Speech On Indian Democracy

Since Independence, India has remained a democracy but it faced a major crisis in terms of deprivation of liberty and freedom to citizens at the time of Emergency (June 1975 – March 1977). At the time of Emergency, freedom of speech was suppressed, state power had become ruthless and judiciary was subordinated to the executive. But India soon emerged out of it in just 21 months. Was democracy by then in about 25 years since first election been properly installed in DNA of Indian citizens or in their imagination? Dr. Ambedkar has famously said that, “democracy in India is only top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially democratic”. Had Indians belied quite positively Dr. Ambedkar’s warning or rather premonition masqueraded as an authoritative

It was an unprecedented experiment in the history of world politics where a country ridden with poverty, disease and hunger was pledging itself to be democratic. Looking in hindsight, this experiment prima facie has succeeded given no other country in Indian subcontinent has remained democratic to the extent India has. But there’s a requirement of further analysis about India’s success as well as failures with its democracy experiment which I will do in due course of this essay. Writing on this subject, Ramachandra Guha in his book ‘India after Gandhi’ says that India’s democracy’s success has been ‘phifty phifty’ (fifty-fifty). I would like to concur with him while making an analytical inquiry into why he says

Otherwise there will be large scale exercises towards a homogenous Indian identity. Such exercises have been led by fundamentalist groups of Hindu right in India. Hindu right has been gaining force since 1980s with the start of ‘Ramjanmabhoomi’ movement which culminated in destruction of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and subsequently led to riots. This movement changed the social fabric of India for worst. Since then, there have been deep fractures in Indian society leading to differences in ethnic majority and minority community where Hindu right is striving for domination. Therefore there’s a case for having ‘state-nation’ democratic entity which will ensure regional considerations for representation otherwise the fundamentalist groups would come to foreground and capture political space. And even when fundamentalist groups have captured power, the secular Constitution which is base of democracy in India has ensured justice to ethnic minorities. Would this have been possible in a ‘supposedly’ democratic country with state religion? Most probably not, the neighbouring country of Pakistan is quintessential example to seek the