of those who stood away f r o m the polls (there was a 60 per cent turn­out) came f r o m this section, except in the areas where the Communists had influence,

D M K Repays Swatantra Debt The emai l but s igni f icant T a m i l

populat ion in the constituency was much wooed — Chit toor is on ly some f i f ty miles f r o m the Madras border. The D M K a r r i ved in strength. They took up their usual postures of T a m i l chauv in ism and made much of the fact that the Swatant ra support had won them Tiruchengode and that debts had to be paid. They also ran a rather st rong smear campaign that Sanjeeva Reddy was a great protagonist o f H ind i and had, there­fore, to be humbled.

Despite Munshi 's protest and Ra ja j i ' s ingenuous disavowals, a D M K Swatantra al l iance is con­sol idat ing and developing. I t should be recalled that it was on the advice of R a j a j i that Annadura i . about a decade ago, broke away f r o m Naic-ker 's D K and set up his par ty; It is st rongly rumoured that he w i l l use his very considerable prestige to persuade the D M K, at a later stage, to establish more f o rma l orga­nisat ional l inks w i t h the Swatantra and even later to merge wi th it, R a j a j i knows wel l enough — and Annadura i and his colleagues know that he knows that the D M K

uses the Drav idas than slogan and its radical economic programme merely to r ide the wave of T a m i l chauvi­n ism. He believes that given time and patience, the Ganatant ra Par i -shad change of labels could also be used as a pointer to the future for the D M K.

The Congress also mobi l ised its T a m i l stalwarts K a m a r a j , Bhak ta-vatsa lam and T T K — who pleaded that the Congress alone could deli­ver the goods and that w i th Congress Ministr ies in both States, their g r i ­evances wou ld find easier redressal i f the Tami ls stood by the Congress in a prestige contest, But the bulk of the Tami ls seem to have voted f o r Ranga, despite the fact that the Congress appeal was re inforced by by some of the leading Commu­nists f r o m Madras campaign ing in Chittoor.

A point in Ranga's favour was the fact that he and his w i f e spent some fou r months in the constituen­cy and did their best to approach

as many people as possible — at least a l l the opinion leaders — on a personal basis. In these more in t i ­mate gather ings he pointed to his Congress past and, of course, to Ra ja j i ' s record and made the point that they were the true heirs to a l l the t ruth there was in the Congress, before it was seized by the socialist aberrat ions.

Congress Propaganda Futile The Congress threw in a l l its re­

sources. Sanjeeva Reddy camped in Chit toor f o r as long as ten days. Var ious other Ministers came and went. But it was c lear ly on the defensive w i t h regard 10 the L a n d Revenue B i l l . I t ta lked of develop­ment p lann ing and the future that this promised, even if i t meant burd­ens and hardship in the present. I t tr ied to use Nehru's prestige and the need to ra l l y behind h i m . I t sharp­ly assailed the Swatant ra and its " r i c h man base*' — but the a f f lu ­ence of its own candidate was an inhib i t ion in this regard. Despite every effort and surpr is ing ly l i t t le dissension, it was not even able to hold its own.

One point has to be said in favour of its ma in campaigners, part icu­la r l y Sanjeeva Reddy. Whi le never

W H E N E V E R Ber t rand Russell speaks his m i n d (which has

been often over the past s ixty five years) he creates a stir in the intel­lectual, and strangely enough, in the non-intel lectual wor ld as wel l . The present vo lume* w i l l prove to be no exception, though perhaps a l l of what he says here has appeared in one f o rm or the other in his past wr i t ings. The book consists of the thirteen dialogues between Mr Woodrow Wyat t and Mr Russell that were fi lmed for television in 1959, The dialogues are in the f o r m of questions and answers and the sub­jects range f r o m philosophy, rel i ­g ion, w a r and pacif ism and power, to happiness, the role of the ind iv i ­dual , the H-Bomb, and the possible future o f m a n k i n d .

The range is considerable, and Mr

Russe l l whose joy in uninhib i ted dis-

* Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind A r t h u r B a r k e r L td , London, 1960

campaign ing together w i th the Coni-muniats, they took care never to embarrass the latter. Actua l ly , one or two Congress campaigners who tr ied to make out that they were as good ant i -Communists as the Swa­tantra were tac t fu l ly removed f r o m the scene.

