A Quote by Lal Bahadur Shastri
True democracy or the swaraj of the masses can never come through untruthful and violent means.
Related Quotes
Violent means will give violent swaraj. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.
Swaraj can only be achieved through an all-round consciousness of the masses.
Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals.
When you begin to suggest that dissent, opposition, resistance, the only way to deal with it is not to listen to it and to engage in dialog with it, but basically to label it as anarchy and to repress it with the most violent, in the most violent means possible. I mean, that's essentially an element of neofascism. That's not about democracy.
Contrary to what we, the people, have been told, we are the power; we have supreme authority because we are the masses and true power always resides with the masses, never with the global elite who, by their very nature, have always been a vulnerable minority and will always continue to be...As long as the masses realize that, of course.
What is true, just, and beautiful is not determined by popular vote. The masses everywhere are ignorant, short-sighted, motivated by envy, and easy to fool. Democratic politicians must appeal to these masses in order to be elected. Whoever is the best demagogue will win. Almost by necessity, then, democracy will lead to the perversion of truth, justice and beauty.
Jeffersonian Democracy simply meant the possession of the federal government by the agrarian masses led by an aristocracy of slave-owning masses.
When dreams come true in reality they never feel the same as when you imagine them, and you know what that means? It means that no matter how good things are, maybe they’ll never be good enough, and there’s something seriously wrong with that.
...Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non- violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children [ellipses in source].
We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.
In effect, according to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible. By gaining democratic freedoms the working masses come to power.
Execution of the constructive programme in its entirety means more than Swaraj. It means Ram Raj, Khudai Sultanat or the Divine Kingdom.
The struggle for socialism is the struggle for proletarian (working class) democracy. Proletarian democracy is not the crown of socialism. Socialism is the result of proletarian democracy. To the degree that the proletariat mobilizes itself and the great masses of the people, the socialist revolution is advanced. The proletariat mobilizes itself as a self-acting force through its own committees, unions, parties, and other organizations.
So much of democracy is built on antagonism. It institutionalizes a certain kind of antagonism. This is not to say that we shouldn't have any democracy, but the fact is that democracy has hardened political identities and made them more violent.
Swaraj is not a product of excitement or intoxication. Swaraj will be the natural and inevitable result of business like habits.
We think about democracy, and that's the word that Americans love to use, 'democracy,' and that's how we characterize our system. But if democracy just means going to vote, it's pretty meaningless. Russia has democracy in that sense. Most authoritarian regimes have democracy in that sense.
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