NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ... 1

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ... 1

Archaic ideas that have lost relevance must be discarded and development achieved through heavy industrialisation. Necessarily, capitalism will come in with all its concomitant exploitation of labour. The trade unions will in accordance rise up in resistance. Through the tussle and tension thereof a nation will be forged where science will have in time eradicated poverty and rendered life materially more meaningful, provided the simultaneous manifestation of character is achieved as well. 

A free society where the Vedanta in all its robustness and not effeminate expression from the podium alone will play its due spiritual part, where vigorous activity will refashion one's life and the life of the distressed around, where servility to however great a leader will in expression of the individual be abhorred and shunned, where 'renunciation and service', the twin ideals espoused by Swamiji, will become the basis for national development, where privilege, a Constitutional abolition, will in real terms be a ghost of the past as well and courage of conviction will have banished the very memory of such apparitions to beyond the boundary of human consciousness, in such a social space will this nation arise with discipline and dedication to building the health of the polity the dual attributes, and obedience and service devoid of 'slavish cringing', as Vivekananda put it, the operational modes. No mean task that is but an end achievable if the bull is caught hold of by its horns and antinational activities such as proselytism and other fissiparous tendencies are with iron hand dealt with. 

Capitalism is the economic model for sure but capitalism that is not crony but is fraught with social good, however oxymoronic it may seem on the surface. For where on earth have we seen greed, the fuelling power of capitalism in general, cater to human welfare as fundamental principle? Exception to this gluttonous rule may lie in the Tatas whose founder was a man of sterling principles and who was influenced further towards enlightened philanthropy by his interaction with Swami Vivekananda en route to Yokohama by sea. That apart we see big businessmen amass wealth by fair and foul means before in the evening of their lives a handful open up their coffers in charitable dispensation for the people.

End of Part 1

To be continued

Written by Sugata Bose