India has operated and maintained a consistent democratic practice since the past sixty years. This is in spite of the fact that India shares all key indicators and characteristics of any typical third world country-namely underdevelopment, poverty, ethnic and religious conflicts/violence. Last week, after an election and counting of votes that lasted over five weeks, India again made it. Some 714 million people were registered as eligible voters and there were 828,804 polling centres across the country. The culture of snatching of ballot boxes and rigging are anathema to the political culture of India.
The Congress Party of the dynastic Gandhi family won majority of the seats in just concluded parliamentary elections and it looks strong to form a government with minimal support from other political parties. It should be noted that for the past 20 years central government has been formed on the basis of coalitions, because there was no outright winner or majority in parliament. This further tells us something about Indian politics. Already the President of the Hindu-nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has gracefully conceded defeat and Sonia Gandhi, the President of Congress Party has humbly claimed victory. This was an election in which many people felt that it was the regional parties that were going to determine the winner or who became the next Head of government. Events have turned out not to be so.
What I seek to come to terms with in this article, is what makes India’s democracy tick in spite of its huge population, diversities, heterogeneity, poverty and even the entrenched caste system? It is not as if India has not had its spate of violence, both ethnic and religious-these are still on-going. Indeed India has also had its spate of political violence attack on the parliament and even assassination of the dynastic members of the Gandhi family. Indeed since the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, Hindu and other religious extremists have targeted members of the Gandhi family for assignation-note that Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and not Mahamat Gandhi. She too, like Mahamat Gandhi, was assassinated while still serving as PM, by a religious extremist who was part of her security personnel. Her son Rajiv Gandhi was killed in a plane crash and no too long, thereafter, her other son, Sanjay Gandhi was also assassinated while serving as PM. At present, the son of Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul has served a term in the lower house of parliament (2004-2009).
The assassination of key members of the Gandhi family was seen more as an attempt to wipe out dynastic rule than anything else. Soon after Rajiv was murdered, the fortunes of Congress party went down and it gave rise to new tendencies in Hindu fundamentalism-the intolerance of other religions and ethnic groups, particularly Muslims, and the privileging of Hindu culture over others; all this gave opportunity to the BJP to rise to fame and power. The BJP served two or three terms and over-stretched the good will of the people, this raised tension among religious and ethnic groups resulting in more political violence. Their deliverables were not well nuanced neither were they able to meet the overwhelming challenges confronting Indians. It became apparent that the Hindu ideology and nationalism were not enough as bases to mobilize the people; indeed the people wanted something more substantive to connect to, politically.
Within this period ,the Congress party had persuaded the Italian-born wife of the Rajiv Gandhi to not only take part in local elections in Amethi constituency in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha or lower house of Indian parliament, but also got Sonia to agree to head the party as President. Gradually and in a matter of six years, under the direction of Sonia Gandhi from 1998 to 2004, the Congress party was rebuilt from scratch, from bottom-up. The structures of the party were overhauled and the party devised new, creative and heuristic mobilization strategies; it recruited fresh and energetic hands into the party. In no time, the Congress Party regained its strengthen and goodwill among the people. It had better appreciation of the problems of the people of India. Sonia was to have been made Prime Minster of India in 2004 were it not for the destructive propaganda of BJP- that a foreigner from Italy would not be allowed to lead India. This made Sonia to drop her ambition of becoming India’s Prime Minister.
The damage the BJP did to the politics of India was such that its ideology was preaching separatism and promoting religious and ethnic group division. The point needs to be made clear, that although three members of the Gandhi family ruled India as Prime Ministers and two of them were assassinated in office, however, none of them was assassinated because of allegation of corruption or abuse of office. Hence from the outset, building on the tradition and legacy of Mahamat Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s longest serving PM who ruled from 1947-1964), his daughter Indira and his grandson, Rajiv were not accused of corruption. India tried to construct an accountable political system whose leaders had in mind the pubic service. That situation persisted until the BJP came to power and all kinds of scandals and allegations of corruption leading to resignation of one leader or another became common place. This in no small way also made the India electorate to see through the BJP and the limits to their nationalism and sectarianism. But the crucial point here is that the violence in India whether ethnic or religious have not been diverted or re-channeled into a culture of snatching or swopping ballot boxes as is common feature in Africa. That makes India a telling democracy to learn from. Why are Indians able to separate the two spheres?
