'Stop Making Us Pretend' Bill Maher

 

A Quick Run Through of Modern Indian History: The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal by Gurcharan Das

 

'Canada is the new Pakistan': Shekar Gupta

 

Shekhar Gupta on Leadership in India

 

The India US Ties

 

Sikh radicalism and votebank politics in Canada

 

Sarah Haider and The Ex Muslims of North America

 

The Kerala Story—It’s time Muslims give up their mediaeval ideal of conquest, conversion

The liberal-secular patrons of the Islamic preachers neither talk about conversions nor let others do the talking. They are devoid of integrity and lack tools to analyse the phenomenon writes IBN KHALDUN BHARATI in The Print


 


The central issue of the movie, The Kerala Story, is religious conversion of Hindus and Christians to Islam — a subject few wanted to talk about. Though the Islamic preachers and narrative makers never hid their intention, their liberal-secular patrons would neither talk about it nor let others do the talking. They have a vested interest in Muslim communalism, and are happy with the electoral gains accruing from Islamic radicalism. Thus, devoid of the integrity to acknowledge the disturbing reality, they also lack the tools to analyse the phenomenon.

Expectedly, the movie has stirred a hornet’s nest. Exposé of an open secret always does that.

The main objection raised against The Kerala Story has been the now-retracted figure of 32,000 conversions of girls in the state to supply soldiers for ISIS. The film producers now mention three girls who converted and went to fight for ISIS. However, beyond this quibbling over numbers, there have been no serious imputation of falsehood. The core content of the movie has a kernel of truth and is not being disputed. There is no accusation of peddling falsehood. Instead, some are questioning the motives behind telling this truth. It’s a politically inconvenient movie that brings to light the topic of religious conversion and its consequences.

There is no denying the fact that conversions happened in Kerala — of girls too! And, neo-converts, even girls, were sent abroad on jihadi missions to fight for ISIS. Women were not recruited in these missions for combat roles. Jihadi men needed comfort girls, and these women were jihad-prostitutes. We learnt about the story when some of them, incarcerated in Taliban’s jails in Afghanistan, begged the Indian government to bring them home.

The point to ponder is, when this news broke, what was the reaction of the Muslim community and the liberal-secular intelligentsia? Were they shocked with disbelief or just embarrassed about the revelation? Did they dismiss it as a freak incident or knowing it to be the tip of iceberg tried to retrieve the situation from increasing radicalisation.

Is it a secret that converting a non-Muslim to Islam is considered the greatest of virtues? Could people, even girls, be converted and despatched on jihadi missions without a general acceptance of conversion and jihad in the Muslim society? Did the people react then the way they are doing now at the movie about it? No, they didn’t, and therefore, there is a need to introspect, and understand what is going on.
Why convert?

The underlying concept behind converting people is that one’s own religion is the only truth, all else is falsehood. Thus, it becomes one’s duty to persuade others to convert to the “true” religion. If persuasion fails, and circumstances allow, the unheeding could be converted by deceit, temptation, or force. Throughout history, most conversions — a supremacist idea — have occurred through force or conquest. With the exception of Southeast Asia, Islam has mainly spread in areas that were conquered by Muslims. While Sufi mystics played a major role in cultivating converts, they could not have succeeded without the protection of the Islamic sword, as they had to reconcile people to the Muslim rule and the ruler’s religion. This was Islam’s version of the “Cross following the Flag.”
The community of converts

Today, the descendants of converts — some 80-90% of Indian Muslims — may regard the conversion of their ancestors as a divine blessing that saved successive generations from hellfire and ensured eternal paradise. However, the process through which this blessing was obtained is also a fact of history. If the story were to be told, it could severely undermine the basis of identity politics. Communal consciousness is shaped by suppressing memory and obfuscating history.
History of conversion

