E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMinoo Masani, Indian author and India's first Ambassador to Brazil, askedGandhi's opinion of the programme of the Indian Socialist Party. Gandhi repliedin a letter dated June 14, 1934. 'I welcome the rise of the Socialist Party in theCongress,' the Mahatma wrote. 'But I can't say I like the programme as itappears in the printed pamphlet. It seems to me to ignore Indian conditions andI do not like the assumption underlying many of its propositions which go toshow that there is necessarily antagonism between the classes and the massesor between the labourers and capitalists, such that they can never work formutual good. My own experience covering a fairly long period is to thecontrary. What is necessary is that labourers or workers should know theirrights and should also know how to assert them. And since there never has beenany right without a corresponding duty, in my opinion, a manifesto isincomplete without emphasizing the necessity of performance of duty andshowing what duty is.' He invited Masani and friends for a discussion.Gandhi opposed the Socialists for their class-war doctrine, and he condemnedthem when they used violence. Yet as he observed disturbing trends, hebecame more pro-socialist and more favorably disposed to equality. Today',Gandhi wrote in the June 1, 1947 Harijan, 'there is gross economic inequality.The basis of Socialism is economic equality. There can be no rule of God in thepresent state of iniquitous inequalities in which a few roll in riches and themasses do not get enough to eat. I accepted the theory of Socialism even whileI was in South Africa.' His, however, was a moral Socialism.If India were to carry out most of Gandhi's numerous economic prescriptions theresult, two or three decades after his death, might be an economy pivoting ona fully employed, self-governing village enjoying maximum self-sufficiency andminimum mechanization; a city where capitalists and municipal, provincial andfederal governments shared industry and trade; strong trade unions and cooperatives;and one- generation capitalists whose wealth, since they could notbequeath it, would revert to the community.www.mkgandhi.org Page 375