Indian Political System

Indian Democracy - Part 1

 

In the following articles, we are presenting Sri Aurobindo's views on some aspects of the Indian political system; it is not an exhaustive presentation, but in the present churning that is taking place in India, it will be useful to comprehend the deeper vision of Sri Aurobindo in politics. This view might help us to steer the national political mind in the desired direction.

 

Soon after attaining independence, India gave herself a constitution and became a democratic Republic on 26 January 1950 and has since been governed by this Constitution. This was indeed a commendable achievement, more particularly when one looks at some of the countries in our neighbourhood and even around the world. For it established a system of governance, a sound legal system and a fairly sound basis for a democratic socialistic society where elections were held regularly and the popular mandate was respected.

 

We may thus say that the democratic system has been established and accepted as an indispensable part of Indian political life; yet we have to recognise that in practice, there have been serious shortcomings and these will have to be addressed sooner rather than later.

 

As a matter of fact, right from the beginning there were voices which raised doubts about the efficacy of this system and its suitability to the Indian nation. These voices increased with time and have now reached a crescendo in the last few months. Here is an extract from an article written by Retd Justice Santosh Hegde: "The situation in India today is drastic, and drastic situations require drastic measures. While corruption has existed from time immemorial, the last year has probably seen the maximum number of scams being unearthed. And mind you, these are only the scams that have been exposed; there could be a thousand others that have gone unexposed. Earlier, we used to say that corruption exists only in government service; today it has seeped into every single profession. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, the media, and the judiciary-nothing is spared. This is a very dangerous scenario for the country."

 

The question that arises is: how much of the fault lies in the system itself and how much in the misapplication that arises due to human frailty? If the fault lies in the system, we should take a close look at it and suggest changes more suited to the Indian temperament. Regarding the aspect of human weakness which is undoubtedly an important factor we shall not discuss it in this article for it will demand a deeper psychological approach. In this article, I shall try to present Sri Aurobindo's views on Democracy and more particularly Parliamentary Democracy. We shall follow it up by making some suggestions for evolving a better democratic system more in tune with the Indian genius and temperament.

 

Sri Aurobindo was in active politics during the years 1906-1910. During that period in a comment he wrote: "Socialistic democracy is the only true democracy, for without it we cannot get the equalised and harmonised distribution of functions, each part of the community existing for the good of all and not struggling for its own separate interests, which will give humanity as a whole the necessary conditions in which it can turn its best energies to its higher development. To realise those conditions is also the aim of Hindu civilisation and the original intention of caste. The fulfilment of Hinduism is the

 

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fulfilment of the highest tendencies of human civilisation and it must include in its sweep the most vital impulses of modern life. It will include democracy and Socialism also, purifying them, raising them above the excessive stress on the economic adjustments which are the means, and teaching them to fix their eyes more constantly and clearly on the moral, intellectual and spiritual perfection of mankind which is the end".

 

Sri Aurobindo withdrew from active politics in 1910; but he continued taking active interest in politics and even wrote extensively on political thought in the Arya, a philosophical journal in Pondicherry.

 

In 1911, Sri Aurobindo wrote a letter on Parliamentary Democracy. We are quoting a portion of that letter: "Be very careful to follow my instructions in avoiding the old kind of politics. Spirituality is India's only politics, the fulfilment of the Sanatana Dharma its only Swaraj. I have no doubt we shall have to go through our Parliamentary period in order to get rid of the notion of Western democracy by seeing in practice how helpless it is to make nations blessed. India is passing really through the first stages of a sort of national Yoga. It was mastered in the inception by the inrush of divine force which came in 1905 and aroused it from its state of complete tamasic ajnañam [ignorance]. But, as happens also with individuals, all that was evil, all the wrong samskaras and wrong emotions and mental and moral habits rose with it and misused the divine force.....It is only when this foolishness is done with that truth will have a chance, the sattwic mind in India emerge and a really strong spiritual movement begin as a prelude to India's regeneration. No doubt, there will be plenty of trouble and error still to face, but we shall have a chance of putting our feet on the right path. In all I believe God to be guiding us, giving the necessary experiences, preparing the necessary conditions."

 

In another context, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

 

"It is the European idea that makes you think that the parliamentary form or constitution is the best. The parliamentary form would be hardly suitable for our people. Of course, it is not necessary that you should have today the same old forms [as in ancient India]. But you can take the line of evolution and follow the bent of the genius of the race."

 

All these statements were made long before India attained its independence; yet we see how prophetic they are.

 

In this article, we shall first show that Democracy is not a modern phenomenon; it was practised with some measure of success in ancient Athens and in ancient India; also they laid down some of the fundamental principles of a democratic society which will be very relevant to us even in modern times. We shall not go into any detailed study of these systems, but we shall point out some striking features which show how well they understood the true meaning of Democracy. Some of those features are relevant even today and will have to be taken into consideration in devising a new political system for India.

