60 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
of having been at the top of the most wanted list of the FBI. But courageously she has demonstrated the logical inconsistency of the system and the universal knowledge of human rights. This chapter on the struggle for human rights has not yet been closed but has led to more follies and contradictions. What is significant here is to note that the prisoners were completely unarmed and were skin-searched before they were allowed into the yard. To shoot an unarmed helpless person in a maximum security prison yard and from an overlooking tower violates the very basic human right to life and self-defense. What occurred in Soledad in 1970 and in Attica Prison in 1971 (in the United States) also occurred in Bhagalpur (Bihar) on May 8, 1972. And such happenings have been repeated in many other fortresses of modern liberal democracies, termed jails or correctional centres or institutions. Dozens and dozens of citizens of our Republic have been shot dead without any due legal recourse. Unarmed prisoners could have been subdued by use of water-hose, teargas, or even could have been overpowered by a dozen unarmed guards physically. But the jury and the established order considered it a justifiable homicide.
V
Such are the examples of inconsistencies of reasoning prevalent in socio-political order of capitalism. A nation that claims to be an open society and upholds the doctrine of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as the paramount goal of the State violates its own claim to sanctity of legal authority. And every citizen who has contributed his taxes that have bought the guns and paid for maintenance of such prisons,
.guards, and the system, are guilty of the murder of the innocent human beings.
But a philosopher who fails to see and point out such inconsistencies violates his own code of profession. Personally, I want activist-philosophers to survive, although I hope they may not all suffer from the counter conversions and curious obliviousness that afflicted persons like Sidney Hook and Abraham Kaplan of America. I would be my own man, prepared to speak out for repressed minorities, creative as well as political;
to speak out against the danger of great conspiracy of governmental and
j industrial control of our thinking. (In India, rumours are hot in New Delhi that Mrs Indira Gandhi's party provided its candidates Rs 50,000 to Rs 500,000 for electioneering during the last general election
'in 1972. Ask not the question : Was it white or black money ? Such is the story of elections in the liberal democracies. And in the United States, Rockefeller spent 6 millions, Reagan 3 millions, and Buckley 1.5 millions for election compaigns in October-November, 1970). I shall n6t "equate property rights with human ^ rights and shall not shy away from criticism of those who place the security of a social order ^bove the well-being of mankind,