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GOOD GOVERNMENT OR SELF GOVERNMENT

It is a superficial thought in politics to attribute magical virtues to democracy, as though democracy by itself and without reference to the social and character conditions of people is guaranteed to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. A moment’s reflection would show that a form of government, any form of government, has no such self-propelling virtue in it but that it depends mainly on the people who operate and supervise the operation, whether it produces good results or the opposite. Democracy is not a necessary good. Nor are autocracy, monarchy, aristocracy and other forms of government necessarily evil. Furthermore, good and evil are relative terms. A thing may be good for certain purpose and bad for other; or may be good in certain circumstances and become unworkable in other. It is recognised for instance that war cannot be waged successfully by committees and deliberative bodies. In war, which is a matter of life and death, democracy is more likely to produce death than prolong life. A clearer and deeper comprehension therefore of forms of polity and their actual working is necessary before particular regimes could be condemned as bad or extolled as good. No government can be good if it is not workable in the given conditions. An unrealisable good is no good.

As in ethics so in politics. It is the good that determines the right and not other way about. The other day a Congress leader declared that the Advisory Government of Madras may be a good government and strong government and smooth. But because it was not self-government, therefore, it was bad government. On his own showing, if in actual practice, self-government is bad government, he would regard it as good government for no other reason except that it is self-government. Absurdity could go no further. ‘By thy fruits thou shalt be judged�. That is the only test whether in theory or in history. The law is for man; not man for law.

Another fallacy is to mistake democracy for constitutionalism or for liberalism. A democratic government may be as tyrannical as the worst autocracy. Constitutionalism refers to the spirit of equity, of moderation, of consideration for the natural rights of others, however numerically small, and all those ingredients that make for honourable and generous conduct in public life. Legalism and Constitutionalism are not identical concepts. It is when, as in England, there is a recognised code of public honour and moral obligation enforced by the general will of the people including party members, that constitutionalism, which is the spirit that saveth, transcends legalism, which is the word that killeth. Observers of recent democratic governments in Indian Provinces, excepting probably in the Punjab, have been very doubtful if in spite of the truth and non-violence professed, considerations of constitutionalism had been in sufficient evidence.

Nor is democracy necessarily liberalism, nor are other Ocracies necessarily illiberal. Liberalism and humanism are ethical ideas which may or may not be embodied and expressed by a form of government. You can have democracies in which the tyranny of numbers will impose a particular type of life on all and stamp out the soul’s liberty and freedom of the individual or a sub-group to pursue its own cultural development even when it does not conflict with duty to the State. We have had monarchies famous for liberal and humanistic spirit. The noblest illustration of this in history is Asoka the Great, the Ethical Emperor. Lesser lights, lesser when compared with him but great when compared to most others in Hindu history are Harsha, Vikramaditya, and many other sovereigns. The illustrious French writer, Ernest Renan, marked out the three Roman emperors, commonly referred to as the Antonines, and the three Moghal Emperors, Babar, Humayun and Akbar, as amongst the most liberal humanistic of monarchs. The tyrants of mediaeval Italy were also patrons of the Renaissance. Venice, a terrible poligarchy, was a great patron of Commerce and the Fine Arts.

It is owing to a peculiar historical coincidence that democracy has to be regarded as a sure foundation and bulwark of liberalism liberal era in English history commenced with the Reform Act of 1832 and continued through the pacious out days of Lord John Russel, Palmerston, Peel, Gladstone, Asquith, Lloyd George till about 1914 when the Great War broke out. Contemporaneously in America there was the era of the great liberator, Abraham Lincoln. The French Revolution and the philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot who gave it its roots in reason and dynamic impulse were also leaders in liberalism and humanism. The French Revolution and its derivatives, the subsequent revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were thus both democratic and liberal. But as pointed out above, there is no necessary connection between the Government of numbers and rule of reason.

Without some such historical ground, it will not be easy to evaluate the place and function of Indian prices in the life and polity of the country. I have dealt with this subject in my recent speeches delivered in Cochin and published in the book-Congress in Office.