Adyar Pamphlets No.147 The Ethico-Psychological
Crux
in Political Science and Art or Who Should be Legislators?
by Bhagavan Das
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India
March 1931
[Page
1]THE Spirit is eternal, and
eternally young. It never ages. But its bodies, subtle and gross, are always
aging, and being cast off, and renewed, India's manomaya-kosha,
mental-body, has obviously become very old. And, it seems, under the decree
of Providence, it has to renovate and rejuvenate itself by taking birth
afresh from its own progeny, which offsprang from it in the distant past viz , the
European mind body. The great-grandfather has to be born again as his own
great-grandson. The intellect of India has to be renewed by transfusion
of European scientific intellectual blood — but the danger, latterly
threatened, has to be avoided, of complete loss of identity, by loss of
memory of the past. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a way of such
renovation in the department of political science and art, with benefit,
not only to the great-grandfather, but possibly also to the great-grandson.[Page
2]
-
1 - WESTERN THOUGHT
The happiness of a
people depends primarily upon the goodness and wisdom of the socio-moral
principles implanted in the heart of each of its successive generations by
good and wise educators; and secondarily upon the goodness and wisdom of
the laws promulgated for the welfare of all sections and classes of it, impartially,
justly, benevolently, by good and wise legislators.
The crucial problem
in political theory and political practice is: How to find, persuade, elect
good and wise men and women to the legislatures ? It may be brought into
relief, for us, by a few quotations from Western writers, and then an attempt
made to find out what ancient Eastern thinkers have to say on it.
“How
to reconcile representative institutions, withgood
government has become the great political problemof the day.
The natural disposition of every assembly is to cultivate its opportunities
on private account sofar as conditions
will allow (p. 117). Representative institutions allow choice, but the grounds
of choice may admit all the folly, wickedness, and perversity of which human
nature is capable (p. 153). Unless means are provided for insuring an active
disposition to use opportunity on public account, it will most certainly
be employed for private advantage, and representative institutions will
tend to become a vast system of plunder (p. 199). The waste and profusion
of which an assemblyis capable exceeds
that of a despot (p. 201). Representatives of the people should have no access
to official patronage or to the public treasury. They must be placed under
such conditions that they will be personallydisinterested in
such matters (p. 202). Mill took strong [Page
3]ground against money payment,
pointing out that it tends to make politics a profession carried on with
a view chiefly to its pecuniary returns and under the demoralizing influences
of an occupation essentially precarious. Seats in the representative assembly
then become objects of desire to adventurers incessantly bidding to attract
or retain the suffrages of the electors, by promising all things, honest
or dishonest, possible or impossible, and rivaling each other in pandering
to the meanest feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest part
of the crowd; under no despotism has there been such an organized system
of tillage for raising a rich crop of vicious courtiership (p. 204). The
ancient tradition that representatives are paid in honor and not in
money, was badly ruptured in 1911 when it was decided to give members of
the House of Commons a salary of £400 a year (p. 205), Salary payment
cannot fail to sap the independence of the assembly . . . Some observers
note a new spirit of submissiveness in Parliament since salaries were introduced
. . . It is certain that paid service to the public cannot compare
in dignity and independence with unpaid service (p. 206). In all legislative
assemblies, the greater the number composing them may be, the fewer will
be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings (p. 218). 'It is impossible
to legislate properly on any part without having the whole present to the
mind.' (Mill quoted at p. 228.) "
These quotations are
taken from RepresentativeGovernment (published
1925), by H. Ford, a professor in U.S.A.
“Outrageous
profiteering" (p.
213); “the
monstrous pay-roll of an American legislative assembly" (p. 214); log-rolling (p.
215); “a noisy
humbug and a costly sham" (p. 220); “Furtive manipulation for which
American procedure allows scandalous opportunities” (p. 231); “Distribution of personal favors”;.
. .“The
same miserable situation existsin mostcountries havingparliamentary institutions”;
. . . “blackmailing use
(of powers)” (p. 233); “passing the buck” (p. 234); "abominable abuse" (p.
236); " extorting personal favors "[Page
4] (p.
238); "systematic traffic in
legislation"; . . . "collection and sale of political influence"; . .
. " the whole
machinery of popular election of representatives is deeply corrupted" . .
. (p. 239); "members have been squared by private negotiations " (p. 242); . . . "dangerous exactions"... individualarrogance .
. .."men often oppose
a thing, merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or
because it may have been planned by those they dislike" (p. 244); "often
great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit,
and to the obstinacy of individuals" (p. 245); "Heavy . . .burden (of)
election expenses . . . English experience ... (of its) . . . demoralizing
effects upon . . . people" (p. 251); " Nursing a constituency " (p. 252); etc..
Such
are some of the expressions scattered broadcast over the pages of the same
book with reference to the U.S. American legislatures, and, in some instances,
the English and others.
Prof. Ford is not alone in his indictment. He
is only typical. Prof. Hearnshaw, [See quotations in Sir Sivaswamy Iyer’s Constitutional
Problems pub 1928] and many others,
have written and are writing to much the same effect. Bryce, in his work on
Modern Democracies (pub. 1921), written when he was about eighty years
of age, and had spent many decades in dealing with practical politics as a
high officer of State, describes and discusses conditions in many self-governing
countries, and points out, in fine language, similar grave defects in all,
in some more acute, in others less. He records how he once asked a prominent
U. S. American, in one of the States, "What sort of a legislature
have you got", and received the prompt reply, "As good as money can [Page
5] buy". Gettel,
in his Introduction to Political Science (Edition of 1922), a
recognized text-book, says, "At the present time the former confidence in
legislative bodies is somewhat declining " (p. 253) in all countries.
