The Greek Democracy: Some Lessons
I am reading Will Durant’s majestic book the Story of Civilization Part II, The Life of Greece . The Greek people, originally called as the Hellas (from Hellenes) gave our modern world so many things like, and I quote Durant, excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in our culture that does not come from Greece. Schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry, history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, music, tragedy, drama, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, skepticism, stoicism, Epicureanism, ethics, politics, idealism, philanthropy, cynicism, tyranny, plutocracy, democracy. It was the ancient Greece and its people that gave us the political system of democracy. I have now started hearing from many Indians that the Indian democracy is not doing its work. The real question which everyone is not asking is, do we actually have a democracy in India (and elsewhere) like the one which was originally developed by the Hellas? ...