 

Later, we shall analyse the psychological roots of modern Parliamentary democracy in the light of Sri Aurobindo.

 

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These are the principle themes in the remainder of this article

 

•  Democracy in the ancient Athens

 

 Democracy in ancient India

- It's five characteristic features

•  Modern Democracy

- The historical background

- The psychological roots of the Democratic system

- Consequences of the democratic system

 

• The Parliamentary system in India

 

Democracy in the ancient Athens

 

We start with some interesting features of Athenian democracy. Here is a story taken from the Republic of Plato; although it is a simple story, it has profound political and philosophical implications. The story goes like this:

 

Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and re-ascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.

This story remains important to us even today because it concerns what we can expect humans to do when they have power over others. In politics, we give power to others, hoping that they will do what is right. If Plato's allegory of the ring is right, then we had better watch out. Anyone who gains power without accountability is liable to use it unjustly. Secrecy is a form of invisibility, and for the purposes of power, as effective as a magic ring. The question "What is Justice?" remains as crucial today as it was a few thousand years ago. This explains the insistent demand today for the Right to Information Bill and many other radical measures.

 

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Another interesting feature of Athenian democracy was the composition of the Council and the method of selection. The Council consisted of 500 members who were neither selected nor elected; they were chosen by lottery. They functioned for one year only with the provision that any individual could be a member of the Council only twice. In this way, the number of participants over the years in the Assembly was large. What were the reasons behind this mode of selection? It was based on two assumptions. Firstly, the greater the number of participants in governance, the more it helped in creating a democratic society. Secondly a legislator who has assumed responsibility during his one year tenure, would be more understanding and careful in his criticism and demands - in other words more responsible. The Athenians were clear that a democratic society demands a sense of responsibility from its citizens. It is evident that the Athenians had a sound and fine understanding of democratic principles.

 

 

Democracy in ancient India

 

Similarly regarding the practice of Democracy in the ancient Indian polity, we shall note some of the striking features. The evolution of the ancient political system in India started from the unit of the village in Vedic times and moved later to the large kingdoms; in this process, it threw up certain very striking peculiarities which owing to the unique mentality of the race fixed themselves and became prominent and permanent characteristics and gave a different and unique stamp to the political, economic and social factors of Indian civilisation. It is important that we identify those characteristics for they can be signposts when we set out in search for a new political system for India.

 

 

The first characteristic

 

The religious and spiritual inclination has been predominant from the earliest times of Indian civilisation and has been one of the striking characteristics of the Indian people. This naturally "brought about at the top of the social system the growth of the Brahmin order, priests, scholars, legists, and repositories of the sacred lore of the Vedas". This development was not unique to India but it was given an unequalled permanence and supreme importance in India. "In other countries with a less complex mentality this predominance might have resulted in a theocracy: but the Brahmins in spite of their ever-increasing and predominant authority did not and could not usurp in India the political power. As sacrosanct priests and legists and spiritual preceptors of the monarch and the people there is no doubt that they exercised a very considerable influence, but the real or active political power remained with the king, the Kshatriya aristocracy and the commons. In other words, despite the strong religious leaning of the Indian people, a theocracy and theocratic rule is completely foreign to the Indian mentality. There never was and never will be a theocracy in India.

 

 

The second characteristic

 

Given this religio-spiritual inclination it was natural that the greatest reverence was reserved for the spiritual man. In ancient India he was known as the Rishi; he was the man of a higher spiritual experience and knowledge, "exercising an authority by his spiritual personality over all; he was revered and consulted by the king of whom he was sometimes the religious preceptor and was able to exercise an important role in evolving new basic ideas and effecting changes of the socio-religious ideas and customs of the people. It was a marked feature of the Indian mind that it sought to attach a spiritual meaning and a religious sanction to all, even to the most external social and political circumstances of its life, imposing on all classes and functions an ideal; it stressed on rights and powers, but much more importantly on duties, a dharma with a spiritual significance. It was the work of the Rishi to put this stamp enduringly on the national

 

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mind, to discover and interpret the ideal law and its practical meaning, to cast the life of the people into the well-shaped ideals and significant forms of a civilisation founded on the spiritual and religious sense." And even in later days, right till the modern times, this original character is still exercising its influence.

