Despite being a fact that, the Constitution of India is unique and great by itself, as it has always been appreciated by the legal luminaries, India, the land of spiritual integrity, cultural plurality and geographical diversity, goes beyond the grasp of the nuances of the concepts framed in the constitution. It is equally a fact that, despite, nobody can question the intellectual supremacy, legal acumen and personal integrity of the founding fathers of the constitution and their ability to chisel terms they used in the text with utmost accuracy to ascertain semantic clarity, the concrete contextual life of an average Indian goes beyond the reach of their intellectual honesty and prudency. Even, the legal luminaries and social scientists, who have excelled the fellow experts in their respective fields, in their ability to collect material facts, in the sharpness of legal scrutiny, in the powers of logical analysis and rational synthesis, have to struggle hard to contextualize acts and rules which are consistent to articles of the constitution then, the difficulty of the laymen in the streets, who frequently use the terms like democracy and secularism in their day to day discourses, need not be elaborated.
The founding fathers of the constitution of India have defined India as a ‘sovereign socialist democratic republic’ to secure justice, liberty, equality and fraternity to all the people of India. Another term ‘secular’ has been incorporated with the definition by the forty second amendment act of the constitution in 1976, without having proper discussions, at any level, because, there was no chance to hold discussions during the period, as the fundamental rights of the citizens had been suspended by Indira Gandhi, the then time prime minster of India, declaring internal and external emergency in India. If, the well-defined terms contained in the constitution can provide sufficient space for interpretations and mis interpretations then, the untold miseries that can be created by an undefined or properly not defined term like ‘secular’ cannot be foreseen even by astrologers. However, the terms democracy, socialism, secularism have been frequently used by the laymen in the street as well as the experts in statecraft, in socio-political and cultural discourses, without having an agreement on the understanding of the meanings of these terms.
Whatever be the definition of the term democracy, which has been accepted by the constitution of India, the meaning of democracy has been described differently by the different political parties in India. They either described or defined the constitutional term, ‘we the people of India’, in different ways in accordance with the respective political philosophies accepted by them. There is no point in accepting the so-called general understanding of the meaning of these terms in social, political and cultural discourses because, each participant in the discourses, uses the same terms having different definitions, which really, creates semantic confusion in every discourse. They use the same terms to communicate different meanings. For instance, the meaning of the term democracy can be understood in the political discourses, only if we are able to understand the meaning of liberalism, centralism, nationalism and socialism because, the political parties in Indian politics have incorporated these terms with democracy in their party documents in accordance with the said to be ideologies propagated by them. Since, the denotation and the connotation of the term ‘we the people of India’ are determined by the political ideology, subscribed by the political parties then, the meaning of the terms like ‘people’ and ‘democracy’ would be different in different socio-political and cultural discourses.
Though, most of the political parties publicly accepted the widely circulated definition of democracy as the “government of the people, for the people and by the people”, they differed sharply, in the connotation and denotation of the core term ‘the people’ and the governance of the people. In Indian context, no political party is capable to include all human beings who are living in the geographical territory of India as ‘we the people of India’ because of the conceptual prisons constructed by their ideology. The Indian National Congress, the party that hold unquestionable political powers for more than five decades in Indian politics, accepts socialist democracy as the guiding principle to define the term, ‘we the people’. Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first prime minister of India and the much-appreciated leader of the INC was the admirer of the Soviet Union, the October revolution, and the mode of socialism practiced by the communist party in the USSR. He thought that, the concept of socialism as implemented in the Soviet Union, after the October revolution, under the leadership of V I Lenin, was a panacea to all problems generated from the socio-political and economic inequality existing in societies all over the world.
Lenin, the leader of the October revolution and the first chief executive of the USSR, after the revolution, established a socialist republic in USSR. Lenin preached that, it was the duty of the communist revolutionaries to slay the enemies of the proletariats to establish socialism. The communist revolutionaries, under his leadership, physically annihilated the bourgeoise or the enemy class of the proletariat in the class war and they established socialist government. Since, it was the inevitable part of communist revolution, Lenin taught the revolutionaries that violent method of killing the enemies in the class war was justified because he believed in the aphorism that ends justify the means. Lenin and his comrades systematically, either exterminated or excluded the enemy of the proletarian class to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat class. So, the term people, according to Lenin, means the human beings belonging to proletarian class and the human beings other than the proletarians are excluded from the definition of the people of USSR.
