Democracy appears to be dying or reviving at various points in any country’s election. At its core is the popular, academic, and intellectual opinion that democracy is the best form of government for its citizens. Any country that does not adhere to democratic processes, which typically include granting all adults the right to vote, is inherently flawed. An ideal government ensures freedom of expression, the rule of law, equality of opportunity, and the integrity of the country. Political thinkers across centuries struggled to decide the best form of running the country by the ‘wisest and the best.’ Is it democracy (an ideal norm today), monarchy (single-person hereditary rule), oligarchy (a group of people distinguished by nobility, wealth, education, and holding equal powers), autocracy (a strong central party or military power monarchical or oligarchic in nature), or totalitarianism (extreme control)? Generally, as power concentrates more in the ruling elite, the citizen’s authority reduces. Democracy appears to strike the golden balance between the extremes of totalitarianism (where the ruler is supreme) and anarchy (where the individual reigns supreme).
Philosophers on Democracy
Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy brilliantly explores philosophers from various eras, highlighting issues with democracy, primarily due to its inability to select the most intelligent and capable individuals to lead the nation. Plato (4th century BCE) believed that every form of government tends to perish in excess of its basic principle: aristocracy by limiting too narrowly within power circles, and oligarchy by the scramble for wealth. Following a revolution, democracy arrives and gives people an equal share of freedom and power. But even democracy ruins itself in excess of its basic principle of an equal right for all to hold office and determine public policy.
Plato says that people lack the education to select the best and wisest rulers. Oratory skills and the ability to garner votes through various means, such as money, celebrity involvement, divisive strategies, and emotional appeals, become more important than the ability to govern. Nepotism, corruption, and general incompetence become widespread in a democracy, finally leading to the tyranny of a few. For Plato, the ideal was a democratic aristocracy where everybody has an equal opportunity to reach the seat of power as ‘philosopher-kings’, without the hypocrisy of voting.
Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, also believed that government was too complex to have its issues decided by numbers rather than knowledge and ability. According to Aristotle, democracy is founded on the false assumption that those who are equal in one respect (like the law) are equal in all respects, including governing. Aristotle says that in a democracy, ability sacrifices itself to numbers, while trickery manipulates numbers.
In Francis Bacon’s ideal world, the government is of and for the people, but by the ‘selected best’ of the people and men of trained skill. Democracy hardly does that. He believed that democratic governments are often characterized by a succession of short-lived demagogues. It is a common occurrence in democracy that people of merit shy away from political office. Another modern philosopher, Spinoza, also reiterated that democracy, appearing to be a reasonable option, still had to solve the problem of selecting the ‘wisest and the best’ to rule themselves.
Importantly, the best intellectuals of the Western world, from Socrates down to the contemporary period, were acutely aware of the problems with democracy. Eerily, what philosophers said about democracy two thousand years ago still holds true today. Non-Western societies have rightly complained that ethnocentric Western political theory, especially the gold-standard ‘liberal democracy’, has limited explanatory power outside the West. Are there alternate models?
Democracy in the Contemporary World: The Case of India and the USA
Nehru’s seven principles for a new ‘modern’ India to come out of stagnation (national unity, parliamentary democracy, industrialization, socialism, scientific temper, secularism, and non-alignment) completely rejected India’s traditional past. Parliamentary democracy with universal adult suffrage, fair elections, separation of powers, and constitutionally guaranteed basic rights was the only way to hold together a diverse, vast, and divided country. Alternatives such as ‘communitarian’ and ‘organic’ democracy, advocated by thinkers like Vivekananda, Gandhi, and Aurobindo, did not appeal to Nehru.
Dr. Bhiku Parekh, an eminent political scientist, asks: Are modern civilizations morally superior? Civilizations, as self-contained wholes, are not amenable to comparative evaluation. The components of modernity, such as rationalism, individualism, liberal democracy, the state, technology, and scientific worldview, do not logically relate to each other, and their convergence in Europe was a result of historical circumstances. Some of them could even be absent in other cultures. According to Bhiku Parekh in his thought-provoking essay, The Poverty of Indian Political Theory, India could have opted for a more decentralized and participatory form of planning that differs from both capitalist and communist forms.
