As a philosopher and a statesman Radhakrishnan made a lasting and unique contribution to the way we think about the world and about certain philophical and social concepts like democracy. Let’s find out way democracy is passing through a testing time and how we can save it.
Democracy is passing through a testing time. As a political arrangement it is not very popular. It has broken down in Italy and in Spain. Russia and China are not favorably disposed to it. Even in parts of Eastern Europe and South America where the semblance of popular representative government is kept up, strong misgivings are felt. Lord Bryce expressed doubts about the feasibility of a real democracy except in small countries like Switzerland and Scandinavia.
We welcomed democracy as a release from autocratic rule, but we are not satisfied with its working today. We are coming to realize that government is a technical art and only those skilled in it can be the rulers. Democracy in its actual working rarely permits a country to be governed by its ablest men. 
It is an age of machines in politics too. In the name of democracy some mysterious caucus in the background rules the state. The elected representatives have not any independence or initiative, since they are helpless tools of a vast machine. The votes of the members are not influenced by their convictions or the arguments in the assembly or even the views of their constituencies. The discussion is unreal, the debate is unnecessary, and democracy is only a name.
The general effects of democracy have not been favorable to the freedom of the individual. In Europe and in America, which are said to be the most democratic and highly individualistic, individual life is least regarded. In the land of liberty, fundamentalism, Ku Klux Klan and Nordic assaults on all other races and cultures prevail. There are organizations which threaten dissenting politicians with personal reprisals. In Soviet Russia no man is allowed to choose what he will do. As technical efficiency is the end, every man is fitted into the machine at a point chosen by the guides and trained for it. There is no liberty of action or freedom of conscience.
Democracy has become confused with ignorance, lack of discipline and low tastes. Our newspapers testify to them. A democracy which reads mainly about divorces and murders, dance-halls and police courts is cultured only in a superficial sense, Though educational facilities are within the reach of large numbers, the level of culture is not high. It has become more easy to get into a college and more difficult to get educated. We are tough to read but not trained to think. Popular education, thanks also to the press, the film and the wireless, has succeeded in furnishing the average mind scrappily though somewhat effectively, with ill-digested bits of Freud and Jung, behaviorism and contraception and various odds and ends. Those who know better are afraid to speak out but keep step with the average mind. Uncriticized mass-impulses, crowd-emotions and class-resentments have taken the place of authority and tradition. We have not the time or the competence to judge about the problems that face us; nor have we the inclination to trust the leaders who have a proportioned perspective. As the mass is the most significant factor, its opinions prevail over those of the thinking few. A sort of Gresham’s law of mental currency by which good, well-considered opinion is being constantly driven out by that which is hasty, impulsive and bad, operates.
There is a tendency in all democracies to standardize thought and belief. Our minds work mechanically. This mechanization of mind is deadly to all creative enterprise. The highest creations are enolved not as the result of thinking according to a pattern but as the outcome of insight, hard refection, and solitary meditation of men, who are lifted above the common groove. Paradoxical as it may seem, democracy in its actual workings is anti-democratic. Its central motive is respect for the individual. Man be thyself said Ibsen, and our democracies demand that we confirm to a more or less conventional pattern where the inner life runs the risk of being starved. There can be no progress in thought if we all begin to agree in our ideas. 
There can be no political equality where there is so much economic inequality. Labor, socialist and communist organizations are attempting to capture the State and its machinery for the end of establishing a better social order. So national barriers are broken down and class-antagonism emphasized. Patriotism is a bourgeois sentiment and the workers must be rescued from the shackles of nationalist prejudices.
 

