When India came into being in 1947, a lot many obituaries were made and books/literature was written. They said this country is too diverse to remain united and bound to disintegrate. This country has a fragile demographic and will flounder and fall soon. This country will not be able to come out of negative growth cycle and people will remain poor and so on.
The basic reason behind these prophesies was the preconceived notion and prevailing wisdom of that time. It was said that “one culture, one nation”, and democracy was not considered to be compatible with diversity. Homogenity was perceptional pre requisite for any successfully working democracy. What happened in USSR, Yugoslavia and a brutal partition of India on the basis of religion were the frequent examples given for corollary and contemplation? But India proved all notions wrong and emerged as a single nation still continuing after 65 years of independence.
A nation remain integrated does not mean it is great or its democracy is working remarkably, because there can be harsh means by which country can remain as a single entity. Military deployment, Emergency, denial of fundamental rights etc can be some of the horrible ways. In fact when there was demand of Khalistan, states reorganization on the basis of language, demands for separate states, Babri Masid demolition and Uprising of Maoists, the same historians reiterated that its “end of all”. Now this country will turn out to be a new Europe with homogenous countries like Sweden and Germany.
Again India passes through those delicate phases and proved every obituary wrong. The most troublesome states are one of the most peaceful states today. This is because of Indian democracy model and its constitution. The makers of Indian constitution were having a fantastic foresight and an inherent understanding of indigenous culture, people. They knew that diversity of India is its power not its weakness and they used this concept in making the new India.
‘Diversity will be preserved’ was given unanimous consent by the leaders of IAC and constitutional provisions were made specifically for this purpose. Asymmetrical federalism was opted (though the word federalism was completely shunted if we see it more closely), Schedules 5 and 6 provides constitutional guarantees for SCs, STs and other minorities, Fundamental Rights given specifically for this purpose. So that each state has sufficient flexibility to exercise its own culture, preserve its language, ethics and tradition. At the same time rigid enough that they can’t secede even if they want to. And this model turns out to be fantastic experiment with the modern democracy and its perception.
Parliamentary democracy was chosen because to run such a diverse country power is considered as a sharable good and it cannot be shared in Presidential democracy. As the logic of democracy unfolded regional parties come into being with regional interests. There were fears that these parties with parochial interests will ask for secession but what happened was just contrary to predictions. Those parties went for colisitions, made alliances and half of them named them self “All India…”, “Bharat…” etc. It means that they do not consider themselves as regional parties but have national aspirations and soon went into the system of interlocking which resulted in the further integration of country.
Indian democracy deserves appreciations as it’s a country which is having a large proportion of people which are proud of being Indian (which countries like Germany and Sweden do not have). All the castes and classes have faith on the democratic institutions like Judiciary, Parliament, Election commission and executive (though is low for Police force for certain reasons). Even the minorities and most backward classes have deep trust on Indian democracy and they believe that their vote makes a difference.
It’s an altogether different discussion that how much these institutions actually yield as kingdoms thrives and flourishes, so ruled on perceptions not on objectives. That is what happening in India.
But it does not mean that India did not face failures. Success and failures in this new experiment (which was against the contemporary wisdom of democracy) are unprecedented. Secession revolutions in Kashmir and Nagaland are the primary failures of this model. It will be hasty to say that democracy has failed here, but it’s the lack of working democracy behind the insurgency.
Indian constitution makers were not able to provide the level of decentralization that was necessary for compatible working of states and unions in this case. And the present leadership can’t take that decision (due to short term losses to parties) which would have been taken by Nehru and others. Somewhere by not providing the sufficient space to states Union is suffocating them and results are in front of us. In Kashmir valley (with 98% Muslims), 80% pubic wants secession. And the reason behind it is the atrocities done by army personnel’s every day. AFSPA is actually reinforcing separatist sentiment there, provoked by neighboring notorious countries and hence resulting in rise of terrorism (revolution as they call them self).
The case of Naxalities is little different in terms of democracy functioning. The habitat of those tribal of Dandakarayana forest are in danger because of industrial/mining intrusion. Again there is need for constitutional guarantees, which belligerent union and states are not providing because of corporate lobbyists with vested interests.
The conclusion of the story is that Indian democracy has worked satisfactory (if not good). And there still there is a lot of potential if further decentralization is done according to genuine needs of the public. There is nothing wrong in coalition and should be considered as boom not as curse for the democracy as it, unites the country. This model has changed the preconceived notion and perceptions of political analyst as it constitution was made according to freedom and need of the indigenous people and we need to do it further so that the nation can sustain in a better way.
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