the individual. They are, therefore, gradually moving towards individual freedom.

They
are being compelled, as in some East European countries and even in Russia, to allow the
individual to own a few things and a little freedom to enjoy his property.

Chester Bowles of America has stated: "Russia is now allowing, what are called, ‘kitchen
farms’ to be personally cultivated by farmers to the tune of 34% of the total land they
cultivate. But the production from these 34% personal holdings (which do not have the
benefit of heavy farm-machinery which is all monopolised by the State) has been 60% of
the total produce, whereas 66% of the State-owned farms has yielded but 40%." That has
once again proved that the promise of total governmentalisation, i.e., absolute
collectivism, with which they started, is beating a hasty retreat in the land of its own
birth.

On the other hand, those countries where Democracy was born with the promise of
‘absolute individualism’ have also gone back upon their original stand. Having seen the
tragic results of the unrestrained ‘equality of opportunity’ and of ‘freedom of the
individual’, they were forced to undertake drastic measures to curtail in practice those
theoretical concepts in the interest of the common social good. In fact, that is how they
were able to avoid revolution and maintain their democratic structure.

We thus find that both the above theories, Democracy and Communism, have two things
in common, i.e., both were born as reactions to the previous order and both have had to
resile from their original stand and forced to move towards each other – Democracy from
its individualism towards collectivism and Communism from its collectivism towards
individualism. In respect of both their birth and growth there is a remarkable similarity
though, of course, their starting points were diametrical opposites because of historical
reasons.

Stemming from the Same Root

This need not cause any surprise to us, for if we go deeper and get at their roots we find
that both of them stem from a common concept of the goal of human life. According to
the Western thought – from which both the concepts of Democracy and Communism
took birth – the life of man for all practical purposes is limited to the physical plane. And
the human being is just a bundle of physical wants. Accordingly, production and
distribution of material objects, which were believed to satisfy the material appetites of
man became the one all-consuming passion of all their theories. Further, equality of man
was propounded on the material plane because all men were equally in need of all these
basic material needs.

As the individual was only a physical entity goaded entirely by those physical desires,
there was no reason for him to look upon society as anything more then an instrument to
serve his needs. But a society made up of such individuals exclusively dedicated to their
own selfish interests could not be expected to endure even for a day. Society, for its
sustenance, demands a spirit of sacrifice on the part of its constituents. And without
society, individuals also cannot carry on their physical existence. So a sort of
compromise, a contract, had to be worked out between the conflicting interests of the
individual and the society.

This ‘contract theory’ is thus the result of the concept of an inherent conflict between the
individual and the society. It is this basic conflict that expressed itself in the form of
Capitalism on the one hand and Communism on the other, i.e., on the one hand, the
individual becoming the enemy of society and on the other, the society becoming the
enemy of the individual. And as we have seen, both the systems are now trying to
mitigate the evils that have flowed from the common materialistic concept of human
goal.

Materialism Fails

But to identify man with a mere bundle of material desires is to equate him with an
animal. If man is just an animal, why should he lead an amicable and ordered life? All
that can be said is that human beings do not prey upon one another like animals, simply
because if X wants to devour Y, some Z will try to devour
X. Thus, to prevent themselves from being mutually destroyed, some sort of arrangement
had to be arrived at. But it cannot explain why the will to sacrifice for others, the spirit of
comradeship in misery, should at all rise in the mind of man. But all through the history
of mankind we come across such persons who have sacrificed their lives for others
willingly, lovingly and smilingly. There is the story of Dadhichi in our ancient literature
who volunteered to offer his bones to be made into a weapon to destroy the demon
Vrittasura. He was a seer living in the forest. As an individual he desired nothing. Then,
what made him to sacrifice himself ?

Let us take an instance of this twentieth century. Once in Calcutta, two little children
playing on the roadside fell into an open manhole. A gentleman who was hurrying to his
office, happened to see the children suddenly disappearing in the manhole. Without even
waiting to take off his coat he jumped into the manhole, caught hold of the children who
were being washed away in the current and pushed them outside. But he himself was
caught in the mud and died. Why did he die? What is that told him, "Go, that is your
direction?" Materialism does not explain.

The Real Basis

There is only one explanation. And that is, there is one common Living Reality in all of
us which furnishes the common inner bond. Our philosophy call it Atma. We love and
serve one another not because of the external relations, but because of the community of
that Atma. Yajnavalkya tells Maitreyi:

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