Miss Follett, in The
New State, [This book praised by Lord Haldane and
Prof Bosanquet, two competent judges catches glimpses of Indian
Metaphysics as applicable to the administration of human affairs] says
pithily, "Representative Government has failed" (p. 5, Edition of 1926).
Bryce lays
special stress on the fearful mischief caused by the prostitution of the public press
to false propaganda (II, 505). The Press, the greatest blessing of modern
times, the most extensive and intensive illuminator of the human mind, a
true light-bringer, is becoming the greatest
curse, the worst darkener and deceiver. Lucifer, "light-bringer", the
greatest and highest of the archangels, is "shooting beyond
the mark", and over-reaching himself, and falling, and being
transformed into the Prince of Evil and Darkness. "Electioneering claptrap" has become a byword. Professors
of political science, journalists, men of affairs, lawyers, officials, platform-speakers, even novelists,
all are inveighing against the corruption that pervades elections today, and
against the character and conduct of the resulting personnel of the
legislatures. Three questions that may be regarded as tests of
successful administration of a [Page
6]country
are — (1) Is the country
satisfied with its legislature? (2) Has it discovered the way of ascertaining
the vocational aptitudes of its youths ? (3) Is it prosperous; and if it
is, is it really self-sufficing, or does its prosperity depend, partly or
wholly, directly or indirectly, upon politico-economical exploitation of
some weaker country; and if it is really thus self-sufficing, does it control
the growth of its population or not ? A satisfactory answer is not available
as regards any country, so far as the present writer is aware. Merivale and
Gibbon, in their histories of Rome, repeatedly describe the gross malpractices
of the political and ecclesiastical elections that took place in the times
they deal with; so Macaulay in his history of England. Lord Haldane, with
ample experience of practical politics, in his Introduction to Miss
Follett's book above referred to, says:
"No
Government will be successful which does not rest on the individual on his
better side, and this . . . better side is to be reached neither by
sending more people to the poll, nor by sending them more
frequently (p.
xiv)."
More ominous and arresting
than all these quotations is the following extract from a publication more
up-to-date than all these and far more intimately concerned with India, viz.,
the Report (pub. 1928) of the All-Parties' Committee (also known as the Nehru
Committee, because the late great patriot of India, Pandit Motilal Nehru,
was its [Page
7] President)
prefixed to their Draft of the Swarãj Constitution of India.
"It is notorious that
even in highly democratic England, votes are given, not for matters of high
policy or considerations that are really important, but for trivial matters,
or even sometimes most objectionable considerations which the exigencies
of election-times force to the front — men, who were to
govern an empire and influence largely world-events, have been elected for
reasons which make every intelligent person despair of democracy (p.
37)."
For
comment upon this, consider the following quotation from George Bernard
Shaw. He is perhaps the most brilliant English author of the day, has reached
the venerable age of seventy-five years, has lived most of that time and
gathered mature experience of modern conditions and affairs in the busiest
centers of life, in Britain, "the hub of the universe", was one of
the founders of the famous Fabian Society nearly half a century ago, and
has been working for social and political reform ever since. The result of
all this experience he has put into a large book, published in 1928, called "The
Intelligent Roman'sGuide to Socialismand Capitalism".
Near the end of the book he arrives at this deliberate conclusion:
"If
democracy is not to ruin us we must at all costs find some trustworthy
method of testing the qualifications of candidates before we allow them
to seek election. When we have done that, we may have great trouble in
persuading the right people to come forward. We may even be driven to
compel them; for those who fully understand how heavy are the
responsibilities of government and how exhausting its labor are the least
likely[Page
8]to
shoulder them voluntarily. As Plato said, the ideal candidate is the reluctant
one (pp. 454-5)."[Some sixteen hundred years
after Plato, Sa’ãdî the famous Persian poet repeated the
same sentiment which, again Vyãsa had embodied twenty-five hundred
years before Plato, in the Mahãbhãrata, in telling the
story of The Origin of the King (Shãnte-parva, ch 66). Sa’ãdî says,
Pand agar bishnawî, ai pãdishãh! Dar hama ãlam beh az în pand n-îst, Juz
ba khirad-mand ma farmã amal, Gar
che amal kãr-e khirad-mand n-îst.
“If for wise maxim, ruler! art asearch In all the world there’s none wiser than this – Let only righteous wisdom office hold, Though to hold office is indeed not wise!”]
The decency and propriety of feeling some reluctance
to take up delicate and difficult work is so natural, and is such an obvious proof of the worthy possession
of a keen sense of responsibility, that where it is not really felt, it is thought fit that persons should
at least affect it! The Speaker of the British House of Commons had, until recently, to be pushed along
by his friends, as part of the ceremonial, after his election, from his seat to the Speaker's Chair, resisting
and shaking his shoulders, as sign of unwillingness ! (See MacDonagh's The Pageant of Parliament.) Percontra,
"fools rush in where angels fear to tread", and, it must be confessed, sometimes muddle through, also!
Thus after a full course of modernism, Mr. Shaw begins
to see good in Plato's ideal prince-philosopher. Another Greek, a couple of centuries [Page
9]older than Plato, viz., Lycurgus (as reported by-Plutarch),
actually worked a scheme of ephors, the "best and wisest", for the Spartan Senate. In other words, Mr.
Shaw says that (1) electees, i.e., the persons who are elected, should be possessed of certain qualifications,
(2) there should be tests for ascertaining the possession of them, and (3) there should be means of persuading
the possessors to undertake the onerous duties of legislation.