The general Congress answer to the Swatant ra sneer that the Con­gress acceptance of Communist support was unethical was the one g iven by T T K on the eve of pol l ­i ng : "the al ternat ive to Congress leadership today, he said, could only be Commun ism or any movement wh ich was left ist to the Congress and not to any movement that was r ight ist and that, too, to a par ty l i ke the Swatant ra Par ty , wh ich jo ined hands w i t h the D r a v i d a Munnet ra Kazhagam, wh ich d id not depend upon the apparatus of democracy to get into the saddle of power but wh ich believed purely in the fascist methods". (H indu , 'August 24).

A pointer. Not, of course, the on ly or even the most cruc ia l pointer. But a b i furcated opposition is bound to have a polar is ing impact on a heterogenous ru l i ng party. And that is the true meaning ' of Chittoor.

cussion is we l l -known warms up r ight f r om the beginning, and he replies to the questions in his in imi table way w i th quips and jokes even in the most austere moments. The questions that Mr Wyat t puts f o r w a r d are var ied in their nature. Some are common­place and yet m a n y have a deceptive appearance in them. F o r example, he begins these dialogues by p lump-ing the uncomfor table question 'What is phi losophy' and asks it as b land ly as he-wou ld if he were ask­ing fo r the plane time, or the fare f r o m London to N e w Y o r k , Mr Russell is not to be put off, as he says, " . . phi losophy consists of spe­culations about matters where ex­act knowledge is not yet possible," and on the difference between science and philosophy he says, " . . you 'd say science is what we know and phi losophy is what we don't know. Fo r that reason questions are per­petually passing over f r o m philoso-

Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind Parthasarathi Dasgupta

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Book Review

THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY September 8, 1962

phy into science as knowledge ad­vances." There are of course dif f i ­culties in such an answer. One wonders where he wou ld place Eth ics wh ich deals w i t h the question of values. Science won' t tell you wha t is good and wha t is bad. H o w can ethical questions then ever be­come a field f o r scientific inqu i ry?

Perverted Nationalism

I t is stated by w a y of preface that there was no prepared script and so the dialogues are quite spon­taneous. There seems to be no order a n d p lan other than that each dialogue runs f o r some ten pages. Each answer generates its own questions and a l l this makes the read ing l ive ly. There is so much of w isdom in every page that i t is perhaps not possible to -single out any dialogue as def ini tely more out­s tand ing than the others. However, the one wh ich is perhaps the most interest ing is that on nat iona l ism. Mr Russel l dist inguishes between the two aspects of nat iona l ism, the cu l tu ra l and the pol i t ica l . Wh i le he advocates the f o rme r he considers the other as unmi t iga ted evi l . To h im the State is p r i m a r i l y an orga­nizat ion fo r k i l l i n g foreigners. The state has also the power of propa­ganda, there is propaganda control over education w i t h an idea to make people th ink what the State th inks and that p r i m a r i l y consists in lov ing one's own nat ion and t h i n k i n g i l l o f other nations, in incu lcat ing the v iew that one's own count ry is a lways r ight in every th ing whereas other countries are a lways w r o n g . Russell even recalls a verse that he was made to lea rn as a ch i ld — "Con­found the i r knav i sh t r icks, f rustrate t h e i r poli t ics and make t h e m f a l l ' and emphasises how a person is taught f r o m his very chi ldhood what a g r a n d th ing i t is to k i l l foreigners.

We, coming f r o m a nat ion wh ich is not much integrated emot ional ly or otherwise, f ind this ra ther strange. Goaded by the m a n y disruptive forces operat ing in our country and burdened w i t h the problem of gene­r a l poverty our government have possibly forgot ten to instruct our schools to teach Us to hate fore ig­ners. The k i n d of nat iona l ism that we have is possibly exempli f ied by Mr Podsnap, w h o in Dickens says, "Fo re i gn nat ions, I am sor ry to say. do as they do, " — a l l of w h i c h in -cates that m a y be too m u c h of nat io­

na l in tegrat ion is not good, as we shal l then be a l l too ready to cut our neighbours throats. However, one wonders i t at the moment natio­na l i sm poses a very great prob lem.

Whi le nat ions have d r a w n apart on account of ideological differences, they have also come together by vir tue of ideological commonness, so much so that possibly today an average Amer i can hates a left ist coun t ryman more than he hates a fe l low Canadian, w h o m in fact he does not hate at a l l . The countries wh ich are intensely nat ional ist ic, l ike those in the Middle East or the newly born nations in A f r i c a are so puny that when disturbances arise in them, what f inal ly emerges is the struggle between the two

%great blocks. Mr Russell admits that it is the tension between the Communist and the non-communist nat ions that is the greatest threat to wo r l d peace and it is to these con­siderations that he turns in the four th dialogues 'Communism and Capi ta l ism' , 'The H-Bomb' and The possible future of mank ind ' . That one side th inks i l l of the other does not cause much concern. What does is the fact that each has the capa­city to k i l l off the other, and w i th a l l the m i l i t a ry bu i ld up. the chances of a war , and w i th it those of total ann ih i la t ion , go on increasing.

