3 ms·

> India’s elections are free and fair. Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed? > That’s all democracy requires. That is certainly false. Dem

by mmooss 2y ago

> India’s elections are free and fair. Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed? > That’s all democracy requires. That is certainly false. Democracy isn't mob rule, or as the saying go, it's not two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Democracy is about self-determination for each person; if people in minority don't have self-determination, it's not democracy at all.

rayiner 2y ago
[flagged]
- rectang 2y ago
  If majoritarianism is exactly equal to democracy, then a third of the citizenry can be in prison serving as slave labor and so long as they get to cast ballots for candidates promising freedom only to be voted down by the keep-slave-labor camp that's "democracy". I'd like to think that aspiring higher than that is neither western nor non-western.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- mmooss 2y ago
  This is the old argument of dicators, going back to the Cold War and before. Like much propaganda, it tries to turn around the enemy's own arguments to disrupt and disconcert - the enemy cares about cultures and freedom, so brutal dictators should be 'free' to do what their 'culture' demands - I don't think their victims see it that way. Democracy, with rights, has prospered and been embraced across cultures and around the world, on every continent. Before Modi, it was embraced in India.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I have no idea what “dictators” you’re talking about. Both my argument and Hamid’s comes from the experiences with fledgling democracies in the Muslim world, where the model of liberal democracy has been tried and failed repeatedly. What does “democracy, with rights” even mean? Who decides what the “rights” are? In Asia, “democracy, with rights” exists primarily in Japan and South Korea, where it was imposed by the United States. Previously, it existed in Hong Kong, which was a British colony. Singapore also has “democracy, with rights” but again as a result of British colonization. And post-colonization, the “with rights” part is pretty circumscribed. “Democracy, with rights” was a foreign import to India (and Bangladesh), imposed by an Oxbridge-educated Indian elite. Nehru didn’t get secularism and social democracy from India, he got them to England while he was studying at Cambridge.[1] What you’re seeing in India now is the result of India becoming more democratic as British colonial influence fades: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial-india https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial... [1] The last Congress prime minister has degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. While the current leader of Congress is half Italian and went to college near Orlando, then got his masters at Cambridge.
    - orwin 2y ago
      It means than everyone is equal in front of the law. If one can be prosecuted for doing X, then everyone should. If a majority vote to exclude a minority from owning businesses (then property, then anything), it isn't a liberal democracy.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      You forgot Taiwan and other countries, all over the world. Every part of China that has had democracy has strived to hold on to it, though tragically not always with success. People in India learned about computers from the West, but that doesn't make them somehow wrong for India. People in the UK didn't know about democracy at some point in history; does that make it wrong? Can there be no growth or innovation - an extreme conservative argument, but used to meaninglessly oppose anything they don't like. Rights are also a moral issue. There are people being harmed, who at the same time deserve to be free and live fulfilling, safe lives of their own choosing - not of your choosing (or mine).
      - rayiner 2y ago
