Democracy is majority rule while protecting minority rights. But primarily it is a political vehicle for delivering freedom. Hence, it’s important to define the latter, especially in the context of the raging debate on tolerance
It is a searing commentary on India’s contemporary political discourse that there has been little debate on the nature and content of freedom, the fundamental issue in some of the fiercely contested questions like minority rights, tolerance and extremism. Minority rights relate to democracy which is not steamrolling majority rule. History has seen many inhuman and undemocratic dispensations by majorities such as in Germany and Italy when Nazis and Fascists were in power under Hitler and Mussolini respectively. Electoral majorities brought the parties headed by the two dictators to power.
Democracy means majority rule, but, equally, respect for the fundamental rights enshrined for all citizens — as well as some specific ones for minorities, particularly those relating to their faith, language and culture — in a country’s constitution. The reigning majority cannot slaughter democracy itself. And, however elaborately one defines democracy, it is, in the last analysis, the political and governmental vehicle for delivering freedom. Hence the importance of defining the latter, which is also relevant in the context of the raging debate on tolerance. In its essence, intolerance is the refusal to accept — as tolerance is the acceptance — someone’s freedom to live, believe and practice in his or her way.
This leads one to the question: What does freedom meanIJ Also, is any of the specific freedoms that add up to the totality of the concept’s corpus, more important than another or, for that matter, all of the restIJ MN Roy provides one of the most illuminating observations on the importance and nature of freedom in his Twenty-Two Theses of Radical Democracy. The second thesis states, “Quest for freedom and search for truth constitute the basic urge of human progress. The quest for freedom is the continuation, on a higher level-that of intelligence and emotion — of the biological struggle for existence. The search for truth is a corollary thereof. Increasing knowledge of nature enables man to be progressively free from the tyranny of natural phenomena, and the physical and social environments. Truth is the content of knowledge.”
Elaborating further, Roy writes in the third thesis, “The purpose of all rational human endeavour, individual as well as collective, is the attainment of freedom, in ever-increasing measure. Freedom is the progressive disappearance of all restrictions on the unfolding of the potentialities of individuals, as human beings, and not as cogs in the wheels of a mechanised social organism. The position of the individual, therefore, is the measure of the progressive and liberating significance of any collective effort or social organisation.”
Roy’s definition integrates all stages of freedom in a continuum extending from the very basic one of existing to that of articulating ideas. Its validity becomes clear on recalling that the struggle for existence is the struggle for the freedom to exist and from forces threatening it. Also the fact that the quantum of freedom in a society depends on the extent of knowledge available in it becomes clear on considering how the freedom to move has increased over millennia from the time when walking and running were the only means of travel to the present when one can traverse thousands of miles in hours. It becomes further clear on thinking of how the freedom to live and the freedom from disease have increased with the progress of medicine. Equally, the evolution of the concept of freedom in all its dimensions, the enumeration of rights as instruments of safeguarding and extending it, and the constitution as the institutional matrix in which rights as well as the structures of government are rooted, is a result of progress in philosophy and the understanding of human nature — with freedom being one of its defining urges — and knowledge and experience of the working of institutions.
In its essence history is a record of expanding freedom, a fact which becomes clear on considering the freedoms people enjoy now compared even to a hundred years ago. A question arises here. How can one justify restrictions on freedom if the “purpose of all rational human endeavour, individual as well as collective, is the attainment of freedom, in ever-increasing measure.” The answer is that restrictions are justified only to the extent to which they contribute to the protection and enhancement of freedom, particularly in the context of collective cooperative living. The latter itself is an important instrument. It evolved in early pre-history because it facilitated survival by helping in hunting and coping with threats posed by wild animals and natural forces. The security it created helped in the development of agriculture and creation of opportunities for reflection which led to progress in numerous directions including science, technology, philosophy and institution-formation. Clans and tribes gradually became complex societies, Governments and States.
Collective living would have been impossible if people did what they wanted, including killing whom they did not like or stealing or robbing at will. Hence the need for restrictions but only to the extent they serve in the fundamental purpose of societies and states — enhancement freedom. This leads us to the second and, perhaps, the more fundamental question: Why do many people voluntarily surrender their freedom to totalitarian ideologies like Nazism, Fascism and religious fundamentalism and the dictatorial organisations propounding themIJ
In his classic work, Fear of Freedom, Erich Fromm argues that one becomes acutely aware of the vulnerabilities and insecurities of human existence in the process of growing up from infancy, when one wrapped in one’s mother’s security, to becoming an individual — which he calls individuation. This feeling of insecurity propels one to seek security by completely surrendering oneself and one’s judgement to a powerful individual, organisation or faith, and feeling protected by the latter. The psychological state underlying this process, masochism, is the obverse of sadism, the states of mind in which one finds a sense of security by physically and/or mentally dominating someone or a group. Eric Hoffer focuses on a similar process when he states in his seminal work, The True Believer, that a mass movement’s appeal lies in the refuge and the feeling of security it provides to people whose lives are barren and meaningless. It does this “by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely-knit and warm corporate whole.”
The message is simple. While strong counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations are needed to cope with extremist militancy, the fundamental answer lies in creating an environment in which people’s feelings of marginalisation and insecurity are minimal.