Lost historical and cultural legacies key to a diversified human future

Understanding Terrorism: Does it possibly lie in the conflict between the ambitions of liberal democracy and anterior forms of democratic assertions?

Harbans Mukhia THE TIMES OF INDIA 24 Jul, 2006

There are two basic premises of liberal democracy — liberty and equality. The social unit of account is the individual. When the French Revolution proclaimed liberty, fraternity and equality as its goal, the reverberations of the three evocative words were felt around the world. The individual must be liberated from all forms of social control, those of the family, community, church or state. Its assumption was the inevitable universal triumph of the values embedded in liberal democracy and its driving force was the force of reason, in opposition to all anterior forms of thought, primarily religion. Nineteenth century positivism reinforced the objectivity and finality of liberal democracy's universalist assumptions. It thus locked itself in adversity with the earlier historically evolved forms; it virtually sought to advance by entering into a head-on clash with history.

Through history the urge for equality has asserted itself in different modes in various regions of the world; implicit in this urge was also the search for liberation. Several religious expressions, especially those centred on a monotheistic imaging of God, such as Christianity, Islam and Sikhism, have been instrumental in major social upheavals primarily moved by their egalitarian appeal. Marxism has seen the most recent secular upheaval with the same appeal. If liberal democracy privileges the individual in its search for equality, all the others seek the same goal by subordinating the individual's aspirations to the aspirations of the community (or in the case of Marxism to the party) of which they are members.

Clearly then there have been diverse manifestations of the urge for equality, and liberal democracy has the briefest history behind it with the exception of Marxism. However, in its quest for universal triumph it seeks to establish uniformity over the diverse landscape of history. It enters into an almost irresoluble conflict with all anterior forms of the search for egalitarianism.

The chief operative instrument in the realisation of democracy is the holding of periodic elections. Universal adult franchise, itself with no more than six or seven decades of history behind it in the most advanced democracies of the West, is the medium of ensuring equality to all its citizens. However, incapable as the instrument is of establishing a decisive democratic superiority of a majority vote of, say, 51 per cent over a rival vote of 49 per cent, the history of electoral democracies almost around the world has in any case witnessed the rule of governments elected by a minority vote. What then would be the measure of democratic legitimacy of such regimes which are the rule than the exception?

Liberal democracy also functions through an integral link with the market and capitalism. The supremacy of the market as the great equaliser at work here would be hard to sustain in the context of history which has witnessed the market as the instrument of differentiation and hegemonisation within societies and between them. It was the driving force of imperialism and colonialism for nearly two centuries before the Second World War. The state has intervened and decisively removed obstacles to market expansion within a nation and globally. Under liberal democracy's auspices it yet forms the sole premise for the attainment of freedom and equality around the world.

The finality of this one vision of equality and liberty, with the assumption of its inevitable universal triumph over the others, needs to be critically scrutinised and space for plurality of visions and their mutual tolerance be enlarged exponentially where historical and cultural experiences of all segments of humanity become part of the process of a shared but diversified human future. We also need to evolve a large range of institutional forms for realising democratic aspirations, with electoral democracy being just one of them. The material comforts of life that the vote and the market provide to those successful ones in a competitive ambience are clearly not a compensation enough for the loss of historical and cultural legacies. The writer was professor of history, Jawaharlal Nehru University.