Our fellow country man have suffered, they have been made to kiss the hand that beats them and glorify those whom they hate. Not only they have not been educated but their morals have been corrupted. It is not the life of one individual or existence of one problem which stands between us and our ability to express ourselves, but is our own values, visions and activities which obstruct our development and thwart our progress. Most shadows in our life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote on 13th April 1944 in Ahmadnagar Fort:

"Evil triumphed often enough, but what was for worse was the coarsening and distortion of what had seemed so right. Was human nature so essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and raise man above that creature of lust and violence and deceit that he now was? And, meanwhile, was every effort to change it radically in the present or the near future doomed to failure?"

The manner in which we struggled and attained our independence, however, clearly established that there is an inevitable connection between the means and the ends as there is between seed and the tree and by including the right values and motivation we can attain the cherished goals. We will have to develop the knowledge and the confidence to employ the principle of design underlying the nature i.e. Harmonious Creative Collaboration and apply them to attain our goals. It is well known that wrong means distorts and even destroys the ends, but right means are beyond the capacity of the infirm and the selfish. We, therefore, will have to be firm, sincere and dedicated not only individually but collectively, not only to the ends but to the means for the two are inseparable.

 Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru asserted on the ethical approach to life and wrote in Ahmadnagar Fort (Supra):

"I have attracted by Gandhi jis stress on right means and I think one of his greatest contributions to our public life has been this emphasis. The idea is by no means new, but this application of an ethical doctrine to large scale public activity was certain novel. It is full of difficulty, and perhaps ends and means are not really separable but form together one organic whole. In a world which thinks almost exclusively of ends and ignores means, this emphasis on means seems odd and remarkable."

 It is only through right means that we have been able to forge ahead. On 15th August 1983 Mrs. Indira Gandhi said:-

"Once enslaved, poor suppressed and timid, this country is today able to be hold its head high. You look at the achievements, some, of them are really big."

Aruneshwar Gupta

July 01, 1984