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Dear comrades in democracy,

Permit me to begin with a confession because the ideal of democracy has survived my early scepticism about it. I rejected the democracy fenced by privilege and inheritance, where parliaments echoed the voices of the propertied while workers appeared merely as instruments of labour. Political participation wore the reassuring mask of universality but remained the privilege of a select few. Democracy, under such conditions, resembled an administrative arrangement for managing bourgeois interests and thus my scepticism arose from history’s repeated testimony that democracy without substantive equality speaks the language of inclusion while preserving the structures of exclusion.

However, the one loyalty I have kept without interruption is loyalty to history and accordingly I revised my understanding of the state, nationalism, colonialism and the pathways to socialism because reality demanded intellectual honesty. Looking across the centuries, I would therefore say something that may surprise those engaging with my ideas. When sustained by organised labour, social rights, public education and vigilant citizens, democracy can become a powerful instrument against domination, whether exercised by the state, capital, or those who diminish democracy while claiming to represent it. If my writings possess enduring value, it lies in the interrogation they invite. 

The true measure of democratic politics lies in its readiness to stand alongside ordinary people in their everyday struggles. A politics indifferent to their anxieties gradually forfeits its moral authority to speak in democracy’s name. History moves through spectacular revolutions, but no less through quiet acts of solidarity and endurance. Politics must travel beyond manifestos, conference halls and ritualised party conclaves into kitchens, classrooms, hospitals, factories, agricultural fields and streets. For when those committed to equality retreat from these spaces, they leave behind a vacuum readily occupied by merchants of hatred, prejudice and manufactured misery.

Consider India, whose encounter with colonial capitalism occupied an important place in my reflections. Its people achieved independence through a remarkable mobilisation of diverse social forces and embraced a constitutional promise of liberty, equality, justice and fraternity. Yet political equality coexists with inherited caste hierarchies, enormous concentrations of wealth, precarious employment and unequal opportunities. India’s experience reminds us that political freedom does not automatically emancipate society. A Constitution may........

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