TOWARDS AN ADVANCED NATION

Our basic shortcoming is to think purely in terms of systems. This has caused us to devote all our attention to overall ‘social reform’, at the expense of the more worthwhile ‘reform of individuals’. that indigenous rule alone could set matters right. In 1947, we finally succeeded in establishing a national government, but it failed to yield the desired result of a good society. Similarly, the initiative which led up to ‘Home Rule’, i.e. the non-violent movement started seventy-five years ago by Mahatma Gandhi, did not usher in any utopian ideal. It had come to be assumed that once the principle of non-violence became the mainstay of Indian politics, it would automatically be put into practice in society. But this transference of a principle from the political to the social sphere did not take place. We may have been successful in launching a political movement based on non-violence, but we were to find that it took more than earnest enunciation of the principle of non-violence to build a good society. The third initiative, carried out after independence, was the attempt to bring about a good society by legislation. There are now scores of laws aimed at social reform, each social evil having several specially framed laws to counteract them. But this multitude of laws has done little to bring a good society into existence. As seen, our basic shortcoming is to think purely in terms of systems. This has caused us to devote all our attention to overall ‘social reform’, at the expense of the more worthwhile ‘reform of individuals’. Over a period of a hundred years, all the major movements launched in our country have been system-based, rather than individual-based. The individual is the primary unit of society. If individuals are reformed, society follows suit. And if individuals degenerate, society too goes into decline. That is why our best efforts should centre on the individual, who is, after all, the basic building block of society. The day we reform individuals in their thousands, we shall have set ourselves well and truly on the path of successful social reform. The solution to our problems lies in inter-community meeting, instead of protests and demand meetings with the government. The most urgent need of today is to hold inter-community dialogues at a national level. Serious-minded and influential people from all communities should participate in these interactions. Their goal should be the securing of peace on the basis of purely non-political grounds.