In India, the issue of conversion will remain contentious because, historically, it has been a corollary of conquest. Whether through persuasion, temptation, or compulsion, both the conqueror and the conquered viewed it as an insult added to injury. The consequences of these conversions are still present in the form of ever-increasing religious radicalisation and separatist politics, even 75 years after the Partition.
Politics of conversion

Now that the age of Islamic conquest is over, and wholesale conversion is no longer feasible, there has been a shift in strategy — to Dawah, i.e., preaching and proselytising. Earlier, groups converted, now individuals do. Sometimes, girls in love convert too. Such conversion is seen as poaching by the community that loses a member. No one remains in doubt about its political meaning. A religious conversion in India is not only about changes in one’s conception of the divine, vocabulary of prayer and ritual of worship. More than anything else, it is a change of community; switching of loyalty from one to another. For the Muslim, a conversion is a validation of his religion’s truth and is celebrated as a communal conquest. Correspondingly, every such conversion makes the Hindu seethe at the unending series of defeat and humiliation. Such contrast in emotions on two sides is inevitable in a situation where communities are seen as historical antagonists, competing with each other for the supremacy of their respective religions.
Conversion from Islam

Islamic jurisprudence is the best guide to understand the political import of religious conversion. According to it, a Muslim’s conversion to another religion is an act of apostasy, which renders him liable to death. The reasoning behind it is that a change of religion is not merely a change of one’s personal faith. It is tantamount to treason to the Islamic state, and is as grave a matter as a soldier’s desertion to the enemy camp. In this worldview, religions are political ideologies, and faith communities are warring armies. Therefore, the campaign to convert is prosecution of war by another means. A new convert to Islam is a victory for the religion that the community celebrates. But the rare conversion of a Muslim to another religion is high treason that Muslims can’t take in their stride, and for which the prescribed punishment is execution.

In an ideological framework where a new convert is actually a newly recruited soldier, the progression from conversion to military jihad is natural.
Ethics of pluralism

A pluralist and secular society cannot allow one community to have such designs on the other. A minority community, particularly, can’t afford such continued incursions into the majority, as it may incite a reaction leading to reverse conversion.

After the Prophet, the Muslims didn’t remain a faith group. They became a religion-based ethnicity. Therefore, seeking to convert non-Muslims to Islam is as ridiculous as converting Indians into Arabs. It creates confusion of identity, which leads to extreme fanaticism.

In a pluralist society like India’s, the Muslims would do better to recognise that all religions are equally true. If they can’t bring themselves to it, they should, at least, recognise that to the people of other faiths, their religion is as true as Islam is to a Muslim. And so, trying to convert others is as unacceptable as changing someone’s gender or skin colour.

It’s time that, in their own interest, Muslims renounced the mediaeval ideal of conquest and conversion. If they didn’t, this fantasy could turn into a nightmare.

“Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you” is a maxim everyone should remember.

S Gurumurthy on India and the World

 

On Pakistan and its hatred of India

 

Other democracies should beware taking pleasure in the UK’s travails

Voters in most developed countries feel that their contract with the state is fraying writes Bronwen Maddox in the FT 

I can barely think of a meeting I’ve had since September that didn’t begin with jokes about Britain’s newfound instability. I started a job a few days before Liz Truss became prime minister, and the “lasted longer than the lettuce” one has been inescapable. “Three prime ministers in a year!” (Ambassadors from European countries still incredulous at Brexit particularly like this one.) Now, there are the strikes — although the meltdown of the NHS’s emergency services is no joke at all. 

But these are rash quips if coming from other democracies. The joke may be on them, too. Older democratic countries share many of the same problems and are struggling to show that they have a system that can solve them. “If you don’t have a political system that can make short-term sacrifices for the long-term good of the country, how can you expect your system of government to survive?” asked one senior Chinese official of a distinguished British former minister. 

It’s a good question. In Britain, the NHS is a symbol of these problems above all others. The stand-off with the government by nurses and ambulance workers is of course about worker pay, but is also about how much the government wants to pay for the health service at all. 

