During India’s freedom struggle, under the inspiring leadership of Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and others, the nation rose to its heights and found nameless joy in suffering and sacrifices for many a righteous cause. While the post-independence era has been marked by spectacular economic growth and mass awakening, there has been a deplorable decline in the moral standards and national character, due to a universal clamour for rights, real or imaginary, to the neglect of duty.
By and large, freedom has come to mean the right to enjoy the good things of life without obligation to work, and freedom to do what we like. The old spirit of selfless service is being superseded by a corrosive passion for power and pelf, thus vitiating the whole of our public life. The curse of individual and collective selfishness has bred the evils of regionalism, linguism, communalism, disunity, power politics, unprincipled defections in the legislatures, vulgar demonstrations often accompanied by violence and open defiance of law, and other anti-social acts, including wanton destruction of public property. These are the very antithesis of culture and character. Worst of all, even our youth, from whom will arise the future leadership, have caught the contagion.
The successful working of a democracy necessitates that every citizen puts his shoulder to the wheel and contributes to the common pool, both in his own interest and to enhance the strength of the society and the country with which are bound up his own welfare and security. Hard work and discipline as in Japan and other advanced countries are essential to the evolution of a healthy and progressive society. Voter’s education as well is most important to ensure that they look upon the vote as a trust to be used for the best candidate without expecting any sort of favours in return. In all such programmes, the inculcation of a civic and social sense which can be said to be the foundation of national character must have the pride of place.
In our democracy, based as it is on free adult franchise, where laws are made by the elected representatives of the people, and the people have the power through the ballot box to alter the complexion of the legislatures and the government, there is no room for violent agitations or mass satyagraha. Any attempt on the part of any section of the people to take the law into their own hands would be negation of democracy and an affront to the self-respect and dignity of the nation which, in its collective judgment, chooses the government of the day.
Sadly, there has been a deplorable drift towards an over assertion of rights and a psychological climate has been produced of universal obsession with rights and all but a total forgetfulness of duty. This has become the fashion of the day, so much so that the mouthing of boisterous slogans has come to be regarded as more respectable business than the silent performance of duty.
Duty and discipline are, in fact, the very breath of corporate life for all sectors of the community, and it is therefore essential that citizens honor their basic duties to the society and the country. Rights and duties are not only reconcilable, but inseparable. Indeed, they are two sides of the same coin. Lopsided emphasis on rights, without matching attention to duties, is not only immoral but a short-sighted folly.
