CHAPTER - 1
DEMOCRACY: HISTORICAL RETROSPECT
The word “Democracy” is derived from Greek words, “Demos” meaning “People” and “Kratein” meaning “to rule”. Democracy, therefore, means government by the people themselves. The concept of democracy has been one of growth and development through centuries. Hence democracy has not meant exactly one and the same thing to different people or to the same people at different times. A good description of democracy was given about 2428 years ago in 422 B.C by the Greek philosopher, Cleon, who defined it as rule of the people, by the people, and for the people,
[1] which was later adopted by Abraham Lincoln. In essence, it is a government which is based on the consent of the people and a carried out in accordance with the will of the people.
The concept of democracy is not new, for man has always cherished his freedom, freedom from the domination of foreigners or fellow individuals or groups within his own country. However, democracy and rights go hand in gloves. A code containing rights and obligations of the ruler and the ruled was laid down some 4,500 years ago during the reign of King Hammurabi of Sumer.
This Code makes it clear, amongst other things that the government of the people is to be carried on by the ruler in accordance with the laws, which should receive the general consent of the people. The Medes and the Persians had their own time-honoured laws and the king was bound to govern his people in accordance with these laws.
[2]In ancient India, too, the king was bound to govern in accordance with dharma or the eternal law. Indeed, dharma was supreme and the king himself was subject to dharma and as soon as the king failed to rule in accordance with the dictates of dharma, he becomes liable to be deposed.
Some 500 years before Christ, the Greeks had developed the concept of democracy. In their city-states, the people took a leading part in governing themselves. All decisions in respect of administration of the people were arrived at after full discussion amongst the people themselves. One of the earliest of Greek law- makers, Solon, was entrusted with the task of compiling the laws for the people. Solon was actuated with the desire to give the people the right to govern themselves. Hence he says “I have given the common people sufficient power to assure them of dignity.”
[3] The word “dignity” here is important. Democracy always safeguards the individual and does not treat him as merely a tool of the State. In the Roman Republic, the rights of the individuals were always recognized and respected by the rulers who came from amongst the people themselves. “With the Romans, it was always an accepted doctrine that vox populi supreme lex, i.e. the voice of the people is the supreme law.”
[4]Democracy in the modern sense was developed particularly in medieval England. The German tribes which had migrated from the Continent to England had brought with them the basic principles of freedom and democracy. They had elected leaders and they insisted that their chosen leaders should govern them in accordance with the will of the tribes. The English people throughout their constitutional history never lost sight of this basic fact. In such constitutional documents as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the fundamental rights of the people were defined and guaranteed.
The English immigrants who settled in America took with them the fundamental principles of democracy as they obtained in England. When the ruling clique in Britain tried to discard these principles in their relations with the colonists, they rose in revolt. They emphasized that there could be no taxation without representation. As their reasonable claims were not conceded, the Americans declared their War of Independence and fought it to finish till they won independence. Some of the noblest principles of democracy are enshrined in the American Constitution and in the pronouncements of the leading Americans of that era.
Democracy in the modern sense requires a freely elected legislature usually with an adult franchise. This legislature must exercise a vigilant control over legislation, taxation and foreign policy. The executive is responsible to the legislature in a democracy. The ministers who head the executive branch of the Government remain in office so long as they enjoy the confidence of the elected representatives of the people.
In a democracy, there may be Parliamentary form of Government as in the U.K. or a Presidential form of Government as in the U.S.A. To some extent there may even be a blending of these two forms of Government. It is not enough that the electorate should exercise its franchise at the time of the general election and then remain politically dormant till the next election. Just as the members of the legislatures have to scrutinize the acts of the executive, so the electorate has to keep a vigilant eye on the legislative activities of their representatives. For the successful working of a democracy, the electorate must continue to remain politically alive and watchful. It must express its opinions on various public matters by all constitutional means.
[5] In this way, democracy seems to have scored an historic victory over alternative forms of governance. The history of 20th century Europe alone makes this clear: Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism came very close to obliterating democracy altogether.
