A New Idea of India: Individual Rights in a Civilisational State

by Harsh Gupta 'Madhusudan'

French writer Guy Sorman observed in The Genius of India: The British may have given India parliamentarism of a certain kind but the democratic spirit was alive long before colonisation. [Alexis de] Tocqueville had rightly sensed this. The distinction between the form and spirit of democracy makes it clear why other former British colonies—Burma, Iraq and those in Africa—have never taken to democracy. They never had a democratic culture and so parliamentary structures are mere facades to conceal dictatorships. On the other hand the democratic ethos is firmly ingrained in the Indian culture … Let us assume that monotheism and the centralised church give rise to totalitarianism examples of which can be found in the history of Europe and present-day Islam; it would then appear that Indians are completely immune to the totalitarian temptation. Not only have the great religions like Jainism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity coexisted for centuries, but each one in turn has been divided and subdivided into an infinite number of allegiances and communities. The dominant cult, Hinduism, which has several million gods and goddesses, is hardly likely to predispose the mind to political absolutism.