 

 

The third characteristic

 

Like in most other countries of the ancient world, the king was at the head of political power. But, as Sri Aurobindo reveals, "Indian monarchy was not, in spite of a certain sanctity and great authority conceded to the regal position and the personality of the king as the representative of the divine Power and the guardian of the Dharma, in any way a personal despotism or an absolutist autocracy: it had no resemblance to the ancient Persian monarchy or the monarchies of western and central Asia or the Roman imperial government or later European autocracies: it was of an altogether different type from the system of the Pathan or the Mogul emperors. The Indian king exercised supreme administrative and judicial power, was in possession of all the military forces of the kingdom and with his Council alone responsible for peace and war and he had too a general supervision and control over the good order and welfare of the life of the community, but his power was not personal and it was besides hedged in by safeguards against abuse and encroachment and limited by the liberties and powers of other public authorities and interests who were, so to speak, lesser co-partners with him in the exercise of sovereignty and administrative legislation and control. He was in fact a limited or constitutional monarch, although the machinery by which the constitution was maintained and the limitation effected differed from the kind familiar in European history; and even the continuance of his rule was far more dependent than that of mediaeval European kings on the continued will and assent of the people."

 

 

The fourth characteristic

 

"A greater sovereign than the king was the Dharma, the religious, ethical, social, political, and customary law organically governing the life of the people. This impersonal authority was considered sacred and eternal in its spirit and the totality of its body, always characteristically the same, the changes organically and spontaneously brought about in its actual form by the evolution of the society; and it must be noted that with the Dharma no secular authority had any right of autocratic interference. The Brahmins themselves were recorders and exponents of the Dharma, not its creators nor authorised to make at will any changes, The king was only the guardian, executor and servant of the Dharma, charged to see to its observance and to prevent offences, serious irregularities and breaches. He himself was bound the first to obey it and observe the rigorous rule it laid on his personal life and action and on the province, powers and duties of his regal authority and office."

 

 

The fifth characteristic

 

"This subjection of the sovereign power to the Dharma was not an ideal theory inoperative in practice; for the rule of the socio-religious law actively conditioned the whole life of the people and was therefore a living reality, and it had in the political field very large practical consequences. It meant first that the king had not the power of direct legislation and was limited to the issue of administrative decrees that had to be in consonance with the religious, social, political, economic constitution of the community", and importantly, "neither could he disregard in the general tenor and character and the effective result of his administration the express or tacit will of the people."

 

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"The religious liberties of the commons were assured and could not normally be infringed by any secular authority; each religious community, each new or long-standing religion could shape its own way of life and institutions and had its own authorities or governing bodies exercising in their proper field an entire independence. There was no exclusive State religion and the monarch was not the religious head of the people."

 

"The social life of the people was similarly free from autocratic interference. Instances of royal legislation in this province are rare. Change in the society was brought about not artificially from above but automatically from within and principally by the freedom allowed communities to develop or alter automatically their own rule of life."

 

"In the sphere of administration the power of the king was similarly hedged in by the standing constitution of the Dharma. His right of taxation was limited in the most important sources of revenue to a fixed percentage as a maximum. The king was in person the Supreme Court and the highest control in the execution of the civil and criminal law, but here too his role was that of the executor: he was bound to administer the law faithfully as it stood through his judges or with the aid of the Brahmin legists learned in these matters.

 

He had the complete and unfettered control in his Council only of foreign policy, military administration and war and peace and of a great number of directive activities. He was free to make efficient arrangements for all that part of the administration that served to secure and promote the welfare of the community, good order, public morals, and all such matters as could best be supervised or regulated by the sovereign authority. "

 

We may thus conclude in the words of Sri Aurobindo:

 

"There could therefore be ordinarily little or no room in the ancient Indian system for autocratic freak or monarchical violence and oppression, much less for the savage cruelty and tyranny of so common an occurrence in the history of some other countries. Nevertheless such happenings were possible by the sovereign's disregard of the Dharma or by a misuse of his power of administrative decree.... The legists provided for the possibility of oppression. In spite of the sanctity and prestige attaching to the sovereign it was laid down that obedience ceased to be binding if the king ceased to be faithful executor of the Dharma. Incompetence and violation of the obligation to rule to the satisfaction of the people were in theory and effect sufficient causes for his removal. Manu even lays it down that an unjust and oppressive king should be killed by his own subjects like a mad dog, and this justification by the highest authority of the right or even the duty of insurrection and regicide in extreme cases is sufficient to show that absolutism or the unconditional divine right of kings was no part of the intention of the Indian political system."

 

A detailed study of the ancient Indian polity will show us that the system was very well thought out; it was based on the combination of a very "complex communal freedom and self-determination, each group unit of the community having its own natural existence and administering its own proper life and business, set off from the rest by a natural demarcation of its field and limits, but connected with the whole by well-understood relations, each a co-partner with the others in the powers and duties of the communal existence, executing its own laws and rules, administering within its own proper limits, joining with the others in the discussion and the regulation of matters of a mutual or common interest and represented in some way and to the degree of its importance in the general assemblies of the kingdom or empire. The State, sovereign or supreme political authority was an instrument of coordination and of a general control and efficiency and exercised a supreme but not an absolute authority; for in all its rights and powers it was limited by the Law and by the will of the people and in all its internal functions only a co-partner with the other members of the socio-political body."