This brings me to the second core issue in Indian politics. India, from the very outset, recognized its diversities. As such it adopted, after the break away from Pakistan/Bangladesh way back in 1947 led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Awami League, a proper federal principle based on autonomous but coordinate units. This is in line with the principle of the leading scholar on the federal principle, Professor K.C. Wheares. Although not all regions in India are aptly homogenous, however many of them are. And they have a lot of political, economic, cultural and social control over their regions. This is also to be expected given the fact that many regions in India are larger than the size of Ghana and its population of over one billion is about the total population of all 53 African countries put together. The implication of this point is that the central government had little “vested” interest in any region.
The uneven regional development in India has to do with the nature of resources, manpower and political leadership in the various regions. This has localized agitations for change and reforms, with people at the regional level focusing more on regional government rather than central government. Many problems are taken to the regional parliaments. In some ways, this has taken the tension out of the federal government or the centre. It is only when cross-cutting issues such as the Kashmir question which is posed in the wider Muslims/Hindu divide and against the politics of India /Pakistan, the issue of poverty and the current so-called war on terror which has both Muslim and Hindu militants implicated, that the problems of India are extended to the center. The nature of India’s federal structure and federalism have helped a great deal to stabilize India’s democracy.
Third India has a huge Diaspora like the Chinese and the Jews. India was the largest colony of Britain, note that at the time of British colonialism, both Pakistan and Bangladesh with a combined population of about 300 million people today, were all part of India! If those countries remained part of India at independence, India as a nation, rather than China, could have had the largest population in the world. . The nature of colonialism and independent struggle in India reflected in Indian cosmopolitanism. Remember that many slaves of Indian decent were shipped to various parts of the world. Remember Indians' voyages and settlements across the world even in the Americas which predated Christopher Columbus and Marcopolo.
Remember that there is virtually no part of the world that the Indians did not live or settle, long before and after British colonialism. Even Mahamat Gandhi was a practicing Lawyer in Cape Town, South Africa, before he relocated to India to commence the political struggle with his people. The culture of cosmopolitanism creates a supra-national culture and consciousness which builds an attitude of tolerance and respect for others. Diaspora consciousness creates an appreciation of the "otherness" and results in the spirit of accommodation, negotiation, appreciation and tolerance among people. Indians are very well traveled and they have impacted their Diaspora experiences in their politics and culture and it has helped in strengthening their democratic culture.
Fourth, in spite of the vulgarization of Hindu practices, Hindu as a cultural practice is one of the oldest ethical fountains of human civilization built on a deeply moralist religion; a religion whose existence predates both Islam and Christianity or better still the coming of Jesus and Mohammed. Hindu is a religion that states that morality is a practice of everyday life . It is a religion which places high premium on how we live the material world, faith is tested through Dharma (righteousness). This is the basis of the fascination with the concept of Karma. This has raised ethical standards and inter-personal relations and the spirit of being your brother/sisters' keeper to a higher level than in most parts of the world. This has a cultural impact in stabilizing India societies in spite of the levels of poverty and social inequalities.
Finally, India has kept its military as a purely professional organization. Nobody has excessively used the military in Indian politics. Yet, India has one of the most disciplined, well-trained and professional Army in the world. The values taught and practiced in Indian military are about how to attain the peak in the profession. Fortunately, Indian politicians have not been as lousy, corrupt and intolerant as we find in many parts of Africa. For many of them, perhaps except the BJP, politics should be taken in the competitive spirit of sports, you either win or you lose an election, it is not do-or-die. Even the BJP is coming to that realization, hence it quickly conceded defeat in the face of the over 260 seats won by the Congress party compared to 161 seats that the BJP won. While the Congress party is repositioning itself as the party of the future and trying to work with other small parties including the Third Front, a coalition of radical and leftist political parties, the BJP is a party of the past because it is trying to wipe up Hindu nationalism as a basis of political mobilization. That worked only for a while, the people of India, though largely Hindu can no longer stand all that. The defeat of the BJP should be appreciated against the fact that there are 905 million Hindus in India alone, and yet the BJP could not use Hindu nationalism to sway them this time.
In all, India has taught us in Africa that freedom not poverty is the basis of democracy. That freedom not development is the basis of human dignity. There may be so many poor people in India but they have made us to know that democracy has little to do with poverty and more to do with cherished values and tradition. These are the same issues that the famous Professor of Indian descent and Noble prize winner in Economics, former Professor of Economics at Oxford University and now Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Amartya Sen, has written about extensively . And he is right.
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