Much of the problem stems from the demands of an ageing population, and that is something that many older democracies share. Even if other countries may no longer envy the NHS, they share some of the same troubles. On many fronts, the contract that voters thought they had with their governments — over them paying for healthcare, education, pensions — is being rewritten, and not in their favour. Perhaps the best-known saying of Jean Claude Juncker, when prime minister of Luxembourg, was: “We know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.” 

Those sceptical of democracy have prophesied that this is how it consumes itself. It is easier to make promises than to keep them, so the temptation is for politicians to make extravagant commitments to get into office, and then try somehow to stay there. Following this recipe, democracy decays into populism and then autocracy. 

To some degree, yes. Boris Johnson and the unfulfillable Brexit promises were a symptom of the need to assemble an expansive coalition, built on impossibilities. The antidote — the “grown-up conversation with the nation” that politicians sometimes desperately invoke — seems pitifully weak. 

All the same, that is what is needed. The pandemic does offer some encouragement, showing that people are prepared to give up an extraordinary amount if persuaded it is necessary. But there are also more practical things that governments could do to help. 

First, they need to make the case for growth and the steps required to bring it about. Truss was not wrong in her ambition, just in recklessly ignoring the constraints on any country seeking to borrow money. For Britain, that means closer relations with Europe. A US trade deal is not coming any time soon; the only alternative of a large market is China, and Rishi Sunak’s government has chosen not to lean that way. It also means telling people that more legal immigration is needed. It means championing the creativity in science and culture that are themselves the product of the intellectual freedom at the heart of democracies. 

The second thing to do is change voting systems and improve legislatures. In the UK, the House of Lords is indefensible, as former prime minister Gordon Brown has pointed out. He is right that regions need more representation, too. And first past the post is increasingly hard to defend in a country of many different kinds of people and views. 

Third, is to stand up for the values that underpin liberal democracy but not try to couple them with all the other deals on the world stage. Insisting on a human rights agenda in every diplomatic relationship can jeopardise the pursuit of environmental and security accords that are desperately needed on their own account. It can lead to accusations of double standards — as shown by the controversy over Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup despite its treatment of LGBTQ people. 

It is right, though, to pursue those liberal principles, while acknowledging that not all countries share them. They are, along with economic prospects, one of the reasons people risk their lives in small boats trying to come to the UK — one of the best arguments that liberal democracy has a future.

How to Become Articulate

 

Forget ‘essential’, hijab isn’t that Islamic. Muslim women just made Western tees ‘halaal’

IBN KHALDUN BHARATI in The Print

Hijab is not Islamic. It’s Western. It’s not essential to Islam but an accretion to it. Unlike Islam, its origin is not in the seventh-century Middle East but in the late 20th century West. Therefore, at best, it could be called ‘Westo-Islamic’. And, insofar as it’s an accretion to the pristine religion, the right theological terminology for it would be bid’at — a new practice that has no authority in the sacred texts, and therefore, essentialises that which goes beyond the divine sanction and Prophet Muhammad’s call.

In the Arabic lexicon and the Quran, the word ‘hijab’ means a curtain, not a veil or a scarf. According to Asma Lamrabet, a Moroccan Islamic feminist, the term is reiterated seven times in the Quran, referring to the same meaning each time. “Hijab means curtain, separation, wall, and in other words, anything that hides, masks, and protects something,” she says. Never in Islamic history was this word used for a garment or a piece of clothing.
Product of new culture

The hijab, in its current form, is not older than two decades in India. As late as 2001, when this scribe stumbled upon an online matrimonial ad in which an American Muslim woman had said, “I wear hijab”, he, reasonably well-versed in Islamic idioms, couldn’t help wondering how hijab could be worn at all. He wasn’t aware that the said word had become a terminology that connoted a stylised head bandage worn to emphasise that the wearer belonged to a different religion and community and that she prided in her difference from those around her who did not belong to the same faith.

