says:

“The democratic creed does not take account of the constitution of our body and of our consciousness. It does not apply to the concrete fact which the individual is. Indeed, human beings are equal. But individuals are not. The equality of their rights is an illusion. The feeble-minded and the man of genius should not be equal before the law. The stupid, the unintelligent, those who are dispersed, incapable of attention, of effort, have no right to a higher education. It is absurd to give them the same electoral powers as the fully developed individuals. Sexes are not equal. To disregard all these inequalities is very dangerous. The democratic principle has contributed to the collapse of civilisation in opposing the development of an elite. It is obvious that, on the contrary, individual inequalities must be respected. In modern society, the great, the small, the average and the mediocre are needed. But we should not attempt to develop the higher types by the same procedure as the lower. The standardization of men by the democratic ideal has already determined the predominance of the weak. Everywhere, the weak are preferred to the strong. They are aided and protected, often admired. Like the invalid, the criminal and the innocent, they attract the sympathy of the public.”

Most of us may not agree with all that the writer says in this passage, but one cannot fail to recognize the force of his point of view.

We must be vigilant to notice the dangers of regimentation. In a country where economic organization tends to be mainly in the hands of the State, restraints upon freedom are likely to be numerous. The safeguarding of liberty in a world which is growing fast in the 20th century is far more difficult, as Bertrand Russell observes, than it was in the 19th century when free competition was still a reality. In his view, there are two simple principles which, if they were adopted, would solve almost all social problems. The first is that education should have for one of its aims to teach people only to believe propositions when there is some reason to think that they are true. The second is that jobs should be given solely for fitness to do the work. The first principle, he says, would lead to tolerance; and the failure to observe the second principle, he observes, is a modern form of persecution as efficient as the Inquisition ever was. In this connection we must also remember that the content of the word ‘freedom’ is wider today than it has ever been. It is not merely absence of restraint. It is not a diminution of government. Indeed, anarchy will mean freedom for the strong and slavery for the weak. The problem is how to obtain all the conditions of good government with the smallest possible interference with freedom. To interfere with the activities of one person in order to give another necessaries is not interference with freedom. On the other hand, to deprive a man of necessaries is a greater interference with freedom than to prevent him from accumulating superfluities.

As regards legislation, there must be a realisation of the true area of governmental interference in private and domestic matters. Legislators must know that, because a course of action is socially good, it is not necessarily good to enforce it by law. Its enforcement by the State may be politically objectionable. The officers of the State must not be armed with too much power lest it corrupt them. Even through an operation may be necessary, it should not certainly be done with an unclean lancet. Further, legislators would do well to remember Lord Acton’s dictum:

“The great question is to discover not what governments prescribe but what they ought to prescribe: for no prescription is valid against the conscience of mankind.”

It may not be overlooked that every prescription that is not easily enforceable undermines respect for the law.

I shall not deal at length with other modes of social organization, for in our country the caste system has embraced within itself religious, social and economic organization; but I shall, before referring to it, touch very briefly upon some forms of economic organization to which we are of late getting used and with which we must reckon in the near future. Until the 20th century, trade-unions were not legal in some countries. But trade-unions have grown up during the twentieth century all over the civilised world, and the power which they wield today is remarkable. They have invented a new right, the right to strike. It is possible for some of these organizations to hold the whole community at their mercy. This sort of organisation is apt to breed a narrowness of mind, an insensitiveness to the general interest, which must be guarded against. Some people still wonder whether such a type of organization, solely or even primarily concerned with the material interests of its members is a desirable form of special organization. Professional Institutions, such as the Medical Councils and the Bar Councils, are primarily concerned with the etiquette of the profession and the character of the individuals who practise it. They lay down the qualifications for admission into the profession and the curricula for professional studies. That kind of organization is unobjectionable.

I will now refer to the caste system which has in our country tended to be at once a social, religious and economic organization. Like an octopus it has spread its tentacles far and wide. It is now no longer a necessary institution. That is not to say that it was an evil institution when it began. Social, economic and religious conditions in the past might have found it a necessary and even a desirable institution. Every sensible man should realise that today it has outgrown its usefulness as an institution. Unfortunately, it is tied up with religious prejudices. To some minds it is bound up with religion. But religion, we realise today, is a personal affair. That realisation is embodied in the avowed secularity of our State. People, of course, may unite to promote the purposes of religion; but people cannot be allowed, in the name of religion, to defeat social aims or endanger social security. A lack of this realisation accounts for the prevalence of the old loyalties to caste and sub-caste. Those loyalties, we must realise, are not inborn, not instinctive, not impelled by any religious feeling, but have only the powerful drive of evil tradition behind them. Casteism and communalism are our greatest social evils today. Even those who openly decry caste are governed by such feelings and attitudes. The more’s the pity. It would seem that their objection to caste is only an objection to a superior caste or a different caste. Further, “so long as politicians find that they can make political capital out of caste, they will whip up such feelings, especially among electorates, and in constituencies, where the vote of a particular caste is likely to be decisive of the issue of an election. We must realise that the days of this age-old institution are, however, numbered. It is curious that some people justify its existence because it has so long survived. But, in my opinion, it is not quite correct to say that the caste system has survived. What there is is only its carcass. Where four castes have become four thousand castes, it is not a case of survival. It is like child breaking a mirror into a thousand pieces and shouting, “Lo! One mirror has become a thousand mirrors now.” Casteism and communalism, however, deep-rooted and undisturbed in their rustic isolation, have remained. They are sources of grave danger to the solidarity of society, and must be recognised for what they are. They are, no doubt, useful ladders on which some politicians climb to power. But politicians must learn to depend upon their capacity and character to reach high positions.

