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		<i>A Stainless Steel Frame</i> </font>

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		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">&nbsp;</p>

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<font face="Times New Roman">CORRUPTION is the order of the day. In all walks of life,
wherever we have to live and move, we come across the
monster; we cannot pass him by, we have to accost him (even
in the Shakespearean sense, that is) welcome him, woo him.
It is like one of the demons of the Greek legends that come
out of the unknown, the sea or the sky, to prey upon a help-
less land and its people until a deliverer comes.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Corruption appears today with a twofold face, Janus like:</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">violence and falsehood. In private life, in the political field,
in the business world, in social dealings, it is now an established
practice, it has gained almost the force of a law of nature that
success can be achieved only with these two comrades on your
either side. A gentle, honest, peace-loving man is inevitably
pushed back, he has to go to the wall; a straightforward
truthful candid soul will get no hearing and make no living.
From high diplomacy on the international level to village pettifoggery, from the blast of the atom bomb to the thrust
of the dagger, we have all the degrees of the two cardinal
virtues that make up the warp and woof of modern life.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the old world—not so old however, for the landslide
started in fact with the First World War—evil there was and
abundantly in man and in man's society, but it was not
accepted as virtue or even as an acceptable or inevitable thing.
It was tolerated, suffered, and generally with a heavy heart.
Indeed the heart was sound, it was the flesh only that was
weak. There was an idealism, an aspiration and although one
could not always live up to it, yet one did not deny it or spurn
it; one endeavoured as best one could, even though in leisure
hours, in the inner mind and consciousness at least, to obey
and follow its dictates. It is the Nazi theory of life that brought</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">to the very forefront and installed in the consciousness of
man Evil as Good, Falsehood as Truth. That is pragmatism
with a vengeance. Whatever leads to success, to worldly
success, that is to say, brings you wealth, prosperity, power to
rule over men and things, enriches you in your possession— <i>vittena,</i> as the Upanishad terms it—that is Good, that is Truth.
All the rest are mental conceptions, notions, abstractions, day-
dreams meant to delude you, take you away from the road to
your fulfilment and achievement. That is how we have listened
to the voice of Mephistopheles and sold away our soul.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The government of a country is, as we know, the steel frame
that holds together the life of its people: it is that that gives
the primary stability and security, scope and free play to all
its activities. In India it was the pride of the British that they
built up such a frame; and although that frame sometimes
see med almost to throttle the nation in its firm and rigid grip
still today we are constrained to recognise that it was indeed.
a great achievement: <i>Pax Britannica</i> was in fact a very efficient
reality. The withdrawal of the power that was behind us has-left the frame very shaky; and our national government is-
trying hard to set it up again, strengthening, reinforcing,.
riveting wherever and however necessary. But the misfortune
is that the steel has got rusted and worn out from inside.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In other words, a diminution of public morality and collective honesty has set in, an ebbing of the individual consciousness too that made for rectitude and justice and equity and
fair dealing. Men who are limbs of that frame, who by their
position ensure the strength of that frame—the bolts and nuts,
screws and hinges—have, on a large scale, allowed themselves
to be uncertain and loose in their moral make-up. Along with
the outer check, the inner check too has given way: hence the
colossal disintegration, the general debacle in the life of the
body politic and the body social.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How to stop this rot that is gaining ground every day, how
to react against the inexorable chain reaction that is leading
to a final explosion? It is not merely the laymen but the
members of the very supporting frame itself, as I have said,
that have fallen and gone over to the enemy. And the fact is
true not only of the political frame, but the social frame too
made up of the <i>elite,</i> the intelligentsia. The remedy that easily</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">suggests itself and is being attempted and applied is something
Catonian, that is to say, a greater stringency of external rules
and regulations, enforcement of punishment, even of heavy
punishment as a deterrent of crime.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The institution of punishment is no longer respected<b> 
</b>or<b> 
</b>appreciated in modern times to the same extent as in the past,
even a century ago. When character goes awry, .punishment
is of no avail. Punishment does not cure or redeem the criminal;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">it often hardens, fixes the trait that is sought to be eradicated.
Fear of punishment does not always prevent one from doing
wrong things. Often danger has an irresistible fascination for
, a certain type of temperament, especially danger of the wrong
kind—indeed the greater the wrong, the greater the danger
and the greater the fascination. &quot;To live dangerously&quot; is the
motto of the heroic soul, as well as of the lost soul. A strong penal system, a 
rigorous policing is of help no doubt to maintain &quot;peace and order&quot; of some kind in a society; but that is
an external pressure which cannot last very long or be effective
in the end.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So the ideal proposed is that of moral regeneration. But
what is the kind of moral regeneration and how is it to be
effected ? All depends upon that. If you issue some moral rules
and regulations, inscribe them on pillars, print them in pamphlets, preach them from the platform and the pulpit, these
things have been done in the past and for ages, the result is
not assured and the world goes its way as ever. Something
more than mental and moral rules has to be discovered: some
dynamic and irresistible element in man has to be touched,
evoked and brought put, something that challenges the whole
world and maintains its truth and the fiat of its truth. That
is the inmost soul in man, the real being behind all the apparent
forms of his personality, the divine element, the very Divine
in him. It is the outer man, the marginal man, man in his
inferior nature that lives and moves in normal circumstances;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">instead, the central man, man in his higher and highest nature
has to come out and take his place in the world.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What is needed then is an army of souls: individuals, either
separately or in groups, who have contacted their inmost
reality, their divinity, in some way or other—men with a new
consciousness and aspiration, a new life and realisation. They</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">will live in the midst of the general degeneration and disintegration, not aloof and immured in their privacy of purity,
but take part 'in the normal activities of everyday life, still
acting from the height and depth of the pure consciousness
prove by their very living that one can be in the world and
yet not of it, doing what is necessary for the maintenance and
enhancement of life and yet not stooping to the questionable
ways that are supposed to be necessary and inevitable. In
other words, they will disprove that safety and success and
prosperity in life can be had only if one follows the lead of
Evil, if one sells one's soul. On the contrary, by living out
one's divine essence one will have conquered the world— <i>ihaiva tairjitam.</i> At every moment, in all circumstances one
follows the voice of the highest in oneself. If it is that and no
other inferior echo, then one becomes fearless and immortal
and all-conquering.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Such souls living and moving among men with little faith
and in circumstances adverse and obscure will forge precisely
the new steel frame, the stainless steel frame upon which the
new society will be securely based.</font>
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