The Hindu : dated April 15, 1953: Think for Yourself

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Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003

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dated April 15, 1953: Think for Yourself

Speaking at the Fifth Anniversary celebrations of the Tirupati Youth Forum, Mr. N. Raghunatha Aiyar, Assistant Editor, The Hindu, complimented the organisation as a clearing house for ideas, and said, "It is the fashion now to decry thinking and talking, and to exalt action alone. But any action, not based on careful prior thinking out of pros and cons, means getting caught up among the contrary winds of opinion and prejudice.

Unfortunately, the intellectual has abdicated his function in many countries, losing faith in himself and labouring under a sense of guilt.

Unless intellectuals all over the world recover their self-confidence and seek to play their legitimate role, totalitarianism that flourishes by playing upon mass fears and passions cannot be halted.

It behoves everybody therefore, and particularly the youth of India, to examine seriously in the light of all available knowledge every nostrum which is offered, such as Socialism, Secularism, Classless Society, and Need for Revolution.Young Indian thinkers must ask themselves how far such prescriptions can be reconciled with each other and with the basic character, needs, and urges of the people of our country, not in terms of some distant ideal future as doctrinaire theorists conceive it, but in terms of the living present in which we are.''

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