This is a very good conversation. When the host answers “what exactly is democracy”, he qualifies “whilst people understand the ideals of democracy and remain true to its foundations.”
It is not the people who define these “ideals” and “foundations”, but people who know better.
It is not the people who define these “ideals” and “foundations”, but people who know better.
This attitude that they know better is precisely why India is ranked as a flawed democracy by western (primarily Anglo) opinion makers. See, it is not the job of Indians to define the “ideals” and “foundations” of democracy, despite them being the largest and oldest democracy.
They grudgingly accept that India is the largest democracy, but they will never accept India as the oldest democracy, and the polity where the democratic practices have been most consistently maintained in history (especially when we remove the period of foreign occupations).
The restrictions on the powers of the king in the Magna Carta, typically cited by the Anglos as the foundation of modern democracy, is by no means unique. In India, such restrictions have long been very methodically enforced and testified by the Dharmaśāstra & Itihāsa literature.
About the pedigree of democracy to the Greco-Roman tradition, the Greeks themselves reported that the Indian polity was democratic. We have the most systematic literary evidence for democratic practices in India. But this is unacceptable to the pretenders of Greek inheritance.
At the very core, this “democracy” is simply about power play and a lever of intellectual control for the Anglo-American empire. This is why the qualification about “ideals” and “foundations”: they would be defined by the Anglo-American empire. Not the business of anybody else.
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