The Solution : World Government

What then is the solution? H o w are we to make sure that the human race survives? Russell does not suggest that we take recourse to re l ig ion and start l ook ing f o r the 'higher things' in l i fe. To h im , the only w a y to ensure man's surv iva l is to establish a w o r l d government w i th a monopoly of a l l the import­ant weapons of war , a wo r l d gov­ernment whose business it should be to take account of a l l conflicts bet­ween dif ferent states.

W i t h the possible exception of the f irst dialogue on phi losophy, the topics chosen fo r discussion were those that interest not on ly Russell but also the public. There is no dia­logue, fo r example, on the nature of mathematics, a subject on wh ich Russell spent the greater part of the f i rst twenty years of his intellec­tual l i fe . May be Russell is some­what inhibi ted because his audience is the general publ ic, but f r o m the passion in his views and the note of urgency in his r emarks one can­

not help feel ing that he has under­gone a complete change, a change which has been g radua l . W r i t i n g as f a r back as 1910 in his "Phi loso­phical Essays", Russell had said, " I n a wor ld so f u l l of ev i l and suf fer ing, ret irement into the cloister of contemplat ion, to the enjoyment of delights, wh ich, however noble, must a lways be for the few only, cannot but appear as a somewhat selfish refusal to share the burden imposed upon others by accidents in wh ich justice plays no part. Have any of us the r ight , we ask, to w i th ­d r a w f r o m present evils, to leave our fe l lowmen unaided, whi le we l ive a l i fe wh ich , though arduous and austere, is yet p la in ly good in its own nature?"

Wha t in 1910 was perhaps a doubt appears now to be a certainty, and at 87 (at the time of the inter­v iew) , he seems somehow to shy away f r om discussions on abstrac­tions. At any rate, the occasion presents a wonder fu l opportuni ty, and he lashes out at his television viewers about their parochia l ism, prejudices, fanat ic isms, and taboo-moral i t ies, conventions against wh ich he has been bat t l ing fo r some fo r t y years now. He is often pungent; " . . only about one per cent of my wr i t ings are concerned wi th sex, but the convent ional public is so obsessed w i th sex that it hasn't noticed the other ninetynine per cent of my wr i t ings . " Often he appears to be cyn ica l : "The human race has surv ived ow ing to inefficiency, but inefficiency is now d imin ish ing , and therefore the human race is threat­ened w i th ext inct ion." A n d as a l ­ways, he is l ibera l in the best Eng ­l ish t rad i t ion ; "The East-West ten­sion wh ich is threatening us a l l in the most terr ible fash ion is m a i n l y due to the fanat ica l belief in com­mun ism and an t i - commun ism. "

Enlightening Realisation

Throughout these dialogues one can discern a note of a n g r y fu t i l i t y in Russell 's tone as he moves f r o m subject to subject and br ings out the m a n y many defects that are in us and in the systems that we have created, defects wh i ch he feels can easi ly be removed by a l i t t le bit of reason, wh ich somehow seems to elude us. A n d as we read th rough every dialogue and come to the very end we are struck by a sudden rea l i ­zat ion wh ich , though commonplace, seems now to be ve ry r i ch and ve ry

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rare. The w o r l d , we realise, is i n ­deed yet very Imperfect.

As I have said in the beginning, by w a y of content there is no th ing new in this book. A l l the questions are o ld ; and the answers that Rus­sell gives are very o ld too. He has said them many times elsewhere. But what is novel about this l i t t le volume is its f o r m , the f o r m of questions and answers. It is not

l ike the common exposition in which the author makes a number of pro­positions and tries to i l lustrate and substantiate them wi th examples of his own. In such expositions the general reader has near ly a lways a large number of questions wh ich the author does not anticipate Wyat t is one of us, and as Russell goes on expressing his views, W y a t t puts forth questions and counterquestions

wh ich would have occured to most of us. It is perhaps in this sense that the book is valuable. A n d when one adds to this that the o r i g ina l televi­sion viewers could observe Russell as the dialogues were under way, one hopes that m a y be now, the public w i l l have a true image of the last of the rationalists , the image of a brave old man, who has loved the wor ld not only wel l but wisely too.