E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

136 Contextualising Gandhian ThoughtVThe fourth fallacy concerns the attitude to Elections. Infact, there are quite a few fallacies that one comes across in thisarea.A. (1) What has been described as the Last Will and Testamentclearly underlines Gandhi's profound concern fordemocracy in India. Gandhi's incisive and trenchantcriticism of Parliamentary Democracy as it obtained inGreat Britain did not dilute his commitment to adultfranchise. He looked upon adult suffrage as basic to ademocratic system. But he also realised that democracycould not be real, could not endure unless it was total;absence of equality in the economic or social sphere couldendanger and destroy political democracy, or render itnominal and meaningless. In that sense, democracy, too,was indivisible. Adult suffrage was a powerful instrumentthat people could use to make democracy complete; and tosecure true democracy in the economic and political spheresas well. So, Gandhi did not dismiss adult franchise as theluxury of a bourgeois liberal system. He wanted it to beused in the cause of justice and equality, in the cause of therevolution that he advocated.If his attitude to the exercise of franchise was casual, hewould not have written his Last Will to emphasize howCRUCIAL the universal exercise of the franchise is. In the LastWill, he talks of the crucial importance of ensuring that (a)every eligible voter is enrolled in the list of voters; (b) bogusnames are eliminated by periodic checks and constantvigilance; (c) every voter exercises his or her vote without fearor favour; and (d) every voter exercises his vote with wisdom.Nowhere does he suggest, that the test of objectivity andwisdom lines in NOT exercising one's franchise. As aSatyagrahi he could not ask others to do what he himself would