Head counts and Democracy

The history of Greece and Rome teaches us that not just monarchy but even majority rule can hinder human freedom. It was democratic Greece which ruled against Socrates. It is not necessary that a system in which, instead of one person, the majority takes decisions will be less intolerant and less cruel. If the elected representatives have supreme and unquestioned authority, they can use the same system of ‘democracy’, which brought them to power, to keep it aside.

They can bring in oligarchy and autocracy.

That is why the history of the growth of human freedom has been intolerant of not just the autocracy of the king but also of the autocracy of the majority. Ideas and institutions evolved throughout history to fight against all kinds of autocracy – Courts, Universities, Academies, the concepts of Natural Justice, Morality and Ethics, all products of wisdom and enlightenment.

Which dictator has not said that he took over power as per the wishes of the people and to fulfill their needs? In fact Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin may all have won majorities during much of their reigns. But an autocrat does not become a democrat just because he has the support of the majority. What makes democracy is the special place that minorities have in them. It is very dangerous to think that when elected representatives take over the absolute powers previously vested with kings or colonial powers, the system automatically becomes a free and democratic one. If people can be reduced to their representatives, then their representatives can also be reduced to an autocrat.

Head counting and electing representatives does exist in democracy. But democracy is much more than that. It is a realization of the values that civilization has been shaping for centuries.

Puritanism and male supremacy

Puritanism is not an element of a class based society or a patriarchal one. It is useful for all domineering systems. But it is also not correct to consider sexual freedom to be the standard for measuring the freedom of a society.

There is something which is linked to all this – male supremacy. Man works. The woman looks after the home. The man is the hero. There is no heroine. Rather the heroine is only a bit actress.  It is said that in animals the female has less sexual urge than the male. So the male has to physically attack and subjugate the female to copulate. In human beings that is not the case.

Perhaps a reason why male dominance still persists is that men wish and are able to own the woman and keep her as private property. In our societies as long as male supremacy persists, even if sexual freedom comes, the exploiter male will bend that too and convert it to something which is useful to him.

May 1972, extracted from a Letter to Govindan