The recipe for democracy

India is the largest practising democracy in the world. In terms of sheer numbers, the stats are mind-boggling enough not to require repetition here. But are people there really living in a liberal democracy? Most who live and follow the process and concept called India would disagree. So why has it been so hard for the fruits of individual human rights, rule of law that’s free and fair, policies that benefit people in reality, not just in some ideological sense that party manifestos require them to, and elected leaders who are transparent in their dealing, been so hard to achieve? After all the nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote that being the ‘Argumentative Indian’ had given the citizens a natural edge over other nascent and evolving democracies. The answer lies in how democracy arrived in India. To understand the process, comparison with how democratic principles entered western (rather the European) societies in the latter stages of last millennia is well worth the time.

Democracy evolved over a period of over 400 years in western Europe. It was the culmination of a long process of churning and evolution. The western nations’ reliance on a mode of analytical and logical thinking, the bedrock of rational decision-making based upon freedom of speech that is an essential pre-requisite of democratic thinking, is as much a product of what preceded this way of thinking. What preceded was of course the excesses of the Church with its abuse of authority, suppression of scientific and rational though linked with denial of individuality. India has not yet been able to, or rather its political leaders have not allowed the nation to lift itself above the regressive and emotive pull of religion, the use and abuse of caste and religious background for vote-bank politics and the overbearing reliance on populist and quick-fix measures as opposed to logical and analytical approach to managing governance. It needs to traverse a similar process of self-reflection as a nation that many western European nations did in the 13th to 17th centuries which led to emergence of the philosophy of science and the age of industrial revolution to really accelerate the process of democracy.

This process in Europe involved sequentially the ages of renaissance, reformation, rationalism and revolution. These stages ultimately broke the stranglehold that ancient and regressive religious thoughts had over people as the predominant mode of determining social realities and manage societies. The change in mindsets was not limited just to enlightened leaders but their subjects too. The period of renaissance was the first stage of breaking this stranglehold. It involved a critical analysis of the religious scriptures and a retelling of the natural order, a viewing of ‘reality’ through the prism of logic; a renaissance of thought. Indeed Nico Machiavelli, the Italian Chanakya, who was credited with writing probably the first treatise on politicking, reportedly said that all his wisdom was a retelling of old knowledge and wisdom contained within the Greek classics.

Renaissance was followed by reformation of the church. Those choked by the puritanical and abusive control of the church broke free and various movements facilitated this, leading ultimately a separation of spiritual realm from political field. Religion became more a personal matter and not an over-riding gear on matters of governance of states.

This era was in turn was followed by an era of rationalism. The freedom from a state of lack of querulousness about matters of nature and the visible world and rejection of superstition and dogma led to the use of reason and logic to explain the mysteries of the universe rather than invoking supernatural forces. This led to the age of industrial revolution in the 17th century in England and the arrival of mechanical aids into the life of people with a value on material wealth and diminution of the spiritual.

The last stage in this process was revolution in many European states as a means of violently purging the society of religious hegemony and monarchic excesses which the previous stages of change had not succeeded in eradicating. There was a violent flux that cleansed many European communities of the royalties and gentry that exploited the common man using religion to attribute motives to man's actions. These four stages spanning a period of nearly 500 years were the precursor to individual rights and use of reason as the primary means of organising societies and decision-making on a daily basis. These precursor stages heralded the arrival of democracy. Development of bureaucratic institutions, and laws of tort: hallmarks of democracy, allowed groups of people to participate in the process of governance, had been evolving through the previous four stages of change.

For the individual, s/he had been a witness and a participant of a huge cathartic process whereby dark forces of superstition, feudalism and internecine medieval warfare that involved the suppression of one group by another had been, in a piece-meal manner, smashed beyond recognition. His own intellectual evolution and emancipation was as much the stuff of democracy as the Magna Carta, that first piece of document penned in Lincolnshire and now preserved in the small town of Runnymede by the Thames. In other words, democracy did not evolve overnight like a magical solution to centuries of autocracy, despotism, nepotism and malevolent monarchy alongside parasitic spirituality/religiosity. It took centuries of development which formed the bedrock of civil society in Europe and the Caucasian world.

Is it any wonder why democracy in India still resembles a myriad forms of religious states, dynastic monarchies, feudal states and despotic authoritariansm? In the next part, we will explore what needs to happen for India to start becoming truly democratic - in practice rather than simply in principle. We shall ask whether the recent liberalisation of economy, the advent of free media, and a more open society has changed a people that are still in many ways ancient.