 

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"The one principle permanent at the base of construction throughout all the building and extension and rebuilding of the Indian polity was the principle of an organically self-determining communal life,-self-determining not only in the mass and by means of the machinery of the vote and a representative body erected on the surface, representative only of the political mind of a part of the nation, which is all that the modern system has been able to manage, but in every pulse of its life and in each separate member of its existence."

 

To sum up: It is evident that the ancient world was keenly aware of the fundamentals of the democratic principle and tried in its own unique way to implement it in their collective life.

 

 

Modern Democracy

 

The modern democratic system took a distinct shape in the eighteenth century in England; it developed gradually into the parliamentary democratic system and has been adopted by many countries with some minor adjustments. India is one of those countries which based its constitution and model of governance on the British model.

 

 

The historical background

 

However, it is important to understand the psychological roots of this development for it is only then that one can truly understand its functioning, its strengths, its limitations and the changes that need to be made.

 

History tells us that after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5^th century AD, Europe was more or less dominated by the Church. The Christian religion through the organisation of the Church dominated the life of almost the whole of Western Europe. No doubt there were kings and powerful feudal lords but all of them had to pay some sort of allegiance to the Church. The power of the Church was based on Faith. The people and almost the whole community had full faith in the Christian religion. Consequently almost all decisions both in the individual and collective life of the society were taken by the Church or priestly class. In this process, many good things happened even though it is sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages. Some kind of peace was maintained among the warring lords, education was taken care of by the Church, the old manuscripts were preserved and hospitals were built to look after the sick and injured. There surely were many more benefits during this period. However, two important forces that strongly motivate the Western mind were suppressed. The first one was the Reason - the inquiring, defining, effective practical reason and the second one was the cult of Life. The Church did not allow any free thinking and suppressed the urge to a full life; these forces were not allowed to grow and quite inevitably after a few centuries, there was a revolt demanding a free room for these two forces. This revolt was aided by the rampant corruption that was then prevalent in the Church. This led to the two great movements of the Reformation and the Renaissance. The consequence of the Reformation was to split the Church into two groups, the Catholics and the Protestants thus weakening the influence of the Church considerably. The Renaissance on the other hand released the power of Reason and the flowering of the aesthetic development.

 

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The free play and development of Reason led to momentous changes in the life of Europe. There was first an Intellectual Revolution followed by the Industrial Revolution, which is really the application of Reason to life. Europe progressed by leaps and bounds and soon became the dominant continent of the whole world. One of the most important consequences of these movements was the belief and conviction that Reason was the highest instrument of Knowledge and that Faith must bow down to the dictates of Reason.

 

 

The psychological roots of the Democratic system

 

But when Reason becomes the dominant power in human life, its role cannot be restricted to only a few areas; it is the natural and inevitable drive that it has to be applied to the whole of life in all its details. Consequently when man starts applying reason to life - becoming reasonable -and makes it his chief instrument of knowledge, it inevitably starts questioning everything and expects rational answers.

 

In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "Man may for a time, for a long time even, live by the mere tradition of things whose reality he has lost, but not permanently; the necessity of questioning all his conventions and traditions arises, and by that necessity reason gets her first real chance of an entire self-development. Reason can accept no tradition merely for the sake of its antiquity or its past greatness: it has to ask, first, whether the tradition contains at all any still living truth and, secondly, whether it contains the best truth available to man for the government of his life. Reason can accept no convention merely because men are agreed upon it: it has to ask whether they are right in their agreement, whether it is not an inert and false acquiescence. Reason cannot accept any institution merely because it serves some purpose of life: it has to ask whether there are not greater and better purposes which can be best served by new institutions. There arises the necessity of a universal questioning, and from that necessity arises the idea that society can only be perfected by the universal application of the rational intelligence to the whole of life, to its principle as to its details, to its machinery and to the powers that drive the machine."

 

The question that inevitably follows is: Whose Reason is to be applied to solve the problems of society?

 

In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "This reason which is to be universally applied, cannot be the reason of a ruling class; for in the present imperfection of the human race that always means in practice the fettering and misapplication of reason degraded into a servant of power to maintain the privileges of the ruling class and justify the existing order.

 

It cannot be the reason of a few pre-eminent thinkers; for, if the mass is infrarational, the application of their ideas becomes in practice disfigured, ineffective, incomplete, speedily altered into mere form and convention. It must be the reason of each and all seeking for a basis of agreement.

 

Hence arises the principle of individualistic democracy, that the reason and will of every individual in the society must be allowed to count equally with the reason and will of every other in determining its government, in selecting the essential basis and in arranging the detailed ordering of the common life."

