Jail Journal
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Jail Diary of BP Koirala

Explanatory notes in parenthesis are given to help readers locate the characters in BP Koirala's personal and political life - Editor.
  • January 4, 1968:

    Means vs. End: Confusion on the issue because of analytical proneness of thinkers to treat them as separate and at times even contradictory entities. Proneness of intellect to analyze - to dismantle an organic whole in order to study its separate parts as exclusive entities. If you give two names to separate parts of the same organic process, the logic of nomenclature will begin to put emphasis on the separate parts divided under separate names. Every human action is motivated by some objective or end or purpose; but every human purpose is also in its turn circumscribed by action directed towards it. End is a natural culmination of a process known as means. End is the last step, means is all the previous steps towards the last step. End is the last culminating action in a series of action, falling one after another in a natural sequence.

  • January 6, 1968:

    Cannot justice be conceived something as social norm that slowly evolves - a norm which society as a whole accepts in an imperceptible process of adoption? All social ethos have such social genesis. The real conflict in dictatorship arises because there is a clash between the dictator's order and the social norm (justice) that such order wants to supercede; that is, the conflict between what is good to the society and what is good to the dictator. A dictator wants to keep himself outside and above social justice.

    Since justice in this sense is the ethical (moral) outgrowth of a collective conscience, which in its turn is built upon a social structure, it is perpetually in a process of adjustment to the change of social structure, i.e. justice has to make appropriate adjustment to changes in social structure. In this sense morality is an evolving concept. Rigid morality is unethical.

    I can no more be innocent - habit of thought takes me away from it. When my mind works, it is seized with logic and I am a prisoner of thought. Why can't the shadow of a thing walk away from the thing? When I build my castles in the air, why must I always remember that such castles don't exist? Why shouldn't what exists in my dream should also exist in reality? Shouldn't reality and dream intermediate each other; I am so corrupted with the ways of truth that even my poetry is unredeemed of it; that even my fiction becomes a mere chunk of my life.

    "Happiness is virtue itself rather than a virtue's reward." - Spinoza

  • February 10, 1968:

    Marxist idea, that anarchism is a social condition of affluence, is the highest stage of communism in which productive forces of the society are fully developed, hence anarchism has to wait a historical period.

    And Bakunin's idea that anarchism has to wage its own revolution right now both for what Marxist says, economic development and man's freedom because without this twin aim, the economic revolution alone will bring about a greater tyranny on man.

    In any case, anarchism is the slogan of the new revolution that is taking place in the developed societies. Gandhi is not being as extensively adopted by the new revolution because (I) India's own image in the international world; (2) Gandhi's antipathy for machinery etc. Mao's cultural revolution has an element of non-material ideal, hence he has an appeal among the new revolutionaries. JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) has relevance in this higher type of revolution: his handicap is that he is an Indian and India has a very poor image in the outside world.

  • February 11, 1968:

    According to William Godwin, the established authority has no more right to regulate individual's action than to regulate his thought. The problem of freedom - its dilemma - lies in the fact that in any social organization some regulations (rule or code of behaviour), even if they are unbaked with the might of a state, are necessary. Even a game of cards has to follow certain rules which the players may change from time to time. But as long as a particular game is played, it must be played according to rules. We cannot conceive of such a state of total anarchism where each individual is free to behave as he chooses. State may wither away, perhaps it will; but some regulating authority, even if on ad hoc basis, will always be there, if only to serve as a road guide.

  • February 13, 1968:

    Tulsi Giri once told me that "you are 50 years in advance of time. You have born 50 years before your time." When I was the Prime Minster, the ambassador of Yugoslavia told me: "You have come into power perhaps prematurely."