Although couched in the discourse of modesty, this was clearly a marker of identity, which soon became the uniform for religious assertion in societies where Islam wasn’t the dominant political force. The politics of this sartorial semiotics was neither lost on its proponents nor those who came to resent it.

Whether the case for hijab is argued from the vantage point of religiosity or identity, in neither case the proffered arguments could be regarded as liberal and secular. So, why can’t the liberal-secular intelligentsia tell the supporters of hijab that their insistence on displaying religious symbols in sanitised public spaces like schools is illiberal, un-secular, regressive, and militant? After all, wouldn’t it eventually harm those the most who have the greatest stake in India’s liberal secularism — the Muslim minority? Is it because the liberals, having completely lost the script and unable to fight their own battle, have been counting on the Muslim identitarian politics to keep them in the reckoning? Have they developed the same vested interest in Muslim communalism as did the British earlier?

 
Not a choice

Two key terminologies that have been bandied about liberally (pun intended) during the ongoing controversy — one in affirmation and the other in negation — are ‘choice’ and ‘patriarchy’. It has been argued that wearing any dress is a matter of individual choice. Of course, it is. However, one might ask whether the votaries of the hijab concede this right to all women to wear any dress of their choice. Would the very girls who have been exercising their “individual choice” to wear the hijab to school be able to walk freely, if they so chose, without it through their Muslim neighbourhoods and not compromise their families’ honour or invite opprobrium on themselves?

Hijab is not an individual choice, it’s a communal compulsion.

The pace at which it has been spreading hints that the day is not far when Muslim women not conforming to it may no longer be recognised as Muslims. This is what was going to happen if the Karnataka High Court’s judgement had gone the other way.

Equally insidious has been the narrative that the assertive display of the hijab is a setback to Islamic patriarchy. Far from it. Both in form and content, and very consciously too, this trend signifies the revival of orthodoxy, including its patriarchal presumptions. The religious sanction for man’s supremacy and his right to decide for women is not being questioned. Instead, what rankles is the loss of political supremacy of the supposed Muslim community. Muslim women, too, are supposed to have suffered from this loss.

Therefore, they, instead of seeking equality with men, are engaged in the higher pursuit of reviving supremacy over other religions. Their gender is not only secondary to Islam, but, as seen in the use of the hijab as a tool of religious assertion, also deployed in service of the religion. The capability and agency gained as blessings of education and modernity are ploughed back into the religious-political discourse.

 
Towards communal visibility

Another myth being circulated is that the hijab is an enabler for education, which is to say that had it not been for the hijab, Muslim girls wouldn’t be able to go out for studies. The fact, however, is that till the very end of the 20th century — before it became a common sight — most Muslim girls attended schools and colleges dressed in the same attire as other girls. The same trend would have continued if religious radicalisation had not permeated the socio-political atmosphere.

Therefore, before educating Muslim women on the hijab, so that a case could be made for the latter’s essentiality, our liberal-secular intelligentsia should have done better to wonder why an outer covering over the regular dress, which was not considered necessary earlier, became a precondition for going for studies.

This is despite the fact that the nature of the Muslim woman’s modest dressing underwent a change through the years. Before the head-wrap became trendy wear, there were three moot questions — Should a Muslim woman freely go out of her house? Should her face be covered with the naqaab? Can she, like men at home, wear Western attire?

The new hijab took care of all the questions. Women could go out. The face was exposed, but instead, the head and the neck had to be covered in a particular style, and, if topped with the hijab, Western dresses such as jeans and tee shirts became halaal.

Hijab replaced the earlier invisibility of the Muslim woman with a hypervisibility of her religious identity. Whether this identity should compulsively be asserted in public spaces is the question that Indian Muslims need to resolve wisely.

