Table Of ContentFROM
RAJ TO SWARAJ
Or. Ohlren.dro Nath Sers
By the Same Author :
Whither India ?
The Problem of Minorities.
Revolution by Consent ?
The Paradox of Freedom.
Bharater Naya Rastra.
FROM
RAJ TO SWARAJ
By
Dhirendranath Sen, M.A., Ph.D.
LECTURER in Constitutional and Administrative Law. Public
Administration and journalism, University College of Arts,
Calcutta; EX-EDITOR, Hindusthan Standard and
Advance; and lately, MEMBER, Editorial
Board, Amritabazar Patrika.
UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA
2005
First Published in June, 1954
by K. P. Mukherjee, Vidyodaya Library
8, Shyamacharan Dey Street, Calcutta-I 2.
Price : Rs. 250/- only
(Rupees Two hundred fifty only)
© University of Calcutta
Published by the Registrar, University of Calcuua,
87/1, College Street, Kolkata-700073
And
Printed by Sri Pradip Kumar Ghosh
Superintendent, Calcutta University Press
48, Hazra Road, Kolkata - 700 019
PREFACE
It has been my experience during the last two decades
or more as a University teacher no less than as a newspaper
editor that far too often political theory and political practice
are in conflict At any rate, one does not always conform
to the other. This curious, if rather interesting and instructive,
phenomenon is observed in this country and outside, in learned
dissertations by scholars and thinkers and in the news and
views of periodical journals. The result is that we have a
double standard of values. We have, that is, practitioners of
the cult of organised coercion, who solemnly talk about
Christian forbearance and Gandhian ahimsa; petty tyrants
clothed in brief little authority, who glibly preach democratic
ideals; beneficiaries of monopoly capital and unearned profits,
who loudly profess faith in social freedoms and Welfare States.
Thus a sort of what I call double-entry book-keeping is
encouraged and maintained in the body politic.
They have, for instance, in Britain a Cabinet unknown
to the law except for incidental statutory references since 193 7,
but very much alive and kicking in Whitehall and Westminster;
a gracious Protestant Christian Majesty, the doughty Defender
of the Faith, who reigns and does not rule but presides over
a secular Commonwealth and Empire; a free, popular press
which, of course, is free in the exercise of private ownership
but which nevertheless is not amenable to popular control.
We in this country have managed to talk the Briton out of
his meddling in our internal affairs while retaining the dubious
technique of his partnership ledger-keeping. To replenish our
national credit balance we have also drawn liberally upon
the sacred political scripture. of the western democracies,
ancient and modem, although we proclaim from the housetops
our adherence to the ends and purposes of what Gandhiji
was pleased to call Ram Rajya. In our romantic adventures
we plan for plenty and progress while listening intently to
the monotonous music of the spinning wheel. I need not
multiply instances.
The fact is that society is in conflict with itself, that our
( VIII )
dharma tends to create a gulf between precept and practice.
The productive relations and the ideological superstructure
based thereon stand in the way of the full and unfettered
operation of the forces of production. All this explains why
our life is much more vivid and responsive than our political
or social literature, yes, much more vivid and responsive if
only because amid hunger and squalor and misery it pursues
its battle for light and liberation unceasingly. Wise men in
the splendid isolation of the "ivory tower" remind us of ancient
saws bereft of modern instances; weary men, on the contrary,
by their toil and tears, give us modem instances and, in the
process, expose the profound emptiness of the ancient saws.
The former evolve theory for theory's sake, whereas the latter
build it upon the hard, bitter and variegated experiences of
life.
The book presented in these pages is an attempt to focuss
public attention not only on the ancient saws but also on
their inconsistency with, if not repugnancy to, the grim, sombre
realities. It is an attempt further to examine why those
contradictions between life and literature occur and how
theories come to be propounded without reference to the facts
and circumstances of organised social life. I have ventured,
in my own humble way, to offer criticisms on what are regarded
as classical theories on the State, its origin, sovereignty,
independence, federalism and Parliamentary government set
against its Presidential counterpart The rule of law as
interpreted by some well-known English authors and judges;
the idea or concept of Fundamental Rights as incorporated
in certain written constitutions; the role of the judiciary as
an instrument of adjudication on disputes between the State
and the individuals, between the individuals inter se or between
the different organs of the State; the expanding invasion of
the judicial forum by persons or bodies other than regular
courts of law; the constitutional conventions as distinguished
from the positive rules-these and similar other questions have
been exhaustively dealt with against the background of new
social phenomena and the crisis of our time.
