Kashikar in Punjab
During his one week tour of East Punjab and Pepsu, Prof. S.G. Kashikar of Nagpur (author of Communism X-Rayed. Organiser dated April 28, 1952) addressed public meetings in Sonepat and Patia’a and college students gatherings in Karnal, Hoshiarpur, Amba’s Cantt, Ludhiana, Jullundur and Amritiar….
In Ambala he addressed the students and other citizens under the auspices of the national Democratic Youth League. The following is a synopsis of his talk there—
The communist belief that economic factors determine everything else cannot stand the test of history. Bharat was partitioned. Can we say-can anybody say—that the reasons behind partition were economic? Rather the men who led the partition movement were men of means-Zamindars, Jagirdars, industrial and business magnates and nawabs. The whole thing was rooted in cultural conflict.
In Kashmir Abullah is abolishing Zamindari without compensation. Supposing Pakistan promised not to dose. Even then can anybody imagine Hindu Zamindars favouring accession to Pakistan?
There is more is human relations than is dreamt of in Marxist theories.
The promise of a classless society is impossible of attainment. Such a society has never existed outside of primitive times. Artificial inequalities, induced by lack of fill and equal opportunities, can, and must go. But natural inequalities, the result of unequal capabilities, can never go. Human progress depends on recognition of superior capacity. Even the communist countries give no evidence of a classless society. It is the merest slogan.
So is their idea of the “withering away of the State”. The fact is the State is not only not withering away in Russia and China, it is becoming ever more powerful and all-controlling indeed menacingly so.
If at all, however, a classless society is considered desirable its basis shall have to be moral, not material. For on the material plane inequalities are insistent. Only in the moral principle of charity can unequal men be expected to live equally.
Nor can communism be considered as the system best suited to satisfy human wants. They may give men more bread-even here USA is a standing challenge to the assumption—but they starve the intellectual curiosity : the emotional appetite and the spiritual aspirations of men.
Red Russia and China have made significant progress in production not because of any magic in their system but because of their superiority over the corrupt and decrepit regimes they replaced. The essential thing here is honesty and efficiency, and not any theories. We with our democratic system of Government can do better than China if only we cared to purify our administration, the instrument through which every Government must function.
The process by which first the Smallholder’s Party and then the Social Democratic Party were first invited to collaborate, than confused, divided and brought into disrepute, and in the end suppressed when they had lost the strength to resist further is recent history.
It is these unscrupulous tactics which have shocked its best products—Rajk, Kostov, Clementis Slansky and other into indignation followed by execution. Let nobody forget that Titio was once the pupil of stalin’s eye. n
The Story of a Leader
(From Our BETTIAH correspondent) Last week old Congressman Prajapati Misra was elected Bihar Provincial Congress Committee President. Kisan Majdoor, a weekly paper of Bettiah-Misra’s home town-has carried a startling story of how he came to be the BPCC President.
Misra, according to this paper, was made President because, as an old Congressman he had to be given something and because Sri Krishna Sinha would not have him as minister—In this decision Sinha was guided by serious allegations levelled against Misra.
Sri Misra is reported to have worked in the Municipal election against the mandate to the Congress. He is also alleged to have defalcated Development funds. He sold the Bettiah Congress office but did not credit the money to Congress account. He gave away the Brindaban Ashram to this nephew and took lands from Bettiah Raj Estate under court of Wards, while arbitrating a certain case.