But Mr. Shaw makes
no suggestion on
these all-important points at all. Nor does any of the other persons referred
to above. Ford makes only the negative suggestion "that the representatives
shall be so circumstanced that they can use their authority only on public
account" (p, 158); "the only
real security is that obtained by establishing such conditions that whoever
is elected, good or bad, will have to behave himself properly" (p. 202); and
it all comes to this that representatives should have "no power to vote to
their own use offices and appropriations" (p. 203). This is sound but very
insufficient. It does not, by itself, ensure actively and positively wise and
beneficent legislation, promotive of public welfare at all. At most, it reduces
the motives for the vicious to get into the legislature. It does not abolish
all unworthy motives altogether. And it provides no inducements or facilities
for the worthy and un-self-seeking to go in. The crux remains: How ensure
that Swa-rãj shall be the rãj of the higher Swa and [Page
10] not of the
lower, that self-government shall be government, i.e.,
legislation, by thehigherSelf of the people, their best, wisest, most
selfless, most philanthropic individuals, ("the better side", in the quotation
from Haldane, above) and not by the astute schemers and self-seekers who
are part of its lowerself. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
said, on an appropriate occasion, that "good government is no substitute
for self-government," the saying sounded very well. But it is even
more true that self-government which is not also good government,
which is bad government, which is government by the lower
self of the people, is not true self-government at all, and may be worse
and less desirable than a good foreign government. How to make self-government
coincide with good government is the problem — to
vary the words of Ford. Legislation is the heart of government. Good and
wise legislation must be secured above everything else. Efficient and honest
execution of the laws will also be provided for by such legislation.
The power of making the laws is, ultimately, the sovereign power. The
person who has that power also knows how to provide forgetting his laws
duly executed. If he does not, the power of making laws will not rest
long in his hands.
Therefore has it been
said above that the extract from the All-Parties Committee's Report is of
very grave and very ominous import to India. The Committee have called up
an imminent prospect of [Page
11] despair; and
have no more offered suggestions for warding it off than Messrs. G.
B. Shaw and the others. India's own actual experience of elections of the
modern style, in the last decade, has amply shown how unscrupulously
elections are steered, how all the four devices of diplomacy, exhaustively
ascertained by the ancient Indian science of politics, viz., sãma, dãna, danda, bheda,
cajoling, bribery, intimidation, and division (divide etimpera), are employed by candidates, and vast amounts of money are
spent in debasing and demoralizing all concerned.
Do the traditions,
the genius, the ancient spirit of India, offer any solution ?
In what has gone before,
an attempt has been made to show that western writers themselves confess
that western self-governments have failed to solve the crucial problem of
how to secure the combination of high degrees of both intellectual as
well as ethical fitness in their legislators, though such
combination is vitally necessary for true and successful self-government.
"Whether
or not it be true that in European countries the intellectual level of
legislative assemblies has been sinking, it is clear that nowhere does
enough of that which is best in the character and talent of
the nation, find its way into those assemblies" (II, 373). (Yet) "Mazzini
described democracy as the progress of all through all under the leading
of the best
and wisest, (and said that) Authority is sacred only when consecrated
by
Genius and Virtue" (II, 609). "Two dangers threaten . . . all modern
democracies. One is the tendency to allow self-interest to grasp the
machinery of governments [Page
12] and turn that machinery to
ignoble deeds. The other is the . . . dissemination by the printed word, of
untruths and fallacies and incitements to violence, which we have learnt to
call propaganda " (II, 505).[Self-interest is obviously the opposite of
Virtue and Propaganda the perversion of Genius] "Philosophers . . . though
they knew that a state needs uprightness and public spirit as well
as intellect in
the rulers, . . . never succeeded in showing how the possessors
of those qualities are to be found and chosen" (II, 604). Bryce, ModernDemocracies.
In the Preface to
his latest book, The Apple Cart, (pub. 1930), Mr. G. B.
Shaw says:
" What
I should like is a real test of their capacity (i.e.,
of the candidates for election) . . . The election addresses convey nothing
whatever to me as to their character or politicalcapacity .
. . What I am waiting for is the discovery of a process by which wecan
ascertain what is right (or wrong)
with him mentally . . . When everything has been done that can be done,
civilisation will still be dependent on the consciences of the governors
and the governed . . . We have been badly brought up, and are full of anti-social
personal ambitions and prejudices and snobberies. Had we not better
teachour children to be better citizens than ourselves ? We
are not doing that at present. The Russians are. That is my last word.
Think over it." (pp.
xxii-xxiv).
- 2 - EASTERN THOUGHT
Have the Indian sages
of long ago thought over it ? Have they already discovered the process for
the discovery of which Mr. Shaw is waiting, and which their unfortunate descendants
have forgotten now for many centuries ?[Page
13]
Have the ancient Indian
philosophers succeeded in doing what, according to Bryce, Western philosophers
have not ? And have they also told us how to teach and what to teach to
our children so as to make certain that they will find, persuade, and elect
only the good and the wise to the legislatures, so that the laws made shall
be good and wise ?
The
Veda is the sacred scripture of the Indian Âryans in theory; but,
in practice, Manu-Smrti is the basis of their socio-politico-religious
polity and civilization. It deals with all departments of the people's life
in the course of twelve chapters. Near the end of the twelfth chapter, it says:
"The final secret,
the fundamental principle, of this Human Science, this Code of Life expounded
by Manu, is this — when situations arise for which
the current available laws are not helpful, and which call for new legislation,
then what the honored and trusted men of knowledge and experience, the
good and wise elders, possessed of tapasya and vidyã, self-denial and
learning, virtue and genius, decide to be right and proper
to do, that shall be the law " (xii, 104-108).
Thus is
the principle of living legislation laid down by the ancient Smrti.
And it goes on to describe the qualifications and marks of "the good and wise
elders". Manu's injunctions on this point have to be supplemented by the
discourses of others, Vyãsa, Shukra, Yajñavalkya, etc..
Briefly,
(1) the
legislators shouldnot be very manyin numbers; a minimum
of ten, or three, or in emergencies, even of one, is mentioned, but the [Page
14]one must
be a thoroughly and widely trusted person, full of wisdom, i.e.,
knowledge of human nature plus philanthropy, adhyãtma-vit-tamah;
large numbers, "even tens of thousands", of unwise individuals cannot
make good laws (Manu, ch. xii; Yãjñavalkya, i, 9).