        > People in India learned about computers from the West, but that doesn't make them somehow wrong for India... Can there be no growth or innovation Democracy is consistent with "growth [and] innovation." If the Indian electorate finds certain western ideas to be positive innovations, it can adopt them democratically. Like computers--Indians adopted computers because they found computers to be a western advancement worth adopting. But voting is how you decide what's "innovation" versus what's "regression." How else would you possibly decide that? > Rights are also a moral issue. There are people being harmed, who at the same time deserve to be free and live fulfilling, safe lives of their own choosing - not of your choosing (or mine). You're articulating western morality that isn't widely accepted in Asia. "Choice" is a western fixation. Asians know that most individuals need society to help them make good choices. Western parents tell their kids to "follow their dreams." Asian parents tell their kids to "follow the proven track." Likewise, fixating on "harm" to the individual rather than harm to society as a whole is a western fixation. For example, westerners perceive Singapore's practice of caning those that cause public disorder as violating "human rights." But Singaporeans view it as an appropriate trade-off that protects the public's right to live in a clean, orderly, and safe environment. "Democracy" is good, and widely supported in places like India, Bangladesh, etc. But it's antithetical to the concept of democracy to use it as a backdoor to smuggle in unrelated western moral philosophy.
alephnerd 2y ago
> Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed? And pray tell who that candidate is and what was their platform? > Democracy isn't mob rule, or as the saying go, it's not two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Democracy is about self-determination for each person; if people in minority don't have self-determination, it's not democracy at all. And what is the definition of minority to follow? Caste? Religion? Ethnicity? Each one of these intersectionalities are represented in Indian electoral politics at the local, state, and national level. The BJP itself lost it's supermajority in the Lok Sabha (Parliament) after Muslim voters in UP flipped to the Samajwadi Party in the 2024 election, and the opposition parties have won major state elections such as in Jharkhand. In fact, after the 2024 election results, Indian electioneering is starting to stop using the "Hindu-Muslim" trope because it's been overused, and the primary swing voting bank at this point is women, as was seen with the results of the 2024 General, Maharashtra, and Delhi elections. > if people in minority don't have self-determination, it's not democracy at all. I agree with you that Majoritarianism is NOT democracy. But minorities are not uniformly opposed to the BJP either. Lower caste Muslims (Pasmanda) tend to lean towards the NDA (BJP's coalition) [0] and Muslim women have begun to lean in favor of the BJP due to women first welfare schemes [1] Furthermore, assuming the BJP is India and India is the BJP is an extremely reductive take on Indian democracy that was clearly proven wrong in the 2024 General Elections. If it was then the BJP would have won a hypermajority ("Abki Bhar 400 Paar"), but got a severe drubbing forcing them to build a coalition with secular JD(U) in Bihar and TDP in AP. [0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/02/09/mapping-muslim-voting-behavior-in-india-pub-91579 https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/02/09/mapping-muslim-voti... [1] - https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/elections/india/lok-sabha-elections-2024-bjp-claims-silent-womens-vote-helped-party-especially-in-north-india-3048812 https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/elections/india/lok-s...
boruto 2y ago
> Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed? Actually a great filter to know who knows what they are talking about.

