BC: look at the end. --- On Sun, 5/7/09, ss <[email protected]> wrote:
From: ss <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [silk] Is voter ignorance killing democracy? To: [email protected] Date: Sunday, 5 July, 2009, 11:07 AM On Saturday 04 Jul 2009 10:50:28 pm Bruce Metcalf wrote: > The logic offered in support of this rule is that when America's > founders wrote "All men..." they meant only white, male, free, adult, > landowners. No doubt we agree the first three are no longer reasonable > and that "adult" may need adjustment. But 200 years ago, ownership of > land was the one stable form of wealth, and it also offered some promise > that the land owner would be sticking around and not jaunting off to the > next province if the prospects there looked better. In America 200 years ago - if you removed slaves and Red Indians from the reckoning it would seem like the only people who were left were good honest people tilling the land with the sweat of their brow. In India "landowner" is a man who has taken control of some land just as the white American of 200 years ago. And the Indian "vote" in British democracy in pre-independence India was pretty much like this - with the elite having a disproportionate voice and the non elite unrepresented except via the whims and fancies of the current ruler. The problem in India was to give some representation in democracy to india's "blacks and red Indians" - the Indian rural non elite who constituted 80% of India's population by 1947. All sorts of ideas were thrown up. One such idea was to have separate representation for 600 pricely states within India - via a representative of the king, as well as a separet representation for the Muslims of India where the elite Muslims of India would speak on behalf of the amss of Muslims in India. Part of the reason for India's partition and the creation of Pakistan was the knwledge that unless the electoral system was weighted to favor the elites, especially among Muslims (with separate Muslim representation) - the overwhelming majority of Hindus in India would vote to disempower the Muslim elite. When the proposal to have a separate Muslim electorate within India was shot down, it set the stage for the elite Muslims of India (the so called "Ashraf") to join Jinnah in the demand for a separate Pakistan. So India got one man one vote and Pakistan got .. well Pakistan. A vast proportion of the Indian Muslim elite migrated to Pakistan. By doing so they protected their own power and status, as elites are wont to do. shiv ...And back to insaniyat!
