The MEA has also sought to highlight what it calls the country’s “robust media (including presence of international media majors)”, “growing space for dissent” and a “thriving civil society.” (File Photo) CRITICS of Indian democracy don’t acknowledge that in India today there is a “much broader representation of people in politics, in leadership positions, and in civil society,” and these people are “much more confident about their culture, about their language, about their beliefs.” They are also “less from the English-speaking world, are less connected to other global centres,” and this difference is “judged politically, harshly.”
These are among the key “speaking notes” in a document on ‘India as a democracy’ prepared by the Policy Planning and Research Division of the Ministry of External Affairs shared with the Lok Sabha Secretariat after the downgrade of Indian democracy by global watchdog institutions.
The MEA has also sought to highlight what it calls the country’s “robust media (including presence of international media majors)”, “growing space for dissent” and a “thriving civil society.” Significantly, these are the very attributes which have come in for criticism: dramatic escalation of attacks on press freedom, numerous sedition cases against protesters, and threats and legal harassment of NGOs.
The MEA’s information dockets sent to the Lok Sabha Secretariat, reviewed by The Indian Express, include a 33-slide power-point presentation on ‘Indian Democracy’ and a five-page document on ‘India as a democracy.’ Taken together, these invoke the country’s “civilisational ethos.” Ironically, the presentation highlighted the structure of the Constitution where the “executive is accountable to Parliament.”
“India is a deeply pluralistic society, intuitively an international society. The term ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam’ – the world as a family, is deeply entrenched in Indian thinking,” the document says. Describing Indian democracy as a “human institution”, the MEA attempts to place its practice in the “civilisational” context tracing it to “panchayats in Ramayana” and “Shanti Parva in Mahabharata,” respectively, and through the birth of different religions – Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism. And, eventually, to the ideas propounded by founding fathers Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Tagore.
Simultaneously, it is confident that India, given that it is the world’s “largest democracy” and a “thriving economy,” will influence international decision making.
The paper talks about countering Western prejudices about India’s democracy: “A large democratic world exists beyond the West, one that gives democracy and pluralism a more universal appeal. But for that to make itself felt in the current situation, the power of ideas and strength of beliefs need to be stronger than the prejudices of history. Whether such convergences can override entrenched frameworks is still an open question. India holds the key to the answer.”
Describing India as a polity which through the spread of democracy is leading to the discovery of roots, heritage, and traditions, the MEA paper hopes it would add “an Indian imprint onto the world – ‘an Indian way’.”
“As a civilisational power now making a comeback on the global stage, it will help create a different global cultural equilibrium,” the paper states.
But in all of this and more, India has to demonstrate ‘an Indian Way’, the paper notes. “…one that delivers at home, embraces the world, contributes its fullest and expresses comfortably what its people really are. That the world has much riding on its success in doing so,” it says.
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