
PM Modi: Gurudevan-Gandhiji meeting remains inspirational even today
The prime minister was inaugurating the centenary celebration of the historic meeting between Sree Narayana Guru and Mahatma Gandhi, at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on Tuesday. He said even today when he takes major decisions for the betterment of these communities, he remembers Gurudev.
'The ideals of Sree Narayana Guru are a great asset to humanity. For those committed to the service of the country and society, Sree Narayana Guru serves as a guiding light. Sree Narayana Guru was undeterred by opposition and unafraid of challenges. Varkala has long been referred to as the Kashi of the South. Whether Kashi is in the north or the south, for me, every Kashi is my own,' he said.
'During the 2013 natural disaster in Kedarnath, in which many from Sivagiri Mutt were stranded, the Mutt approached me, as I was then the chief minister of Gujarat. In times of crisis, one's attention first turns to those they consider their own, those they feel a sense of belonging and responsibility toward. There can be no greater spiritual satisfaction for him than the sense of kinship and trust shown by the saints of Sivagiri Mutt. When foreign ideologies attempted to undermine India's civilisation, culture, and philosophy, Sree Narayana Guru made us realise the fault did not lie in our original traditions, but needed to truly internalise our spirituality,' the PM said.

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The Print
2 days ago
- The Print
Socialism doesn't deliver prosperity or produce equality. Does it give freedom? Of course not
Now, Gandhi taught us two things, basically. One was that ends and means are interlinked, that you cannot produce a better society by methods that are not clean and decent, that the end does not justify the means. By the time your means, which are dubious, are practised, your end gets vitiated. In other words, to cite the Soviet Union, by liquidations and butchery, by distortion and lying, you cannot produce a more fraternal society. Our great leader, Mahatma Gandhi, used to say that consistency in political affairs is 'the virtue of an ass.' He was himself a very inconsistent person, who moved from position to position as he developed and the world developed. The point I am making is that it would be very stupid for anyone to hold on to a point of view or a dogma, disregarding what is happening around him. There is an idea afoot that liberalism came before socialism and therefore must fade out before socialism. I would like to examine that assumption and, looking fifty or a hundred years ahead, to consider which is more likely to survive, and which is getting outdated today. The other thing Gandhiji taught us was that the State in the 20th century is no longer a great friend of freedom and progress, that perhaps the biggest threat to human freedom comes from the State. This Gandhi repeated a hundred times in different ways, by saying that there is no violence as evil as the violence of the Government. All other violence can be forgiven, understood or controlled, but when the Government becomes violent and dominates and oppresses the people, that is the most foul kind of violence. Socialism does not deliver prosperity. It does not produce equality. Does it give freedom? Of course not. The loss of liberty is the most obvious thing in the socialist countries. Lenin was a great man. He was an idealist gone wrong. 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It affects it through the profit motive, through what is called the law of the market, which is the only sane economic law—the law of supply and demand. The industrialist or the businessman does not produce for fun or for love. He produces for a profit. He produces what will get him a profit in the market. A profit is made when the demand exceeds the supply because when the demand exceeds the supply, then prices go up. But where the supply exceeds the demand, prices drop. The biggest capitalist has thus to consider what the smallest man in the market wants. This is how the consumer is king and this is what is called a free market economy. This is the liberal economy, as opposed to the socialist. What are the results? One is prosperity. The buying power of the man in these countries is out of all proportion to what it is in the socialist countries. Even the Indian worker, under so-called capitalism is better off than Russia under socialism, since he does not have to work as long as a Russian worker, to get a pair of shoes or some cloth. Liberal methods, which are economic freedom or economic democracy, lead to social justice, equality, prosperity and freedom much quicker than the methods of State Capitalism or State-ism, which in France is called Etatisme. That is a much more accurate name than socialism, which may mean anything or nothing. It is interesting that most of the world is beginning to see this. The world trend is away from communism and socialism and towards liberal democracy. This is not surprising because, after all, human intelligence wins in the end. This essay is part of a series from the Indian Liberals archive, a project of the Centre for Civil Society. It is excerpted from Minoo Masani's essay in the book Congress Misrule and the Swatantra Alternative, published in November 1966. The original version can be accessed here.


Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Hindustan Times
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Time of India
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- Time of India
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