474 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
50 per cent of whom were slaves. Only 50 per cent were free. The 50 per cent who formed slaves had no place in the Government at all. Surely our democracy is quite different from the Athenian Democracy.
The second thing to which I would like to draw your attention by a preliminary observation is that even in the same country democracy is not always the same. You take the history of England. Nobody can say that the English Democracy before the English Revolution of 1688 was the same as the English Democracy which came after the revolution of 1688. Nor can anyone say that the English Democracy as existed between 1688 and 1832 when the first Reform Bill was passed, is the same as the democracy that developed after the passing of the Act of 1832. Democracy keeps on changing its form.
The third thing that I would like to draw your attention is that democracy not only undergoes changes in form; democracy always undergoes changes in purposes. You take the ancient English Democracy. What was the purpose of that democracy? It was to curb the King, to prevent the King from exercising what we now in law call his prerogative rights. The King even went to the extent of saying that although parliament may be there, as an enactment making body, “I as a King have got the prerogative to make the law and my law shall prevail.” It was this kind of autocracy of the King which made democracy to come into being.
Today what is the purpose of the democracy? The purpose of modern democracy is not so much to put a curb on an autocratic King but to bring about the welfare of the people. That is a distinct change in the purpose of democracy. You will therefore see that in the title which I have given to my subject, I have deliberately used the words “conditions precedent for the success of modem democracy.”
Democracy Defined
Again what do we mean by democracy? Let us have a clear understanding before I proceed to my subject. Democracy has been defined, as you know, by various people, writers of political science and philosophers, sociologists and so on. I take only two for the