Democracy: global context and Indian perspective

By

Randeep Wadehra

As an institution democracy has a hoary pedigree although its evolution has been gradual spanning several centuries. Recorded history tells us of the city-states of ancient Greece and Rome, which were direct democracies, wherein citizens voted in assemblies. However, a significant chunk of the population, including slaves, women and some others, had no political rights. However, concepts of equal political and social rights were gradually defined over a period of time, viz., during the Renaissance, when the development of humanism was fostered, and later during the Reformation, in the struggle for religious freedom. Today democracy has become a political system in which the people of a country rule through a chosen form of government. In modern democracies, authority is exercised by representatives elected by universal suffrage.

The major features of modern democracy include individual freedom, equality before the law, and universal suffrage and education. But these features did not appear as a matter of course. Their existence is due to epic struggles by various reformers and events. The first popular rebellion against monarchy in England (1642) resulted in the replacement of autocratic European governments with democracies. The seeds of this change were sown by such political philosophers as Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in America. By the end of the 19th century, every major Western European monarchy had adopted a constitution, thus facilitating transfer of political power to the people. The British Parliament became a model for representative legislatures in Europe and elsewhere. Later, democratic institutions in the United States served as a model for many nations.

Fareed Zakaria (Illiberal Democracy at home & abroad. Pp. 106-07) points out that India got its democracy from the United Kingdom and the Congress Party. The British built and operated most of the crucial institutions of liberal democracy in India: courts, legislatures, administrative rules, and a (quasi-) free press. It just didn’t allow Indians to exercise much power within them. Once independent, in 1947, Indians inherited these institutions and traditions and built their democracy on them, led by the Indian National Congress, which had dominated the struggle for independence. Even the Congress party was modeled after a British political party, from its liberal nationalist ideology down to its committee structure. Indian courts followed British practice and precedents. The New Delhi Parliament followed Westminster rules and rituals, down to the prime minister’s “Question Hour”. Absent the British and the Congress Party it is difficult to imagine Indian democracy as it exists today, asserts Zakaria.

However, in all this credit taking/distributing effort what is forgotten is India’s indigenous democratic ethos that predates even Roman and Greek republics. Buddhist and Jain literature as also various puranas and other Vedic literature provide strong evidence of the existence of non-monarchical forms of government that were either oligarchies or democratic republics, albeit not in the complete sense of modern democracies, in that the concept of universal suffrage did not exist in those times. These republics are known to today’s historians as gana-sangha, comprising a clan-based society with an egalitarian constitution. There were many such republics in ancient India, which had institutionalized the practice of consultation amongst the leading clansmen. For this purpose there were different forms ranging from the open samiti to the more restricted sabha or parishad, each of them were sovereign entities in such republics.

Vedic literature indicates that many tribal republics were ruled by chiefs who bore the title of raja, who was not an absolute monarch, for the government of the tribe was in part the responsibility of the tribal councils, the sabha and samiti. The first was a meeting of the great men of the tribe, while the second was a mass gathering of all free tribesmen, or of heads of families. These two bodies exerted much influence on the king and their approval was necessary to ensure his accession. Some tribes apparently had no hereditary chief, but were governed directly by the tribal council. In fact, in some clans, the title of raja was taken by all the

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