Never in the long range of history has the world been in such a state of flux as it is today. Never has there been so much anxious questioning, so much doubt and bewilderment, so much examining of old institutions, existing ills and suggested remedies. There is a continuous process of change and revolution going on all over the world, and everywhere anxious statesmen are almost at their wits’ end and groping about in the dark. It is obvious that we are a part of this great world problem and must be affected by world events.
And yet, judging from the attention paid to these events in India, one would not think so. Major events are recorded in the news columns of papers but little attempt is made to see behind and beneath them, to understand the forces that are shaping and re-forming the world before our eyes, to comprehend the essential nature of social, economic, and political reality. History, whether past or present, becomes just a magic show with little rhyme or reason, and with no lesson for us which might guide our future path.
On the gaily-decked official stage of India or England, phantom figures come and go, posing for a while as great statesmen…And then there is the vague but passionate nationalism of many who find present conditions intolerable and hunger for national freedom without clearly realising what form that freedom will take. And there are also here, as in many other countries, the usual accompaniments of a growing nationalism — an idealism, a mysticism, a feeling of exaltation, a belief in the mission of one’s country, and something of the nature of religious revivalism.
{{/usCountry}}On the gaily-decked official stage of India or England, phantom figures come and go, posing for a while as great statesmen…And then there is the vague but passionate nationalism of many who find present conditions intolerable and hunger for national freedom without clearly realising what form that freedom will take. And there are also here, as in many other countries, the usual accompaniments of a growing nationalism — an idealism, a mysticism, a feeling of exaltation, a belief in the mission of one’s country, and something of the nature of religious revivalism.
{{/usCountry}}Our politics must either be those of magic or of science. The former of course requires no argument or logic; the latter is, in theory at least, entirely based on clarity of thought and reasoning and has no room for vague idealistic or religious or sentimental processes which confuse and befog the mind.
What then are we driving at? Freedom? Swaraj? Independence? Dominion Status? Words which may mean much or little or nothing at all. Whose freedom are we particularly striving for, for nationalism covers many sins and includes many conflicting elements? There is the feudal India of the princes, the India of the big zamindars, of small zamindars, of the professional classes, of the agriculturists, of the industrialists, of the bankers, of the lower middle class, of the workers.
There are the interests of foreign capital and those of home capital, of foreign services and home services. The nationalist answer is to prefer home interests to foreign interests, but beyond that, it does not go.
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Nothing is more absurd than to imagine that all the interests in the nation can be fitted in without injury to any. At every step, some have to be sacrificed for others. A currency policy may be good for creditors or debtors, not for both at the same time.
The form of government is, after all, a means to an end; even freedom itself is a means, the end being human well-being, human growth, the ending of poverty and disease and suffering and the opportunity for everyone to live the ‘good life,’ physically and mentally. What the ‘good life’ is, is a matter people will agree that freedom is essential to it — national freedom so far as the nation is concerned, personal freedom so far as the individual is concerned.
For every restriction and inhibition stops growth and development and produces, apart from economic disorders, complexes and perversions in the nation and individual. So, freedom is necessary. Equally necessary is the will and the capacity for cooperation. Modern life grows so complex, there is so much inter-dependence, that cooperation is the very breath that keeps it functioning.
(This is an abridged and edited version of an article written by the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, first published in Hindustan Times in 1933)