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

Economy of Permanence
progeny. Similarly, the imitators have no creative faculty or if they possess it,
it is allowed to lie dormant, being given no opportunity to express or develop
itself. It may be, if their environment were changed, they would be able to
contribute to the general progress of society. To the extent that they remain
functionless, the existence of such a group is definitely a loss to society. They
consume without creating. Their lives are not works of art but just colourless
black and white prints from the printing press.
Earlier in this century, the Japanese, who copied everything western, fell into
this group. It had led them from the Economy of Permanence, which they,
along with their neighbours China and India, were following, into the House of
Imitation and we see vividly today their inevitable fall into the Parasitic
Economy in their inroads into Manchuria and China. From following nonviolence
they have now enshrined violence and destruction.
In our own country, many of our friends, especially Indian Christians (I write
this in regard to the community to which I belong in humiliation and shame) fall
into this group. They imitate the westerner in every possible way even to the
extent of abandoning their own mother-tongue for English. They dress like the
westerners, they keep house in the best foreign missionary style and in their
well-to-do circle even their food habits have been borrowed from the West
inclusive of many tinned imported stuffs. Their recreation follows all that is
held fashionable in the west, such as racing and ballroom dancing, which latter
has been well described as 'hugging set to music'. This group has also been
highly sterile intellectually in spite of the fact that most of them can boast of a
varied liberal education. Unfortunately, the trend in big cities is towards this,
the lowest type. The only consolation is that their number is comparatively
small, and if measures are taken in hand in good time to check its spreading
further, we may be able to eradicate it root and branch.
The House of Adoption: The motto of those who belong this group is "Let us
eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die". These also do take from the
contributions of others as do those of the previous house but the difference lies
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