Most of the countries which profess democracy today are former colonies; their socio-economic conditions are diverse. None of them is affluent; they all bear burdens of surplus labour, scarce land, and fractured society. The prevailing theory of democracy, formulated by Immanuel Kant in the serene environment of the nineteenth-century Europe, does not address the concerns of today's new democracies. Aware of the intellectual limitation of Kant's theory. this book proceeds towards an alternative approach.
The traditional theory of democracy is metaphysical. We shall establish the concept of democracy on the ground of human dignity determined with empirical data. The space of human existence may be visualized as extended over three branches, namely, society, economy, and polity. Democracy, a political institution, has to cohere with society and economy, or the other way round. Its three pillars are respectively liberty, equality, and fraternity, which are in part mutually inconsistent. Equality and fraternity do no harm to democracy. But the exercise of liberty has shown occasionally a habit to be exploitative, and hence a potential drawback to society, economy, and polity. A balance among the quanta of liberty, equality, and fraternity has to be found.
Democracy and capitalism are intimately related. At the close of the Cold War, with hubris it was claimed that democracy constituted the end point of man's ideological evolution and the final form of human government, hence the end of history. But capitalism has an inherent tendency to create and maintain an underclass in society which is contrary to the norms of democracy. Hence democracy as we know it cannot be the final achievement of human civilization. Is democracy for all? Is it an inexorable or inevitable law of nature? Is it a panacea? Is ideology the only driving force of history?
Ancient Athens, and China, and the medieval Middle East, with their success and failure, have bequeathed certain profound knowledge. Sectarian progress of one group ipso facto further downgrades the lower strata. Democracy raises people's expectation; it flourishes better in an affluent country, not so much in a land of poverty. Following the exegesis on theory and history, the book takes up its central theme: democracy and India. The analysis is structured around the three pillars of democracy, namely, liberty, equality, fraternity as upheld in the banner of the French Revolution; as well as the foundation of democracy, i.e. human dignity, in the spirit of the Renaissance.
This book builds on my earlier work, On Democracy and Progress. Some of the materials have been presented in conferences, seminars, and quarterly journal of the Indian Academy of Social Sciences, Bharatiya Samajik Chintan. The bi-annual journal, Islam and Muslim Societies, Lucknow University, has been kind enough to give me some space. The weekly Frontier has generously printed my writings. I am grateful to all for the honour and privilege extended to me. I thank KP Bagchi & Co., for their excellent cooperation. My responsibility for the errors and omissions is full and unlimited.
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