IndiaPost.com - Substituting one government for another is no freedom

(Answering a question on right kind of education in a free India in 1947)

What do you mean by a 'free' India. You have succeeded in substituting one government for another, one bureaucracy for another; but are you free? The exploiter exists as before, only now he is brown, and you are exploited by him as you were by the other.

The usurer exists as before, the communalism, the class divisions, the quarrels over separate provinces, over which province shall have more or less, over which group in that province shall have the jobs-all these factors still exist. So the same conditions continue as before, only now there is a difference which is psychological.

You have got rid of a group of people, and this acts on you psychologically. You can stand up again now; now, at least you are a man whereas, before, somebody was treading on your neck. The white man may not be treading on your neck, but a brown man is, who is your own brother and much more ruthless.

Don't you know he is much more ruthless, having no morality? What do you mean by a 'free' India? You will probably have your own army and navy-you are following after the rest of the world with their armies, navies, air forces, and regimentation.

To see an old people like you playing with things that children should play with is a sad sight, is it not? It is just like an old man flirting with a young girl; it is an ugly thing.

That is what you call 'free', and you ask what kind of education you should have in a 'free' India! First, to have education of the right kind, you must become intelligent. You cannot be intelligent by merely substituting one government for another, one exploiter for another, one class for another.

To bring about a new kind of education, all these must go, must they not? You must start anew. That means radical revolution-not of the bloody kind, which does not solve a thing, but a radical revolution of thought, of feeling, of values.

That radical revolution can be brought about only by you and me; a revolution that will create a new, integrated individual. It must begin with you and me. Since you are not putting a stop to racialism, organized dogmatism in your religion, how can you produce a new culture, a new education?

You can speculate about it, you can write volumes about what the new education should be; but that is an infantile process, another escape.

There can be no creation until you throw down the barriers and are free, and then you will be able to build a new culture, a new order, which means you have to revolt against the present conditions, against present values-revolt in the sense of seeing their true significance, understanding them intelligently, and thinking things out anew.

It is comparatively easy to dream of an Utopia, a brave, new world; but that is sacrificing the present for the future - and the future is so uncertain. No man can know what the future will be, there are so many elements intervening between now and the future.

We hope that by creating a conceptual Utopia, a mental idealization, and working for it, we shall have solved the problem; but we shall certainly not solve the problem that way. What we can do, if we are intelligent people, is to tackle the problem ourselves in the present. Now is the only eternity, not the future.

I must give full attention to the problem now. Merely to discuss what should be the right kind of education for people in a free India is quite obviously stupid. India is not free: there is no free India.

You have a flag and a new anthem, but surely that is not freedom. You speak in your mother tongue, and think you are awfully patriotic, nationalistic, and that you have solved the problem.

Sir, solving this problem requires thinking anew, not looking through the spectacles of the old formula. That is why it is imperative, for those who are serious, to create a revolution by regenerating themselves; and there cannot be regeneration unless you break away from the old values, examining them and seeing their significance and their worth, not blindly accepting anyone of them as good.

That is why it is important to look into ourselves and to see the manner, the ways of our own thinking and feeling. It is only then that we are free, only then that we can produce a new culture.