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

by Ramachandra Guha

Notably, the ‘egalitarian mechanics of the poll afforded particular pleasure’, the fact that on this day, this occasion, this ritual, the traditional hierarchies of caste, class and gender broke down completely.32

Consider the career of a cloth merchant from Bhopal named Mohan Lal, who contested elections against five different prime ministers. Wearing a wooden crown, and a garland gifted by himself, he would walk the streets of his constituency, ringing a bell. He unfailingly lost his deposit, thereby justifying his own, self-inflicted sobriquet of Dhartipakad, or he who lies, humbled, on the ground. His idea in contesting elections, said Mohan Lal, was ‘to make everyone realise that democracy was meant for one and all’.38

India’s High Courts, once a case is filed, it takes, on the average, three years and one month to be disposed of. The person losing the case can then ask for a stay and appeal to the Supreme Court. Some cases, filed originally in a district court and contested all the way up to the highest court in the land, can take several decades to achieve finality, the litigants sometimes dying in the process.

As the Republic turns seventy, the national experiment seems more robust than the democratic one. No part of India is likely to secede soon, if at all. The astonishing project of creating a nation without a common language, common religion or common enemy has, thus far at least, largely succeeded. However, the record when it comes to nurturing equality of citizenship is decidedly mixed.