 

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This is the psychological root of Democracy; man starts to govern his individual and collective life by reason and this gradually led to the system of Parliamentary Democracy; it took shape first in England and then spread to other nations in the world. This system leads to what may be called representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy practised in ancient Athens. In modern times it is impossible to have direct democracy because of the size of the population. In Representative democracy it is claimed that the members of Parliament are the representatives of the people and their aspirations. We shall see later the falsehood underlying this assertion.

 

To sum up, the rational age believed that this common judgment should be effectively organised only for the indispensable common ends of the society, while in all else men must be left free to govern their own life according to their own reason and will and find freely its best possible natural adjustment with the lives of others. It was a deep conviction of this age that in this way by the practice of the free use of reason men can grow into rational beings and learn to live by common agreement a liberal, a vigorous, a natural and yet rationalised existence.

 

 

The problems and the causes of failure

 

However, this did not work out in the actual practice.

In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

 

"In practice it is found that these ideas will not hold for a long time.

For the ordinary man is not yet a rational being; emerging from a long infrarational past, he is not naturally able to form a reasonable judgment, but thinks either according to his own interests, impulses and prejudices or else according to the ideas of others more active in intelligence or swift in action who are able by some means to establish an influence over his mind.

 

Secondly, he does not yet use his reason in order to come to an agreement with his fellows, but rather to enforce his own opinions by struggle and conflict with the opinions of others. Exceptionally he may utilise his reason for the pursuit of truth, but normally it serves for the justification of his impulses, prejudices and interests, and it is these that determine or at least quite discolour and disfigure his ideals, even when he has learned at all to have ideals.

 

Finally, he does not use his freedom to arrive at a rational adjustment of his life with the life of others; his natural tendency is to enforce the aims of his life even at the expense of or, as it is euphemistically put, in competition with the life of others. There comes thus to be a wide gulf between the ideal and the first results of its practice. There is here a disparity between fact and idea that must lead to inevitable disillusionment and failure."

 

 

Consequences of the democratic system

 

"The individualistic democratic ideal brings us at first in actual practice to the more and more precarious rule of a dominant class in the name of democracy over the ignorant, numerous and less fortunate mass.

 

Secondly, since the ideal of freedom and equality is abroad and cannot any longer be stifled, it must lead to the increasing effort of the exploited masses to assert their down-trodden right and to turn, if they can, this pseudo-democratic falsehood into the real democratic truth; therefore, to a war of classes.

 

Thirdly, it develops inevitably as part of its process a perpetual strife of parties, at first few and simple in composition, but afterwards as at the present time an impotent and sterilising chaos of names, labels, programmes, war-cries. All lift the banner of conflicting ideas or ideals, but all are really fighting out under that flag a battle of conflicting interests.

 

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Finally, individualistic democratic freedom results fatally in an increasing stress of competition which replaces the ordered tyrannies of the infrarational periods of humanity by a sort of ordered conflict. And this conflict ends in the survival not of the spiritually, rationally or physically fittest, but of the most fortunate and vitally successful. It is evident enough that, whatever else it may be, this is not a rational order of society; it is not at all the perfection which the individualistic reason of man had contemplated as its ideal or set out to accomplish."

 

We have shown the psychological roots of the modern democratic system as it is practised all over the world. As it should be clear, the system is based on the following premises:

 

Reason is the highest instrument of knowledge at the disposal of man. Therefore the perfection of life comes by the application of reason to both individual and collective life. In the individual life each man is expected to govern his life by his own reason without interfering with the same right in the life of other individuals. In the collective live the collective reason has to be applied only to the indispensable common ends of the society. The question is now what is meant by the collective reason? As already explained earlier, it cannot be the reason of the intellectual elite nor can it be the reason of the ruling power; it has to be the reason of each and every individual member of the society who has developed the capacity of reasoning. This has been fixed to adults who have crossed the age of eighteen.

 

The system failed for the following reasons: firstly a large number of men have not yet developed the power of using their reason and secondly because even those who have developed the power of reasoning use it to justify their interests and preferences or to justify their intellectual points of view. The consequence is the inevitable failure of the theory.

 

It would seem that the corrective to this is the introduction of universal rational education. This is a long term solution and would demand a strong political will, huge amounts of investment and a radical improvement in the methods of education and would take a long time to implement.

 

In the meanwhile all modern nations have devised a democratic system to implement these ideas; in India we have adopted the parliamentary democratic system based more or less on the British model. The question that we shall now raise is with the system that has been adopted in India. We shall take a look at the basic and essential features of the system and what it claims for itself.

 

Here is what Sri Aurobindo writes about modern democracy.

