Strike a balance between freedom, justice: Narayanan

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, AUG. 14. The President, Mr. K.R. Narayanan, said today that there was no need for the people of the country to be disheartened ``by our many faults and failures'' and instead reminded that the Independence Day was an occasion to celebrate our ``achievement of unity and democracy''.

Addressing the nation on the eve of Independence Day, he noted that the last 54 years had been the longest period in our history when we have had ``relative peace, progress and a sense of unity''.

Without mentioning any of the raging separatist aspirations, Mr. Narayanan asserted that if India was a united nation it was because ``the unity has not been brought about by blood and iron'' but by ``more enduring methods of tolerance and the human approach''.

The President put his faith in the ``gentle and genuine method of democracy'', in sharp contrast to the increasingly fashionable itch for stern authoritarian rulers.

Attributing this success to a willingness to undertake ``an unprecedented experiment in social democracy'', he said that ``increasingly we would be called upon to strike a balance between freedom and justice''. Only this ``essential and basic balance'' which lay at the ``heart of our system'' had enabled us to stand up to the demands of globalisation.

In other words, he called upon the people to tap - as Gandhiji did - the power of the ``dumb millions''. For a country that has increasingly no recollection of its struggle for independence, the President reminded the nation that it was these ``dumb millions'' who ``laid the moral foundations and the political framework that made India a resurgent nation and enabled all of us to hold our head high in the world''.

In his brief address, Mr. Narayanan struck a note of caution against the creeping elitism, and put his faith ``in our people, the millions of our ordinary people, what Gandhiji called the dumb millions, who are becoming today more and more articulate and impatient''. Moreover, he gently reminded the rich to be mindful of their obligations to the rest of the society: ``Let the better off among ourselves ask themselves what they can do for our people and for our country, to be the inheritors of our great past and trustees of our future.''

The President's address was characterised by a dogged refusal to give in to the pervading sense of pessimism, and to put abiding faith in the healing and regenerative powers of democracy.

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