RECONSTRUCTING DEMOCRATIC CONCERNS IN INDIA

Rajarama Tolpady

This paper attempts to provide an outline of the contributions of the Indian democratic socialist tradition to the expansion and radicalization of the canvas of democratic theory and practice in India. While doing so, it also briefly discusses and highlights the historical and cultural context of the emergence of democratic imagination in India. Besides, the paper also tries to grapple with certain central issues of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the socialist input into Indian democracy could help in overcoming some of its predicaments. This analysis is done in three sections. The first section discusses the historical and cultural context of the emergence of democracy in India in terms of the nationalist movement and the framing of the Indian constitution. The second section identifies the central issues that Indian democracy confronts today. Finally, the third section highlights the significance of Indian democratic socialist discourse both in identifying the problems of Indian democracy as well as in evolving amicable solutions to them.

I

Democracy as a political idea owes its origin to the west. However, the western genesis of the idea of democracy does not necessarily make it Eurocentric as different societies have different ways of articulating or rearticulating democracy in their distinctive cultural and historical pursuits. In India too, the chronicle of democratic imagination and pursuit has been historically specific and culturally distinct. Although the democratic imagination in India might have had its lineage in the historical experience of Western Europe, it cannot be either reduced back to that historical experience or be treated as an unproblematic transposition of an alien idea. In other words, the narrative of the Indian democratic pursuit is by no means a simple and mechanical re-enactment of the western history of democracy.

In India, democracy as a family of ideas emerges and takes shape in the course of events and eventualities associated with her historical encounter with colonialism. The nuanced and fairly long historical relation of India with the west, mediated through the hegemonic rule of colonialism, produced a wide range of ideas, which in due course constituted part and parcel of the Indian idea of democracy. To map out this extremely complex picture of Indian pursuit of democratic imagination, one needs to traverse through the dense historical occurrences of nineteenth and the twentieth century India. This helps us to understand under what circumstances and responding to which events, ideas were articulated, institutions were envisaged, and processes were initiated. The complex history of India's encounter with colonialism could be overviewed in terms of a range of responses of the Indian people from social reform to the nationalist movement; from demand for constitutional rule to the cry for Swaraj; and from efforts of social change to endeavours for social, economic and political transformation. The early response of Indian society vis-à-vis colonialism can be identified in terms of varying kinds of demands for social reform. It varied from the demands of Bengali elites for the abolition of sati and for introduction of women's education, to the Dalit demands for self-respect and social justice. These different kinds of demands can be identified in a number of movements that emerged in different parts of India; and in different contexts of her evolution as a modern society in the larger background of colonial rule. They included movements and struggles against varying kinds of social, political and cultural conditions of oppression as well as injustice. These conditions of oppression and injustice could have been propelled either by native structures of exploitation or by colonial interventions or by both. Different kinds of peasant struggles, working class agitations, Dalit upsurges, tribal resistances, and women struggles are some of the Indian responses to conditions of oppression or non-freedom caused by native or alien forces.

The national liberation movement that emerged in India in the early part of the twentieth century is, in fact, a culmination and a combination of all these divergent developments. It should be stated here that the national liberation movement did not incorporate into its fold each one of these developments, but provided expressions to quite a few of them. Although the national liberation movement in India drew the ideological strength from the constitutional liberal tradition of the west, it radically reconstructed the liberal tradition in accordance with the specific cultural and social needs of Indian society. This was possible precisely due to the fact that the national movement was profoundly and unequivocally anti-colonial in its sensibility. The strong rooting of the national liberation movement in the Indian cultural tradition enabled the movement to redefine the central values that it sought to achieve and formulate strategies to realize them. For instance, some of the early leaders of Indian nationalism like Ranade, Gokhale or Bannerjee appeared naive and straightforward imbibers of English liberal ideology. However, a closer examination of their ideas reveals their striving to domesticate and internalize western influences in the context of India. Other nationalist leaders like Tilak and Gandhi exhibited exceptional sensitivity towards the cultural roots of Indian society in different ways. Similarly, the nationalist leaders of the subsequent generation like Nehru, Jai Prakash Narayan, Lohia and Ambedkar were keenly aware of the historical and cultural perplexities of their time. Consequently, the ideas of democracy, secularism, social justice, federalism and decentralization, which constituted an integral part of the Indian democratic imagination, were subjected to critical scrutiny. This resulted in these ideas being creatively rearticulated keeping in view the cultural and historical context prevalent in India. The nationalist leadership, above other things, intensely recognized that India was a society of diversity...