Democracy is a form of Government based upon self-rule of the
people and in modern times upon freely elected representative institutions
and an executive responsible to the people; and way of life based upon the
fundamental of the equality of all individuals and their equal right to life,
liberty (including the liberty of thoughts and expression), and the pursuit
of happiness. As a general concept it may be held that the democracy is a
form of social organisation in which the participation of each individual in
the various phases of group activities is free from such artificial
restrictions are not indispensable to the most efficient functioning of the
group, and in which group policy is ultimately determined by the will of
the whole society.
The basis of democratic development is the demand for equality,
the demand that the system of power be erected upon the similarities and
not the differences between men. Of the permanence of this demand there
can be no doubt, at the very dawn of political science Aristotle insisted
that its denial was the main cause of revolutions. It is because political
equality, however, profound, does not permit the full affirmation of the
common man’s essence that the idea of democracy has spread to other
spheres. It was with the French Revolution that economic equality may be
said to have become a permanent part of the democratic creed. From that
time, particularly in the context of socialist principle, it has been
increasingly insisted that in the absence of economic equality no political
mechanisms will of themselves enable the common man to realise his
wishes and interests. Economic power is regarded as the parent of political
power. To make the diffusion of the latter effective, the former also must
be widely impossible the attainment of a common interests by state action.
Economic equality is then urged as the clue upon which the reality of
democracy depends.
The arguments for democracy have been set forth in three
principal, variously interrelated forms, namely the doctrine of natural
rights, first appearing, as a defence of democracy in the latter Middle
Ages, the theory that the standard utility, or the happiness of the many doctrine, set forth most explicitly during the last half century, that only
makes democracy the preferable form of government; and the idealist
democracy makes possible the full realisation of the most characteristic
potentialities of human personality.
In the seventeenth century John Locke, a British philosopher,
revolution of 1688 argued that the only sort of political society justifiable,
who sought to establish a scientific justification for the parliamentary
on the basis of perfect freedom of man in the natural state, was one in
which the people incorporate themselves into “one body politic, wherein
the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest”. This is the central
idea of the latter classics of democracy, such as Rousseau’s Social
Contract, pain’s Rights of man, and the great “Declaration” of the
American and French Revolutions. Many of the most significant events of
modern political history the growing supremacy and gradual
democratization of the English. House of Commons, the achievement of
American independence from Great Britain, the overthrow of the old
antocracy in France, the later movements for written constitutions and
representative parliaments, the recent independence of Indo-Pak and other
Asiatic countries have been widely interpreted as efforts to vindicate the
claim that ordinary men have an inherent right to determine the form and
personnel of their governments.
The utilitarian argument is that since political government has no
other end than the well-being of the individual men and women that make
up society and since each individual’s well-being ought to count for as
much as that of any other individual, a society is properly organised
politically to the extent that its constitution and policy tend to promote the
interests, conserve the rights, and extend the capacities and opportunities
for happiness of the greatest number of individuals in the community.
Democratic Government satisfies these requirements, since it is least likely
to subordinate the welfare of the majority of the community to that of any
part. Democracy means government by those who have the greatest
concern for and the greatest awareness of the interests and rights of the
people generally. The natural self-interest of human beings is the best
Security against political action that is oppressive or tolerant of oppression.
is so far as governments promote human welfare through the efficient and
from internal and external enemies, settling disputes, providing the means
equitable discharge of the primary political functions furnishing protection
It is also contended, in the utilitarian argument of democracy, that of education, and supplying certain other essential and common needs-
democratic governments have actually produced results at least as
satisfactory as those achieved under monarchies and aristocracies. It is
also contended that in certain functions, as in alleviating poverty and
removing traditional economic and social injustices they have been more
prompt and thorough going than other forms of government.
Dictatorship, on the other hand, is opposed to democracy, as it
means absolute control of the community by the will of a single-ruler..It is
a term which has undergone notable change in meaning. In the constitution
of the Roman Republic it signified the temporary possession by one man
of unlimited power, a trusteeship regarded as necessary to enable the state
to weather a crisis. In Modern times there have been numerous instances
of absolution, sometimes, benevolent and acceptable, sometimes harsh and
deserving the name of depotism and even tyranny. But the concept of
dictatorship has until recently been kept separate and history has used it to
designate an emergency assumption of power, as England, in order to
escape from civil war, had to put herself temporarily, in the absolute
power to her one great man – Cromwell.
