Democratic Identity

Democracy is basically a question of human dignity. It also brings benefits such as security and freedom, which, in general, make people prosper. Democracy, in turn, demands that people act as citizens and not carry their pre-democratic identities and inclinations into democratic affairs. It seeks to make each person the master of their own life, while also obliging them to act and interact knowledgeably and responsibly.

It is surprising and anomalous that pre-modern, job-related identities and narratives responding to existential anxieties continue to capture the human imagination and tragically impede the democratic potential of societies. Humanism unfolds as liberalism in the domain of knowledge, democracy in politics, and capitalism in the economy. Strengthening democracy, therefore, requires freeing the market to the maximum, as this alone promises mobility into secular roles and a spirit commensurate with democratic norms.

Let me add something here about the free market. It is a truism that competition begets excellence in corporate affairs and that people empower themselves to serve humanity better. However, the free market must not be seen as economic entities engaged in a blind race for market domination, but rather as a drive to serve fellow human beings better and to respect competition rather than curb it. I am not speaking here of Western liberalism, but of an incipient Indian liberalism, a manifest form of which is Gandhism.

Some may find the passage contradictory, as I advocate secularism in the second paragraph and dharma in the third. It is a gross epistemological folly to equate dharma with religion. Dharma concerns the upholding of life in the best feasible way, commensurate with time and space. In doing so, it draws upon both reason and the emotional sensibilities of human beings and transcends the boundaries of religion and science. In brief, dharma is a conscious and cultivated realisation of human consciousness.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Human Dignity and Democracy

Respect for human dignity is the essence of democracy. If you care for your dignity and believe in human dignity, you do everything possible to sustain, strengthen and refine democracy.

People often confuse democracy with its form and remain oblivious to its essence. A true democracy finds its operating procedures. Even actors, often highly acclaimed for their contributions to upholding and promoting democracy, and electors have limited roles.

It is the two intertwined values, rationalism and humanism, that generate the essence, i.e., the general respect for human dignity.
It is a historical process by which these values get embedded in the human mind and the race evolves into a democratic commonwealth.

Now the question comes what led to and sustains democracy in India? Primarily it is the Sanatana Dharma. The Dharma has a fair mix of concerns for noumenal and phenomenal. It cares both for the earthly and the heavenly. At times it prioritises the collective but mostly brings individuals to centre stage. Most importantly, it very unambiguously asks for reliance on self-intelligence. Unlike all religion cum philosophical enterprises, the Sanatana had high compatibility with modernism. Europe which happened to have birthed modernism had rejected its religion to embrace modernism. Let me remind here that humanism and rationalism are also the core values of modernism. It is modernism which evolved into democracy.

Modernism realises itself through systematic administration and free enterprise, i.e., bureaucracy and capitalism. Bureaucracy should not be confused with feudalism-fused pubis order of patronage. It is about managing both public and entrepreneurial affairs. Capitalism brings the spirit and substance of democracy into a society and bureaucracy makes it operational. The unavoidable features of the whole enterprise are efficiency, economy, and accountability.

What we can do to strengthen democracy, which remains a fragile order globally?

For this, we must recognise the merit of individualism and have faith in their faculty and agency. But we would be able to do this only by doing something else.

Here comes the role of education, to speak more precisely, of pedagogy. The nation must spend more on STEM. And secondly, we must let educational institutions evolve autonomously. The collegium of academics alone should have the responsibility of running an institution, preferably with self-funding.

Niraj Kumar Jha