Democracy and Where It Has Gotten Us
College is usually a time where people actually experience the “real world” for the first time, in many ways. We learn how to deal with new people, esp from different backgrounds, as opposed to school, where schoolmates are from the same town or neighbourhood. We learn how to set up a schedule for ourselves, with no parents to wake up, if we are staying in a hostel. We learn how to manage money, with it, in most cases, being only limited in supply. A highly crucial aspect of this life, is that it is a time when we make friends, in many cases, friends for life. We also cultivate some rivalries, even make bitter enemies, due to various reasons. This, in my opinion, is a perfect example of a microcosm, quite representative of society at large.
Within this framework, our group of friends is the most proximate group of people that we associate with, within which, we take as much liberty with each other, as much we would give them. We treat everyone as equals. We make sure no one is left behind, in any sense. We always make sure we split the bills. We make collective decisions together. Decisions. This is actually an important issue.
These are just some ramblings that I often find myself lost in. But they aren’t always random. About this issue of decisions, I was just thinking how does each group arrive at this practice? For example, how do we decide which cafe to go to? In our college, we had several options that fit our budget, we made sure. We could go to Suprabha, have a nice idli sambhar. Or we could go to Ramu, get a veg puff. Or, we could even go to Krishnavilasam, and have the best ghee roast dosa within walking distance from our hostels.
I am sure many of you have also faced such questions of national importance in your college life, as well. And I am also sure the way most of us solved these questions by putting it up to a vote. We made certain assumptions, implicitly, without ever making them clear. Like every vote counts. Equally. Even girls get to vote. Caste, religion, region of origin, CGPA, none of these factors matter. These are revolutionary ideas that have, sort of lost importance in our daily lives. I often find myself asking, why?
I think, the answer is, we were handed these principles, of equality, franchise, on a silver platter. We never had to struggle for them. These are legacy principles. That is also partly the reason why we are starting to doubt their validity anew. A large section of our society undervalues them to a large extent. I intend to take a brief look into how democracy evolved and how it shapes our view of the world.
Ancient Examples
The word democracy itself is a Greek word, where demos means people and kratos means strength. It is a system of government in which people exercise power directly or via representatives. In Greece, the earliest democratic governance was in Athens, during 6th to 4th centuries BCE. Cleisthenes is regarded as the Father of Greek Democracy. It was a direct democracy, meaning that people could directly vote, or give their preference, on policy matters.
Since the foundation of Rome, its rulers had been monarchs, elected for life by the Roman Senate. The last Roman king was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (“Tarquin the Proud”). In the traditional histories, Tarquin was expelled in 509 because his son Sextus Tarquinius had raped the noblewoman Lucretia, who afterwards took her own life. Lucretia’s father, her husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, and Tarquin’s nephew Lucius Junius Brutus mustered support from the Senate and army, and forced Tarquin into exile.
The Senate agreed to abolish kingship. Most of the king’s former functions were transferred to two consuls, who were elected to office for a term of one year. Each consul had the capacity to act as a check on his colleague, if necessary through the same power of veto that the kings had held. Veto means the power to single-handedly stop an action or a decision. If a consul abused his powers in office, he could be prosecuted when his term expired. Brutus and Collatinus became Republican Rome’s first consuls. Despite Collatinus’ role in the creation of the Republic, he belonged to the same family as the former king, and was forced to abdicate his office and leave Rome. He was replaced as co-consul by Publius Valerius Publicola.
Even though the Roman Republic, in almost 500 years of its existence, contributed much to our current understanding of democracy, was extremely flawed. The voting rights in Rome were limited to a minority of citizens. The Athenian democracy was slightly better, since it allowed all Athenian citizens to vote. However, Athenian women, slaves and foreigners were not considered Athenian citizens.
Even in ancient India, there are many evidences of non-monarchical rule. Going by the Pali Canon and even some Sanskrit literature, such forms of governments were quite common between 6th and 2nd century BCE, at least in the northern part of India.
Perhaps the most useful Greek account of India is Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander , which describes the Macedonian conqueror’s campaigns in great detail. The Anabasis, which is derived from the eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s companions, portrays him as meeting “free and independent” Indian communities at every turn. What “free and independent” meant is illustrated from the case of Nysa, a city on the border of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan that was ruled by a president named Aculphis and a council of 300.
