NOTES 59 alive of India's tribals and low-caste citizens. And yet the Indian philosophers are on record of supporting beliefs, traditions, and religious myths that are not conducive to our socio-economic progress. IV It seems to me that in every age, even the greatest liberals have lacked an adequate sense of history. They suffer from a curious oblivious-ness to forms of intransigence which the agencies of the strongest liberal democracies seem impotent to remove. I do not say that the community lacks the ideal, but on the contrary. But it remains at best somewhat abs- ^ tract, and those who adhere to it lack that strong sense of social responsi- * bility for the removal of palpable causes of want, suffering, and alienation which drive men to rebellion. Most liberals show a naive faith in time, good will, and arts of discussion. Or perhaps they fail to see that what seems so eminently reasonable to them appear to their critics as mere manifestations of vested interest, or lack of courage, or want of sensitivity which can be coped with only by acts of resolute disobedience, defiance, and rebellion. For example, John Stuart Mill, the renowned author of On Liberty and a defender of the Freedom of America, was among the Directors of the East India Company—the capitalist agency that established the political subjugation of Indian and other Asian peoples—28 years prior to its take-over by the British government in 1858. He inherited the directorship from his father, James Mill, another great philosopher of the liberal persuation. But that was nearly a century ago. In the year 1972 most philosphers in India and in the United States observed a discreet silence on socio-political issues where their muteness is tanatamount to acquiescence to social injustice. But a young and beautiful black radical-activist philospher, Miss Angela Davis of the University of California, Los Angeles, upheld the honour of the Socratic tradition. She led the movement for the freedom of the Soledad Brothers. The Soledad is a large state-operated prison in California that has nearly 3,000 inmates, most of them black. On January 13, 1970, 17 prisoners were skin-searched to make certain that none of them carried a weapon and permitted out in to a newly constructed special yard for the maximum security prisoners. Once in the yard, a racial fight developed among three Blacks and one White. A white security guard fired four shots from an overlooking tower killing the three Blacks and wound ing the White prisoner. The Black prisoners began a hunger strike, and the anger grew when the District Attorney ruled that the killings were justifiable homicide. A grand jury investigation returned the same finding : justifiable homicide. A day later a White guard was found dead and eight days later three Black inmates were charged with the murder of the guard. History books will refer to this case as The Soledad Brothers incident of 1970. For her efforts to help the Brothers, Miss Davis had the honour