Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 87
dignity, of scientific research and rationalism, of economic
freedom and organisation, of public spirit and political
principle, of popular government and social progress."18
Instead of their preoccupation with "transcendental
nonsense;' Indian intellectuals should concentrate on the
fact that in the face of famine and pestilence, "there is not a
single decent representative institution, technical institute,
laboratory or library in the whole country." It was imperative,
Har Dayal said, for young people to read Rousseau,
Voltaire, Plato, Aristotle, Ernst Haeckel, Spencer, Marx,
Leo To lstoy, John Ruskin, and Auguste Comte as well as
to study ethics, science, sociology, economics, and politics
rather than the Vedas.19
In "Barabari da Arth" (The Meaning of Equality), he
noted that since the Vedic Aryan conquest, Hindu philosophy
and society had been based on inequality, although
things were different in pre-Vedic times, and he would like
them to be different again. But equality had to be practiced,
not just lauded, in its full and true meaning, which included
first economic equality, then equality of opportunity, and
then equal distribution of wealth by the people working on
the land and in the factories. We alth could not exist except
by depriving or exploiting someone else. All people must
have autonomy, which was also a form of equality.
In another piece on the Indian peasant, written in May
1913, Har Dayal argued that the caste system had it upside
down; the laboring classes-in his scheme comprised not
of an industrial proletariat but instead of peasants, artisans,
and menial workers-were the source of all value, wealth,
and life, and the true masters of society. In order to achieve