[6] Against this background, it is unsettling that some recent political commentators have proclaimed the ‘end of history’ - the triumph of the West over all political and economic alternatives. The revolutions, which swept across Central and Eastern Europe at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 stimulated an atmosphere of celebration. Liberal democracy was championed as the agent of progress and capitalism as the only viable economic system. Ideological conflict, it was said, is being steadily displaced by universal democratic reason and market-oriented thinking.
[7] But such a view is quite inadequate in a number of respects. In the first instance, the ‘liberal’ component of democracy cannot be treated simply as unity. There are distinctive liberal traditions, which embody quite different conceptions from each other of the individual agent, of autonomy, of the rights and duties of subjects and of the proper nature and form of community. In addition, the ‘celebratory’ view of liberal democracy neglects to explore whether there are any tensions, or even perhaps contradictions, between the ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’ components of liberal democracy; for example, between the liberal preoccupation with the individual rights or ‘frontiers of freedom’ ‘which nobody should be permitted to cross’, and the democratic concern for the regulation of individual and collective action, that is, for public accountability.
[8] Furthermore, there is not simply one institutional form of liberal democracy. Contemporary democracies have crystallized into a number of categories, which make any appeal to a liberal position vague at best.
[9]Within the history of democratic theory lies a deep rooted conflict about whether democracy should mean some kind of popular power (a form of politics in which citizens are engaged in self-government and self-regulation) or an aid to decision-making (a means of conferring authority on those periodically voted to office). This conflict has given rise to three basic variants or models of democracy. First, there is direct or participatory democracy, a system of decision-making about public affairs in which citizens are directly involved. This was the ‘original’ type of democracy found in ancient Athens, among other places. Secondly, there is liberal or representative democracy, a system of rule embracing elected ‘officers’ who undertake to ‘represent’ the interests or views of citizens within the framework of the ‘rule of law’. Thirdly, there is a variant of democracy based on a one-party model (although some may doubt whether this is a form of democracy at all). Until recently, the erstwhile Soviet Union, East European Societies and many Third World Countries have been dominated by this concept.
Democracy in the Indian Context
Since 16th and 17th centuries, when modern science and technology began to be developed by the Western nations, Asia was no longer a match for Europe. The growth of European nationalism, extensive commodity production and world commerce was witnessed. Asia, henceforward, became a mere field of operation for European imperialism and colonialism. The rise of Industrial Revolution intensified the process of augmentation of economic and political power by the Western nations. In the 18th century and the early part of the 19th century, the Asiatic countries presented a spectacle of thorough economic decline, political prostration, social stagnation and cultural decadence. Asia had become a subordinate category in world history.
In modern India, one finds a dynamic upsurge of new political and social energy. Coming of Vasco da Gama opened the door for the Western traders, colonists and invaders. The influx of the British on the Indian soil was widely different from what India had known before. Most of the early intruders who came to India had settled within her frontiers, were absorbed by her superior culture and had become one of the land and its people. However, the British conquest was unique in the sense that for the first time, India encountered an invader who considered itself racially superior and culturally more advanced.
The Indian society at that time was groaning under the greatest of tyrannies - the tyranny of custom, discord, disunity, lethargy, infidelity, sceptism, irreligion and false religion, pedantism, slavishness, introversion, rigidity and man’s inhumanity to man. All this has been described by Jawaharlal as “the progressive deterioration.” This made them forget the deeper moralities and immoralities involved in their every day life. Women were given a place of respect in home and society but not of equality. Purdah system was common among both the Hindu and Muslim women. Though women of poor families who went out on work for livelihood could not observe it. Child-marriages were common among both girls and boys though consummation usually took place after they attend the age of maturity. Dowry-system was prevalent among the people. Polygamy was common. Remarriage of widows was generally looked down upon, though it prevailed in some places. The birth of a girl-child was not welcomed. Infanticides and human sacrifices were common. The evil practice of Sati mostly prevailed and those who escaped it were condemned as widows, to life long misery, neglect and humiliation. Another debilitating factor was caste. It sought to maintain a system of segregation hierarchically ordained on the basis of ritual status. The rules and regulations of caste hampered social mobility, fostered social division and sapped individual initiative. Above all was the humiliation of untouchability which militated against human dignity. In the words of Jawaharlal, “the conflict is between two approaches to the problem of social organization, which are diametrically opposed to each other: the old Hindu conception of the group (the caste-system) being the basic unit of organization, and the excessive individualism of the West, emphasizing the individual above the group.”
