Vol. 17, Part III · pages 506–510

477CONDITIONS.................OF DEMOCRACY those who are against the party system and who must be taken also on that very account to be against opposition, seem completely to misunderstand what democracy means. What does democracy mean? I am not defining it. I am asking a functional question. It seems to me that democracy means a veto of power. Democracy is a contradiction of hereditary authority or autocratic authority. Democracy means that at some stage somewhere there must be a veto on the authority of those who are ruling the country. In autocracy there is no veto. The King once elected is there with his inherent or divine right to rule. He does not have to 20 before his subject at the end of every five years to ask them, “Do you think I am a good man? Do you think I have done well during the last five years? If so, will you re-elect me?” There is no veto on the part of anybody on the power of the King. But in democracy we have provided, that at every five years those who are in authority must go to the people and ask whether in the opinion of the people they are well qualified to be entrusted with power and authority to look after their interest, to mould their destiny, to defend them. That is what I call veto. Now, a democracy is not satisfied with a quinquennial veto that the Government should go at the end of five years only to the people and in the meantime there should be nobody to question the authority of the Government. Democracy requires that not only that the Government should be subject to the veto, long-term veto of five years, at the hands of the people, but there must be an immediate veto. There must be people in the parliament immediately ready there and then to challenge the Government. Now, if you understand what I am saying, democracy means that nobody has any perpectual authority to rule, but that rule is subject to sanction by the people and can be challenged in the house itself. You will see how important it is to have an oppositon. Opposition means that the Government is always on the anvil. The Government must justify every act that it does to those of the people who do not belong to its party. Unfortunately, in our country all our newspapers, for one reason or other, I believe, it is the revenue from advertisements, have given far more publicity to the Government than to the opposition, because you cannot get any revenue from the opposition. They get revenue from the Government and you find columns after columns of speeches reeled out by members of the

478 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES ruling party in the daily newspapers and the speeches made by the opposition are probably put somewhere on the last page in the last column. I am not criticising what is democracy. I am saying what is the condition precedent for a democracy. The opposition is a condition precedent for democracy. But do you know that in England not only is the opposition recognised, but the leader of the opposition is paid a salary by the Government in order to run the opposition. He gets a secretary, he gets a small staff of stenographers and writers, he has a room in the House of Commons where he does his business. In the same way, you will find that in Canada the leader of the opposition gets a salary in the way as a Prime Minister does, because in both these countries democracy feels that there must be someone to show whether the Government is going wrong. And this must be done incessantly and perpetually and that is why they do not mind spending money on the leader of the opposition. Condition No. III I think there is a third condition which may also be called a condition precedent for the success of democracy and that is-equality in law and administration. One need not at this statge delite too much on equality before the law, although there might be cases here and there when there is no equality before the law. But what is important is equality of treatment in administration. It is quite possible for good many of you to imagine or to recall cases where a party Government is carrying on the administration for the benefit of the members of the party. At any rate, I can recall a great many instances of this sort. Suppose there is a law which says that nobody shall deal in a particular commodity without a licence. Nobody can quarrel with that law because it is universal. There is no discrimination in that particular piece of legislation. But let us go further and see what happens when a man goes to a particular officer or to the Minister with an application for lincence in trading in a particular commodity. I do not know, it is quite possible again that probably the Minister may first look at his hat. What sort of a coloured hat he is wearing? If he is wearing a hat which appeals to him and it assures him that he is a party man and another man goes with another sort of dress or belonging to another party and in making his decision the licence is given to the first and refused to

479CONDITIONS.................OF DEMOCRACY the second, although both of them on merits are equally qualified to have that licence, then obviously this is a discrimination in administration and there is no equity. Of course the question of licence, i.e. the granting of this privilege and that privilege is perhaps small thing and affects only a very small class of people. But let us go further and see what would happen if this kind of discrimination enters administration. Supposing a member of a certain party is being prosecuted for a certain offence for which there is abundant evidence, and suppose the head of the party in that particular area goes to the District Magistrate and tells him that it is not right for him to prosecute this man because he belongs to his party and says, “well, if you don’t do it, I shall refer the matter to the Minister and get you transferred from this place to some other place.” You can just imagine what chaos and injustice would result in administration. The sort of a thing which used to happen in the United States which is called a Spoil System, that is to say, when one party came in office, it removed all the employees that were employed by their predecessor including even the clerks and the peons and they filled their vacancies by those gentlemen who helped the new party to go in power. The United States as a matter of fact, had no administration worth speaking of for a number of years. Subsequently, they themselves realised that this was not helpful to democracy. They abolished this Spoil System. In England, in order that administration should remain pure, impartial, away from politics and policy, they have made a distinction between what is called political offices and civil offices. The civil service is permanent. It serves all the parties whichever is in office and carries out the administration without any kind of interference from the Minister. Such a thing at one time did exist in our country when the British were here. I recall very clearly an incident in my own career as a member of the Government of India. You perhaps will recollect that every Viceroy has got in Delhi some street or club named after him. The only Governor General who does not gel his name attached to some street or institution is Lord Linlithgow. His Private Secretary was my friend. I was then in charge of P. W. D. and there were plenty of works I was in charge of. He came and quitely said to me “My dear Dr. could you do something for naming some institution or work after the name of Lord Linlithgow?” He

