1.

Democracy and Freedom

I am deeply grateful for the privilege accorded to me to deliver the Sixth John F. Kennedy Memorial Lecture. This lecture series is in honor of an individual who was one of the most luminous spirits of the century,-a cleansing personality who combined intellect with compassion and courage of the highest order. He had the gift of grace which is the hall-mark of all great leaders in history and which is quite different from political sex-appeal. It is in the fitness of things that every democracy, including India of which he was a very close friend, should honor the memory of this pilgrim of eternity. I thought no subject would be more apposite for this lecture than the one which was dearest to his heart freedom and democracy. Let me emphasise that democracy and freedom are not synonymous. Today the word democracy has been devalued and it has come to be identified merely with adult franchise, i.e. the right to be governed by the elected representatives of the people. Democracy in this sense is quite different from freedom. You may have democracy without freedom; and you may have freedom without democracy. There are several totalitarian States which are democratic in the sense that their rulers are elected by the people and which actually use the word Democratic in the very name of their State. But their political set-up is characterized by the very negation of freedom; they allow only one party to function and do not permit the right to dissent. The claim that the elected representatives are entitled to ignore or abrogate the basic human right as an expression of the democratic will of the people , is the very foundation of all fascist and totalitarian governments. Our Supreme Court has cited with approval the memorable words of United States judges that a government which does not recognize inalienable human freedoms and which holds the lives, the liberty and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute disposition and unlimited control of even the most democratic depository of power, is after all but a despotism. It is true it is despotism of the many, of the majority, if you choose to call it so, but it is nonetheless despotism. 2 I would define democracy as the dwelling place which man has built for the spirit of liberty. Intruders have seized the place in many lands. Democracy in which the spirit of liberty does not reside is a morgue. History affords constant vindications of the validity of the principle that the human being precisely because he is human and has a personality and individuality of his own must be permitted to enjoy the basic human rights which the State should be powerless to take away. First, all great art and literature
1

The Sixth John F. Kennedy Memorial Lecture delivered under the auspices of the Indo- American society, at Bombay, on June 1973
2

Savings and Loan Association V. Topeka 87 U.S. 655; Hurtado v. People of California 110 U.S. 516; quoted with approval in Gopalan v. State of Madras 1950 S.C.R. 88, 247, A.I.R.1950 S.C. 27, 91.

have flourished best during periods of freedom, or they have flourished best during periods of freedom, or they have been given to the world by men who yearned for freedom although they might have had the misfortune to live under autocratic regimes. Liberty has proved most conducive to the flowering of the human spirit, and it has been the most humanizing and civilizing force in the crowded story of man. Secondly, men have always been inspired to make the costliest sacrifices at the altar of liberty. They have laid down their lives in defense of freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of conscience and religion. Great poets and composers have been stirred by the spirit of liberty.
Which bade those heroes dare To die and leave their children free. Some of you will recall the lines of Lord ByronThey never fail who die In a great cause: the block may soak their gore; Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs Be strung to city gates and castle wallsBut still their spirit walks abroad.

It is a poignant thought that countless Indians died in order to secure the basic human freedoms for India, and within a quarter of a century of our attaining those freedoms our elected representatives claim the right to take them away. Thirdly, freedom has proved itself capable to surviving for centuries while permitting the contrary creed to be freely propagated. Many truly democratic countries permit freedom for communists to persuade people to their way of thinking, and yet the democratic system survives. Have you ever heard of a communist country where the credo of liberty is allowed to be propagated at all? If it were allowed to be, even the strongest totalitarian State would crumble within half a generation. This is the great difference between a doctrine which is basically founded on truth and therefore can withstand the attacks of fanatics, and a doctrine which does not rest on the foundation of truth and therefore cannot brook or survive any opposition. Truth never yet fell dead in the streets- it has such great affinity with the soul of man. As one of the greatest living writers, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, said in his Nobel Speech:
Once the lie has been dispersed, the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its repulsiveness, and then violence, become decrepit, will come crashing down In Russian the most popular proverbs are about truth. They express the not inconsiderable and bitter experience of the people, sometimes with astonishing force. One word of truth outweighs the whole world. And on such a fantastic breach of the law of conservation of mass and energy are based my own activities and my appeal to the writers of the world.