[10]When the British took over the administration of Bengal, all higher education was confined to a study of classical Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian in ‘tols’ and ‘madrasas’. Vernaculars were sadly neglected, and neither natural science nor subjects like mathematics, history, political philosophy, economics or geography formed part of the curriculum. Grammar, classical literature, logic, philosophy, law and religious texts formed the main elements of higher studies, while elementary education imparted in Pathsalas and Makhtabs consisted of the three R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) and religious myths and legends. Indians had little knowledge and less interest of the great strides Europe had made since the Renaissance. In matters of education and intellectual progress, India was passing through a period analogous to the middle ages of Europe.
Modern India - Reforms and Democratic Aspirations
Broadly speaking there are three main currents in educational activities; the one is directed by the Government, the other by Missionary effort, and the third by people themselves. The British government at first took but little interest in the development of education. Warren Hastings encouraged the revival of Indian learning and laid the foundation of the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781. Inspired by the same spirit, Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta in 1784 and a Sanskrit College was established at Benaras by the Resident Jonathan Duncan in 1792. But there was no proposal or even a remote suggestion of establishing a system of education under government supervision or control. The idea of setting up a network of schools for teaching English was first mooted by Sir Charles Grant, a civil servant of the Company. He rightly held that the social abuses and the moral degradation of the people were “the results of dense and widespread ignorance, and could be removed only by education, first of all by education in English.”
[11] Grant on his return to England tried to persuade the House of Commons and the Court of Directors to his view, but without success. What Charles Grant failed to do through Government, the Christian missionaries undertook to accomplish in Madras and Bengal. Among these noble bands of workers to whom India owes the beginning of English education, one name stands foremost, that of William Carey. Missionary schools had already been established in Madras with Government support, Carey and his friends set up schools and published Bengali translations of the Bible. Thus, they laid the foundations of English education and Bengali prose and literature. It is along lines laid down by them that intellectual development has taken place in subsequent times.
Carey’s example was followed by other missionaries and liberal Indians, the most notable among them being David Hare, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chand Vidyasagar and later on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. Early three were mainly instrumental in establishing several English schools, including the Hindu College in 1817, which afterwards developed into the Presidency College. It was not until 1823 that a Committee of Public Instruction was appointed in Bengal to take measures for the introduction of useful knowledge, religious and moral improvements, promotion of a knowledge of the sciences and further directed that a sum of not less than one lakh of rupees should be set apart each year and then steps were taken to establish a Sanskrit College at Calcutta. Against this, a spirited protest was made by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in the form of a petition to the Governor-General, Lord Amherst.
This new idea of imparting English education soon made their influence felt even in the Committee of Public Instruction. It was gradually divided into two parties known popularly as the “Orientalists” and the “Anglicists” or the “English Party”. The latter held that pubic funds should henceforth be devoted only to the imparting of liberal education on Western lines through the medium of English. The Anglicists advocated for the ‘Filtration Theory’. The appointment of the famous missionary, Alexander Duff, on the Committee of Public Instruction strengthened the hands of the English Party and it scored its first triumph when Lord Willian Bentinck established the Medical College in Calcutta. The appointment, in 1834, of Thomas Babington Macaulay, the new law member as President of the Committee completed the discomfiture of the Orientalists. On 7th March 1835, the Council decided that henceforth the available public funds should be spent on English education. The existing Oriental institutions like the Sanskrit College and the Madrassa were to continue, but fresh awards of stipend to students of these institutions and the publication of classical texts must cease.
The cause of English education was still further advanced by the regulation introduced first by Lord Hardinge that all public services were to be filled by an open competitive examination held by the Council of Education (the successor of the Committee of Public Instruction), preferences being given to the knowledge of English. Virtually English education was made the only passport to higher appointments available to the Indians and hence its popularity and rapid progress were equally assured. In order to carry out the above objects, the first University in India was founded in 1857 at Calcutta and between 1857 and 1887 four new Universities, at Bombay, Madras, Lahore and Allahabad were added. Nothing has more decisively influenced the current of Indian life in a certain direction than the spread of English ideas in an Eastern society. The contact and even occasionally the clash of two great cultures - the one in its state of decay and the other in its state of bloom, so different from each other - has proved to be one of the turning points in the history of Asia and even of the world.