Before I conclude, I would like to reiterate what I have been stressing throughout. Although man instinctively and necessarily tends to be one of a multitude, he is often at his best in solitude. Even in solitude, he is not really alone. Of course, the charms of solitude are not appreciated when they are enforced. Alexander Selkirk failed to see the charms which sages saw in its face because he was marooned in an island without desiring it. Man is spiritually at his best and highest when he is voyaging alone on strange seas of thought. The greatest inspirations of mankind come from the still small voice, the whispers that are only heard in solitude. Unfortunately, modern life makes it difficult to enjoy the seclusion and isolation necessary for great achievements in the world of art or of science. The opportunities for communion with one’s own spirit, to hold counsel with one’s self, are few and far between, in these days when man goes the rounds of social and professional life continually and almost mechanically. These observations are not intended to disparage or to deprecate modern conditions of life or to contrast them unfavourably with conflictions of the past. The evil is not primarily in modern conditions, but in our own failure to adjust ourselves to them. We must ensure that an individual lives the highest kind of mental life, that is, the highest kind of life of which a human being is capable.

Our country has only recently won freedom. Political freedom is only the beginning of things. A really free society is one capable of choosing goals for its own group behaviour, and of devising and applying means of reaching the goals it chooses. In order that a country may progress along right lines, there must be a proper re-conciliation between the rights of the individual and the social claims upon him. The individual must realise that he cannot ask anything for himself that another cannot claim. If he is wise, he knows that his greatest self-fulfilment lies in contributing to the life of the community the highest good that he is capable of. He can fulfil himself only through the life of the community, by extending his own life to the utmost bounds possible. He must seek the enrichment of the common life if he wants to enrich his own life. The individual aim must identify itself with the general, and this fusion can take place only on the moral and the spiritual plane.

One other thing requires to be emphasised. Our traditions in this country do not lay emphasis on the importance of the individual. The individual should not be subject to irrational taboos or be compelled to conform tomodes of behaviour which are incompatible with modern standards of decency or self-respect. The tendency must be resisted to reduce him to a term or a mere unit of a whole. We must remember that humanity has advanced by the efforts of individuals, and that the greatest benefactors of mankind have been rebels: persons who fought against the established modes, who rose against the tyranny of entrenched conservatism and orthodoxy, who were inspired by the love of adventure, and who struck out new paths for the mind and the spirit of man. We must recognize that individual liberty has been too much constrained by collective entities whose artificial personality has stifled and smothered the individual. Most of us are content to move with the crowd. We are afraid of breaking the idols of the market place. We are haunted by the terror of excommunication. What we call commonsense points in the direction of conformity. But commonsense, it has been observed by a celebrated scientist, has never been the tool of evolution. “It is a practical and safe notion, but without value for human progress. If it were universal, it would mean the end of the spiritual development of man, the end of evolution. It would indeed prevent us from improving ourselves, from driving towards an ideal, from acting in a way opposed to our immediate interests. It would forbid our ever taking a chance. It is never of a heroic deed. If it were carried to an extreme, virtues would not have many occasions to shine.” The makers of art and of literature, the promoters of knowledge, the builders of civilization are men who departed from the norm, who in their own day were considered unreasonable and perverse. We must, therefore, realise that only the fullest freedom of the individual, compatible with the needs of organized society, is the best instrument of progress and civilisation.

To conclude, I endorse the point of view expressed in the following passage from a front-page article in the Times Literary Supplement of recent months:

‘No social ethic that takes away individual responsibility for adjustment, effort and value-judgments can produce a durable, cohesive and progressive society; for such a society can only result from both the self-regarding and other-regarding motives of free individuals; and if they are not free to begin with, if they are compelled by the society, their motives and motive forces will alike be inhibited. They will then be gehemmt, hemmed-in, and no co-operation–no real society–can ensue.’