This will be a stand-alone course offered to Law and Public Policy students who might be interested to engage with historical as well as contemporary ideas and practice of direct democracy in India and the world.

This course explores the philosophical and practical dimensions of direct democracy through the civilizational visions of M.K. Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. Their vision of Swaraj was diametrically opposite to Industrialism which is an ideology of unlimited material growth, led by strong centralized nation-states, with its accompanying representative democracy, and nature destructive technologies.

Both Gandhi and Tagore were wary of a powerful nation-state, welfare or otherwise. They saw narrow and aggressive nationalism as one of the worst outcomes of industrialism. Tagore distinguished between somaj pradhan desh (Society-Centric Country) and rashtro prodhan desh (State-Centric Country), claiming that India was more suited to the former. Similarly, Gandhi’s political vision was to form village republics which were largely self-sufficient and self-governing. In such a communitarian structure, they argued that informed and empowered direct participation is much more important than tokenistic representation at higher levels.