The Indians had come under a common government and a common administrative system. Now they began to come under the influence of a common culture and developed, therefore, a common political and cultural consciousness - which was different from the old Hindu, or the Muslim or Hindu-Muslim consciousness. The Indian mind, which was cribbed, cabined and confined for centuries became free gradually after getting English education. It has moved in the same old grooves for year; now it acquired a consciousness of undreamt-of possibilities and began to move on uncharted waters, unpathed shores. History, literature, logic, philosophy, science, the arts, the religion; each of these great departments of human thought put on a new life and began to develop on lines of its own. The spirit of nationalism, which was absent among the Indians began to take shape. India at that time badly wanted internal peace and security; and to guarantee that peace and security it was necessary that there should be one single power in the whole country; and that power, whatever may be its lapses and shortcomings in actualities, did stand for peace and security. The great lesson of 18th century history of India is that order is heaven’s first law; and only on the basis of order can true liberty grow. It was because Great Britain brought this gift of internal peace and stability that she won.
Broadly speaking, two main schools stand out as representative of the Indian social thought. The first current may be broadly called “Indian Liberalism”. It is at first, purely religious liberalism, it then develops into social liberalism and it culminates in political liberalism. The general attitude of the whole school is in the direction of an all-round progress on modern lines. It stands for a radical revision of all Indian ideas, theories, beliefs, institutions in the light of reason. It is, therefore, essentially a Rationalistic school of thought, also known as Anglicism. It stands for the acceptance of the advanced Western thought and practice, as a basis of Indian social reconstruction, and lastly it stands for the progressive application of the ideal of liberty to the whole religious, social and political life of India.
Contrasted with this is a rival current of thought, which may be called “Indian Nationalism”. It is also called “Revivalism” and “Oriental”. It takes its stand above all on the indigenous Indian culture. ‘National reconstruction on national lines’ was its fundamental cry. It, therefore, violently reacted against the invasion of Christianity and Western rule in India. Its opposition to the Western ideals and its strong insistence on a revival of the ancient Hindu ideals mark it off definitely from the other school. This movement of Indian nationalism also passes through three phases: the religious nationalism of Arya Samaj, Deoband and Wahabi Movements; the cultural nationalism of Vivekananda and Mohammad lqbal and the militant political nationalism of B.G.Tilak, B.C. Pal, Hasrat Mohani and Obeidullah Sindhi. Between 1757 and 1857, there was no question of participation by the Indians in the process of political governance. With the assumption of the reins of power by the imperial Crown, additional steps were taken towards the growth of local government, responsible government and later self-government. The slow impact of the growth of the British liberalism, philosophical radicalism and movements of political and economic reform was felt in the country through the English education. It was in terms of the concepts of liberty, rights, equality, participant citizenship and freedom from imperialistic exploitation that some of the leaders of the Indian renaissance and early nationalism made their appeals. Therefore, in order to understand the political thought of modern India it is absolutely necessary to arrive at a correct understanding of the political ideas of the great reformers of Indian renaissance.
[1] R.S. Cohen, Marxism and Democracy, New York, 1965, p. 1.
[2] Phiroze J. Shroff, Fundamentals of Democracy, Democracy in India (ed.) Symposium organised
by the Forum of Free Enterprise, Dhawale Popular, Bombay, 1960, p.10.
[3] Quoted by Phiroz J. Shroff, ibid, p.11.
[4] Ibid, p.12.
[5] Phiroze J. Shroff, op. cit., p. 9-15.
[6] David Held, Democracy: From City-States to a Cosmopolitan Order? Contemporary Political Philosophy an Anthropology, Robert. E. Goodin & Philip Pettit (ed.), Blackwell Publishers, U.K. 1998, p.78.
[7] F.Fukuyama, The End of History, The National Interest, 16 (1989).
[8] I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford, 1969, pp.164ff.
[9] A. Lijphart, Democracies, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1984.
[10] J.L. Nehru, Discovery of India, OUP, 1989, p.246.
[11] Quoted by R.C. Majumdar, An Advanced History of India, Part III, Modern India, Macmillan, London, 1958, p. 816.
