Out of 62 years of India’s democratic parliamentary history, only one party which ruled for 46 years, and out of this, 34 years was served by the famous Nehru-Gandhi family members . It means that for a large part of time, Indian politics was almost devoid of a strong opposition, and so despite being a single party system we kept calling ourselves largest democracy in the world. Apart from the congress, though there have been a series of regional parties coming into being especially after Emergency but sadly all these outfits remained the propagator of socialist views. India probably is one of the most unique democracies in the world that despite being a nation of very diverse culture, thoughts, and interests could not have a party with liberal ideas which could have played a constructive role in the national polity .
What is actually this liberal tradition and what are their core beliefs that it is so alien to our political party system? Has this tradition ever influenced Indian mind-set in the past? Can the trace of today’s liberalism be found in the ancient Indian thoughts? If so, then why our Indian mind, does it not still understand its advantage for present party-politics?
In India the term ‘liberalism’ is largely seen by majority of the people as a kind of political sin without really bothering to know what this idea means, and what it holds for human society. Actually it is always perceived in context with capitalist economy, so people in socialist nehruvian India regarded it as an untouchable idea despite the fact that socialist system did not do any good to the nation except making her highly corrupt bureaucratic, inward-looking and poor society. The fact is that liberalism is first of all a social philosophy of individual sovereignty based on the concept of self questioning and not subjugating oneself to any dogmatic view of life. It first teaches to live with a questioning mind which can accept or reject others view on the basis of reasoning but at the same time respecting each and every human irrespective of his origin, beliefs etc is the core belief of this tradition. From this very idea of freedom of questioning and finding truth by debate, discussion generates the goal of pursuing happiness. In order to do so, man should follow his free will to choose his path be it social, spiritual or material without any restriction from any corner. Accordingly a liberal free man does not want any state authority to dictate his way of pursuing happiness. But the moment his way of pursuing happiness collides with the interests of other individuals, the state should and must intervene to sort out the problem, and then after performing the job, should get out of the scene to monitor the situation as moderator and guardian of everybody’s freedom. Following this philosophy, liberalism asks people to pursue free trade and enterprise economy with very limited role of state. So this ideology considers pursuing capitalist approach just as mean to achieve the goal of happiness based on individual freedom through wealth creation. We must understand that the key point is that this philosophy regards citizens’ freedom a sovereign power in other words state exists for their (people’s) sake but not the other way round.
The evolution of this political philosophy took place in west by thinkers like Locke, Kant, Voltaire and Montesquieu in the 17th-18th century; later, it was translated into a perfect tool of governance under the name of parliamentary democracy by various western leaders which includes American presidents like Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and a few others. This political tradition was well matched by the idea of capitalist economy exposed by Adam Smith (1723-90) in his book in ‘the Wealth of Nations’ in 1776. Despite the fact that this liberal thought first appeared in the western hemisphere but the tradition of self questioning and reaching a conclusion through peaceful debate was a way of life in India too starting from the Aryan period. In fact today the research shows that the evolution of democracy in the ancient Greek was influenced by the lessons of old Indian texts like Upanishad. It is worthy to note here that Buddha’s whole teaching itself was based upon intellectual reasoning, he never asked his followers to believe in his master’s worlds without questioning them. But sadly this rich tradition of giving supreme importance to human mind and his choice remained restricted to only spiritual thinking and religious practices, and whatever be the reason, this thought never tried to enter into the corridor of power. Thus princely states in India remained sovereign source of power, as a result of that the light of democracy reached very late only after the British came to the sub-continent.
Amidst of the gloomy colonial period, Indians began to discover the notion of fundamental civil rights thanks to the British influence. That is how it started the era of liberal thinkers in India which culminated into the national movement for independence.
The first liberal person who shook the traditional beliefs of orthodox society to bring change in people’s life was Raja Ram Mohun Roy(1772-1833). He believed that to bring political liberal thought, the nation must go through religio-social reforms which would make people aware of their fundamental rights. To arrive at that level, he strongly initiated for the women’s right to be acknowledged and to be protected. He was broadly the first contemporary thinker to make people aware of their civil rights. Gopal Krishna Gokhale(1866-1915) also known as political guru of Gandhi can be considered as another prominent flag bearer of that tradition. He was a strong believer in classical liberalism and western institutions. To his mind, social reform was the first step to lay the foundation of this tradition in India. There are a few more personalities namely Dadabhai Naoroji, Ferozeshah Mehta, Mahadeo Ranade and others who directly or indirectly contributed to the growth of this movement.
One person who is known to accelerate the pace of freedom movement in 1910 is indeed Gandhi(1849-1948), we need to take a relatively closer look on his ideas on liberalism to understand its Indian form. The Gandhian concept of “Hind Swaraj” was not just attaining independence from foreign rule but to achieve complete freedom from all sorts of domination which includes the unsolicited interference of state into citizens’ affaires too. His vision of self-rule was based on obtaining freedom in all walks of life: political, spiritual, economic etc; the political freedom demands liberty from authority, the spiritual one gives freedom to practice his own choice of faith fearlessly, and the economic freedom liberates people from poverty. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj tells people to be autonomous, and to take charge of their lives. His concept of self-rule was more rational because he believed that rights alone can’t render full freedom to people, for that it needs to be matched with duty or responsibility (Dharma). Though he was quite influenced by western liberals but his theory of freedom through rights and duty was inspired by Bhagwat Gita.
