CONDITIONS.................OF DEMOCRACY 483
across a case where a demand for adjournment has been refused either by the Speaker, provided of course it is an order by the Government. When I was a member of the Bombay Legislative Assembly, there were a few of our friends Mr. Morarji, Mr. Munshi and Mr. Kher and others who were in office. They never allowed a single motion of adjournment to be discussed. Either our friend Mr. Mavlankar who was then the Speaker helped them by ruling it out or as he admitted, the Minister objected to it. You know what happens when a Minister objects? When a Minister objects, the man who proposes the adjournment motion has to produce 30 or 40 people, whatever the quota is. It may be that if Government were constantly to oppose adjournment motions of the small community which is represented in the house by a group of few members such as 4, 5 or 6, such small minorities can never get a chance to ventilate their grievances. What happens is that these minorities develop a contempt for parliamentary people and develop a revolutionary spirit something unconstitutional. It is therefore necessary that when democracy is working, the majority on which it is based, must not act in a tyrannical manner.
One other point I will refer and then close. I think that democracy does require the functioning of moral order in society. Somehow, our political scientists have never considered this aspect of democracy. Ethics is something separate from politics. You may learn politics and you may know nothing about ethics as though politics can work without ethics. To my mind it is an astounding proposition. After all, in democracy what happens? Democracy is spoken of as a free Government. And what do we mean by free Government? Free Government means that in vast aspects of social life people are left free to carry on without interference of law, or if law has to be made, then the law maker expects that society will have enough morality in it to make the law a success. The only person who, I think, has referred to this aspect of democracy is Laski. In one of his books he has very categorically stated that the moral order is always taken for granted in democracy. If there is no moral order, democracy will go to pieces as it is going now probably in our own country.