John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of Liberal Hegemony”

 

Putin will end the culture war between Liberals and Nationalists

 

Muslim women must see burqa is just like chastity belt of dark ages, Taslima Nasreen writes

 Taslima Nasreen in The Print

Students take out a protest rally from Aliah University in Kolkata against the hijab ban imposed by few Karnataka colleges | ANI Photo

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There is practically no difference between a Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Hindu fundamentalist. They are all primarily ‘intolerant’. Standing next to the mortal remains of playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, Muslims have prayed to Allah, Hindus to Bhagwan, and Christians to their almighty God. Seeing Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan lifting his hands in prayer and blowing on her body, some Hindu extremists thought that he was spitting. Then social media mayhem descended.

I have noticed that in India, while Muslims are largely aware of Hindu rituals and practices, most Hindus are ignorant about Muslims ones. Similarly in Bangladesh, Hindus understand Muslim rituals more than what Muslims know of Hindus.

To a large extent, intolerance stems from ignorance. As we saw in the Shah Rukh Khan incident, people from all religions stood behind him. In fact, there are enough liberal and rational people in the Hindu community to oppose the extremists. 

The row over hijab

An unnecessary controversy over hijab has erupted in another part of the country, Karnataka. After authorities raised objection to female students from wearing hijab to colleges, the protest by Muslim students started. Then, a group of students donning saffron scarves, took to the streets protesting against the burqa. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai ordered schools and colleges to remain shut for a few days. But this is not a solution. If the state fears riots, then violence can erupt when schools and colleges reopen. To prevent riots, the mindset needs to change, and hatred and fear for each other need to be washed clean. In this regard, the Karnataka High Court’s interim order makes sense. I believe, uniform civil code and uniform dress code are necessary to stop conflicts. Right to religion is not above the right to education.

The distance between Hindus and Muslims has not been bridged even after 75 years of Partition. Pakistan has separated from India and has turned into a religious state. But India never wanted to become a Pakistan. Or it could have easily turned into a Hindu State 75 years ago. The Indian Constitution upholds secularism, not religion. This country, with a majority Hindu population, is home to the second largest Muslim population in the world. The laws of India give equal rights to people from all religions, castes, languages, creeds, and cultures.

It is perfectly all right for an educational institution in a secular country to mandate secular dress codes for its students. There is nothing wrong in such a message from the school/college authority that states that religion is to be practised within the confines of the home. Educational institutions, meant for fostering knowledge, are not influenced by religion or gender. It is education that can lift people from the abyss of bigotry, baseness, conservativeness and superstitions into a world where the principles of individual freedom, free-thinking, humanism and rationality based on science is valued highly.

In that world, women do not feel pride in their shackles of subjugation but rather break free from them, they do not perceive covering themselves in a burqa as a matter of right but as a symbol of female persecution and cast them away. Burqas, niqabs, hijabs have a singular aim of commodifying women as sex objects. The fact that women need to hide themselves from men who sexually salivate at the sight of women is not an honourable thought for both women and men. 

Education is supreme

Twelve years ago, a local newspaper in Karnataka published an article of mine on burqa. Some Muslim fundamentalists vandalised the office and burnt it down. They also burnt down shops and businesses around it. Hindus also hit the streets in protest. Two people died when the police opened fire. A simple burqa can still cause fire to burn in this state. Riots can still break out over burqas.

A burqa and hijab can never be a woman’s choice. They have to be worn only when choices are taken away. Just like political Islam, burqa/hijab is also political today. Members of the family force the woman to wear the burqa/hijab. It is a result of sustained brainwashing from a tender age. Religious apparel like the burqa/hijab can never be a person’s identity, which is created by capabilities and accomplishments. Iran made hijab compulsory for women. Women stood on the streets and threw away their hijabs in protest. The women of Karnataka, who still consider hijab as their identity, need to strive harder to find a more meaningful and respectable identity for themselves.

