The Economy of Permanence: A Quest for a Social Order Based on Non-violence (स्थायी अर्थतन्त्र)

Economy of Permanence
public. We cannot discharge our responsibilities by remaining passive. We need
to be up and doing.
The two great global wars, that have been visited on this generation, are
witnesses to the destructive nature of modern institution and organizations.
Even science, which by its very nature ought to be objective and creative, has
been prostituted by being turned into an abominable engine of destruction.
Instead of standing firm footed on the rock of permanence and non-violence,
eminent scientists have been engulfed by the river of violence in spate, which
is carrying death and ruin through the fair fields of human progress and
civilization. They complacently claim to be on neutral ground. This is self-
deception. There is no neutrality. Either we are creative or destructive. By the
exercise of their freewill, they have chosen to serve the latter end and hence
great is the destruction thereof.
Material destruction, immense as it is, is the least part of it. What is bemoaned
above everything else is the irreplaceable loss of young promising lives. If a
tiger should kill a great scientist what is its gain and what is the loss to
humanity? The man-eater gets perhaps 120 lbs. of flesh, bone and blood. The
nutritive value of these can well be replaced even from the vegetable kingdom:
if the digestive apparatus were adapted to it. On the other hand, what
humanity loses is not so much the flesh and blood but the higher faculties
which are the resultant of generations of culture, expressed under changing
values of life and action and which are of no use to the tiger, while the loss is
an irreparable one to mankind. That part which is noblest and highest and
which works towards permanence is lost by the parasitic act of the tiger, whose
gain is but transient. The flesh and blood have gone to appease its hunger for a
few hours at the cost of an eternal loss as a heritage. The higher life of the
scientist comprising knowledge, creation and love has been of no use to the
prowling beast.
In the same way, the loss to humanity occasioned by the millions of lives
sacrificed in these wars cannot be computed by human effort. The clock of
human progress and civilization is set back centuries by such holocausts.
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