For comment on this consider the following. J. S. Mill says:
"No
government of a democracy or a numerous aristocracy . . . ever did or could
rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign many have let
themselves be guided, which in their best time they have always done, by
the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed one
or few."
Though
the full complements of the English Houses of Lords and Commons are over six hundred each, yet
the quorum for the former is only three, and for the latter, forty. Also,
as the published reports show, the active debaters and deliberators, the
real law-makers, are to be counted on the fingers, and are almost all grey-haired,
well past middle age, or even white-haired and old, i.e., possessed
of mature experience. The remaining hundreds are there only for kudos,
or sport, or the intellectual
pleasure of hearing good debates, or delivering brilliant talk and smart repartee
and witty retort and slashing attack, etc., or for high life and fine company
and the delights of " the best club in the world", or for ulterior purposes
and grinding axes and feathering nests, etc. — all which motives may
have their play elsewhere, but surely have no natural place in a law-making
assembly, [Page
15] which
should be composed of "grave and reverend seigneurs", large-minded and large-hearted patriarchs
of the nation. Some departments of the executive services are the proper place for the
utilization of the other motives.
Manu's dictum may be
illustrated by another very modern writer.
"The secret of sound
administration is a knowledge of the particular facts of the general method
of human behavior" (i.e., psychology, adhyãtma-vidyã)
". As
Anatole France says, “sovereignty resides in science, and not in
the people. Foolishness repeated by thirty-six million mouths is none the
less foolishness". George E. G. Cutlin, The Science and Method of Politics,
p. 348 (pub. 1927).
(2) The
law-makers should be such persons as are already widely trustedand honored, are known to be possessedof self-denial andexperience,
which two together constitute the title to trust and honor, and invariably
do secure them. The principle of selection and election by the people is
embodied here. It is not enough for a person to be good and wise and
unselfish. He must be recognized as such by the people. The rule of
decision by the majority, Mahã-janoyenagatahsapanthãh, “The
proper way is that which the majority follows", and the rule of legislation
by the few, are reconciled in this way; the majority decide which few shall
make the law. In Mill's words, they “let themselves be guided by a gifted
one or few ". The Samskrt word puro-hita etymologically means “he who
has been put forward, placed in [Page
16]front, selected
and elected as
guide and leader, for the performance of all religio-legal actions whereby
the good of the people is promoted “
The
ways of ascertaining the opinion of the people may have been different in
the olden days, but the principle and its application in practice, in some
form or other, were there. The old way was to look at a person's whole past
life and work; the modern way is to look at his hundred rantings and stump
orations in the course of a whirlwind campaign of a few weeks and at his
offerings of liquor, refreshments, and cash.
(3) “The
king, the head of the executive, shall be ruler over the people, but the puro-hita,
the legislature, shall be ruler over the king."
In other words, the
legislature shall control the executive; and the two functions shall not
be combined.
(4) The
legislature and the king's counselors shall consist ofrepresentatives of the various sciences, and of the main
vocationalsections of the People, the Society, the Social
Organization.
(Manu, xii; Mahãbhãrata, Shãnti-parva,
ch. 85; Shukra-nîti, chas,
i and ii, 166, 167; also Vãlmîki’s Rãmãyana, Bãla-kãnda,
ch 7) [Page
17]
Manu prominently mentions representation of the three first orders of
society, viz.,
the student, the householder, and the publicist retired from household life
(i.e., the vãna-prastha, who has ceased from competitive
bread-winning and money-making and spends his time and resources in unremunerated
public work, yajña-s, pious works of various kinds and self-sacrificing
charities, and study of the inner sciences. Vyãsa lays stress on the
representation of the four main vocations of society, the four natural
and inevitable estates of every civilized realm:
“Four
men of learning, especially versed in medical science, human psychology
and physiology, eighteen men of action, versed in the arts of executive
administration and of war, twenty-one men of agriculture and trade, of
business and finance of all kinds, three men of labor, and one person at
least who should be specially versed in history; and all should be of pure
character and of mature age."
That the West is slowly
advancing towards what is being variously called
functional or occupational or vocational representation,
in place of an indiscriminate universal franchise without any of the very
greatlyneeded
guidance to the electors whom to elect, is indicated by such. statements of
western writers as the following:
“At
present most political issues are economic in nature, and parties represent
common interests in occupations. . . . The landed classes, the
capitalists, the labor party, the socialists, free silverites, and similar
groupings, are typical." (Gettell, Political Science, p. 291) [Page
18]
“Neighborhood and occupational
groups, either independently or one through the other, must both find representation
in the State." (Follett, The New State, p. 321.)
The
first three, if “the learned classes" were added to them, would
obviously correspond with the four vocational classes (varnas)
of ancient India (before the days of perversion into rigidly hereditarycaste];
and the others would all go as sub-divisions under the main four. It may also
be noted that most of the legislatures of the West today consist of two houses,
and, very broadly speaking, the Upper House consists of representatives of
the men of learning and the men of action (the higher clergy and the
nobility in England), and the lower, of those of men of business (capitalists)
and men of labor. In the technical terms of psychology, these four would be
called, men and women (1) of knowledge, (2) of action, (3) of (wealth-making)
desire, and (4) of undifferentiated, mostly unskilled, labor. Thelegislator should have done good work in any one of the multifarious walks
of life, which form the sub-divisions of the above main four vocations, and
should haveearned a good name for uprightness, helpfulness, and
philanthropic public spirit (Mbh, Shãnti, Ch. 83), This
implies that he should be fairlyadvanced in years. Shukra-nîti (ii,
166, 167) mentions ripe age
expressly among other qualifications.