Nysa was in Greek terms an oligarchy, as further discussion between Alexander and Aculphis reveals, and a single-city state. There were other Indian states that were both larger in area and wider in franchise. Some historians in their histories of Alexander mention a people called the Sabarcae or Sambastai among whom “the form of government was democratic and not regal.” The Sabarcae/Sambastai, had a large state. Their army consisted of 60,000 foot, 6000 cavalry, and 500 chariots. Thus Indian republics of the late fourth century could be much larger than the contemporaneous Greek polis . And it seems that in the northwestern part of India, republicanism was the norm. Alexander’s historians mention a large number of republics, some named, some not, but only a handful of kings. The prevalence of republicanism and its democratic form is explicitly stated by Diodorus Siculus.
Some historians even argue that most societies developed some kind of “governance by discussion”. For example, some native American tribes had evolved a kind of democractic society between 1400 and 1600 CE, before the Europeans came.
But, these democracies did not survive for long, anywhere. Julius Caesar, one of the last consuls of ancient Rome, was a dictator and was assassinated. His great-nephew, Gaius Octavius, along with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, led a war against the assassins of Julius Caesar and he eventually edged the other two out and became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. The Athenian democracy suffered losses and conquest at the hands of first the Spartans and then, Macedonians, and they too, lost their democracy. The ancient Indian republics also weakened due to various factors, not the least of which was the rigidity of the Chaturvarna system.
Middle Ages
In the middle ages, Europe was again ruled by monarchs, feudal lords and the clergy. The British Parliament, which can be traced back to the Magna Carta, signed by the King in 1215, was established in the year 1265. The Magna Carta, as I had said in the previous monologue on free speech, limited the powers of the King and gave liberties to the citizens of Britain. This was the first division of power in the State. Similar such laws and rules were made after this throughout Europe.
Meanwhile, in medieval India, there are evidences of quasi-democratic forms of governance dating to the late 9th century. An inscription in a Manur Ambalanatha Swami temple, from Tirunelveli district, that has been dated back to around 898 CE mentions a resolution passed by the local town that was called by gathering people by beating drums and assembling near the temple.
It even had certain rules for the people who voted. People who frequently voted “No” were charged heavy fines for obstructing work. Only those who owned land in the village were allowed to vote, so the had skin in the game. Moreover, they also had to be conversant with one Veda and one Dharmashastra, which would be tested by scholars. So, it was more like an oligarchy than a democracy. Still, it was better and more democratic than a monarchy.
Back in Europe, in the year 1610, a case called the Case for Proclamations was fought, which defined some limitations in the powers of the King. The most important part of the judgement of this case was that the King could only make laws through the Parliament. This established, firmly, that the King was not above the Parliament.
In the year 1628, the Petition of Rights was passed by the British Parliament. This document is considered to be as important as the Magna Carta of 1215 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. It made illegal the taxation without Parliamentary consent and of arbitrary imprisonment. This led to a lot of conflict and war which ended in the Glorious Revolution in the year 1688, after which the Bill of Rights was signed.
This led to a widespread acceptance for the democratic values, not just in Europe, but in America as well. The United States declared its independence in 1776. It rejected the Greek version of direct democracy, instead opting for the Roman representative version.
In the year 1789, French Revolution happened against the French monarchy and the French Republic was established, which initally took the form of a constitutional monarchy and then, became a constitutional republic.
The 19th century saw some great reforms that happened via democracy. Slavery was abolished, in 1833 by the British Empire, in 1848 in the French colonies, in 1865 in America and slowly all over the Western world. This was a great achievement for democracy. In 1853, black Africans were first allowed to vote in southern African provinces. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was passed in the USA and African Americans were given the vote.
Fall of democracy
However, these bastions of democracy, great as though their achievements were, were soon to be challenged. The First World War was a temporary victory for democracy when many monarchies, like the Ottoman Empire and Austrio-Hungary, were taken down in favour of democratic governments.
Communism rose near the end of the 19th century, and in 1917, when Bolsheviks came to power, quite violently so, proclaimed communism to be the true democracy. But one of their biggest achievements was that they accorded the right to vote to women, for the first time in Europe. However, they were not the first ones to do so. New Zealand had already given the right to vote to its female citizens in the year 1893.