In a democracy you have the choice of different parties. In a totalitarian State you have usually only one party; and if at all there are two parties, they are the yes party and the of course party. While the finest pages of history bear witness to the glory of freedom, it cannot be gainsaid that the nose counting method which is unavoidable in democracy has very serious shortcomings. Let me read out to you a few lines:
The democrats contemptuously rejected temperance as unmanliness. They mistook insolence for good breeding, anarchy for liberty, waste for magnificence and impudence for courage. The father gets

accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them and the son to be on a level with his father, having no shame or fear of his parents The teacher fears and flatters his pupils, and the pupils despise their masters and tutors. The old do not like to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they imitate the young The citizens chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and at lengththey cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten.

You might think these lines were written about our modern democratic set-up. Actually, they are the words of Plato, describing the Athenian democracy in his Republic. Plato died in 347 B.C. You realize that democracy has not changed much during the last 2,300 years. Man continues to be the same treasured ape, whether he walks on his legs or flies at 650 miles an hour. The average man is both difficult to govern and unfit to govern others. Adenauer, the great German Chancellor, said, God, in creating man, has hit upon a very poor compromise. If He had made man more intelligent, he would have known how to behave. If He had made man less intelligent, he would have been easier to govern. It is a reflection on the drawbacks of democracy that the happiest periods which civilized man has known have been under benign and enlightened rulers who were not elected on the basis of adult franchise. Gibbon said that the happiest period of European history was the Age of the Antonines which started with Emperor Nerva who came to power in 96 A.D. and ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 A.D. That was the age when Pax Romana brooded over the earth. In that era the crown was not inherited, but the king would adopt as his son the wisest and most dedicated man he could find in his kingdom and nominate and train him as successor to the throne, and thus the monarchy went by merit. Marcus Aurelius failed to nominate his successor, and his son who came after him ended the age of happiness. It may be doubted whether democratic India will ever know the happiness which people enjoyed under great rulers like Emperor Ashoka or King Janaka. Despite its shortcomings, democracy is, as Winston Churchill said, the least unsatisfactory of all forms of government. The simple question is what is the alternative? When Maurice Chevalier, at seventy, was asked whether he enjoyed being that age, he said, Being seventy is fine with me considering the alternative! What are the alternatives to democracy? Monarchy, oligarchy, or dictatorship. If you have monarchy, history proves that the odds are frighteningly heavy against your being blessed with an Ashoka or Aurelius. Oligarchy and dictatorship have seldom produced national happiness. We would thus be well advised to count our blessings in a democracy rather than be frustrated by its distressingly dark side.
Though outwardly a gloomy shroud, The inner half of every cloud Is bright and shining: I therefore turn my clouds about And always wear them inside out To show the lining.

A shower of rain There is a minor historical fact which had a momentous impact on the constitutional history of the United States. Minute trifles have changed the course of history, just as minute atoms have changed the pattern of power. In the well worn words of Pascal, if Cleopatras nose had been shorter, the history of the world might have been different; for then her beauty would have been a good deal impaired, and Julius Caesar and Mark Antony would not have fallen victims to her charm. Some historians say that the outcome of the Battle of waterloo was substantially altered by the microbes in Napoleons stomach.