The TaittirîyaUpanishat
also supplements Manu on this point. [Page 19]
When there
is a doubt as to what is the right course, then the course prescribed and followed by
the wise men who are just and impartial-minded, not actuated by any partisan-feeling, same-sighted,
gentle of nature, tolerant and not bigoted, law-abiding, dharma-loving,
thoughtful, renowned, looked to by the people for guidance, regarded and appointed,
elected, ãyukta, as counselors by the people — the
course advised by such shall be the lawful course.
(5) Smrtis say
that makers of and advisers on law shall not sell it, shall not
be dharma-vikrayî-s. If follows implicitly that they should not
go about canvassing, begging that people should receive the law from them.
It is curious that the legal practitioner is punished for employing touts,
which is the same thing as canvassing, while the would-be legislator is encouraged
in doing so.
On the question of
payments to legislators, Plato says:
Good men do not wish
to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of hirelings,
nor by secretly helping themselves out of the public revenues to get the
name of thieves (Republic, Jowett's
translation, Clarendon Press, 3rd Edition, p. 25).
On the subject of canvassing,
his opinion is that
The ruler who is good
for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him. . . The pilot
should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him .. . neither are
the wise to go to the doors of the rich. When a man is ill, whether he is
rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who wants to be governed,
to him who is able to govern (p. 186).
Of course,
modern conditions, with huge states, some extending over millions of square miles, and comprising
hundreds of millions of inhabitants, are [Page
20]different from those of Plato's
tiny city states; and men not rich in cash, representing distant parts,
might find it impossible to meet even the mere traveling expenses from their
private purse; but while the outer conditions may be different, human nature
continues to be very much the same. Ford's views have been quoted before.
Mill was strongly against money payment to legislators. Bryce says:
“Wherever
rich men abound, the power of money is formidable in elections and in the
press, and corruption more or less present. I will not say that wherever
there is money there will be corruption, but true it is that Poverty and
Purity go together. The two best administered democracies in the modern
world have been the two poorest, the Orange Free State before 1899" (which
seems to be a commentary on the benefits accruing to Boerland from its absorption
by the British Empire) “and the Swiss
Confederation . . . The rise of a large class of professional politicians must
be expected if largesalaries are paid to representatives . .
. Such a class grows in proportion to the work party organizations have to
do, and patronage is misused for party purposes wherever lucrative posts or
so-called honors are at the disposal of a party executive" (II, 503). “Of
these faults ... (1) the power of money to pervert administration or legislation,
(2) the tendency to make politics a gainful profession, (3) extravagance in
administration . . . have been observed in all governments, though the
forms of all three are now different, and their consequences moreserious
(II, 504). ModernDemocracies.
MODERN
DEMOCRACIES
The solution
of the dilemma, suggested by the principles indicated in the
Smrtis, seems to be that ex-officio expenses, of traveling, housing,
etc.,
[Page 21] should
be paid from the public state funds, but no cash salaries or allowances or
personal expenses; such personal expenses, if absolutely necessary, as when
the electee happens to be a genuine ascetic vowed to poverty, may be borne
by friends and electors, or defrayed by public subscriptions and honoraria,
with honor redounding to both; [Foot-note to p. 21: Plutarch's Lives contain a few instances
approximating to these conditions. In our own day, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, first Laborite Premier of England,
was once charged by political opponents, large of purse and very small of mind, with having accepted an
expensive motor-car from some one. He was triumphantly vindicated by a public statement that the car had been
lent to him, by a friend, for use during his tenure of office, because he was too poor to buy one for himself,
and too incapable of doing on foot all the running about which a Premier had to do unavoidably] and, finally, that, as inducement to
shoulder the burden and do his best, distinctive honor should be paid to the legislator as
such; while power, in the sense of official authority, should be entrusted
to the (mostly salaried) executive, with responsibility to the legislature; and wealth as
such, and until spent to the extent of self-sacrifice on public and charitable
works, should be expressly and specifically, by public law, ranked below honor, which should rank first,
and power, which should rank second.
It will be found on scrutiny that human instinct has always ranked these
three in this order, and is doing so today; but, because the psychology
of the subject has been lost sight of, therefore it is done in an utterly
imperfect and ineffective manner. That which nature itself indicates as right
and proper, has only to be clearly recognized and regularized, in order to
influence the administration of human affairs beneficially.
If this gradation and partition (i.e., comparative separation) of the
four great prizes of life, honor, power (or authority), wealth, and amusement, is [Page
22]made by public law (as also of the four main kinds of livelihood)
between the four types of social workers, the indispensable sufficient personal or individualistic incentive
to good work will be provided, on the one hand, and, on the other, the temptation to abuse and misuse of
the four (i.e., of honor by “trading on reputation" to obtain the other three, of power by
oppression of the weak to secure the other three, of wealth by bribery to purchase the other three, of amusement
by excess and dissipation to ruin all, soul and body) will be minimized. It will make the prostitution
of any one for the gain of the other three almost impossible, or, at least, very difficult.