From the vision of these three outstanding leaders, Roy, Gokhale and Gandhi, it’s easy to find some commonalities in their approach to liberalism. For example, they all believed in social reform for the evolution of political liberal consciousness in people’s mind; on the other hand none of them hinted towards laissez-faire method of economics but supported the right to property for every individual;, Gandhi regarded it necessary but it must be used for the well-being of the society. The entire three regarded citizen as real source of power, and their rights must be the driving force for the state. And lastly, all of them modified the western liberal thoughts according to Indian context by taking inspiration from old Indian texts.
The fact remains that the Indian national movement was guided till 1920-25 by liberal philosophy but later high jacked by a series of socialist leaders, and even till today it’s still under the same control. So what could be reason that led to the situation where in a country whose old history clearly reflects the ethos of liberalism could not have a party with this stance as prominent political outfit?
If we take a quick look at the history of post-independent India, we find that the death of Gandhi and later Patel left Nehru all alone to rule the nation with his unchallenged idea of socialism, he established a state centric system inspired by the then Soviet Union model. He was himself a great admirer of European socialism. He thought that only socialist ideas could change the condition of millions of Indians as it did it in the then USSR. Thanks to his unparalleled popularity, he kept winning elections, and remained an unquestionable leader of the country till his death in 1964. We must remind ourselves here that the congress party won all elections because there was on strong opposition there. Though for a short(1957-1974) period, C Raj Gopalachari tried to oppose congress’ socialist policy by forming Swatantra party but in absence of popular support and the leader himself was getting older, the party ultimately became inexistent after his death. Congress, thanks to the image of the party which fought and won dependence from the British, became a pan-India party till Emergency period (imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975).Over these years from 1947-75, Congress consciously succeeded in ingraining the socialist tradition in the politically unconscious mind of Indians. In that socialist incursion of mind, liberalism ( Swatantra party) was not even in eye to eye competition with Congress because the latter had managed to create an image as said earlier of a party of poor people where as the Swatantra party was perceived as a party of rich people. In fact, the Congress itself used to call it a ‘raja-maharaja and land-lords’ party because most members of the latter were linked to some ex-princely states. The Swatantra party probably failed to convey its message of liberalism at that time to the people, and thus the nation remained one party ruled democracy till the mid 70s.
After the Emergency period, one basic difference in the country’s polity appeared was that Congress’ rule could be challenged by other parties like Janata party at centre and at regional levels by parties like communist party in Bengal and Kerala and a few other factions based on regional nationalism in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. What was unfortunate amidst the evolution of all these parties was that all in some or other way relied on the socialist fashion of governance, none tried to think out of the box. This brings us to make an observation that in a real democracy like many western nations, the political space is filled by all kinds of political ideologies but where as in India only one ideology, socialism, reined undoubtedly in the form of national and regional parties. So does it suggest that the country which calls herself largest democracy in the world could not develop a true democratic party system?
The people of India struggled for independence, for driving out the foreign ruler out of their nation, and to build their own republic but they did not necessarily fight for a democracy. The system of the latter was a gift to a country which had only 13% of literacy rate(in 1947)by founding fathers of the nation. Nehru must be given credit for laying the foundation of electoral democracy in this country though Congress is solely responsible for not allowing the growth of multi-party system. If one takes a look at the world history, one finds that in the quest of a real democracy India did not go through a churning process as most western countries did like the French, American, English and Italian too. So India could not develop a political mind set of citizen centric governance, she regarded state as ultimate god which can solve all problems. Probably Indians developed this huge unchallenged respect for state due to their old habit of being ruled by Kings, emperors and then British ruler straight from England. After independence, those ruling structures were simply replaced by newly born state; in all these processes, people could not really develop the essence of democracy and let themselves ruled by today’s corrupt leaders. Needless to say that Gandhi’s vision of ‘Hind-Swaraj’ was fully forgotten by Indians, even before that Nehru and his family dumped that.
But today we live in a very exiting period of human history which is called globalization where we witness a free movement of people, ideas and goods from outside world into our country and vice-versa. Thanks to economic liberalization started in 1991, people are really realizing the advantage of free market economy. But still a huge chunk of people those who have not been recipient of any sort from this don’t really bother to understand the process of liberalization. So still today most Indians see liberalism just as a politics of capitalism but not as a philosophy which puts individual at the centre of the governance. At this juncture when people are getting politically more aware, a party or organization with liberal believes first need to reinvent the Indian model of this philosophy where the ideas of ‘Hind- Swaraj’ can be inculcated not just because it is Gandhi’s views but because it reflects the ancient tradition of our nation. And the point that one should emphasis on to make people understand liberalism is that how to practice real democracy in this country where ever body can participate. Later one can introduce the policy of free-market culture with certain pragmatism because majority of Indian mind still see it with some skepticism, and the recent financial turmoil added to that doubt. This is just a perception which needs to be changed soon because in Indian tradition, creating wealth was always considered as one of the means of pursuing happiness otherwise in our mythology we would not have had goddess Lakshmi to worship. But this does not mean either that one should start promoting the radical reform process inspired by Thatcher- Regan duo, in the Indian context one must develop a path of “madhyamika” (middle way as called by Buddha)of liberalism.
