Nehru’s Views on Democracy.

During the Nehru era, these were two broad Models of democracy. The first was the liberal democratic model which valued individual liberty, freedom of expression, limitations on the powers of the government, fundamental rights, constitutional government, representative government sovereignty of the people, majority rule etc.

The other was popularized by USSR and other communist countries known as ‘peoples’ democracy which made the will of the majority subservient to the intellectual insight of the chosen few known as he vanguard. of the Proletariat. Nehru and other leaders of the underdeveloped countries developed a third model of democracy which was neither purely liberal nor purely totalitarian.

Nehru tried to give a new meaning to democracy based upon his own experience, though he closely followed the western liberal model of democracy. Nehru inherited the classical liberal Model of democracy as represented by Locke, Bentham and Mill with ideal of humanism and respect for the individual. Nehru tried to combine the political democracy with the economic and social democracy.