If this is done, and
the suggestions of the old Smrtis, embodying the genius, the spirit, the
individuality, the traditions of India, are utilized duly, it will be found
that the three problems, in the terms of Mr. G. B. Shaw, of (1) qualifications,
(2) tests, (3) persuasives, are all capable of satisfactory solution.[ For
a more systematic application of the suggestions to modern Indian conditions,
the reader may refer to the text and the appendix of the
OutlineScheme ofSwarãj published by Deshabandhu
C. R. Das and the undersigned in 1923. The speech of the undersigned, in support
of a motion of amendment, re qualifications of legislators, made on
the last day of the sessions of the All-Parties Convention at Calcutta (from
22-12-1928 to 1-1-1929) and published as an Appendix to the Report of the
Proceedings of the Convention supplies some details and comments on
some of the points touched on in the text above. Some (revised) extracts
from it are given in an Appendix to this pamphlet][Page 23]
Unfortunately,
the insane communal disputes that have been and are occupying and disturbing all minds
in unhappy India; the fetish of
practicalism which obsesses most of the educated-minds that are
engaged in the work of political reform — practicalism in different
yet allied forms, “Let us not talk in the air", “Don't indulge in impatient idealism". “We don't
want doctrinaire philosophizing", “Don't look too far ahead", “One step
enough for me", “Enough for the day is the evil thereof”, “A bird in
the hand is worth two in the bush", etc.; the glamour of western political
and economic words and methods, and of legal phrases and conventional
maxims, drawing unjustifiable sustenance and power from the misused
realities and results of western science — “the nations which have
aeroplanes and submarines and machine-guns and devastating explosives
must also necessarily have sound political and economic and legal maxims
and practices and arrangements — even though they have all been trying
very hard to cut each other's throats very recently, and are still looking
askance and growling at each other" [ By the way, this fact should suggest
the desirability of making Japan suzerain over all the nations of Europe,
including Britain, to keep the peace between them, to those British
politicians who are always repeating that the British alone can and are
keeping the peace between Hindû and Muslim in India, out of pure
philanthropy ! Many honest English writers have stated that the British
policy has itself been all along that of divideet impera, instead.] the feeling that [Page
24] enslaved
India's past can have no lessons to give except by contrast, a feeling strengthened
by the awful retrogressiveness, the crass narrow-mindedness, the blind self-seekings
of the orthodox Pandits and Maulavis and professional religio-political leaders; the lack, on the part
of many, perhaps most, of the active and prominent political workers of the country, of deep and sympathetic
study of the ancient Samskrt and Arabic-Persian literature; the consequent impatient rejection
of the sound, together with the worn-out or corrupt, ideas of the East, and
the hasty acceptance of and obsession by the bad, together with the good, ideas
of the West; and, almost more than all else the exigencies of the rush and
hustle of day-to-day politics; — these leave no inclination and no energy
to Indian political leaders to take the trouble of thinking out a comprehensive
scheme based on long as well as broad views; no wish and no time to “go
to the root of the matter" and find out the solution of the political crux,
and so combine active forward movement with a deeply thought-out philosophy
of the movement, looking before as well as after, and aiming at a high ideal
always through the daily practical.
The terrible welter of isms in the modern West, from individualism and
Fascism, through socialism, State-socialism, guild-socialism, collectivism, and communism of many kinds, to
the culmination [Page 25]in Bolshevism — which,
incidentally, seems to be taking new shapes and turns every year, if not every month — all this ferment
is only the endeavor of the Human Oversoul to arrive at a new and better organization of society. The endeavor
is not succeeding, because men persistently ignore certain deep-seated facts and laws of human psychology.
It appears laughably absurd for any son of “ India in Bondage" to suggest that the traditions of such
a fallen India had in the past reconciled all these isms by taking due cognisance of those facts and
laws, and embodied them in a social polity, which though it is the best practical combination of individualism
and socialism, has now become the laughing-stock of the world, because of the terrible perversion of the whole
system from the basis of karma to that of janma, of elastic spontaneousvariation to
rigid hidebound heredity, and the permeation of it by a fatuous, reasonless, idiotic touch-me-not-ism.
COMBINATION
OF OLD AND NEW THOUGHT
If modern thinkers
could apply the old theory to practice, with modifications suited to the
new conditions, they would probably find many of their difficulties solved.
History shows that the only sound practice is that which
is based upon sound theory . Art and craft without science [Page
26]behind
them are shaky rule of thumb. Medical practice without knowledge of
anatomy and physiology and many other sciences is quackery. So political
practice without knowledge of the psychology and philosophy of human
nature is the most mischievous and dangerous charlatanism and
chicanery.
Individualism and socialism
are both necessary. Individual and society, I
and We, are both obviously indispensable to each other. To suppress
either is inevitably to suppress the other also. Absolute equality,
homogeneity, is to be found only in pralaya, chaos. A cosmos means
heterogeneity, differentiation, inequality.
Sãmyampralayah, vaishamyamsrshtih. “Sameness
is world-disappearance, world-slumber, dissolution, unconsciousness; Difference
is world-reappearance, world-waking, evolution, consciousness". So says
ancient Sañkhya. So say modern Herbert Spencer and all the evolutionists
and scientists? Human beings are not equal but different in psycho-physical
temperaments. If they were equal, they would have to be made unequal, to make
life interesting enough to be tolerable, at this stage of human evolution.
A soul that experiences the parental and the filial as well as the fraternal
emotions is spiritually at least three times (in reality very many more times)
richer than one which knows the fraternal only. Mere equality without seniority [Page
27]and juniority, superiority
and inferiority, would soon become very monotonous and dull. Excess of equality
and sameness as well as of inequality has to be avoided, as far as possible.
As said before, there are four main types of temperaments. The main
functions of a socio-political organism are correspondingly four: (1)
education, (2) protection, (3) nourishment by wealth-production, (4)
assistance of the other three by comparatively little skilled labor. The
main prizes or luxuries of life are four: (1) honor, (2) power, (3) wealth, i.e.,
artistic possessions, and (4) play and amusement. The main ways of
livelihood, of earning a living, are four:
(1) public and private honoraria; (2) taxes, tributes,
public salaries; (3) agriculture, dairy-farming, cattle-rearing,trades
and industries of all kinds; (4) ample
living wage, housing, recreation. [See Manu,
IV, 1-13; X 74-130]
These means
of living should be partitioned between the four types,
thereby ensuring that the minimum necessaries of life, food, clothing,
housing, etc., should be secured to all. And the four luxuries too should
be
partitioned equitably between the four temperments and types of workers
between whom the social labor should be divided, so as to act as
incentives to each to put forth his or her best for the promotion and
refinement of civilisation and the general welfare. So also each. [Page
28] individual life should
be organized and regularly divided into the four
stages into which nature already divides it: (1) student, living and studying
at the expense of parents and society at large; (2) bread-winning,
competing, social-labor-sharing householder; (3), un-remunerated
publicist; and (4) hermit, anchorite, religieux, renunciant, preparing
for the larger life beyond this life, and helping society by prayer and blessing
and the potent example of a well-lived life.