Though, Nehru accepted the Soviet mode of socialism in principle, he did not subscribe the theory of violence, which was inevitable according to Lenin, in the process of the establishment of socialism in Indian context by Indian National Congress. Nehru, on the contrary, preached the establishment of a socialist society by the power of ballets which he considered as the best non-violent means to establish socialism. Nehru dreamt of an egalitarian society, existing in India, where there is no difference between man and man. Hence, he opposed the capitalist people and he considered them as a necessary socio-economic evil exists in the society prior to the establishment of socialism. Like Lenin, Nehru also thought of the elimination of private property and wealth in a socialist state. Lenin adopted the method of slaughtering the capitalists and capturing the wealth of the nation, Nehru thought of the elimination of the capitalist mode of wealth management by getting the majority votes in the election and adopting pro-poor legislations. He also believed that the true form of democracy can be practiced only by implementing economic equality. Therefore, Nehru thought that, the establishment of socialism is the logical pre-condition for the establishment of democracy. Naturally, the definition of the people of a non-socialist democracy is different from the people of a socialist democracy.
Nehru further thought that, the capitalist class, a group of human beings to be eradicated in the course of the establishment of socialism by means of non-violent methods. He believed in the will of the majority people, who are the have nots, in the general elections, to get elected to power and he asked the haves to vote against their will to establish socialism. The question, was it practically possible for a person to vote against his conviction was not asked by Nehru. He introduced the soviet model planning and the theory of mixed economy for the smooth establishment of socialism. But the theory of mixed economy was a colossal failure and it encouraged the rich to become richer and the poor the poorer. Hence, the term people in Nehruvian mode of governance, could never whole heartedly include the class of haves or the capitalist class with his favorite group of people because, they are the enemies of socialism. Interestingly, he thought that, accepting the good aspects of capitalism and rejecting the bad aspects of USSR model of socialism he could establish an egalitarian society.
The Communist Party of India, following the footsteps of Lenin and adopting the party program of the communist party of USSR, endorsed the theory of democratic centralism to define democracy and the people belonging to that group. Since, the capitalist group of people would have been physically annihilated by the communist party members in the revolution, the only remaining group of people would be the proletariats, the democracy, according to them, is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Naturally the people according to communist theory means the people belonging to the proletariat class only. Hence, Indian communist is theoretically incapable to accept the human beings other than those who belonging to the class of proletariat as the people of India. The Indian Communists, even today, admit that they accept the present democratic practice only as convenient tactics as part of their unending efforts to establish democratic centralism after the bloodshed communist revolution. As, the dictatorship of proletariat never provides any space for the class enemies to oppose them, they are logically incapable to provide space to dissent with the authority and the majority. Therefore, logically, there cannot be freedom for media, freedom for religion, free and fair election, and the practice of human rights activities in a communist society.
Democratic liberalism has been the political theory adopted by the Swatantra party established by Rajagopal Achary, the direct disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom fighter, to oppose the socialist democracy of Nehru. It is a theory which never believes in the socialism of any mode because, according to their belief, socialism, whether it is won by violent means or by non-violent methods, annihilates human freedom, which they think as the essential content of democracy. They designed a different definition to democracy and according to them democracy means a state of affair which provides equal opportunity to all to generate wealth and occupy positions in society irrespective of caste, creed, community, class etc. They argued for the minimum interference of the state or other means of socio-political mechanisms in the free actions of the people. This concept of liberalism cannot afford to socialism because, socialism believes in the establishment of a social, political and economic order in a society with maximum control of the state.
Liberalism is incapable to accommodate any group of people that opposes unfettered freedom to compete with one another in the process of generation of wealth. It believes that everyone must get the opportunity to generate wealth in accordance with his/her aptitude and potentiality. The other side of the unregulated competition is that, it creates economically, socially and politically marginalized sections in society which would, naturally, slash their socio-political status in society. The basic logic of the theory of economic liberalism is the unfettered competition for existence and the survival of the fittest. The application of the theory in economics, paves the way for the creation of wide gulf between the rich and the poor and the last in the row would be naturally ignored or eliminated. Hence, ‘we the people’ in liberal democracy admits the division of the privileged and the under privileged groups. Even if the theory of liberal democracy keeps the magnanimity of including the under privileged in the definition of ‘we the people’, logically and practically, they could consider them only as a subordinate group.
In the early period of Indian democracy, Jan Sangh, under the leadership of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, proposed nationalist democracy as an alternate ideology to the democratic theories adopted by the other three groups of Indian politics incorporating socialism and liberalism to democracy. The above mentioned three ideologies, in one sense or the other, accept a view of internationalism rather than nationalism. It has often been narrated by the liberal-left thinkers that nationalism is a Euro-centric narrative and it is unsuitable to progressive nations. Nehru was more an internationalist than a nationalist and communists unconditionally accepted internationalism because, according to their ideology, a class enemy in one’s own country is not a comrade to a communist. A communist always prefers another communist, who lives in a different country, as his natural comrade. They conveniently forget the fact that, the socialism accepted by Nehru and the communists as well as the liberalism propagated by Rajaji are the Euro-centric ideologies and those concepts are not originated from the Indian soil.
