“Democratic theory presupposes self-determination, human rights and social justice.” Discuss this with particular reference to M.K. Gandhi. (2005)
Democracy assumes three things: that people author the laws they obey, that each person holds claims no majority may override, and that citizens stand on terms equal enough for the vote to mean something. Mohandas K. Gandhi accepted all three but re-rooted each, in self-rule, in duty and in the welfare of the last person.
The Three Presuppositions
- Self-determination. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, freedom is obedience to a law one has prescribed oneself. Applied to peoples, it grounds the anti-colonial claim.
- Human rights. From John Locke‘s natural rights to the Universal Declaration of 1948, speech, association and dissent are what make the vote more than a ritual.
- Social justice. B. R. Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly (25 November 1949) that political equality resting on social and economic inequality creates a life of contradictions.
Swaraj: Self-Determination from Below
- In Hind Swaraj (1909) Gandhi rejected English rule without the Englishman: independence that keeps the colonial state’s machinery is not swaraj.
- Swaraj works at four levels: self-mastery of the individual, national independence, self-government rather than good government, and village republics.
- Gram swaraj makes the village a complete republic, governed by a panchayat that all adults elect every year. Power rises in an oceanic circle of widening communities, not a pyramid. In his words, true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the centre; it must be worked from below by the people of every village.
Rights Grounded in Duty
- Replying in 1947 to Julian Huxley of UNESCO, which was surveying thinkers for a declaration of rights, he wrote that all rights to be deserved and preserved came from duty well done, even the right to live.
- He did not deny rights; he rooted them in obligation. Satyagraha defended rights by openly disobeying unjust laws, and he treated the security of minorities as the test of a majority’s fitness to rule.
Social Justice: Sarvodaya and Antyodaya
- Sarvodaya, the welfare of all, rejected the utilitarian formula: no minority may be sacrificed to the greatest number.
- Antyodaya puts the last person first. His talisman tested every policy by what it gives the poorest person one has seen.
- Trusteeship made property-holders custodians of a social surplus, and bread labour gave all work equal dignity.
- He made abolishing untouchability a condition of swaraj, not a later reform.
Critiques
- Ambedkar called the village a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism and made the individual the constitutional unit. A duty-first scheme also leaves the powerless dependent on others’ virtue.
- Jawaharlal Nehru, writing to Gandhi in 1945, judged the village too backward to carry progress. Independent India chose planning and industry.
- Socialists add that trusteeship left ownership untouched.
Relevance
The Constitution absorbed Gandhi selectively. Article 40 and the 73rd Amendment (1992) built the gram sabha and a panchayat tier, now with over 14 lakh elected women. Fundamental Duties (Article 51A) were added, but remain non-justiciable beside enforceable rights: the ranking is Ambedkar’s, the vocabulary Gandhi’s.
Conclusion
Gandhi confirms the proposition and deepens it. Self-determination begins in self-restraint, rights are sustained by duty, and justice is measured from the bottom. His weakness was institutional. India needed Ambedkar’s enforceable rights to protect Gandhi’s last person.