Napoleon normally began his battles early in the morning; but on 18 June 1815 he had a severe pain in his abdomen and did not start his onslaught till 11.35 A.M. That gave Marshal Blucher the opportunity of joining up with Wellington in the afternoon and their combined armies were too strong for Napoleon. An earlier start of the campaign might have resulted in the defeat of Wellington, and Bluchers Prussian ar my could have been separately overpowered later in the day. Microbes altered history. How a shower of rain changed the fate of the United States was pointed out by Justin McCarthy, the popular historian of the last century. In 1749 a cricket match was being played at Clifden in England, in which Frederick, the Prince of Wales being the eldest son of George II, happened to be interested. It chanced to rain, the match could not go on, and the Prince retired to his tent and insisted on a game of whist to cheer his humour. A strange Scottish nobleman, Lord Bute who was thirty-six years old at that time, was asked to join as the fourth hand at the game, and that was the beginning of Lord Butes tremendous influence over the Prince and his wife. Bute became the tutor of their son who was at that time eleven years old and was to ascend the throne in 1760 as George III. Bute moulded the feeble intelligence of the young Prince George who could hardly have had a worse adviser. It was mainly Butes teaching which made George III an obstinate autocrat; and it was the pigheadedness of George III which led to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 where the thirteen Colonies raised the cry of No taxation without representation, and which ultimately led to their Declaration of Independence in 1776. Had it not rained that fateful day, and Had the Scottish noblemen not been sought and found for the memorable game of whist, George III might well have turned out to be a different personality without the disastrous influence, in his formative years, of Bute; and it is possible that the American Colonies might, like Canada, have still formed part of the Commonwealth. It has been well said that the constitution of man changes the constitution of States; it was the constitution of George III whichled to the independence of his kingdom across the seas. Common features of Indian and U.S.A. democracies India and the U.S.A. one the most populous and the other the most powerful democracy in the world have several features in common. To start with, in both the countries the revolt against colonial rule was the genesis of freedom. In both the countries there is dual authority the authority of the Union and the authority of the States as part of the basic structure and framework of the Constitution. If this basic structure were ever dismantled, the Constitution would clearly suffer a loss of identity. There is a difference between the extent of jurisdiction reserved for the States in the U.S.A. and that reserved for the States in India, but the difference is one of degree and not of kind. In both the countries the Constitution was farmed by a few hand-picked individuals who were not elected on the basis of adult franchise. As regards the criticism that such a Constituent Assembly had no right to impose a permanent Constitution on the people, Dr.B.R Ambedkar said: Sir it may be true that this Assembly is no a representa-tive assembly in the sense that Members of this Assembly have not been elected on the basis of adult suffrage. I am prepared to accept that argument. But the further inference which is being drawn that if the Assembly had been elected on the basis of adult suffrage, it was then bound to possess greater wisdom and greater political knowledge is an inference which I utterly repudiate. ..It might easily have been worse. Power and knowledge do not go together. Oftentimes they are dissociated, and I am quite frank enough to say that this House, such as it is, has probably a greater modicum and quantum of knowledge and information than the future Parliament is likely to have.

Themistocles remarked, Tuning the lyre and handling the harp are no accomplishments of mine; but I know how to raise a small and obscure city to golry and greatness. Many of the framers of the United States and Indian Constitutions did not have the cheap talent to catch votes by making blib promises, but they had the great vision to formulate the fundamental law. It was the good fortune of the two countries that men of knowledge, Intellect and high integrity framed their Constitutions. The U.S. Constitution has survived for 200 years, without a dent in its basic structure. It has been amended in matters like grant of the vote to women and to negroes, introduction and abolition of prohibition; but the human freedoms and the basic framework of the Constitution have never been touched and have never been even attempted to be touched. No political party would survive in the United States if it tried to tinker with the fundamental rights of the people. In both the countries the Constitution represents charters of power granted by liberty, and not characters of liberty granted by power. Liberty is not the gift of the State to the people; it is the people enjoying liberty as the citizens of a free republic who have granted powers to the legislature and the executive. By contrast, in England freedom is the result of charters of liberty granted by power. Over the centuries liberty has been wrested from the kings by charters like Magna Carta (1215) and the Bill of Rights (1689), apart from judicial pronouncements by judges of courage and sturdy independence. The most significant feature of both the Constitutions is the accent on basic human freedoms. India has its Fundamental Rights; the United States has its Bill of Rights. In the words of Frankfurter, When we are dealing with the Constitution of the United States, and more particularly with the gread safeguards of the Bill of Rights. We are dealing with principles of liberty and justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental-something without which a fair and enlightened system of justice would be impossible. High moral tone One more point of similarity, and perhaps the greatest, between the two Constitutions is their high moral tone. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence of 4 July1776 states: We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This lofty ideal is the enduring foundation of the American Constitution. The same noble note is struck by the preamble to our Constitution: WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity of the Nation; IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACTG AND GIVE TO OURSEL VES THIS CONSTITUTION. Our Constitution makers were so keen to uphold the nations honour and public integrity that they provided for a built-in mechanism by which every debt, however big or small, owing by the Government

