A Page from History : America & Russia

Prof GR Malkani
Vinoba Bhave, who toured Telengana, reports that he found  more bhakti among the communised peasantry of Telengana than perhaps anywhere else in the country.
Does that not show that spiritualism is compatible with communism?
Communists are never known to take the name of God. Our peasantry is illiterate. Once it becomes literate and reads communist literature, that will be the end of their religion.  A person who takes the name of god cannot shoot people or forcibly dispossess them. Take away violence and revolutionary methods from communism, and communism collapses. Social justice is not their speciality.

Does communism preclude spiritualism?
We can only judge communism in this matter by its theory and its practice. About practice, there are hardly two opinions. Age-long privileges cannot be removed the meek way but only the violent way. The communists have no respect for means, and their end is merely the leveling of all classes. As to theory, there can be two opinions. But the general tendency leaves us in no doubt  that communism is essentially materialistic. It is materialistic in the new sense or in its interpretation of history. History is nothing but the struggle for power between classes for the exploitation of economic forces in their own favour. It is a view opposed to the Christian view according  to which history has a spiritual goal. It is a view which is also opposed to the Hindu view. According to the Hindu view, there is a revelation from above (Sruti and Smriti) which reveals the Moral Law that  should govern society. It is the moral law or dharma that alone can hold society together and sustain it. Communism has replaced spiritual values by secular or economic values.
Is the USA competent to lead the world against Communism?
If there is any single nation strong enough to meet the challenge to communism, it is USA Think or Europe without the aid of USA. Think of Europe without the aid of USA think of Europe without the aid of USA. Russia would not hesitate to over-run the whole of Europe in  no time.
Nothing can stop communism in any quarter of the world except the fear that the whole might of the USA will be thrown in the balance against it. And Communism knows it. It denounces America more than any other free country.
Do we see in USA the working out of those values which we Hindus would wish to save from communism?
USA may be working out any of those higher values or not, we are no interested in that. For we do not want to follow the spiritual lead of America. We have merely to decide what threatens the security and the independence of smaller and weaker nations in a military sense. The danger is from world communism—which works with a zeal worthy of a better cause and not from America.
The Hindu loves money more than any person I have seen on earth. He is certainly a greater worshipper of the rupee than the American is of the dollar. The only consolation we have in  this sorry affair is that India contains extremes of both kinds, the highest spiritual culture and the meanest love of money for the sake of money. Let us not talk of ideals, but or practice.
Is not China bringing about the economic improvement of the masses with very little violence?
That may be so, although we do hear reports of violence on a rather large scale. But however that be, the energy of the few at the top, with power to enforce their decisions, can always pay dividends under any system. What we in India lack is energy at the top, except in making speeches.