 

"For that is what the modern democracy at present is in fact; the sole democratic elements are public opinion, periodical elections and the power of the people to refuse re-election to those who have displeased it. The government is really in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the professional and business men, the landholders, —where such a class still exists—strengthened by a number of new arrivals from the working-class who very soon assimilate themselves to the political temperament and ideas of the governing classes."

 

Let us now take a look at the Parliamentary system in India.

 

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The Parliamentary system in India

 

What are the essential elements on which the Parliamentary system in India is based? They are as follows:

 

1. Universal adult franchise with the eligible voters having the option to vote or not to vote.

 

2. Periodic elections are held at different levels, Parliament, State, districts right down to the Panchayats.

 

3. Single member constituencies with the first past- the- post winners.

 

4. The Government is formed by the party or the conglomerate of parties that gets a majority of seats in the legislature.

 

5. The leader elected by that party or conglomerate is nominated as the Prime Minister.

 

6. The Prime Minister selects his minister only from the legislature.

 

The system is justified on some of these counts:

 

1. It is said to be representative of the people and their will.

 

2. It is said that the Government formed in this manner will be broad based, representative, stable, durable and effective.

 

3. It claims to ensure accountability - of each member to the Prime Minister, of each minister to his colleagues through the principle of collective responsibility and finally of the political Executive to the Parliament.

 

In the next part of the article, we shall make a detailed study of the system in its actual working in India.

 

 

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The need to change the political system

 

As already pointed out in the previous article, Sri Aurobindo wrote extensively about politics and society not only when he was in active politics but also after withdrawing from it. These writings were written mainly from the psychological point of view and were illustrated by contemporary events and appeared in the two books The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity. In that context he wrote in great detail about the psychological roots of socialism and democracy as they have evolved in the modern age. These are extremely relevant even today; in fact in the previous chapter we have shown in some detail the psychological roots of democracy. We are picking some more relevant extracts from his writings:

 

 

 

Inevitably there have been different forms of democracy in nations. And, in India democracy as it has evolved in the last five decades seems to be more like a disguised oligarchy which reposes its rule on the assent of the people expressed by election or otherwise; it would be more appropriate to call it a semi-passive democracy.

 

 

Referring to India, Sri Aurobindo wrote:

 

 

In this article we shall try to show the relevance of these statements in the present context in India, and take note of the actual working of the Parliamentary system. We shall then see that democracy as it has been practised in India is hardly democratic.

 

This series of articles has three parts

 

1. In the first we brought out the psychological basis of Indian democracy,

 

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2. In this second part we will observe our Parliamentary system in action and see how far it conforms with our understanding of democracy.

 

3. In the third part we shall try to suggest ways and means for improving the system and make it more truly democratic. This will be taken up in some detail in the next article of the series.

 

 

The psychological basis of Indian Democracy

 

1. As already seen in the previous article, the modern age is essentially an age of Reason. It follows that in a rational society every citizen must be given the liberty to develop himself and fulfil his life, satisfy his mental tendencies, emotional and vital needs and physical being according to his own desire governed by his reason; no other limit to this right and this liberty is to be admitted except the obligation to respect the same individual liberty and right in others. This was the principle applicable to the individual in his personal life.

 

In the collective life, however, society had to be governed by the collective Reason. The question was to find out this collective Reason. It was in answer to this seeking that the system of parliamentary democracy evolved. This was done by means of periodic elections where the citizens would elect their representatives.

 

Thus it was believed that Parliament with all the elected members becomes not only the representative but also the embodiment of the reason of the people; in other words, it is suggested as a logical follow up that the citizen may consider his representative in Parliament as an extension of his own reason. Indeed, one sometimes even hears the argument put forward that the enlightened individual could well come to regard this collective reason and will as his own larger mind, will and conscience and find in a happy obedience to it a strong delivery from his own smaller and less rational self. Thus emerged the belief that Parliament is supreme and it is Parliament alone that can make laws for the country and that is because it represents the enlightened reason and will of the people.

 

The Parliamentary system in India

 

Let us now see the essential elements upon which the Parliamentary system in India actually functions. They are as follows:

 

1. 1. Universal adult franchise with the eligible voters having the option to vote or not to vote since voting is not compulsory.

 

Periodic elections are held at different levels: Parliament, State, districts, taluqas right down to the Panchayats.

 

Single member constituencies with the first past- the- post winners.

 

The Government is formed by the party or the conglomerate of parties that gets a majority of seats in the legislature - the Lok Sabha.

 

The leader elected by the elected members of that party or conglomerate of parties is nominated as the Prime Minister.

 

The Prime Minister selects his ministers only from the legislature and only from his own party.

 

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This system is believed to be justified because:

1. It is said to be representative of the people and their will.

 

It is assumed that the Government formed in this manner will be broad based, representative, stable, durable and effective.