When a woman’s right to education is violated on the pretext of her wearing a hijab, when someone forces a woman out of hijab as a precondition to education, I stand in favour of education even in hijab. At the same time, when a woman is forced to wear a hijab, I stand in favour of throwing the hijab away. Personally I am against hijab and burqa. I believe it is a patriarchal conspiracy that forces women into wearing burqa. These pieces of clothing are symbols of oppression and insult to women. I hope women soon realise that burqa is not different from the chastity belt of the dark ages that was used to lock in women’s sexual organs. If chastity belts are humiliating, why not burqa?

Some say that the furore over the burqa in Karnataka is not spontaneous and is supported by political forces. This sounds very familiar to saying that riots do not happen, but are manufactured — mostly before elections and almost always between Hindus and Muslims. Apparently they do count for a few votes. I, too, was thrown out of West Bengal for a few votes.

It is heartening that riots do not happen. It would be frightening if they did happen spontaneously. Then we would have surmised that Hindus and Muslims are born enemies and can never live with each other peacefully.

I believe that even the Partition riots didn’t happen on their own but were made to happen. 

A new India

I have heard some Hindu fanatics call for India to be turned into a Hindu Rashtra, where non-Hindus will be converted to Hinduism or be forced to leave the country.

I really do not know if such people are big in numbers. I know India as a secular state and love it that way. I have confidence in the country. Is India changing? Will it change? I am aware of the liberality of Hinduism as a religion. One is free to follow or not follow it. Unlike in Islam, Hinduism does not force one to follow its practices. Hinduism doesn’t prescribe people to torture, imprison, behead, hack or hang someone to death for blasphemy. Superstitions still exist in Hinduism, even though a lot has waned with time. But, India will be a country only for Hindus, anyone criticising Hindus or Hindutva will be killed — are statements that are new to me.

I have been critically scrutinising all religions and religious fundamentalism in order to uphold women’s rights and equality for more than three decades now. My writings on Hinduism and religious superstitions suppressing women’s rights have been published in Indian newspapers/magazines and have also been appreciated. But today, as soon as I pose a question like, “Why do men not observe Karva Chauth for the welfare of women?” hundreds of Hindus hurl personal attacks and abuse on me demanding my expulsion from the country. This is a new India. An India that I cannot imagine. I find their behaviour similar to Muslim fundamentalists. Utterly intolerant.

If India was a Hindu Rashtra, will all fundamentalists and liberal Hindus be able to live peacefully? Will there be no discontent among the dominant and oppressed castes, no discrimination between men and women? A state only for Hindus? Perhaps. Just the way Jews have carved a state for themselves, and Muslims have Pakistan.

I will have to leave a Hindu Rashtra too because I cannot become a Hindu. I am an atheist and a humanist, and I choose to stay that way. Gauri Lankesh, I believe, was a humanist. She was not fit for a Hindu Rashtra, nor will I be.

The failure of liberal democracy and the rise of China’s way

Eric Li in The Economist

ALARM BELLS are ringing about the state of democracy. Freedom House proclaims the “global decline in democracy has accelerated” and that even in America it has “declined significantly”. Much of the weakening is happening in countries that are aligned with America, according to research by the V-Dem Institute in Sweden. Larry Diamond, a political sociologist, argues that the “democratic recession” has reached a “crisis”, intensified by the pandemic. There are many diagnoses. Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist, believes the American government is captured by elites and the public is divided by cultural identities. And then there are those who always reach for the easy answer, blaming China and Russia.

On the other side of the spectrum, democracy’s sceptics are enjoying a moment of Schadenfreude. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, recently criticised the West’s failed attempts to “enforce democracy” on other countries whose cultures were ill fitted for such political systems and called on them to stop. Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean diplomat and scholar, believes America has in some ways “all the attributes of a failed state.” A decade ago even I weighed in, arguing that China’s model is superior to the West—a smug way of saying democracy is doomed.

Yet these pronouncements miss the mark because they share a flawed definition of democracy. To be more precise, they mistakenly equate liberalism with democracy, thereby rendering liberal democracy the only form of democratic governance. This is wrong.