But in the decade following the World War I, there was a wide
speard tendency to use the term ‘dictatorship’ as synonymous with
absolutism or autocracy. In the true dictatorship the suspension of some
constitutional features has in the past had as its aim the saving of the
constitution as a whole. But in the post-war dictatorship, constitutional
government was ignored or encroached upon in the interest of an
ambitious hero or a privileged class, with little evidence of popular
consent save man’s unwillingness to resist machine gun and police agent.
This principle of one-man political rule found practical expression
in Italy, Germany, and in some other countries of Central and Eastern
Europe, where dictatorship were set up. Each of the dictators put himself
up in power chiefly by means of armed forces, destroyed all effective
opposition, in the early stages of his regime, by a policy of governmental
terrorism, and retained the use of censorship, and a summary judicia
procedure as normal means for dealing with political minorities. Yet each
was approved, it appeared, by substantial numbers of the more intelligen
citizens and was widely acclaimed by the populace. It is not difficult to
find explanations for the origins of the dictatorships and for the practica
successes which, in some measures, they achieved. On the one hand, th
World War I, or the conditions of the terms of peace, left each of the countries in a condition of exceptional economic and social disorder on the
other hand, the normal operation of parliamentary institution was made
impossible or difficult by a general popular lassitude, in reaction from an
extraordinary war discipline, and by the failure of rival democratic groups
to agree on any economic programme to meet the emergency. Where the
choice appeared to lie between a perpetuation of such conditions and a
submission to the iron hand of ruler which, although destroying self-
government and individual liberty, seemed able to meet immediate needs
in the way of balancing budgets, stabilizing currencies, and maintaining
order the people chose, or accepted, the latter alternative.
If democratic institutions as currently applied disable the nation
from acting at all in a multiform crisis that demands action, it is not
surprising that the people accept even welcome, the ‘strong man’, with his
boldness the self-confidence, his readiness without debate to make
decisions with those of the nation he purports to incarnate. He brings order
and settles matters not by trying to persuade or by counting majorities but
by his own fiat. The mass of the people dote on one who by a mystery of
magnetism inspires respect, makes them feel great through their kinship
with him, their national symbol. If he has the privilege of military success
they love him as the nation’s savior. If he has a journalist’s flair for
phrase-making his slogans may kindly enthusiasm in a newspaper reading
age, giving him power comparable with that of the sophistical demagogue
in the days of oratory.
Some critics of democracy and advocates of dictatorship claim
that, when usually difficult problems have to be faced, even the older
democracies confer their impotence and surrender to emergency
dictatorship. Premier Poincare, it is pointed out, saved France in 1926, by
persuading the French parliament to give him a “dictator’s mandate” in
reorganising the finances of the nation. The British in 1931, escaped
financial and social disaster only by yielding to the Prime Minister Mac
Donald’s emotional plea that the votes give him and his associate carte
blance in devising the fiscal and economic measures to deliver the country
from its crisis, which only vague intimations as to what his measures
would be. The Congress of the United States, in 1933, blindly conferred
on President Roosevelt the vast discretionary powers he demanded to
inflate the currency, institute governmental economies, and regulate
production, prices, and working conditions in private industry and trade as
the only way to restore prosperity. If these steps were necessary, then the critics contend, democracy is discredited, for the test of a good form of
government is to be found in the measure of its success in meeting the
difficulties of a crisis, any form of government may work tolerably in
times of prosperity and peace.
The theoretical justification of dictatorship was set forth
extensively by Mussolini and other spokesmen for Italian Fascism, who
characterised their doctrine as a “new conception of civil life” the novelty
consisting essentially in an exphatic repudiation of the assumptions, ideals,
and methods of modern democracy. It was the object of the Fascists to
display the visionary, disintegrating, enfeebling creeds of equality and
freedom by a realistic doctrine of an organic, hierarchically constituted
nation, whose few most virile citizens assist a dictator in holding the
multitude to the task of realizing destinies more exalted than the petty aims
of commonplace men.