The modern political narratives in the English language cannot avoid the use of these terms in the socio-political and cultural discourses. What is possible is to ascertain the semantic accuracy of these terms by redefining them in tune with the contextual necessities which we require to narrate our experience. The moment we redefine the term, there would be a paradigm shift in the nuances of the discourses we may be using the same term but the meaning would be different. So, by nationalism, the Jan Sangh leaders meant those who are borne and brought up within the territory of India, that is Bharath. The nationality of Bharath includes the biotic and non-biotic manifestations exist within its geographic boundaries. The earth, water, air, fire and space of this land and all the micro and macro manifestations within the time and space of this land have been systematically included in the nationalism of this land. It believes in all-inclusive pluralism and excludes nothing. Nationalism may be a new term to the Euro-centric discourses. But the national identity of Bharath as a nation is inherent in the history of this nation.
The most important cultural identity of Bharath is its belief in the pluralism. Pluralism is the hall mark of everything which bears the identity of Bharath, including philosophy, art, literature, and the life patterns which are being practiced by the people living in the geographic regions. Bharath never entertains monolithic ideologies and the resultant exclusivism. It never says that there is only one way of life and there is only one methodology to know truth and God and to narrate the same. So, it never says that there is only one prophet, one text, and one God. It believes that truth is absolute and it can be known in many forms and narrated in many ways (Ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti; Rig Veda). It gives space to innumerable forms of ideologies which can be generally classified into 12 categories and each category can generate many forms of sub categories and each person in each sub category is free to experience the same in the context in which he/she lives. (Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, Purvamimamsa, Utharamimamsa, Dvaida, Visishtadvaida, Advaida, Jainism, Buddhism and Carvaka are the 12 major schools of thought) All these categories of thought and the forms of ideologies generated from them are the inseparable part of nationalism.
The Indian schools of thought spread to a span of divergent thoughts, ranging from uncompromising and hardcore materialism of Carvaka school to the absolute spiritualism of non-dualism of Advaida. It is possible to see the relativism and theism of Jaina philosophy and the atheism and nihilism (Sunnyavada) in Buddhism. A person who practices uncompromising devotion to God and a person who denies the existence of God is a nationalist. The point to be noted is that blasphemy has not been included in the list of punishable offences according to Indian schools of thought and legal codes. The pluralistic ideology which functions as the basis of Indian patterns of life is the core content of Indian democracy. The diversity in thought process and practice gives the space for dissent with the authority and the majority. The Indian forms of diversities can be seen in food habits, dress habits, and the various other patterns life. Hence, the Indian form of nationalism is basically inclusive and not exclusive.
The meaningful form of the practice of democracy is possible only in a society where pluralism is being practiced because, only the practice of pluralism can ensure freedom to practice dissent with those who refuse to agree with the way of life being practiced by one self and the other. Hence, the nationalism of Bharath model could provide inclusive space to all religious faiths in the nationalism and we can be proud of that, India is the only country where jews have not been persecuted. Since, freedom is the essential content of Indian nationalism we cannot admit any effort to thrust up of any ideology, including religious faith, on anyone because, such an effort to thrust up an ideology on anyone amounts to the annihilation of freedom. Any effort to curtail freedom of anyone justifies exclusivism. Since, exclusivism and democracy cannot go together because, inclusivism is the essence of democracy then, the exclusion of any person or set of persons based on caste, class, community or ideology is inconsistent to the very concept of democracy. Democracy must be able to include every human being as well as all the manifestations in the particular time-space context within the limit of the nuances of the term ‘the people’.
Fortunately, the environmental studies have become one of the core concerns of the creative innovations of the intelligentsia, all over the world, especially after the publication of the “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson, published in 1962, in America. The role of a piece of dust has attained importance with the role of stardom in keeping ecological balance in nature. The ecological awareness among the intellectuals as well as the lay men have given birth to a lot of new areas of environmental studies including ecological democracy. The theory of ecological democracy widens the denotation and deepens the connotation of the term “the people” and now it has become an encompassing term to include all manifestations of a particular time-space context, named a nation. So, democracy can never be a business related to the human beings alone and the right of a piece of dust must be recognized and accepted along with the human rights as part of democratic rights. Therefore, the contemporary democratic studies are incapable to add the adjective terms like socialism, centralism, liberalism etc. to democracy. Nationalism, in the Indian sense, alone can be democratic because, it is all-inclusive by definition and it accepts the theory that, nature as well as men are multitudes.
Discussion about this post