would be duly discharged. Any creditor of the Government can file a suit for recovery of a debt, and once a decree is obtained the amount becomes automatically charged on the Consolidated Fund of India under Article 112 of the Constitution, and Article 113 provides that even Parliament has right no to vote upon it. A few extracts from the Constituent Assembly Debates would serve to illustrate the great sense of honour which actuated the labours of the outstanding men who framed our Constitution. Brajeshwar Prasad said in the Constituent Assembly on 10 October 1949: A nation that sacrifices vital principles, that does not stand by its pledged word, has no future in politics.. I do not know what kind of people will be there in the future parliament of India. In the heat of extremism or at the altar of some radical ideology, they may like to do away with the provisions which we have made in the Articles of the ConstitutionOur leaders have made certain commitments. We stand by them We are sovereign and not the future Parliament. We can fetter the discretion of the Executive, Judiciary or Parliament. It is for this purpose that we are drawing up the Constitution. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel said on the same day, referring to the guarantees which had been given to the covenanted services: Have you read history? Or, is it that you do not care for recent history after you have begun to make history? If you do that, then I tell you we have dark future. Learn to stand upon your pledged word. Can you go behind these things? Have moral no place in the new Parliament? Is that how we are going to begin our new freedom? Do you take a lathi and say, Who is to give you a guarantee? We are a Supreme parliament. Have you supremacy for this king of things? To go behind your word?- If you do that, that supremacy will go down in a few days. Acharya J. B. Kripalani spoke eloquently in the Constituent Assembly on 17 October 1949: I want this House to remember that what we have enunciated are not merely legal, constitutional and formal principles, but moral principles; and moral principles have got to be lived in life. They have to be lived, whether it is in private life or it is in public life, whatever it is in commercial life, political life or the life of an administrator. They have to be lived throughout. These things we have to remember if our Constitution is to succeed. It is difficult to imagine that these noble sentiments were uttered only twenty-five years ago in the same country in which there is such total negation of public morality today. Some politicians refer to the provisions of the Constitution as having become anachronistic with changed times. In fact, it is good faith and the sense of decency and honour which have unfortunately become anachronistic in our public life today. Conditions for survival of free democracy A free democracy is not hewn out of granite. In fact, it is delicate to the point of easy destructibility. Certain conditions are essential to its survival. First and foremost, the people must have a sense of discipline. A democracy without discipline is a democracy without a future. Undisciplined trade unionism is as dangerous as undisciplined capitalism; and undisciplined demagogy is as dangerous as undisciplined student power.

Secondly, freedom has a precarious hold on existence in countries where the spirit of moderation does not prevail. Learned Hand, one of the greatest judges of this century, defined the sprite of moderation as the temper which does not press a partisan advantage to its bitter end; it can understand and will respect the other side, and feels a unity between all citizens. It is in contradistinction to the spirit of fanaticism which, said George Santayana, consist in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. The chance of survival of liberty are in inverse proportion to the number of extremists who are allowed to get into the saddle. Lenin virtually defined the spirit of fanaticism when he asserted that he would co-operate with Socialist Democrats as a hangman co-operate with the rope. Democracy depends upon habits of consent and compromise which are attributed only of cultivated and sophisticated political societies. Where the spirit of moderation does not prevail, society degenerates into divisions and hatred replaces goodwill. One of the numerous historical episodes which redound to the great credit of Kennedy was that when he became the President of the United States his first act was to consult, not his own supporters, but the defeated leader of the Republican Party and to have a meaningful dialogue with him as to the best policy for strengthening the country socially and economically. Here was a man of true humility and moderation who knew that no man and no party has a monopoly of wisdom or patriotism. The third and not the least important, of the conditions for the survival of freedom is the willingness and capacity of the people to take disinterested part in public life. A democracy does not begin and end with voting at the elections. The United States is an excellent example of how democracy involves the continuous association of the citizens and the press with public life. The tyranny of a Prince in an oligarchy, said Montesquieu, is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. In the unforgettable words of Felix Frankfurter, Democracy involves hardship-the hardship of the unceasing responsibility of every citizen. Where the entire people do not take a continuous and considered part in public life, there can be no democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a sage harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement. That is why no office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen. All of us are born to the high office of citizenship; so few of us discharge the duties attached to that office. Like the United States, India also won her freedom by awakening the sleeping peasants. If freedom is to survive, the slumbering masses must once again be made alert, and it must be brought home to them that the survival of freedom as was needed for winning it. No smaller and no lesser price that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Buddhas last words to his disciples were: Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves. These words come home to us with a strange poignancy in a state where we have the right to select our masters and rulers. When you live in a democracy, you live in hazard. There is no amenable God in it, no particular concern or particular mercy. A bad government is the inevitable consequence of an indifferent electorate. As Daniel Webster said, Nothing will ruin the country if the people themselves will undertake its safety; and nothing can save it if they leave that safety in any hands but their own. Just as parts of a body suffer atrophy when they fall into desuetude, human freedoms suffer that fate. A grave lesson lies behind the jest of Mark Twain: In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things; freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. The future of democracy What will be the shape of democracy in the centuries ahead? I should like to venture two predictions.

