Universalizing Democracy: John Dewey, Hu Shih, B.R. Ambedkar

• In Event: Comparative and Global Political Thought

Abstract

How is possible to envision democracy as a way of life rather than simply a means to elect leaders? How is possible to promote democracy in countries with strong hierarchical cultural traditions? How is it possible to collaborate with other people around the world to spread the ideal of democracy?

This essay considers the answers to these questions by three important figures in twentieth century American, Chinese, and Indian political thought: John Dewey, Hu Shih, and B.R. Ambedkar. The aims of the paper are to (1) understand a chapter in the history of ideas and (2) explore whether this conversation about universalizing democracy remains relevant for thinking about how to make the United States, China, and India more democratic today.

The first part of the paper explains Dewey’s project of universalizing democracy. The purpose of this section is to explain why Dewey would want to mentor students from around the world and why they, in turn, would want to study with him at Columbia University. This section looks at John Dewey’s lectures and articles in China during 1919-20, whereby he explains the historical context for his global vision of democracy that he expresses in The Public and its Problems (1927).

The second part of the paper is on the project of universalizing democracy in China. Dewey’s student, Hu Shih, participated in the New Cultural Movement and the May Fourth Movement and served as president of Peking University. Chinese Academic Library recently assembled and published the English Writings of Hu Shih, including a volume on Chinese philosophy and intellectual history that show how Hu Shih changed and applied Dewey’s democratic theory to the Chinese context in essays such as "Intellectual China in 1919" and "The Renaissance in China."

The third part of the paper is on the project of universalizing democracy in India. Dewey’s student, B.R. Ambedkar, would go on to write the Indian Constitution and have a series of debates with Gandhi on the issue of caste. This section considers how Ambedkar used and modified Dewey’s democratic theory in work such as the “Annihilation of Caste" (1936).

According to Dewey in Democracy and Education (1916), democracy means extending “the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own” leading “to the breaking down of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity.” Dewey, Hu Shih, and Ambedkar would go on to strive for this ideal of democracy each in their own ways, Dewey fighting American parochialism, Hu Shih contesting prevalent interpretations of Confucianism and Buddhism, and Ambedkar challenging Hinduism and Marxism.

The final section considers the current relevance of these ideas given that Dewey, Hu Shih, and Ambedkar “lost,” namely, that the current leaders and political climates of the United States, China, and India are not especially democratic. I will argue that their work remains timely as a democratic component of each country’s public political culture. For those who wish to make democracy as a way of life a reality around the world, Dewey, Hu Shih, and Ambedkar provide a wealth of insights as to what that looks like and how to make it happen.

Author

• Nicholas Tampio, Fordham University