From The Archives: Rajaji’s Warning Against ‘Creeping Totalitarianism’ Of Nehru’s Congress

The Cart Before The Horse

The uncandid and creeping totalitarianism of the Nehru-guided Congress Party is worse than the avowed totalitarianism of the orthodox Communists. The latter challenges us to a straightforward duel. The issues in that duel are clear and our dharma has a definite advantage and can be sure of victory. The uncandid and creeping totalitarianism involved in the Socialism of the Congress is the more dangerous evil, in as much as it deceives and dupes all the way along and drives public opinion and Press and nation inescapably into the lane that holds State compulsion and regimented life at its dead end. The advantage of a straightforward issue is great for those who have to resist tyranny. It calls forth all the latent energy of a nation and its capacity for sacrifice whereas the creeping totalitarian tyranny of the Socialist pattern disarms the citizens, divides them into classes and weakens them by inspiring and setting up mutual conflicts, and through State power prevents sacrifice from organising itself against tyranny. The immediate annoyance is made to look bigger than the coming greater evil and the enemy pushes his way into what otherwise would be an impregnable fortress.

And this is the programme of an institution which has the history of political emancipation on its flag to hide its present rotten interior. How can we be disloyal to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru? This is the question that puzzles the noble hearts of our youth and blocks their intellect. God bless them for their noble instincts. But loyalty does not and should not mean approval of the ideology which the Government has today chosen to inflict on the nation and on which it has proceeded to build its policies in all matters. We may recognise all its past claims but need not and should not allow the implications of their present unwise policy and the ill-thought out laws and decrees issuing therefrom.

There is no piece of legislation more full of thoughtlessness than the land ceiling Bills now launched at the direction of the Centre in all the States. Apart from its numerous flaws and illogicalities, fragmentation of land is the great enemy of the nation and it is trebled and quadrupled by the insensate policy of confiscation of “excess” land. This “excess” land serves as buffers against the effects of the laws of succession that fragmented all the smaller farms. The acceleration of an evil was never found to be a remedy for that evil and yet this is the creed of the ruling party, judged from its acts whatever its own illusion may be. This acceleration invites scarcity of food supplies to industrial and urban centres to come down at double speed and create the need for total and detailed controls in all spheres.

Jealousy and hatred never were and never can be wisdom or be the basis of national polity. Yet this has become the philosophy and the bible of the Congress. “Inequalities must go”; therefore, says the ruling party, we confiscate the “surplus” above the proper average as we lay it down.

And the ambiguity in the creed of the special Socialism of the Indian National Congress, leads to a further increase of national debt without even the satisfaction of having fulfilled the claims of the expropriated farmers for just compensation. The injury is not alone to the victims of expropriation but to the nation as well, which is to be burdened with fresh interest and debt charges for no productive purpose but for the sake of a disproductive dogma of distribution put before the production of additional wealth.

All this will lead the country to the inescapable end of accepting totalitarian tyranny – unless we resist it now and prevent its destructive march.