CONDITIONS.................OF DEMOCRACY 473
Dr. Ambedkar’s Address
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
When the invitation came, I wrote to your Secretary that I would very much like to know what are the subjects in which the members of this District Library are interested, because I may come here and speak on a subject in which they may have no interest. If so, the visit would be of no value either to you or to me. He was kind enough to send me a list of four subjects. He said “You can select anyone of them.” I was in a hurry to reply to him and could not convey to him my actual decision as to what subject I would select. But I told him in a general way that I would select one of the four and if I did not select one of the four, I will not travel beyond the ambit of the four which he had prescribed. The one subject which attracted me which he had mentioned was Parliamentary Democracy, and I thought that that was a subject on which I might speak. The subject which I have selected is not Parliamentary Democracy, but something which is very closely associated with Parliamentary Democracy and which from my point of view, and I believe from the point of view of the country, is a very important subject. Now, the subject which I am going to speak to you this evening is according to my wording of the subject: “Conditions Precedent for the Successful Working of Democracy.” What are the conditions precedent which must exist in order that the democratic form of Government may continue to work without any kind of hindrance. That is the subject on which I propose to make a few observations.
Setting for the Subject
Now, before I actually deal with the subject-matter I propose to make a few preliminary observations in order to provide, what I call, a setting for the subject.
The first preliminary observation I propose to make is this that democracy is always changing its form. We speak of democracy, but democracy is not always the same. The Greeks spoke of Athenian Democracy. But as everyone knows, the Athenian Democracy was as different from our modern democracy as chalk is from cheese. The Athenian Democracy consisted of people