In 1992, at the end of the cold war and beginning of a golden era for liberal democracy’s universalisation, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, a political theorist, wrote in an essay, “The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy”, that “liberal democracy is liberalised democracy: that is, democracy defined and structured within the limits set by liberalism.” This combination, he noted, was crystallised around the 18th century in Europe and was widely championed in practice by the West only after the second world war as a way of opposing the Soviet Union. Democracy itself, in its earliest Western incarnation in ancient Greece, long preceded liberalism.

Moreover, in combination, liberalism was the dominant partner and democracy was subjugated. In fact, liberalism was hostile to democracy. The development of liberal institutions over the past two to three centuries has in many ways consisted of attempts at limiting the power of democracy. If we are to be historically accurate and intellectually honest, we need to recognise that liberal democracy is but one kind of democracy.

During the European Enlightenment, liberal thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu and Mill proposed revolutionary ideas about how human societies should be governed based on the tenets of liberalism, such as the individual as the fundamental unit of society, the sanctity of private property and the primacy of procedural rule of law. Most modern liberal political institutions were developed with these ideas—representative government based on elections, separation of powers, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary and so on. They are fundamental to America’s constitution and to most other liberal societies.

But at the same time, many liberal forefathers also recognised that the goal of liberal institutions is to deliver happiness to the people. If that outcome is not met, procedures must be changed. According to Mill, even access to voting could be curtailed, say, if a citizen were illiterate.

Liberal democracy had enormous successes, notably in the second half of the 20th century. During that period, liberal democratic countries delivered unprecedented prosperity to their people—so much so that many countries, including China, sought to emulate many of the West’s practices, such as market economics. However when groups like Freedom House and V-Dem rank countries on their levels of democracy, it in essence measures countries on how closely they follow liberal institutional procedures. When people say democracy is receding in many countries, they really mean liberalism is in trouble.

Why is liberalism in bad shape? The reason is that in many places it seems to be failing its junior partner—democracy. Liberal democracy is in crisis mode because so many of these countries face severe problems: persistent inequality, political corruption, collapse of social cohesion, lack of trust in government and elite institutions, and incompetent government. In short, liberalism has been failing to deliver democratic outcomes.

In the Soviet Union there was a popular joke: “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.” In many liberal societies, people can turn that around: “We pretend to vote, they pretend to govern.” At this rate, the word “liberal” may soon no longer deserve to be followed by “democracy”.

A broader view of governance

The world needs a better and more inclusive way of evaluating democracy. Defining and measuring democracy by liberal procedures is way too narrow—historically, conceptually and under contemporary conditions. In ancient Greece, when democracy was first practised in the West, democratic politics was rather illiberal. There was no concept of individual or minority rights. That was why Plato and Aristotle—no democrats, both—criticised its majoritarian nature. Elections were not the only way of selecting leaders. Sortition—choosing leaders by lottery—was widely practised and fit Aristotle’s definition of democracy.

In the contemporary West, populist movements from the right and socialist activism on the left seem to be, at least in part, attempts to hold liberalism accountable for not delivering on outcomes. Looking at democracy anew is no easy task and will no doubt take a lot of work and debate. But I venture to propose a common-sense idea: let’s measure democracy not by procedures but by outcomes.

Democracy’s normative goal must be to deliver satisfaction to a vast majority of people over a long period. What good are elections if they keep producing poor leaders with the public stuck in perpetual cycles of “elect and regret”? What good is an independent judiciary if it only protects the rich? What good is separation of powers if it is captured by special interests to block necessary reforms? What good is freedom of the press, or freedom of speech for that matter, if it corrodes societies with division and dysfunction? What good are individual rights if they result in millions of avoidable deaths, as has happened in many liberal democracies during the pandemic?

