“If there must be a curb on the individual in the interests of others it is better that it is one operating by usage and custom and therefore engaging our passive consent. A state which sets out to destroy traditional restraints in the name of freedom and modernity but makes no bones about imposing its own notions of what kind of restraint is good for the citizen may be merely an agent for unsettlement without being an instrument of reform.”
AUGUST 10, 1954
The state and the individual
SPEAKING AT THE MYSORE UNIVERSITY THE OTHER DAY, MR. M. C. Chagla, the Chief Justice of Bombay, made an eloquent plea against hurried attempts to change human nature and improve individual morality” by legislation. He said the primary duty of the State was to create an atmosphere of security in which the individual can develop himself. But the Welfare State, he went on, was committed to securing economic justice for all; and he suggested that to the extent that this required curtailing the economic liberty and the property rights of those classes that were better off, legislative and administrative interference would be justified. Mr. Chagla would, however, admit the need for restraining the individual’s liberty in those matters that fall within the sphere of his personal life, such as morality and religion, only to the extent they were “against the interests of society and not because they were in the view of the State wrong or immoral Restraint would be permissible, he pointed out by way of illustration, in the case of a man who was drunk and disorderly in a public place. But if he was merely drunk without making a public nuisance of himself and without wasting money on drink which he should use to support his family, the State, said Mr. Chagla, must leave him alone because “he is harming only himself”; he must be allowed to benefit by his own experience and to form his own moral judgment.”
But here a doubt obtrudes. Even if the man does not rob his children of their food, the daily spectacle of his thus degrading himself by over-indulgence might do far greater harm, psychologically speaking, to the children and to others who must bear with him. There might therefore be a case, in the interests of these sufferers, for bringing to bear upon him those influences which might be more effective than State pressure or coercion because they would be grounded in a true knowledge of psychology and appeal to the man’s deepest instincts. Religion and morality are just such influences. And while it may be readily conceded that the State as such is not qualified to speak for religion and morality, it must be realised that they have a definite place in society as well as in the lives of individual men and women. And the least the State could do is not to impede the working of these social and moral forces from a mistaken notion of the meaning of secularism. More often, the growing intolerance of the State against other forms of organisation derives from an obscure feeling that they might serve to weaken its hegemony. The emergence of the totalitarian State has been made possible because the traditional forms of social organisation, which in the old days acted as a curb on State power, have fallen before the onset of head-counting democracy. And political democracy itself, having made away with its rivals one by one, destroyed the old organic society and reduced the individual to the status of a mere atom, easily succumbs to the will of any obstreperous minority that might seize State power. The existence of the tertium quid – numerous non-political forms of organisation – is absolutely essential for the maintenance of a healthy relationship between the State and the citizen.
It is the dim realisation of this truth that has set sociologists groping for ways and means of restoring the old, intimate and freely chosen group life, based on community of interests, ideals or beliefs. In our country the new-found zeal for panchayat raj, where it is not inspired by the desire consciously to emulate the Soviet type of unit government, may well be a harking back in a nostalgic way to the old traditional ideal. But our reformers would eat their cake and have it. They want panchayat raj, as well as unlimited power to a centralised administration to interfere in the ordering of the individual’s concerns. To live a truly free life, unswayed by rule or convention, is so difficult that in the complex conditions of modern life not even the most doughty libertarian attempts it consistently. We are all of us mostly creatures of use and wont. We are guided by what our church, our club, our social set, our traditional mentors, say. And on the whole it is well that it is so. If there must be a curb on the individual in the interests of others it is better that it is one operating by usage and custom and therefore engaging our passive consent. A State which sets out to destroy traditional restraints in the name of freedom and modernity, but makes no bones about imposing its own notions of what kind of restraint is good for the citizen, may be merely an agent for unsettlement without being an instrument of reform.
Mr. Chagla maintained that the State must content itself with a directive to the citizen to educate his child, that it should not go further and demand that he should give him one type of education, not another. But the parent’s ideas of education may be so fantastically cranky that freedom to him to indoctrinate his child in his beliefs may be far more cruel than allowing the State to do the indoctrination; after all no State has ever enough time to be thorough in these matters! The real remedy surely is to see that public education is as far as possible free from State control, diversified, informed by the social ideals and mores that are closely associated with the child’s folkways. To deprive the child, in the name of secularism, of the opportunity of getting religious and moral education, for instance, is to do untold damage to his personality by withholding an essential element for his spiritual growth. Likewise, plans for expropriation of certain sections in the name of equality are not immune to the criticism that Mr. Chagla levelled against the State’s blundering interference with the personal freedom of the individual. Taking away from Peter and giving to Paul may be good for Paul, not necessarily for Peter. A competence has by philosophers of all ages been regarded as the prime condition of self-fulfilment. The plans for equalisation evolved by any Government in power, may, on the other hand, be deeply influenced by the passions and prejudices of the dominant clique. Hence the golden mean has always been favoured by those schools of thought that valued freedom. They believed in taxation, aided by the traditional restraints against covetousness and greed, as the least harmful way of preventing gross inequality. The prescription should still hold good, if only our statesmen realised that the Great Society of the future must be a plural society and the success of the State must be judged by its ability to stimulate the growth of vigorous voluntary organisations of a non-political character.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I