These general
principles are of use and applicability in any and every form of government, and any
and every form of social organization. The most benevolent despotism cannot
help its subjects better and make them happier than by imposing some such
arrangement upon them. And the most extreme form of communistic Bolshevism
which still remains helplessly the Peasants, Soldiers and (a) brain,
and b) muscle) Workers' Soviet", (i.e., the same four main vocational
types, again) will also achieve the end of securing the greatest happiness
of the greatest number by utilizing these principles — and will secure
equality also, but in the sense of equitable partition of the luxuries of
life, which are the only, the best, the strongest incentives to hard
and effective and high-class work. Even Bolshevik Russia requires educators
and scientists, and in very large numbers. The idea of attracting the best
in sufficient numbers by [Page
29] giving them attractively high
pay — does
not pay! There is not money enough. And more, those who are attracted
by money are not good enough real scientists and real educators; they are
only moneymakers ! The small cash-pay necessary for necessaries must be eked
out with honor-pay. So
soldiers and captains and generals are needed, and also executive
policemen and magistrates and administrators of various kinds. As in
comparatively poor Japan, which cannot afford to pay high salaries, like
plutocratic U. S. A. and Britain, to its public servants, they have to
be satisfied with the power of authority besides the not more
than necessary pay. So leaders and guides and managers of wealth-production
are needed. Bolshevik Russia, too, despite vaunted equality, and abolition
of private property, etc., finds itself compelled to take the help of foreign
capitalist concessionaires (“men of acquisitive desire" with special natural
talents for producing, managing, accumulating wealth of all
kinds, principally necessaries, and in the next degree other consumable
goods) on the terms of these latter, and let them make money. And it is
doing all this with a very ill grace, a very evil grace, with a great deal
of confusion and dissatisfaction and oppression of and misery to the people
(even according to the most favorable reports) — because it
does not recognize what nature, human nature, is loudly shouting in its
ears; because it has
not solved the crucial [Page
30] problem of politics, governs
by means of a Presidium, i.e., a clique, a cabal, a caucus, or even
by a single dictator, and has not secured, by any well-thought out and
permanently and easily working method, genius plus virtue, character plus talent,
intellectual plus ethical fitness, goodness plus experienced knowledge, selflessness plus wisdom,
uprightness and public spirit plus ability, for its legislature.[ What is written about Russia
is based on the very imperfect and unreliable information which is available in India, and must be
regarded as subject to correction]
It is by
no means impossible to utilize the solution suggested here, even when society
is not regularly, but only instinctively and more or less imperfectly,
organized, as it is in all countries today. But if the individual life
as well as the social life were organized, ordered, planned out, as above
suggested, in accordance with Manu's views, [See
the present writer’s The Science of Social Organization, or The Laws of
Manu ] and as it is intended by nature to be, then there would always be
available, ready at hand, a more than sufficient number of amply qualified
persons in “the third stage" of life, to supply all demands for honorary workers of the
finest qualifications, ethical as well as intellectual, for the performance of the highest kind of legislative,
advisory, supervisory, judicial, arbitrational, and similar other public work.
In the setting of a regulated social organization, as very broadly
indicated [Page
31] above,
the crucial problem of political science and art would be solved of itself,
because a sufficient number of the best type of legislators would always
be available among individuals in the third stage of life, retired from competitive
bread-winning or money-making, looking upon the whole community with the
benevolent eyes of patriarchal helpfulness (which all-embracing kindness of
feeling is not possible to one still engaged in competition), full of the sense
of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, possessed of full experience of some
one important department of the national life, of knowledge of human nature
through having reared a family in the midst of other families, of necessary
leisure, of good name and fame and the trust and confidence of a large circle
of fellow-countrymen, free of economic dependence and free also of
dependents which and who confuse the mind, and able to bring mature
judgment and benevolent wisdom to bear on all questions of public welfare
in such a way as to preserve a due balance between and give just help and
promotion to all right interests, a due balance of power between all the
classes within each nation, or, rather, each people — a gentler, sweeter,
more humane word.
WHAT
AND HOW TO TEACH ?
The
prime condition — and this is the answer to the very important query,
What to teach and How to [Page
32] teach
it to our children? — for the
ushering in of such a millennium, for the establishment of the Kingdom of
Heaven on Earth, the essence of which is Legislation by the Good and
Wise — the prime condition is that in school and college, [For the kind
of educator needed, see the present writer’s The Science of Social
Organization, ch iii, “The Problems of Education”] and The
Unity of All Religions, the section on “Education and the Educationist”.
through press, from platform, the peoples of the earth, children and
adults, young and old, men and women, should have it persistently and
perpetually instilled into their hearts, (1) that Self-Government, spiritual
as well as political, individual as well as social, domestic as well
as economic, in the home as well as the factory, the place of business
as well as the law court, in a train and on a ship, is government by
the Higher Self, the God in Man, and not by the Lower Self, the Devil
in Man; (2) that the persons in whose hearts and minds the Higher Self
reigns may be recognized by such and such marks, the outer symbols of
the inner grace, and (3) that Human Society, and also each Individual
Life, should be organized in accordance with a few plain and simple psychological
principles, to give free play to that Higher Self.
[Page 33]
APPENDIX
Who
should be Legislators ?
