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After the advent of Independence in 1947, the centuries-long struggle for freedom gave place to the task of nation-building precisely in a literal sense. But the crucial question was, what should be the goal and the means to achieve it. It was here that the men then at the helm stumbled. They had all along been. while engaged in the freedom struggle equating the mere transfer of power from the alien rulers, with real independence and hence to some extent, were bewildered at the sudden turn of circumstances in which they were empowered with authority to rule.
In fact, for them, it was a god-given historic opportunity to shape the destiny of the nation, which was as it were taking a new birth altogether. The real need then was to identify the character and the time-tested basic values, which this ancient nation stood for millennia, and to reshape the nation on that basis with any modifications suited for the changing needs of the day. But they deemed economic progress and material welfare as the finality of an independent nation.
They had before them two models, both from the West. While the American one had in it the capitalist economy with all-permissive individual freedom, which in fact was eating into the very vitals of her social life, the Russian socialist alternative with its ambitious five-year plans, presented a facade of heaven on the earth, in which actually the individual was but a cog in the wheel. Being enamoured by both, and material progress alone being made the touchstone, the new rulers opted to simultaneously ape both - an exercise which ultimately tended to make the nation a carbon copy of neither.
The thinking of the Sangh in this regard has all along been of a very basic nature. From its inception, the goal before the Sangh was to attain the 'Param Vaibhav' (the pinnacle of glory) of the Hindu Rashtra, the freedom from the alien rule being just a step in that direction. The transfer of power can at the most be 'Swaraj' (one's own rule) but definitely not 'Swatantrya' (actualisation of one's own potential being). The concept of ''Param Vaibhav' has ingrained in it the material progress too of the nation, hut not with its very identity and interests mortgaged.
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