*Note: This is not a scientific paper but rather a lecture delivered as part of a Peace conference. I have included it in this category since the content is fairly academic and scientific in nature* ---- - It's important to bring philosophical thinking as a practice to children. Not philosophy as a subject or the content of philosophers but the idea of philosophical thinking - to actually consider what it is to see, to think and to read. - ‘There cannot be democratic government unless the society for which it functions is democratic in its form and structure.’ - Dr. B R Ambedkar. Democracy is not just about the government and politics but also about society and the individuals mental disposition. - John Dewey - "Democracy is more than a form of government. It's primarily about associated living of conjoined communicative experience." - According to Ambedkar the three values of democracy are liberty, equality and fraternity. Fraternity in particular is important since it sustains equality and liberty and ensures that they don't destroy one another. Equality and liberty are inherently in tension with one another, so fraternity is particularly necessary to ensure the balance. - Democracy is a term which is flexible and can be internalized in many different ways. It is used in the day to day constantly and also politically there are dozens of types of democracies. While this is the conceptual power of democracy, it is also what leads to its ambiguity. - Democracy has been reduced in India to politics and voting. Most worryingly, none of the parties itself allow for any democratic practices within them. - One of the features of Indian democracy that has been pointed out by Meera Chandok and Kumar is that it has loosened the rigid class and caste structures giving a sense of agency to the non-elite. They also note how in India the poorer classes participate in voting more. - In the western world democracy has been more about individual freedom and choice, in the Indian context it has been about social justice. The Indian democracy should be seen as a social process and not a political one. - We must understand identity and group dynamics and what it means for a group to have right in the context of the social democracy that India is. Very often people talk about communities and religious groups voting together in Indian politics as if there is a problem in doing that, a problem that is related to not asserting one’s autonomy as an individual. But we must unpack this and understand the link between democracy, individuals and groups. - One challenge in the Indian democracy is that the Dalits have remained invisible in this democracy. Dalits continue to be humiliated degraded and repulsed and there is little change for their self-esteem and respect. - The Chinese also have made the claim to being the most populous democracy. They define their people's democracy as "Whole-process people's democracy integrates process-oriented democracy with results-oriented democracy, procedural democracy with substantive democracy, direct democracy with indirect democracy, and people's democracy with the will of the state." in their 2021 document. Fundamentally they argue that a State that works for the needs of the people is a democratic one. Voting isn't as important as whether the promises made are being fulfilled or not. - Now if we think about India, is our democracy based on the fact that each of our people can vote or does it lie in the fact that thirty percent of people in dire poverty are pulled out of poverty. - How can we expect the country to be democratic when in every level of our society there is no democracy. Think about a family. There is hardly any democracy within a family. Think about companies and institutions. How many of these have undemocratic leaders? Finally, we come to schools. How are schools democratic? What principles of democracy are children going to learn if they're not learning from a democratic classroom. - But before this we need to talk about the 'democratic self'. We need to understand better what does the idea of the 'democratic self'. We must think of how we can create the 'democratic self' but keep in mind not to think too individualistically. The society and relationships also shape an individual. - There are two ideas of the 'democratic self' that are important in the Indian context - Gandhi's idea of self-rule or 'swaraj'. Gandhi argued that swaraj is not only about self-governance but also about the self and freedom from poverty and individual's capacity for selfhood. - Ambedkar's idea of self-respect. - Most often democratic principles are justified using the greater good argument, which is a standard argument in ethics. However, the central argument in the context of Indian democracy has been what fetches greater help to the elite and the middle class and not so much to all ‘the people’. So, the idea of ‘the people’ has never been inclusive of the many who have been kept out of the people. - The author argues that we must define 'the people' in a democracy as the most marginalised and the worst off in society. Every person cannot be given the same value. The worst off must be given the highest value. Though it may seem unethical in the context of greater good this is the only meaningful conception of a social democracy rather than a political one. - In response to Question - It’s obviously very difficult in school systems, and that’s something I have been thinking about. Let me give you examples of why I find it frustrating to think of democracy in classroom practice. For example, this young student came up to me and told me, ‘I don’t have a choice in what I study. I don’t want to study Mathematics, there should be a choice for that.’ Today it’s Mathematics, tomorrow it could be ‘I don’t like the history that you’re teaching’ or ‘I don’t want to learn poetry’. The question is, where then do I position the child’s capacity to decide what they want to say? - In response to Question - The problem with the term ‘the people’ is that once you have homogenised this thing called ‘the people’ for whom democracy is working, then within ‘the people’ there are other smaller peoples who are disagreeing with what ‘the people’ want. --- Peace, History For. “The Social Life of Democracy - Sundar Sarukkai.” _History for Peace_, 14 July 2023 - [Link](https://www.historyforpeace.pw/post/the-social-life-of-democracy-sundar-sarukkai)