India’s Democracy under Nehru Historically Exceptional

 

India’s Democracy under Nehru Historically Exceptional

The history of democracy began with ancient Athens in the 5th century BC, where the term "demos" (people) and "kratos" (power) used to create the concept of "rule by the people." It was a direct democracy where only free male citizens could participate in the assembly and vote on laws. In the modern era, the Industrial Revolution preceded democracy in western countries as a political system of governance; expanded through struggle for suffrage and the establishment of large-scale representative governments.

While the modern idea of democracy was considered unthinkable without certain prerequisites such as economic prosperity, wealth, property and education, the struggle for universal suffrage continued over centuries across the continents.

The basic requirement of a democracy is the right to vote.  The uuniversal suffrage, also known as the universal franchise, is a political right where all adult citizens get the right to vote. This concept is fundamental to democracy that embodies the principle of "one person, one vote’. It means the right of all citizens to vote in elections to choose government of their choice, without any restrictions as to their educational background, gender. race, and social and political standing.  In modern democracies, governments restricted the vote to those with property and wealth, which almost always meant a minority of the male population, the right to vote to all adults was conceded much later.

In the United States, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870 during the Reconstruction era, provided that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude." Despite the amendment, the blacks were disfranchised. The blacks in Southern America got the right to vote only after the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. The US and the UK conferred the women the right to vote only in 1920 and 1928 respectively. The universal adult franchise was denied to Indian citizens during the British rule. And under the Government of India Acts 1919 and 1935, only those people who satisfied certain criteria, like income, education, and property. could vote.

 

India opted for parliamentary democracy with universal adult franchise in one go when the constitution came into force in 1950, giving the right to vote to all adults of 21 years, which was lowered to 18 in 1989 by the Rajiv Gandhi government. It was a major accomplishment of the founding fathers of the Indian Republic.

 

The universal adult franchise gave birth to democratisation and free and fair elections, played a significant role in restoring an order dominated by the upper castes and the rich people. It gave the backward, the marginalised and the poor a voice in the choosing of a government, that was denied to them for ages. It is founded on the principle of the right to equality, which is the very foundation of democracy. And exercising the right to vote enhanced their self-esteem, dignity and instilled a sense of responsibility.  

 

Making a presentation on his project the Revival of Nehruvian and Gandhian Legacies, Ashutosh Varshney, Professor of Political Science at the Brown University, USA, says India’s democracy was an historical exception, because none of the prerequisites of democracy that the democratic countries had existed in India in 1947. No wonder the western world didn’t believe that democracy would survive in India, considering its massive illiteracy and backwardness and abject poverty. The inferences drawn in this article are based on his presentation.

 

According to Varshney, Democratic theorists worldwide have recognised India’s democracy historically exceptional, especially given its level of poverty. They believe that the commitment of the early independence leadership, particularly Nehru, had a lot to do with how India’s democracy got institutionalised, as an electoral democracy. And right from the beginning there was conflict between the electoral democracy and the liberal democracy. However, over the last decade, the electoral and the liberal aspects of democracy developed a deep conflict, with the liberalism of India’s polity going into serious decline.

 

At the time of Nehru’s death in 1964, political democracy had existed for seventeen years. The political democracy may sound strange both in an Asian setting and on without an industrial revolution – a contemporary exception to democratic theory. The odds against democracy in India were extremely high.

 

The key elements of modern democratic theory are: contestation and participation, that is the opposition should be able to contest the rulers freely; voters voting freely without fear; and guarantee of certain freedoms such as freedom of expression, including the freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of association and protection of minorities or else democracy would degenerate into a brute majoritarianism.

 

Since 1952, India saw 18 national elections and 390 state elections, demonstrating electoral vibrancy.  Until 1989, the richer and more educated citizens used to vote more than the poorer and the less educated. And since 1989, the poorer and the less educated voted as much as the richer and more educated, if not more. In fact, now in cities, the more educated and richer people have left the electoral process.

 

Interestingly, income is supposed to be the best predictor of democracy. This theory of income yardstick was defied by India’s democracy under Nehru. Democracy had survived in India after the World War II, compared to many countries where it failed, giving rise to dictatorship of one type or another. The most surprising case is India.  All other poorer exceptions had higher income than India.  If India is the biggest exception of the low-income end, Singapore is the greatest surprise on the high-income side. Its per capita income is higher than that of the UK, France and Germany, and recently even surpassed the US. According to the World Bank, India until 2005 was the lower income country.

 

And all the oil rich countries are undemocratic. India, the poorest-lowest income country remained a democracy because of Nehru’s faith in democracy and Indian people.  He institutionalised democracy in India. During the Nehru period, the elites also played a big role in institutionalising democracy in the first three national elections. This challenged the theory of John Stuart Mill - the father of liberalism- who was against the universal adult franchise, He held the view that the right to vote should be restricted only to people who are able to read and write and do arithmetic.  India defied this too.

 

Nehru rejected Mill’s idea. He turned the constitutional democracy into a practising democracy. His premise was that ‘each person should be treated as having equal political and social value’. And this became the defining statement about independent India’s universal franchise, as gender, income, property, ownership, literacy, caste, religion, language and tribe could not be the basis for allocation of voting rights. There is historical background why India became backward and the Indian people poor and illiterate. To say educated are well informed about democracy and its value is farther from truth, as we could see today in India the communal mindset of educated middle and upper classes. Today Indian people are more communal than the illiterate people on the eve of independence.

 

The democracy that Nehru established is at a cross roads. On November 5, 2025, his great grandson Rahul Gandhi – the Leder of the Opposition in the House of the People- held a press conference exposing the vote theft during the last Assembly election in the Indian state of Haryana; castigating the Election Commission of India for being a party, in collusion with the ruling BJP, to the theft of 25 lakh votes, thus stealing the people’s mandate. He made a shocking revelation that a Brazilian model voted 22 times in 10 different polling booths during the 2024 Haryana Assembly election. It was his third exposer of the vote theft. The Commission has no answers, signalling the death-knell for democracy. He is single handedly fighting to defend the constitutional democracy that his great grandfather had established and nourished.  

 

Surprisingly, Shashi Tharoor says ‘dynastic politics’ is a ‘grave threat to Indian democracy’. Whie acknowledging the historical role of the Nehru-Gandhi family in India’s freedom struggle, he lamented that ‘it also cemented the idea that political leadership can be a birthright’. It was the same Congress leadership that allowed him to parachute into Thiruvanthapuram, bypassing veterans who had worked hard at the grassroots. The same ‘dynasty’ backed his candidature for the UN Secretary-General – an ethically contentious move as he contested against a fellow Asian. He cannot question internal democracy in the party after having contested and lost the election for Congress President. The current Congress party chief Mallikarjun Khadge, who rose from the grassroots, may not possess his linguistic polish, but he has been an effective parliamentarian and a steady organisational leader, Tharoor doesn’t consider the divisive-communal politics of the ruling dispensation and the vote theft threatening the very survival of democracy in India. It demonstrates not only intellectual dishonesty, but also reveals an intellectual flaw.

 

However, it is  heartening to know  that Zohran Mamdani, who got elected as the Mayor of New York – the world’s richest city - defeating both a Republican challenger, Courtis Sliwa,  and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, by a record victory margin of more than 1 million votes, quoting from Pandit Nehru’s historical speech Tryst with Destiny in his acceptance speech on November 4: “In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, a moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed, finds utterance. Tonight, we have stepped out from the old into the new.”