Experts meet at one day conference organised to celebrate 125th birth anniversary of freedom fighter K M Munshi and completion of 75 years of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
“We live in impossible democracy,” said Chittatosh Mukherjee, former chief justice, Mumbai High Court and chairman, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kolkata, speaking at one-day international conference Symbols and Theories of World Democracies and World Cultures organised in city on Sunday to celebrate 125th birth anniversary of freedom fighter K M Munshi and completion of 75 years of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
The conference was inaugurated by Governor of Gujarat Dr. Kamalaji Beniwal and Mukherjee was the key note speaker at the event. Noted experts of various fields including Rajendra Sinha, DGM, SBI, professors I S Mathur, R J Mathai, NID, Amit Kumar, GM, ONGC, Dr Z N Patil, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, C V Gopinath, sr.DDG and ex-officio additional secretary to government of India, Dr Sanjeev Sharma, honorary secretary, Indian Political Science Association, and Dr Neerja Arun analyzed various definitions of democracy to re-define Indian version of the same concept.
Mukherjee said, “There is no alternative to democracy. Indian democracy is defined as impossible system. As it continues to prevail in conditions like large territory, illiteracy, variety of cultures and sub-cultures and diverse people and under any of these conditions can affect the running model of democracy. However, we have that system up and running as our people wants it.”
Reasoning on the same line, Dr Sharma said, “Generally, definition of democracy worldwide is based on western models and concepts. This is first time that we try trying to understand and define this political system with our perspective. Experts from Maharashtra, UP, Gujarat, Jammu, Delhi, Calcutta, Karnataka and other parts of the country have arrived to attend this meet. The discussions are being documented and this is commendable effort to analyze democracy and re-define it in local context.”
Similarly, Dr Neerja said, “Democracy is a political concept which alters according to local contexts. Democracy has different meanings in UK, UK or India and each country and state and city has different symbols to reflect that concept of democracy. Like Ahmedabad has mass-corporate-democracy, while Mumbai is democratic, Hyderabad0 has aristocratic-democracy and Lakhnaw has nawabi-democracy. Today, the experts have met with a view to assimilate their deliberations on democracy in local contexts. Our team will soon come out with a detailed book – based on discussions at this conference – which will document various types of democracies that prevail in our country.”