Surprisingly, independent India failed to define traditional ideas on topics like social justice, the specificity of the Indian state, secularism, legitimacy, political obligation, citizenship in a multicultural state, the nature of the law, the ideal polity, and the best way to theorize Indian political reality. Contemporary political theory takes the state as its starting point and understands society in relation to it. Traditional social theory, on the other hand, concentrated on the social structure first, with the government as one of its many institutions.
According to reports, the animosity between Republicans and Democrats in the USA today is so strong that it is even preventing marriages. The two-party democracy in the USA is a disaster, with two warring factions (Republicans and Democrats) standing on each side of the fence and slugging it out. It is only through group identification with a ‘tribe’ that one compellingly supports a party while demeaning the other. The same hate is now evident in the multi-party system of India, where things are even more chaotic. Affiliation with the party seems to matter more than the nation itself. A new party arrives to immediately undo whatever the previous party did, good or bad. Before granting anyone the authority to perform a task, any society evaluates their qualifications and abilities. Strangely, the Constitutions of both India and the United States do not include education as an eligibility criterion for becoming a parliamentarian. The qualifications include some specific ages, citizenship, and the absence of a criminal record. Even with the last criteria, there are cases of gross violations.
The state of Indian democracy is equally depressing. Given the recent elections, where twenty-six parties united with the common goal of overthrowing the ruling party, one may question the feasibility of a multi-party democracy. Each party supposedly has a unique approach to developing the country and ensuring the happiness of its people. Despite the apparent optimism of a thriving country, a failing political system is evident everywhere. Land and property settlements; commissions on every conceivable deal; acquiring money and property beyond all possible means; pumping unimaginable money and liquor before elections; subversion of government machinery; and protecting the criminal behavior of relatives and friends have become almost the expected behavior for politicians across the country. Nobody even bats an eyelid when the same politicians begging for votes before elections become deviant, untrustworthy, and unapproachable after coming to power. The uniformly shattered roads across the country are perhaps the most glaring manifestation of our failed parliamentary democracy.
In recent years, top scientific journals such as Nature, Scientific American, and the New England Journal of Medicine have published articles and editorials condemning the then US President (Donald Trump) and seeking to change him. Similarly, in India, many intellectuals, academicians, and politicians publicly declare that they do not accept a particular person as their leader. Such proclamations have extremely disturbing moral and ethical implications for the role of democracy and the importance of voting in free countries. Accepting the majority’s decisions is a cornerstone of democracy. A blatant refusal or rejection points to the whole idea of democracy as an extremely flawed institution. This all confirms what Ananda Coomaraswamy said about democracy: a tyranny of the majority, where the minority is always unhappy.
Sri Aurobindo and Ananda Coomaraswamy
India is a civilizational-cultural-spiritual unity, quite different from the modern notion of nations, based on a single language, religion, or ethnicity. After the Treaty of Westphalia, modern nationhood developed historically in Europe. Diversity was the norm in Indian culture, whose political nature was decentralized. Sri Aurobindo and Ananda Coomaraswamy were two of the most profound thinkers of modern India, whose writings remain perennially relevant. Their understanding of traditional India remains mostly unmatched. Modern India’s education systems, for reasons beyond the scope of this essay, have nearly completely ignored them, resulting in their minimal inclusion in narratives about the country.
Sri Aurobindo was highly critical of the Westminster model of parliamentary party-based governments, stating that it was unsuitable for India. He was uncomfortable with the European idea of the nation-state, which he thought was only a forced political unity that was fragile in nature. The risk of such nation-states and their consequent nationalism was obvious in the colonial expansions and the world wars. For Aurobindo, political unification was secondary to another deeper form of unity already existing in India.