by mmooss 2y ago

rayiner 2y ago

[flagged]

rectang 2y ago
If majoritarianism is exactly equal to democracy, then a third of the citizenry can be in prison serving as slave labor and so long as they get to cast ballots for candidates promising freedom only to be voted down by the keep-slave-labor camp that's "democracy". I'd like to think that aspiring higher than that is neither western nor non-western.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mmooss 2y ago
This is the old argument of dicators, going back to the Cold War and before. Like much propaganda, it tries to turn around the enemy's own arguments to disrupt and disconcert - the enemy cares about cultures and freedom, so brutal dictators should be 'free' to do what their 'culture' demands - I don't think their victims see it that way. Democracy, with rights, has prospered and been embraced across cultures and around the world, on every continent. Before Modi, it was embraced in India.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I have no idea what “dictators” you’re talking about. Both my argument and Hamid’s comes from the experiences with fledgling democracies in the Muslim world, where the model of liberal democracy has been tried and failed repeatedly. What does “democracy, with rights” even mean? Who decides what the “rights” are? In Asia, “democracy, with rights” exists primarily in Japan and South Korea, where it was imposed by the United States. Previously, it existed in Hong Kong, which was a British colony. Singapore also has “democracy, with rights” but again as a result of British colonization. And post-colonization, the “with rights” part is pretty circumscribed. “Democracy, with rights” was a foreign import to India (and Bangladesh), imposed by an Oxbridge-educated Indian elite. Nehru didn’t get secularism and social democracy from India, he got them to England while he was studying at Cambridge.[1] What you’re seeing in India now is the result of India becoming more democratic as British colonial influence fades: https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial-india https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-culture-wars-of-post-colonial... [1] The last Congress prime minister has degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. While the current leader of Congress is half Italian and went to college near Orlando, then got his masters at Cambridge.
  - orwin 2y ago
    It means than everyone is equal in front of the law. If one can be prosecuted for doing X, then everyone should. If a majority vote to exclude a minority from owning businesses (then property, then anything), it isn't a liberal democracy.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    You forgot Taiwan and other countries, all over the world. Every part of China that has had democracy has strived to hold on to it, though tragically not always with success. People in India learned about computers from the West, but that doesn't make them somehow wrong for India. People in the UK didn't know about democracy at some point in history; does that make it wrong? Can there be no growth or innovation - an extreme conservative argument, but used to meaninglessly oppose anything they don't like. Rights are also a moral issue. There are people being harmed, who at the same time deserve to be free and live fulfilling, safe lives of their own choosing - not of your choosing (or mine).
    - rayiner 2y ago
      > People in India learned about computers from the West, but that doesn't make them somehow wrong for India... Can there be no growth or innovation Democracy is consistent with "growth [and] innovation." If the Indian electorate finds certain western ideas to be positive innovations, it can adopt them democratically. Like computers--Indians adopted computers because they found computers to be a western advancement worth adopting. But voting is how you decide what's "innovation" versus what's "regression." How else would you possibly decide that? > Rights are also a moral issue. There are people being harmed, who at the same time deserve to be free and live fulfilling, safe lives of their own choosing - not of your choosing (or mine). You're articulating western morality that isn't widely accepted in Asia. "Choice" is a western fixation. Asians know that most individuals need society to help them make good choices. Western parents tell their kids to "follow their dreams." Asian parents tell their kids to "follow the proven track." Likewise, fixating on "harm" to the individual rather than harm to society as a whole is a western fixation. For example, westerners perceive Singapore's practice of caning those that cause public disorder as violating "human rights." But Singaporeans view it as an appropriate trade-off that protects the public's right to live in a clean, orderly, and safe environment. "Democracy" is good, and widely supported in places like India, Bangladesh, etc. But it's antithetical to the concept of democracy to use it as a backdoor to smuggle in unrelated western moral philosophy.

alephnerd 2y ago

> Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed? And pray tell who that candidate is and what was their platform? > Democracy isn't mob rule, or as the saying go, it's not two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Democracy is about self-determination for each person; if people in minority don't have self-determination, it's not democracy at all. And what is the definition of minority to follow? Caste? Religion? Ethnicity? Each one of these intersectionalities are represented in Indian electoral politics at the local, state, and national level. The BJP itself lost it's supermajority in the Lok Sabha (Parliament) after Muslim voters in UP flipped to the Samajwadi Party in the 2024 election, and the opposition parties have won major state elections such as in Jharkhand. In fact, after the 2024 election results, Indian electioneering is starting to stop using the "Hindu-Muslim" trope because it's been overused, and the primary swing voting bank at this point is women, as was seen with the results of the 2024 General, Maharashtra, and Delhi elections. > if people in minority don't have self-determination, it's not democracy at all. I agree with you that Majoritarianism is NOT democracy. But minorities are not uniformly opposed to the BJP either. Lower caste Muslims (Pasmanda) tend to lean towards the NDA (BJP's coalition) [0] and Muslim women have begun to lean in favor of the BJP due to women first welfare schemes [1] Furthermore, assuming the BJP is India and India is the BJP is an extremely reductive take on Indian democracy that was clearly proven wrong in the 2024 General Elections. If it was then the BJP would have won a hypermajority ("Abki Bhar 400 Paar"), but got a severe drubbing forcing them to build a coalition with secular JD(U) in Bihar and TDP in AP. [0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/02/09/mapping-muslim-voting-behavior-in-india-pub-91579 https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/02/09/mapping-muslim-voti... [1] - https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/elections/india/lok-sabha-elections-2024-bjp-claims-silent-womens-vote-helped-party-especially-in-north-india-3048812 https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/elections/india/lok-s...

boruto 2y ago

> Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed? Actually a great filter to know who knows what they are talking about.