Democracy is bound to evolve; and it will shed, in course of time, the infirmities and shortcomings which often make it so ludicrous today. At present the main infirmity of democracy is that the only job of governing and legislating. You need years of training to attend to a boiler or to mind a machine, to supervise a shop floor or to build a bridge, to argue a case in a law court or to operate upon a human body. But to steer the lives and destinies of millions of your fellow-men, you are not required to have any education or equipment at all. Elections mostly throw either mediocrity or extremism into power. Talking of some speeches in Parliament, Gladstone described them as sometimes rising to the level of mediocrity. Lord Balfour once said of and elected Member of Parliament that if he had a little more brains, he would have been half-witted. On another occasion, referring to a young politician, he quipped, I thought he was a man of promise; but I soon discovered that he was a man of promises. The House of Lords has been called proof of life after death. In Major Barbara, the father observes about his son, He knows nothing and he thinks that he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career. The most damning indictment of the typical representatives elected on adult suffrage is contained in the words of Sri Aurobindo who, referring to the average politician, said: ..he does not represent the soul of a people or its aspirations. What he does usually represent is all the average pettiness, selfishness, egoism, self-deception that is about him and these he represents well enough as well as a great deal of mental incompetence and moral conventionality, timidity and pretence. Great issues often come to him for decision, but the does not deal with them greatly; high words and noble ideas are on his lips, but they become rapidly the claptrap of a party. The disease and falsehood of modern political life is patent in every country of the world and only the hypnotized acquiescence of all, even of the intellectual classes, in the great organized sham, clocks and prologs the malady. Yet it is by such minds that the good of all has to be decided, to such hands that it has to be entrusted, to such an agency calling itself the State that the individual is being more and more called upon to give up the government of his activities. As a matter of fact, it is in no way the largest good of all that is thus secured, but a great deal of organized blundering and evil with a certain amount of good which makes for real progress, because Nature moves forward always in the midst of all stumbling sans secures her aims in the end more often in spite of mans imperfect mentality than by its means. I have no doubt that modern democracy is only a caricature of democracy to be. A time is bound to come when, in every well-regulated democracy, adequate training and equipment will be prescribed by convention as essential qualifications for a man who aspires to make laws or govern a state. The second step in the evolutionary process will be reached when democracy will transcend national frontiers. What are today national frontiers will become not barriers but lines of demarcation only. This stage of evolutionary process is, I believe, almost inevitable. In some measure it has already come in Europe. Take the European Common Market: there are less impediments to the movement of goods from Italy to France than there are to such movement from the Tamil Nadu State to the Maharashtra State in our country. Eleven countries of Europe have agreed to abide by any decision of the European Court of Human Rights against their own governments, and have thus voluntarily surrendered a part of their internal sovereignty. Will freedom itself survive in the world or will the free way of life yield to totalitarianism? I believe that liberty will not die before man. The invincible soul will find a way of triumphing over any repression, however ruthless. Mans unconquerable mind will always crave and hunger for freedom, despite all the deficiencies and inefficiencies of the democratic setup-in preference to the efficient monolithic State with its inhuman sacrifice of human values. The spirit of liberty will always be the eternal Flame.