It is obvious that dictatorship has certain advantages over
democracy. A dictator can make administrative action swift, while that of
a parliament is vacillating. He can satisfy the more pressing demands at
once in readjusted taxation, extravagant public work, although he may
thereby be storing up difficulties for himself. He is in a better position to
improvise remedy in time. But in the economic field he is under a heavy
handicap, for it is I here where he chiefly needs the common counsel
which his regime rejects. He must depend on his own intention. Because
he considers himself omniscient, the indispensable critical advice is hard
to get, and especially to accept when one is maintained in office as the
ineffable, all-powerful, all-knowledge one. In external affairs the
dictator’s policy is cheap and easy nationalism. Hatred of the foreigner is
something on which all classes may be united and stirred to an emotional
pitch sufficient to divert them from consideration of lost liberty.
Unluckily, caught as he is, the prisoner of the legend of his greatness that
has been woven round him, the dictator is tempted into rash, and
disastrous adventures. Dictatorial power seldom terminates except in
lawlessness from where it generally originates, because absolute power is
the constitution’s normal vigour is enfeebled during dictatorship, when the
dictator is gone, there is the additional danger that would be successors
will destroy the nation in their struggles for mastery.
Thus whatever the original purpose of dictatorship, history
indicates that it cannot avoid degeneration and when that occurs the
benefits of the dictatorship are bound to be confined to those who share in its operation. Democracy, though it is not a perfect form of government,
is certainly superior to dictatorship as it is built on the sound notion that
the only way of responding to the wants of total experince in modern
communities is to give that experience the full opportunity of expression,
and the only way to give it that freedom is to offer it in its various aspects
the responsibility of sharing in power.
“Parliamentary democracy demands many virtues. It demands, of
course ability. It demands a certain devotion to work. But it demands also
a large measure of cooperation of self-discipline, of restraint. It is obvious
that a House like this cannot perform any functions without a spirit of
cooperation, without a large measure of restraint and self-discipline in
each group. parliamentary democracy is not something which can be
created in a country by some magic wand. We know very well that there
are not many countries in the world where it functions successfully. I think
it may be said without any partiality that it has functioned with a very
large measure of success in this country. Why? Not so much because we,
the members of this House, are examples of wisdom, but, I think, because
of the background in our country, and because our people have the spirit
of democracy in them.
“We have to remember that parliamentary democracy means,
more so in this time of change and ferment that in ordinary times. Even
when the old order is good, it has to yield place to a new one, lest one
good custom should corrupt the world. Change there must be, change
there has to be, particularly in a country like Pakistan which was more or
less changeless for a long time, changeless not only because the dynamic
aspect of the country was limited restricted and confined by foreign
domination, but also Because we had fallen into ruts of our won making,
in our minds, in our social framework and the rest. So we had to take our
souls both from the ruts and from the disabilirapied changed in order to
catch up.
“but, while change is necessary, there is another quality that is
also necessary a measure of continuity. There has always to be a balancing
of change and continuity. Not one day is like another. We grow old each
day. Yet, there is continuity in us, unbroken continuity in the life of a
nation. It is in the measure that these processes of change and continuity
are balanced that a country grows on solid foundations. If there is no
change and only continuity, there is stagnation and decay. If there is
change and only continuity, there is stagnation and decay. If there is change only and no continuity, that means uprooting, and no country and
no people can survive for long if they are uprooted from the soil which has
given them birth and nurtured them.
“The system of parliamentary democracy embodies these
principles of change and continuity. And it is up to those who function in
this system, members of the house and the numerous others who are part
of this system, to increase the pace of change, to make it as fast as they
like subject to the principle of continuity is broken we become rootless and
the system of parliamentary democracy breaks down. Parliamentary
democracy is a delicate plant and it is a measure of our own success that
this plant has grown sturdier during these last few years. We have faced
difficult and great problems, and solved many of them, but many remain
to be solved. If there are no problems, that is a sign of death. Only the
dead have no problems, the living have probes and they grow by fighting
with problems and overcoming them. It is a sign of growth of this nation
that not only do we solve problems, but we create problems to solve
them.”