His key was decentralization, similar to Gandhiji but modelled slightly differently. He proposed an apex system of nation-building: nation (Rastra), state (Rajya), province (Pradesh), village (Gram). Like Gandhiji, he saw the village as central to nation-building. It was the nation’s basic unit, much like the human cell is to the whole body. There was an organic relationship between the primary unit and the higher-complexity organizations. Sri Aurobindo believed that spirituality of the highest kind united India into a nation, and this spirituality was the basis of any Indian field like arts, literature, music, dance, drama, sciences, economics, social life, and politics. India’s core spiritual message (the “Self in All”) was the greatest message for the whole world, persistently suffering from strife and friction.
He consistently criticized politicians and political parties, proposing a decentralized polity that would have “one Rashtrapati at the top with considerable powers so as to secure continuity of policy and an assembly representing the nation. The provinces will combine into a federation united at the top, leaving ample scope for local bodies to make laws according to their local problems. Western polity conceives of doing away with political parties and creating governments of national unity only in times of war or crisis; India, because of her long tradition of a unity underlying her diversity, should have shown that this unity is not a freak phenomenon but a workable basis for new politics.”
Sadly, India’s attempt at decolonization was less than half-hearted. As scholar Michel Danino states, its apparatus remained wedded to a British constitution, a British polity, a British judiciary, a British administration, and a British educational system—a prison that is about the antithesis of what Sri Aurobindo envisioned. Summing up Sri Aurobindo’s political vision for India, Danino says that it was to move away from party politics and aim at simplification, decentralization, local empowerment, true participation, ruthless transparency, and a suppleness that remains responsive to evolving situations. Unfortunately, independent India did not pay him much heed.
Once again, sadly, the multi-faceted genius Ananda Coomaraswamy, a prolific Sri Lankan Tamil writer, went unnoticed. He categorically rejected many of the flawed Western narratives based on modernity’s values. The European narratives saw a linear progression of history, where the past (or traditions) was necessarily primitive, and the future (or modernity) was necessarily progressive and liberating. This was the thought that entrapped our mostly western-educated nation-builders at independence. They simply failed to understand India’s civilizational strength. Notably, both were critical of the English language as a medium of instruction. Coomaraswamy says, “A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West, the past or the future.”
In one of his important essays, The Bugbear of Democracy, Freedom, and Equality, he explains that the ultimate values of Indian culture—the four purushartas (Dharma, Artha, Kama, and especially Moksha, or liberation)—form the bedrock foundation of all Indian social and political systems. These values form the principles of governing the country when the king is not a ‘ruler’ of the people of the country but an upholder of a larger entity called Dharma. For both Sri Aurobindo and Coomaraswamy, secularism was incomprehensible in a culture where the distinction between the “secular” and “religious” was meaningless and where every form of art, literature, poetry, dance, and even the sciences is an expression of the spirit or the one single Self. In the culture, Moksha, or liberation, was the final ideal for both the collective and the individual, and Dharma was the means to achieve it.
When it comes to democracy, Coomaraswamy says: What we see in a democracy governed by “representatives” is not a government “for the people” but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the formation of unstable power balances. In his essay Individuality, Autonomy, and Function, he says that the object of any form of government (‘good’ or ‘bad) is to make the governed behave as the governors wish. A democracy that grants the power to rule through votes, regardless of the margins, ultimately becomes a tyranny of the majority.
The Indian Perspective
Ananda Coomaraswamy and Sri Aurobindo
Political India in the past was characterized by enlightened or Dharmic monarchies receiving advice from wise ministers, free citizens, and decentralized political units bonded together by a spiritual and cultural essence. Kautilya’s Arthashastra is one of the most profound texts describing the method of choosing and forming such governing bodies. Unfortunately, this text is now in the realm of specialized studies rather than commonsense wisdom. Indian traditions focused on qualities and duties at all levels, from the king to the ordinary citizen, unlike Western ‘rights-based’ traditions. The kinds of wars fought in Europe during mediaeval times may have been unusual in the Indian context. Indian wars, by principle, mostly left agricultural lands and temples intact. A bond linking rulers and people across kingdoms allowed free movement for pilgrimages and access to knowledge. Shankaracharya could raise the four mathas in four corners of the country. As a result, alternatives to democracy thrived across the country without affecting trade, agriculture, literature, or the sciences.