Even Britain, which had a long history of women’s suffrage movements, finally gave the right to vote to women in 1918 and the USA in 1920. Even this was not exactly an equal right. In 1914, when the WW I broke out, party politics in Britain was suspended and that led to the suspension of militant suffragette movements as well. In 1918, Representation of Peoples Act was passed, quietly lobbied by these movements in the duration of the War, which accorded the right to vote to all men above the age of 21 and women above the age of 30, provided they met the property requirements. It was only in 1928 that men and women were guaranteed equal rights in Britain. France enfranchised its women in the year 1944.
Among the many reasons given not to extend the franchise to women, one of them was something that seems ridiculous today. It was that women were inherently too emotional to make important decisions and that they were better suited in the home, taking care of children and the household. Insulting phrases like, “You do not need the ballot to clean your sink” were printed on fliers. In spite of all of that, just on the basis of this principle of equality of men and women before law, the suffragists won their battle.
The WW II ended in 1945, after which decolonization began. India became an independent country in the year 1947. We gave ourselves our new constitution in the year 1950. In the general elections of 1951–52, all people above the age of 21, male and female were given the right to vote. This was later changed to the age of 18, in the 61st Amendment of 1989.
In the year 1991, the Iron Curtain fell peacefully and the erstwhile Soviet republics eventually became democratic republics.
What We Should Learn
What I see happening very often is that people undermine the importance, the sheer brilliance, of this idea of considering every person residing in a country a part of the process of governing the entire country. This idea is nothing less than revolutionary, one that enfranchises every single person of age, giving them importance in the discourse of the nation.
But it’s not like democracy does not have problems of its own. One of the longest standing criticisms of democracy comes from one of the oldest philosphers and one of my biggest influences, Socrates. Socrates did not much like the idea of democracy, that every person, irrespective of their level of intelligence, would get to participate in the process of decision making. One of his students, Plato, who was the teacher of Aristotle, who in turn was the teacher of Alexander The Great, in his book Dialogues, writes that Socrates tried to convince a friend of his about the problems with democracy.
Socrates used the example of a ship. How would we decide who captains the ship? By voting? Or by merit? In his metaphor, as he later explains, Greece is a ship and its leader must be one who is educated and wise enough to set the correct course for the ship. This meritocracy argument against democracy is not devoid of merit. But, hidden in it is an a priori assumption that there is a correct course for the ship. In my personal opinion, hardly can a person know what the one correct way is. At best, one can do a few good things at the cost of the other. And if it is any sort of an oligarchy, rule of a few men, or a monarchy, the resentment and unrest among the people is extremely high, as has been seen several times in the past.
Keeping that in mind, I think, the sovereign individuals, who vote and choose their rulers, are in fact the sovereign. They choose their leaders, however they may be. If they end up choosing a great leader, a person with vision and will, their country will prosper. If they choose an idiot, they will suffer and they will have to live with that, till the next election. They cannot exactly blame someone else for that.
In order to avoid making bad choices, I agree in full with Socrates’ solution for this problem. Education. People need to be educated to a point where they can make constructive decisions for their own society, for the longest period. This is also one of the reasons why it is my firm conviction that free education for BPL children till the age of 14 is a brilliant idea. Children must be equipped with the tools to choose what is best for themselves. This history of democracy must also be put in the proper context for them to see how important this idea is.
Another criticism of democracy is that it is a slow process, often too slow to make any real progress. Examples would be authoritarian states like the erstwhile Soviet Union, or modern China. These countries are autocratic. They achieved a lot of significant progress, but at the cost of heavy suppression of large swathes of their population.
Many people often argue on social media that India should become a dictatorship for a few years, only then it will progress. What exactly do these people think happens in dictatorships? Fundamental rights are suspended. People are oppressed and are arbitrarily incarcerated. I think these people always imagine their dictator to be a benevolent personality, like Santa Claus, who is only concerned about the growth of the country and not about consolidating his/her power and suppressing any rebellions. We had once come quite close to a dictatorship during the national Emergency. And even though I was not alive at that time, I know that those who recount their memories of that time always recount horror stories, not Aesop’s fables.
The biggest shining example of a liberal democracy still having made the most progress in spite of maintaining its democractic character is the United States. It allowed its people the freedom to participate the decision making process, yet, it was able to make rapid progress in terms of scientific and economic development. Many countries followed its lead and have still remained free countries, which is what I think India should do, and I think it is on the same path.
If you learn anything from today’s podcast, let it be this, that the value of democracy is hardly debatable. It has by now been ingrained in our heads, and for good reason. It is good, as an academic exercise, to doubt and discuss the effects of democracy, but, as Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the others.”