“Very
much thought has been given, in the west, to the qualifications of the
elector, mainly in the direction of making them less and less exacting,
in order to make the franchise wider and wider. But none has been given,
so far as I am aware, to the special qualifications needed by the electees,
though the work of making good laws is very delicate and difficult, and
requires much looking before and after, much knowledge of causes and
effects, much knowledge of human nature and human requirements. The
qualifications of the elector matter very little; those of the electee, very
much. Yet the choosing of the persons who are to make the far-reaching
laws which will make or mar the happiness of the country is left to the
unguided discretion of a vast mass of people, who are not only not
instructed rightly whom to choose, but are often deliberately misguided,
with vast abuse of power and wealth, during the election days, to choose
wrongly; and are misguided in a manner which corrupts the morale of the
electors as well as the future legislators, creates lasting and bitter personal
enmities, aggravates and perpetuates class-hatreds, and promotes vicious
legislation.
To obviate this evil
as far as is humanly possible, and provide a safeguard against the dread
despair portended in the All-Parties Committee's Report, I venture to propose
the following amendment:
The Amendment
That the following
clauses be added . . .
(Clause 1). Every
candidate for election shall be possessed of qualifications as below:
(a) He shall represent
one or another of the following main functions of Society, viz.,
(1) Advancement of Science and Learning, or (2) Executive work, or (3) Production
of wealth, or (4) Labor;
(b) He shall have
done good work in some walk of life and earned a reputation for uprightness
and public spirit, and be not less than forty years of age. [Page
34]
(c) He shall have sufficient
leisure for the work of the Legislature, and, preferably, if not necessarily,
have retired from bread-winning or money-making business.
(Clause 2). Canvassing,
directly or indirectly, beyond the putting forth of a statement of the candidates
qualifications by his nominators, shall be regarded as a disqualification.
(Clause 3).
No member of the legislature shall receive any cash remuneration for his work as such
member, but all ex-officio expenses
of travelling, housing, etc., shall be paid to every member out of the public
Treasury, and special marks of honour shall be given to him.
These clauses are calculated
to ensure that all the four main natural classes of every civilised society,
all the four principal functions of every social organism, are duly represented;
that the worthiest and most experienced persons, ethically and intellectually,
of each class go into the legislature; and that those who go in do so under
conditions which make their work one, not of personal ambition for power
or place or preference, or of profit or privilege or pastime, or for display
of cleverness and smartness and oratorical brilliance, but of onerous and
dutiful and patriarchal service of the public, for which the only, and sufficient,
recompense is public honor. One objection, very natural, may be dealt with.
How Will you make sure, who will make sure, that these qualifications are
or are not possessed by any given person ? How will this portion of the law
be enforced ? How will it be applied ?
I submit that at least some of the clauses of the very important section 4, relating
to Fundamental Rights, are open to similar objections. A Constitution which is the root and source and basis
of all future laws, is somewhat different in nature from those laws. We need not try to make sure that each
of its provisions is enforceable in the same way as ordinary laws. Even these are never completely enforceable.
Crime exists abundantly despite penal codes. And, in any and every case, much has always to be left to the
discretion and honesty of [Page 35]those
who have to carry out those laws. Indeed it may well be said that the law means, ultimately, the discretion,
or the caprice, of the law-interpreter and law-applier. The letter of the law is the same for all judges, yet
one has the reputation of being a hanging judge, another an acquitting judge, a third a hair-splitting judge,
a fourth a fact-seeking judge, a fifth an upright, independent, conscientious judge, a sixth an indolent, submissive,
concurring judge, a seventh an outright corrupt and dishonest judge.
But a Constitution
is created by an agency, and in a manner, different from that by, and in,
which ordinary laws are created. It is not an Act of Legislation but an Act
of Self-Manifestation, s v a y a m-b h a v a n a, an Act of the initial Self-creation
of a State; or, in the words of some western writers on political science,
an Act of Revolution. It initially creates the very agency by which laws
will be made, and also that by which they will be executed. In the case of
provisions like those of the amendment, the executive agency will be the
good sense of the electorate itself, as a whole, and not any particular salaried
public servants. After all, the ultimate sanction of a Constitution's provisions,
as a whole, must always remain the intelligence and will-force of the people,
as a whole, which created it. A Constitution embodies the people's ideals
of organised socio-political life. It is a great human document of moral
culture even more than of legal maxims. It embodies the spiritual quality
and aspirations of the people who frame and adopt and declare it. And spirituality
and moral culture are far more necessary, far more valuable, far more directly
efficient for general human happiness, than any penal code.
Let us, then, embody
in our constitution, this ideal of the ethical as well as the intellectual
worthiness of the legislator, the final trustee and guardian of the people's
happiness. At the very least, such embodiment will keep the ideal constantly
before the electors. It will serve as a beacon light to guide them. It will
most effectively give them the very quintessence of that political education
which is most needed, and is also most readily assimilable, by the great
bulk of the people, viz., how to [Page
36] choose
rightly. Gradually the ideal will infiltrate into their hearts. They will
instinctively begin to choose the right kind of representatives, who will
be experienced in one or another of the sets of duties and functions of the
four natural and inter-dependent estates of every civilised and prosperous
realm, like the four natural and interdependent parts of the living human
body, and who will also, at the same time, be selfless, public-spirited,
philanthropic, and will, therefore frame with anxious care, laws which will
promote the welfare of all sections of the people, which will organise
society so thoughtfully and skilfully that, as far as is humanly possible,
every human being included in it shall have enough food, enough clothing,
enough education, enough family life, enough suitable work, and enough
recreation.
And
as physical supply follows physical demand in the domain of economics,
so will psycho-ethical supply follow psycho-ethical demand in that of politics.
More and more such persons, worthy to become legislators, will be produced
by the nation which wants them, wishes for them, steadily, earnestly, in
the depths of its soul."