The book contains a comparative study of the political
(IX)
norms that have emerged from age to age and from country
to country, and of the governmental structures which rest on
those nonns in different countries, including India, Britain,
the USA and the USSR. A critical historical perspective is
maintained throughout. Naturally, the Indian political system
is discussed in greater detail than any other system. I have
tried, as far as possible, to discard the orthodox method of
treatment adopted generally by the text-book writers, Indian
and foreign, and the familiar patterns of social or political
postulates. Abstruse metaphysical speculations, it has been
shown, are no better than idealistic chatter devoid of material
content, or else they are illusions created, nursed and fostered
by minds that can hardly adjust them-selves to the fast moving
scenes of the crowded but fascinating drama of life. In either
case, these speculations are a kind of stately retreat from
the shocks of the external world, a search for comfort and
contentment in the invisible or the unknown. For a time, maybe
short or long, these not only sustain the ruling power but
serve to influence the psychology of the masses as well. But
they are eventually exploded by the dynamics of history.
The book offers a new approach to certain problems which
have confronted mankind since the beginning of history and
which, in their evergrowing ramifications and complexities,
constitute today a challenge to civilisation otherwise described
as the art of life. Civilisation is at once the product of the
conflict of interests and classes and an urgent call for fresh
endeavours in the harnessing of the inexhaustible resources
of a bounteous nature to the wider and more intensive use
of man. A thinker, as has been so aptly said by a distinguished
Soviet writer, is not a "photographic plate" which records
only the present To put it in a different way, he is not a
photographer, who clicks his camera and imprints on the
sensitised film the image of an American Senator engaged
in anti-Communist witch-hunting; a devout Indian hermit in
meditation on the imponderables of this mysterious universe;
or a British statesman gallantly defending the pedlars of the
dollar democracy. A real_ thinker does not merely contemplate
passively the phenomena· that · meet his eyes and register
( X)
mechanically anything that occurs. His is an active, creative
and sympathetic attitude towards the world around him, to
the inner essence of the phenomena, and to the aspirations
and urges, the passions and impulses of the broad masses
of humanity.
Without truth, however, there can be no useful, far less,
great literature, social, political or other. And truth is fidelity
to life, to the life's experiences and struggles. Man reacts
to his environment and is, to a large extent, fashioned by
it physically, intellectually and emotionally. Nor is environment
a static or constant quantity; it yields, in its tum, to man's
warm and lively contact. It follows that it is far more difficult
to write books of enduring value in a society in a continuous
state of flux like that in our generation than in an atmosphere,
say, of the leisurely gradeur which marked the nineteenth
century western social order. Moreover it is a commonplace
of recorded history that institutions, beliefs and theories tend
to lag behind actual practice. That, however, is no reason
why an alert and receptive mind should live in the past and
enunciate theories which have no relation to social reality.
The title of the book seems to require elucidation. It does
not simply mean the hsitory of gradual evolution of British
rule in this country culminating in the transfer of power in
1947 to the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim
League in the two sectors of divided India, although there
is reference to that history throughout the body of the text.
It does not merely tell the story of the transition of the organised
political power within a given territory from the hands of
a hereditary monarch to a popularly elected Board replaceable
by a democratic vote, although this aspect of social evolution
is not ignored or disregarded. It seeks to convey a wider
and more comprehensive idea of different patterns of political
or social behaviour created or produced from epoch to epoch
by the dynamics of the mode of production and of the theories
that emerge therefran Theories are examined against the
background of history. They are tested with reference to the
social categories which are unfolded by what I call the
dialectical imperative. Raj, I contend, does not necessarily
(XI)
mean the British monarchy or, for that matter, any monarchy
at all. It includes a type of social organisation which has
come to be known as State. Swaraj, again, is no synonym
for political independence. It implies those phases of social
evolution in which the people themselves come to shape,
manage and control their own affirs, and may include
communism.
I do not pretend to claim that this book is an adequate
work, but I should consider my labours amply rewarded if
it would succeed in exciting in the minds of the public generally
and of the student community in particular a critical but
sympathetic interest in the problems I have commended to
their earnest consideration.
Among those to whom thanks are due for the assistance
and help they have ungrudgingly given me in the preparation
of this work mention must specially be made of Sri Basuda
Chakravarti, M A.; Professor Sushi) K. Sen, M A., of City
College; Sri Saroj K. Dutt, M.A.; Sri Monomohan Mukherjee,
B.A.; Sri Narayan Ghosh, B.A.; and the conductors and workers
of the Jnanodaya Press.
Calcutta, Senate House, Dhirendranath Sen
April 21, 1954