 

It claims to ensure accountability - of each member to the Prime Minister, of each minister to his colleagues through the principle of collective responsibility and finally of the political Executive to the Parliament.

 

The established procedures of Parliament

 

Parliament is the body that makes the laws for the nation. We have already seen that the Executive is chosen only from members of Parliament. What are the established procedures of Parliament?

1. Bills are introduced by the Executive;

 

2. They are scrutinised by standing committees;

 

3. The reports of standing committees are then studied by the executive and the necessary changes are made or proposed to Bills;

 

4. The legislature then debates the Bills clause-by-clause

 

5. Finally there is voting for or against them.

The procedure actually appears to be reasonable and sound; why then is there so much criticism and dissatisfaction against the functioning of Parliament as witnessed in the recent movements? This dissatisfaction has in its extreme, even denounced parliamentary democracy.

 

While it is easy to criticise Parliament and its functioning, it would be more useful and to the point if we first identify the shortcomings in the system, and then seek to set the system right by cleansing it of its malcontents and, if necessary, overhauling it completely to a new system that is more suitable to the Indian temperament and genius.

 

The issues that we shall take up are:

 

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I. Does parliament really represent the will of the people?

 

ii. Is it justified to say that Parliament is supreme? In what sense is it supreme?

 

iii. Is parliament actually applying the collective reason to make laws for the country?

 

iv. Is the Executive truly accountable? and to whom are they accountable? V. What is the quality of the Parliamentarians?

 

vi. How are decisions actually taken?

 

I. Parliament represents the will of the people

 

Does parliament really represent the people?

 

To see how far this is true, we consider an example from recent events. In his book Parliamentary Democracy, Arun Shourie^a, we are shown how in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, 59 MPs of Uttar Pradesh entered the Lok Sabha with just 10 to 20 per cent of the vote. While the then Basti MP won on just 11 per cent of the votes, the Robertsganj MP needed 11.4 per cent, Mohanlalgunj MP 11.6 per cent, Mirzapur MP 12.4, Bansgaon MP 12.5 per cent, and so on. It must further be noted that this 11% is of the votes cast and in most elections only 50% of the eligible voters cast their vote. Thus this 11 % really comes down to around 5% to 6%. If we glance at the proportion of votes by obtaining which members got elected to the Lok Sabha in 2004, we get the following results. 99% of the members got into the Lok Sabha by getting less than half the electors to vote for them. Almost 60% got in with the endorsement of less than 30% of electors in their constituencies. Even with 100% of eligible voters exercising their vote, the MPs can hardly be said to be representative of the people. In reality, we see quite clearly that the elected members of parliament are not truly representatives of the people. In the State Assemblies, the numbers deteriorate further south, though we will not go down this path anymore. Yet, it is confidently claimed that Parliament represents the people of India.

 

 

II. The supremacy of Parliament

 

It is being continuously argued by many members of Parliament and some political commentators that it is only Parliament that can make laws; no other individual or group has the right to make laws since it is the sole prerogative of Parliament. Here is what an editorial in the Hindu wrote recently^b:

 

^a Shourie has twice been a member of the Rajya Sabha

^b Significant Victory, Aug 28 2011; Editorial, The Hindu

 

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For in India the situation is different from that prevailing in Britain. Britain does not have a written Constitution and quite naturally Parliament is supreme. It suits their natural genius and has been working for more than a century. But in India we have a written constitution which has been amended by Parliament several times. It is therefore absurdly argued that Parliament is supreme. But it must be remembered that the Constitution is for the people.

 

It would be therefore more correct to say that the people are supreme and that both the Constitution and Parliament are meant to be the expression of the people and their will. Thus neither the Constitution nor Parliament can be considered as a sacred cow which one must not touch. What needs to be done is to make both the Constitution and Parliament more responsive and representative of the people of India. For after all, the Constitution has been made for the people of India and it must represent the genius and temperament of the history and aspirations of the Indian people. It follows that members of Parliament must be well versed with the history and deeper psychological aspiration of the people of India down the ages. Consequently the people must be consulted in major changes to the Constitution. All radical alterations must get the assent of the people of India and that can be done by a referendum. Only then will we be moving towards a more democratic democracy.

 

Here is a reference from Sri Aurobindo to show that in ancient India, the people were considered supreme.

