A Vision of United India

Chapter 10

The political system in India

However, all this needs a national approach and consensus, something which is totally missing in the country today. This unhappy situation arises out of the political system that we have adopted in India. This system, which we have borrowed from the West, opens the door to a peril of stupendous proportions. For we are now faced with a Westernisation, inspired on one side by the Parliamentary form of Government and on the other by the militant Socialism of the Communist bloc. As a result, the politics of this country has become very divisive and is hampering all development and growth. The solution to this lies in creating a national government, a government where the national interest is paramount, and not the party interest. India will have thus to find out its own political system. This needs a serious debate and consultation. The time has come to start this process.

Viewed from this point of view the whole question takes on a different aspect. A radical change in the political system is needed and some signs of awakening seem to be taking place and there are hints of a change and a recovery of the deeper Indian spirit. We believe that a deep change of spirit is foreshadowed although it has not yet taken a definite form. The time has come to give it a definite shape and form. In a letter written in 1914, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

"Spirituality is India's only politics, the fulfilment of the Sanatana Dharma its only Swaraj. I have no doubt we shall have to go through our Parliamentary period in order to get rid of the notion of Western democracy by seeing in practice how helpless it is to make nations blessed. India is passing really through the first stages of a sort of national Yoga. It was mastered in the inception by the inrush of divine force, which came in 1905 and aroused it from its state of complete tamasic ajnanam [ignorance]. But, as happens also with individuals, all that was evil, all the wrong samskaras [imprints] and wrong emotions and mental and moral habits rose with it and misused the divine force. Hence all that orgy of political oratory, democratic fervour, meetings, processions, passive resistance, all ending in bombs, revolvers and Coercion laws.... God has struck it all down, — Moderatism, the bastard child of English Liberalism; Nationalism, the mixed progeny of Europe and Asia; Terrorism, the abortive offspring of Bakunin and Mazzini.... It is only when this foolishness is done with that truth will have a chance, the sattwic mind in India emerge and a really strong spiritual movement begin as a prelude to India's regeneration. No doubt, there will be plenty of trouble and error still to face, but we shall have a chance of putting our feet on the right path. In all I believe God to be guiding us,

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giving the necessary experiences, preparing the necessary conditions."1

In another conversation dated 27 December 1938 Sri Aurobindo refers to the Parliamentary form of government: Parliamentary Government is not suited to India. But we always take up what the West has thrown off.... [In an ideal government for India,] there may be one Rashtrapati at the top with considerable powers so as to secure a continuity of policy, and an assembly representative of the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation united at the top, leaving ample scope to local bodies to make laws according to their local problems.

The need of a national government

It has become imperative to form a national government not based on the party system with its narrow ideological approach, but with a national vision and approach. In this context, we quote a message given by the Mother to Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1969.

Let India work for the future and take the lead. Thus she will recover her true place in the world. Since long it was the habit to govern through division and opposition. The time has come to govern through union, mutual understanding and collaboration. To choose a collaborator, the value of the man is more important than the party to which he belongs. The greatness of a country does not depend on the victory of a party, but on the union of all parties".

The paradigms of the party system

The present party system that we have borrowed from the West is based on two fundamental assumptions.

The first assumption is that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Therefore there has to be a constant vigil on the ruling power and the way to do that is by creating an opposition party.

The second assumption is that each political party represents an ideology. An ideology is in this view a mental principle arrived at by the process of a rational and scientific study. We have thus in the economic and political fields, the ideologies of Democracy and Socialism, public sector and private sector, globalisation and Swadeshi and so on. All these ideologies are pitted as representing opposing viewpoints and one has to choose between them.

Let us briefly analyse these two basic assumptions.

There is no doubt that in the present state of human consciousness power does corrupt and that consequently checks and balances have to be constantly kept in place. This has resulted in the creation of an opposition with the

1 Archives & Research, December 1977, p. 84.

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aim of keeping a constant vigil on the ruling party. But unfortunately this has been carried to the point where opposition is made for the sake of opposition and the consequence of this is that the party has become more important than the nation. This is visible in the political life of almost all nations and more so in India. It is therefore indispensable that, while admitting the need of an opposition, an element of harmony leading to consensus is brought into the political system. The present system that encourages vote bank politics has to be replaced by a better system, which reflects the national aspiration. It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss the system and method needed to implement this idea; but it is imperative and urgent that political parties come together to work out a solution.

The second principle, which is based on the assumption that the mind and reason can give us the whole of Truth is an error and yet contains a truth.

Indian culture and psychology have always known that although the mind and reason are powerful and useful instruments of knowledge, they cannot arrive at the whole of Truth. The reason cannot arrive at any final truth because it can neither get to the root of things nor embrace the totality of their secrets; it deals with the finite, the separate, the limited aggregate, and has no measure for the all and the infinite. But at the same time it is evident that the reason does give us one aspect of the Truth. Each system or ideology represents one aspect of the Truth, but not the whole Truth. Therefore insisting on one side of the Truth does not help a nation or society to progress. On the contrary, it is only in the harmonious blending of opposites that any trued progress can take place. There has to be an attempt to synthesise these apparently opposite ideas. Freedom and discipline are not contrary ideas; rather both of them are needed for the progress of a society and nation. In the same way we can see that democracy and socialism, globalization and Swadeshi, development and ecology have to be synthesized and harmonized. In fact, one might say that the art of life and in particular of political life lies in harmonizing opposites.

All these issued are reflected in the manifestos of political parties. Unfortunately, the mind being what it is, the natural tendency is to stress on one of these ideas at the cost of the other. But life cannot be based on one idea alone; each idea has to be given its due importance and place. As a result of the party system and the natural stress on one idea almost exclusively, there comes in the natural principle of compensating reactions. The law of action and reaction, which is valid in physical Science, is in human action, which always depends largely on psychological forces, a more constant and pervading truth. That in life to every

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pressure of active forces there is a tendency of reaction of opposite or variative forces which may not immediately operate but must eventually come into the field or which may not act with an equal and entirely compensating force, but must act with some force of compensation, may be taken as well established. It is both a philosophical necessity and a constant fact of experience. For Nature works by a balancing system of the interplay of opposite forces. When she has insisted for some time on the dominant force of one tendency as against all others, she seeks to correct its exaggerations by reviving, if dead, or newly awakening, if only in slumber, or bringing into the field in a new and modified form the tendency that is exactly opposite. After long insistence on centralisation, she tries to modify it by at least a subordinated decentralisation. After insisting on more and more uniformity, she calls again into play the spirit of multiform variation. The result need not be an equipollence of the two tendencies; it may be any kind of compromise. Or, instead of a compromise it may be in act a fusion and in result a new creation, which shall be a compound of both principles. This is visible in the political history of independent India. Without elaborating in any detail, the change of governments in the last three decades testifies to this truth and law of action and reaction.

One might therefore reasonably conclude that it is only by the harmonizing of all these apparently opposite viewpoints that one can arrive at a settled and secure national growth and development. The political system must reflect this vision of things and only then can we move on a sound and stable curve of progress and fulfillment. One might even reasonably conclude that Nature is pushing India in this direction by the formation of coalition governments at the Centre. Let us therefore collaborate with Nature and move ultimately towards a national government, which will inevitably create a harmonious synthesis of ideas overriding all narrow political interests.

It is our hope that all political parties will make a sincere attempt to realise these ideals and evolve a system suitable to the genius of India. It is only on this basis that the true development and unity of India can come about.