480 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES said it is looking very glaring that everybody’s name is there but not his. I said “I will consider.” I was then discussing the construction of a barrage over Jamuna in order to provide water to the city of Delhi in summer, beause it goes dry in summer, I told my Secretary who was a European by name Priar. And I said, “Mr. Priar look here, this is what the Secretary to the Governor General has said to me. Do you think we can do something?” What do you think was his reply? His reply was “Sir, we must not do any such thing at all.” Such a thing at any rate in this country to do would be quite impossible. For any officer to say something which is contrary to the wishes of the Minister is, to my mind, utterly impossible. But in those days it was quite possible, because we too in India like Great Britain had made that wise decision that administration must not be interfered with by the Government, and that the function of the Government was to lay down policy but not to interfere and not to make any discrimination. This is very fundamental and I am afraid we had already departed from that and may completely abnegate and abolish the thing we have had so far. Condition No. IV The fourth condition precedent, in my judgement, for the successful working of democracy is the observance of constitutional morality. Many people seem to be very enthusiastic about the Constitution. Well, I am afraid, I am not. I am quite prepared to join that body of people who want to abolish the Constitution, at any rate to redraft it. But what we forget is that we have a Constitution which contains legal provisions, only a skeleton. The flesh of that skeleton is to be found in what we call constitutional morality. However, in England it is called the conventions of the constitution and people must be ready to observe the rules of the game. Let me give you one or two illustrations which come to my mind at this moment. You remember when the 13 American colonies rebelled, their leader was Washington. It is really a very inadequte way of defining his position in the American life of that day merely to say that he was a leader. To the American people Washington was God. If you read his life and history, he was made the first President of the United States after the constitution was drafted. After his term was over, what happened? He refused to stand for the second time.

481CONDITIONS.................OF DEMOCRACY I have not the least doubt in my mind that if Washington had stood ten times one after the other for the Presidentship, he would have been elected unanimously without a rival. But he stepped down the second time. When he was asked why, he said, “My dear people, you have forgotten the purpose for which we made this constitution. We made this constitution because we did not want a hereditary monarchy and we did not want a hereditary ruler or a dictator. If after abandoning and swerving away from the allegiance of the English King, you come to this country and stick to worship me year after year and term after term what happens to your principles? Can you say that you have rightly rebelled against the authority of the English king when you are substituting me in his place? He said, “Even if your royalty and fidelity to me compels you to plead that I should stand a second time, I as one who enunciated that principle that we should not have hereditary authority, must not fall a prey to your emotion.” Ultimately, they prevailed upon him to stand at least a second time. And he did. And the third time when they approached him, he spurned them away. Let me give you another illustration. You know Windsor Edward the VIII whose serial story has now been published in the Times of India. I had gone to the Round Table Conference and there was a great controversy going on there as to whether the King should be allowed to marry the woman whom he wanted to marry, especially when he was prepared to marry her in a morganstic marriage, so that she may not be a queen or whether the British people should deny him even that personal right and force him to abdicate. Mr. Baldwin was of course against the King’s marriage. He would not allow him, and said, “If you do not listen to me, you will have to go.” Our friend Mr. Churchill was the friend of Edward the VIII and was encouraging him. At that time the Labour Party was in the opposition. They had no majority and I remember very well the Labour Party people considered whether they could not make capital out of this issue and defeat Mr. Baldwin; because there was a large number of conservatives who in their loyalty wanted to support the King; and I remember the late Prof. Laski writing a series of articles in the ‘Herald’ condemning any such move on the part of the Labour party. He said, “By our convention we have always agreed that the king