India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha

in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.

The state is, on the one side, weak and incompetent when providing basic services such as education and health care; but, on the other, savage and brutal in its suppression of discontent.

For Indians today may be more free than when the British left these shores, but they are surely less free than what the framers of our Constitution hoped or wished them to be.