Historian Ramachandra Guha has called India’s an “election only” democracy, meaning that the majestic spectacle of its elections hides a less impressive reality in the years in between.50 Part of the problem is that India itself, for all the lofty ideals of its constitution, has never actually made the transition to becoming a full liberal democracy, with public institutions capable of guarding in every respect the civil and political rights of its many peoples. Yet it was never exactly an “illiberal democracy” either, in the sense of the phrase coined by author Fareed Zakaria to describe the
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