 

 

 

III. The application of Reason by members of Parliament

 

As already seen in the previous article, Democracy is the exercise of the Reason in guiding the collective life. Hence members of Parliament are supposed to exercise their reason before passing a law. Unfortunately, very often bills are passed without any application of reason by the members. Here is one illustration taken from a remark by Justice Santosh Hegde:

 

Do you think your elected representatives discuss bills before they are passed? Are they even aware of what bills are being passed? In 2008, 17 bills were tabled and passed in

 

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Parliament in a span of 12 minutes. Where are the discussions? Where are the debates? And please do not harbour any illusions about them being insignificant bills. One of the bills (which was noticed and not passed) was an amendment to the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA). Can anyone in his right mind imagine that corruption has decreased from 1947 to 2008 that there is a need to amend the Act to make it easier for the accused? The present Government sought to amend three sections. Section 13(1) clearly states that if someone holding public office has accumulated unaccountable assets, the onus is on the person to prove his innocence. The second, Section 19, states it cannot be argued by a person in public office that bribery and accumulation of wealth were activities that occurred during the discharge of duties. The last amendment is with reference to sanctions where you can prosecute retired government officials in a corruption case. Now tell me, does a Government that tries to pass a bill like this have the heart to fight corruption?"⁶

 

Another feature of almost all parties is the issue of a whip which demands that all members of the party have to follow the decision taken by the heads of the party. This means that even when a member of a party finds that the decision taken by the leaders is not reasonable he has no choice but to subvert his reason to that of the leaders. This leads to the question whether the party system is itself reasonable. We shall discuss this aspect later in the chapter.

 

 

IV. The Decision Making process;

 

How are decisions taken by the Government and Parliament?

 

One of the most important elements of governance is the decision making process. In the Parliamentary system, it is the Prime Minister along with his Cabinet that takes all the decisions. Unfortunately in the present scenario, this system seems to have been undermined. The impression that seems to be making the rounds of the political circles is that there is a diarchy; the perception is that all important decisions are taken by the President of the ruling majority party and the Prime Minister follows suit. This impression has been further strengthened by the creation of the National Advisory Council. The President of the ruling majority party is the Chairman of the Council and has been given the rank of a cabinet minister; also all members of the Council are not members of Parliament. Thus the decision making process is taken out of the hands of Parliament. At least that is the impression in the country today. If this is true, it poses a serious danger to democracy itself. It is being felt and even aired by respected political commentators that Indian democracy is hardly a democracy; it is a veiled oligarchy and today not even veiled; it might be called a veiled autocracy. Writing about the present phase of Indian politics Mark Tully writes:

 

 

As a matter fact the problem is not so simple. It is much deeper. There seem to be two centres of power in the country. Effective power is with the President of the

 

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ruling majority party with no accountability, while authority with accountability rests with the Prime Minister but without any real power. The creation of the National Advisory Council responsible for all major decision making process, with the party President as its Chairman, confirms this fear. The present ruling majority party appears to have become a private limited company owned by a single family.

 

 

V. Quality of politicians

 

Sri Aurobindo writes about politicians in the world:

 

 

This seems to be particularly true in India.

 

Here is an illustration from an article written by Ajai Sahni who is a founding member and executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, in New Delhi.

 

 

It is evident that the election process needs to be looked into so that we get the right people into Parliament and into the Government. A detailed note on the electoral process will be presented in the next part of the series of articles.

 

 

VI. Accountability of the Executive

 

It is claimed that in the Parliamentary system that the Ministers are accountable to Parliament. This is a myth; for as we have shown earlier all decisions are taken by a

 

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small committee of the ruling party and every member of Parliament belonging to that party is bound by that decision. Therefore since the ministers are chosen from the ruling party which has a majority in the House, accountability is not to Parliament but to the heads of the Party that takes decisions. This is neither democracy nor accountability.

 

One can go on and on, for there are many other aspects that need to be looked into; however even without going into all those aspects, it is clear that the Party system and the consequent system of Parliamentary democracy as practised in India is hardly democratic and has failed to fulfil the aspirations of the people.

 

We are putting forward some relevant quotes from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo which will be the basis of the suggestions for a better political system.

 

In 1969, the Mother had given a message to the then Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi; we quote the message below:

 

 

We are reproducing another extract from what the Mother said in 1970 regarding Indian politics.

 

 

An extract from a conversation with Sri Aurobindo:

 

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In the next article we shall suggest some solutions to the system Some of the problems mentioned above will be addressed; we do not claim that the suggestions are the last word - that is not the intention - but to open a dialogue among all lovers and well wishers of the nation and even if it so happens a national dialogue. For the matter is one of pressing importance.

 

References

 

¹ The Human Cycle p 400 CWSA

 

² The Human cycle p471 CWSA

 

³ India's Rebirth July 13 1911

 

⁴ India's Rebirth April 7, 1926

 

⁵ The Renaissance in India p11 CWSA

 

⁶ April 20, 2011 - former Supreme Court judge Santosh Hegde, India Today

 

⁷ The Human Cycle p 296 CWSA

 

⁸ CWM, Vol.13, p.377

 

⁹ 25 May 1970: CWM, Vol.15, pp.426-28

 

¹⁰ December 27^th 1938 India's Rebirth

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