Debating Liberal Democracy and Gandhi

Abstract

We entered into modern era with various new goals and aspirations. To accomplish those goals model of liberal democracy was evolved by political theorists. Basically Democracy and liberalism are two different principles. The idea of democracy does not just represent one value among many, such as liberty, equality and justice; but is itself a value which can link and mediate between competing prescriptive concerns. It is a guiding principle which can help to generate a basis for specification of relations among different normative concerns. Democracy does not presuppose agreement on diverse values. Rather, it suggests a way of relating values to each other and learning the resolution of value conflicts.

Liberalism desires to create a diversity of power centers. A world marked by openness and plurality compromised by the reality of ‘free market’, is a world of liberalism. Liberalism takes “the individual” to be ultimate moral and political unit and makes his freedom, defined as free choice, the organizing principle of social and political life. What objectives have been designed by democracy cannot simply be found in liberalism. Despite of that democracy and liberalism entered into a commitment. That was an unmatched, unwanted settlement and that is why, the settlement produced many complexities. One among those is the politics of inclusion and exclusion upon which this paper deals in detail.

Since, Gandhi is not only conscious for an individual or a particular group but also for the society of which the individual and the group are an integral and an essential part, this paper presents a comparative study of liberal democracy and Gandhi’s democracy to resolve the tension of inclusion and exclusion in the contemporary discourse. For clarity of study paper divides subject matters into three parts. In the first part liberal democracy has been discussed and contested on various grounds. In the second part Gandhi’s idea of democracy is been researched with a fresh look. And finally third part of the study would be highlighting findings of a comparative study of both of these perspectives.