Liberal democracy is said to be facing an existential crisis in the age of Trump, Brexit and rising incendiary politics across the globe. In India too, the nature of democracy, both in a procedural and substantive sense, is under the scanner. On the one hand, the Opposition is questioning the recent Assembly polls’ results as they suspect the EVMs were tampered with. On the other, with the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the CM of UP and the entry of gau rakshaks into our public life, many are questioning whether democratic procedures lead to just outcomes.
These responses raise serious questions about our faith in, and understanding of, democracy. While questioning the legitimacy of the elections or the virtuousness of democratic outcomes does not augur well for trust in India’sdemocratic institutions, asking questions about the character of Indian democracy is not necessarily sacrilegious. Democracy, after all, is not merely about elections and their outcomes. Democracy operates in and through a lifeworld, permeable to various social forces, that constitute what democracy itself comes to mean. The sociality of democracy was something B R Ambedkar, whose 126th birth anniversary we celebrated recently, gave considerable thought to and which deserves a closer examination.
In his celebrated text, The Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar remarks that for fraternity in a society: “There should be varied and free points of contact with other modes of association. In other words there must be social endosmosis. This is fraternity, which is only another name for democracy. Democracy is not merely a form of Government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellowmen.”
Fraternity was particularly a value Ambedkar drew on in this speech as well as in his other writings. Fraternity, according to him, is the principle which “gives unity and solidarity to social life”, without which “liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things”. This “sense of common brotherhood of all Indians” was something he felt India desperately lacked. India was not “yet a nation in the social and psychological sense”, especially because of the presence of castes which “bring about separation in social life”. Ambedkar hence dubs castes “anti-national”.
In his celebrated text, The Annihilation of Caste, he says that for fraternity in a society, “there should be varied and free points of contact with other modes of association. In other words there must be social endosmosis. This is fraternity ... another name for democracy. Democracy is not merely a form of
government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.”
Such an exposition of democracy as a mode of “associated living” is directly derived from the ideas of John Dewey, an American philosopher in the pragmatic tradition who was Ambedkar’s teacher at Columbia. For Dewey, individuals are not “isolated non-social atoms” but essentially social beings. And for a society to become democratic, it should allow social endosmosis—the free exchange of ideas and practices across different social groups. Ambedkar felt the conditions necessary for social endosmosis, and hence democracy, did not exist in India. The hierarchical caste system, with strict rules of endogamy and restrictions on communication, constrained movement of ideas between social groups. As he remarked, “It is the isolation of the groups that is the chief evil. Where the groups allow for endosmosis, they cease to be evil. For endosmosis among the groups makes possible a resocialisation of once socialised attitudes.”
For Ambedkar, like Dewey, democracy is not just a governmental form and citizenship not merely the relationship between the citizen and state. What he advances is a horizontal understanding of citizenship which values the relationship between individuals across different groups. This has roots in the republican tradition of political thought which emphasises civic virtue and participation in furthering the common good. While liberalism is predisposed towards individual autonomy and non-interference by the state, republicanism construes liberty as the absence of any form of domination, be it from the state, social groups or individuals.
The Constitution, which Ambedkar helmed in drafting, recognises that the source of domination need not be state power but can also be private power. While fundamental rights are principally exercised against the state, the Constitution also guarantees certain rights horizontally applicable across private persons. Article 15(2) prohibits any restriction on access to public places like shops, wells and roads on the ground of religion, caste, sex, etc. Article 17 abolishes untouchability, Article 23 prohibits human trafficking and forced labour and Article 24 prohibits child labour. While the spheres of social life they cover are limited, their inclusion shows the Constitution recognises the
significance of annihilating domination and discrimination from our social lifeworld.
If we are to judge democracy from the standpoint of Ambedkar, we should not be merely looking at whether electoral procedures are fair, or whether electoral outcomes are reasonable or even whether the state is meeting the needs of citizens. What is also important is to examine whether we inhabit a society which is democratic in spirit, respects fellow humans and promotes fraternity between different social groups. When membersof particular castes and communities are lynched for what they eat 67 years after the Constitution’s adoption and when people are labelled anti-nationals, the constitutional vision of fraternity seems elusive. Hence, bridging the gap between political democracy and social democracy remains one of the biggest challenges for the Indian republic.
(The author is a lawyer who works with the Centre for Law and Policy Research,
Bengaluru. Email: mattidiculla@gmail.com)