Indian civilization, at least five thousand years old, apart from a high quotient of personal happiness, had a thriving economy with highly evolved arts, literature, philosophies, education, sciences, spirituality, architecture, and so on. Our indigenous systems had some merit, as their outcomes consistently attracted thousands from other parts of the world. Academics, the media, and political theorists fail to acknowledge Indian traditions, portraying the past as perpetually primitive. The proof of traditional models is the immense success and survival of the great Indian civilization. Traditions are not fossilized items, and they have immense flexibility to offer solutions for any period.
We cannot go back to the era of kings, of course, but the point is that we followed a model that was different and yet prospered. The king’s belief systems could be independent of those of his citizens, an impossibility in Western monarchies. The king’s duty was to ensure peace, prosperity, and happiness for his people. Dr. SN Balagangadhara, a contemporary scholar-philosopher, asserts that Indian culture did not recognize slavery as ‘a person ruling over another’ and allowed citizens to cross kingdoms without facing treason charges. Indian political philosophy has been consistently conservative in nature. Organic evolution, rather than a radical revolution, was the basis of change.
Sanatana (Eternal) Dharma is harmony, starting with the individual self and encompassing broader areas of family, society, and the state. Dharma ultimately talks about balance and harmony with not only fellow humans but also animals, non-living objects, and the environment around them. Duties are paramount, and rights are secondary. The principles of feminism, ecologism, humanity, and acceptance of diversity intricately permeate our best philosophical traditions.
Conclusions: How Can We Best Describe Ourselves?
In Western traditions, the pursuit of maximum individual liberty, under the protection of minimal state interference and maximal state security, has always been a constant. Seeking harmony is the goal as ideas across different philosophies combine to fill lacunae and create “isms” of the most bewildering variety. It is futile to use a single philosophy as a solution to all economic and human issues without considering the complexity of human behavior, societies, economies, traditions, religions, law, and so on.
The hard right-left divide in the West is confusing, as we are a mix of both. Hyrum Lewis, in his book “The Myth of Left and Right,” reveals that the terms “left” and “right” represent the most pervasive false narratives ingrained in our collective minds. There is no “essence” to these terms; rather, they are merely a social (or “tribal”) phenomenon where one is simply identifying with a particular group. The political positions of both parties have undergone numerous shifts, often becoming radical opposites. In India, the imaginative Marxists appropriated the term “left” for themselves and labelled everyone who disagreed with them as “right”!
“Right-wing” conjures up images of extremely conservative US Republicans and xenophobic European right-wing parties, hardly a description of traditional India. The term “left or liberal,” which often conjures up images of atheism and state control, is equally confusing in the Indian context. The best “conservative” and “liberal” ideals evolved over centuries into a unique Indic thought, and the tragedy came with independence when we rejected our past. Democracy seeks to gain power by dividing and eventually destroying India’s pluralism. Our way of living together was not through mutual respect or tolerances achieved by secularism, but by an “indifference to the differences,” as SN Balagangadhara says while describing Indian traditions.
Amazingly, Sri Aurobindo stated that the evil of democracy is the decline of humanity’s greatness. When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. When politicians fight, it is the citizen who suffers. Democracy in India simply embodies the most peculiar coalitions, highly polarizing politics (particularly in the Indian context, where diversity has always defined us), and a blatant greed for power. Despite the citizens’ belief in their vote’s immense power to change governments, the latter often fail to provide even the most basic amenities, with the country’s roads serving as the most prominent example. Yet, unfortunately, political philosophers and citizens harp on democracy as the best form of government. The best, compared to what? This brings us back to the fundamental flaw in democracy. Do the ‘wisest and the best’ come to govern the country, or do they stay away? Is there even a possibility of thinking about alternate models or improving the present model?