In its attempt to challenge a rising China, America’s president, Joe Biden, frames this competition as a starkly ideological dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy. With that in mind, the administration is hosting a gathering of democracies on December 9th and 10th, to which some 110 countries or regions invited. A review shows that these 111 places (with the US included) consist of around 56% of the world’s population but had cumulative covid-19 deaths of 4.2m, which is 82% of the world’s total. More glaringly, the three countries with the highest deaths are the host country (780,000), which boasts of being the oldest democracy, Brazil (615,000) and India (470,000), which relishes being the largest democracy.

As for the seeming target of the gathering, China, it has 1.4bn people and just 5,697 deaths from covid-19.

Some may object that this was because China restricted freedoms more than “democracies”. But what kind of democracy would sacrifice millions of lives for some individuals’ freedom not to wear masks? It is precisely in this way that liberal democracy is failing its citizens.

Perhaps it is possible to develop a set of measurements that show which countries are generating more democratic outcomes. How satisfied are most people with their countries’ leadership and directions? How cohesive is society? Are people living better than before? Are people optimistic about their future? Is society as a whole investing enough to ensure the well-being of future generations? Beyond the narrow and procedural-centric liberal definition of democracy, outcomes must be taken into consideration when we define and evaluate democracies.

I would suggest that when it comes to outcomes, China doesn’t score so badly. The country has its problems—inequality, corruption and environmental degradation to name a few. But the government has been tackling them aggressively.

This is probably why a vast majority of Chinese people tell pollsters that they are generally satisfied with how the country is being governed. Can we at least now entertain the idea that China is generating more productive and democratic outcomes for its people and, measured by these concrete results, its political system is more democratic than that of the United States, albeit different, at the moment?

Abraham Lincoln characterised democracy in the most eloquent layman’s term: government of the people, by the people, for the people. I dare say that the current Chinese government outperforms America on all three. Chinese people overwhelmingly believe their government belongs to them and they live in a democracy; and it is a fact that a vast majority of China’s political leaders come from ordinary backgrounds. Quite to the contrary, many Americans seem to believe that their government is captured by monied interests and formed by an elite oligarchy. As for the last part, “for the people”, China is way ahead on outcomes.

The world needs greater diversity in the concept of democracy that is both historically truer (because democracy was not always liberal) and practically more beneficial. Many developing countries have seen their economic growth stagnate. They need to be unshackled from the ideological rigidity of the liberal doctrine and to experiment with their own ways of realising their democratic potential. New perspectives and measurements might help liberal societies as well.

Decoupling liberal democracy

For too long, liberalism has monopolised the concept of democracy and liberals have taken their democratic credentials for granted. This may be one cause for why many liberal governments are failing to deliver democratic outcomes for their people. Being measured not on procedures but on actual performance may be just the spur for liberal countries to implement much-needed reforms. If liberal governments could again deliver more democratic outcomes, so much the better for the world.

This perspective, on the need to judge democracy by its outcomes, is rarely discussed in global debates over governance. Liberal societies champion diversity in just about everything except for diversity in models of democracy, even at a conceptual level. But the reality is that the history of democratic aspirations and practices has been immensely rich and diverse. Besides Athenian democracy being decidedly not liberal, there were centuries of democratic ideals and institutional practices in China’s Confucian tradition—also not liberal. At this point in time, the world is certainly in need of more democratic experiments.

I am not attempting to advocate any particular form of democracy, and certainly am not making a case for majoritarian or direct democracy—which China is definitely not. Rather, I am proposing to broaden and pluralise both the definition and measurements of democracy. China’s current socialist democracy is surely a model worthy of study given the country’s obvious successes.

The American foreign-policy thinker Anne-Marie Slaughter recently argued that the United States should “accept at least the possibility that other forms of government could be better.” She further suggested, as a new measure of governance, that people evaluate which countries are doing a good job at achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

It is a great idea. And the broader point needs to be amplified: end liberalism’s monopoly on democracy—and let more forms of democracy flourish.

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