Circumstances less propitious for a fledgling nation could scarcely have been imagined. Yet six decades later, the country that emerged from the wreckage of the British Raj is the world’s largest democracy, poised after years of rapid economic growth to take its place as one of the giants of the 21st century. An India whose very survival seemed in doubt during the conflagration of 1947 offers lessons in democracy-building that the rest of the world would do well to heed. The odds against constructing a working democracy in India were great indeed. No other country in the world embraces the extraordinary mixture of ethnic groups, the profusion of mutually incomprehensible languages, the varieties of topography and climate, the diversity of religions and cultural practices and the range of levels of economic development that India does. The singular thing about India is that you can only speak of it in the plural. To the American motto, “E Pluribus Unum”, India can only counter, “E Pluribus Pluribum”! Everything exists in countless variants. There is no single standard, no fixed stereotype, no “one way”. India made a strength out of this seeming weakness. At a time when most developing countries opted for authoritarian models of government to promote nation-building and to direct development, India chose to be a multi-party democracy. Instead of suppressing its diversity in the name of national unity, as so many other countries tried to do, India acknowledged its pluralism in the way it arranged its own affairs: all groups, faiths, tastes and ideologies survive and contend for their place in the sun. And despite many stresses and strains, including twenty-two months of autocratic rule during a “state of Emergency” declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, a multi-party democracy — freewheeling, rumbustious, corrupt and inefficient, perhaps, but nonetheless flourishing - India has remained. It helped that India’s founding fathers, from Mahatma Gandhi on, were convinced democrats. India’s first and longest-serving Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, spent a political lifetime trying to instil the habits of democracy in his people: a disdain for dictators, a respect for parliamentary procedures, an a b i d i n g f a i t h in the constitutional system. He himself was such a convinced democrat, profoundly wary of the risks of autocracy, that, at the crest of his rise, he authored an anonymous article warning Indians of the dangers of giving dictatorial temptations to Jawaharlal Nehru. “He must be checked,” he wrote of himself: “We want no Caesars.” And indeed, his practice when challenged within his own party was to offer his resignation; he usually got his way, but it was hardly the instinct of a Caesar. As Prime Minister, Nehru carefully nurtured the country’s infant democratic institutions. He paid deference to the country’s ceremonial presidency and even to its largely superfluous Vice-Presidency; he never let the public forget that these notables outranked him in protocol terms. He wrote regular letters to the Chief Ministers of the states, explaining his policies and seeking their feedback. He subjected himself to cross-examination in Parliament by the small, fractious but undoubtedly talented Opposition, allowing them an importance out of all proportion to their numerical strength, because he was convinced that a strong opposition was essential for a healthy democracy. (He obliged his Ministers and civil servants to be just as respectful.)

HE TOOK CARE not to interfere with the judicial system; on the one occasion that he publicly criticised a judge at a press conference, he apologised the next day to the individual and wrote an abject letter to the Chief Justice of India, regretting having slighted the judiciary. And he never forgot that he derived his authority from the people of India; not only was he astonishingly accessible for a person in his position, but he started the practice of offering a daily audience at home for an hour each morning to anyone coming in off the street without an appointment, a practice that continued until the dictates of security finally overcame the populism of his successors. By his speeches, his exhortations, and above all by his own personal example, Nehru imparted to the institutions and processes of Indian democracy a dignity that placed it above challenge from would-be tyrants. Democratic values became so entrenched that when, of all people, his own daughter Indira suspended India’s freedoms with a State of Emergency for 20 months, she felt compelled to return to the Indian people for vindication, held a free election and comprehensively lost it. She had imbibed the most important of her father’s values. The clincher took time to evolve: strikingly in India, democracy is not an elite preoccupation, but matters most strongly to the underprivileged masses. Whereas in the United States a majority of the poor do not vote - in Harlem in the last Presidential elections, the turnout was 23 per cent - in India the poor turn out in great numbers. It is not the privileged or even the middle-class who spend four hours in the hot sun to cast their vote, but the poor, because they know their votes make a difference.

THOUGH INDIAN politics are no more immune to the appeal of sectarianism and the siren call of identity than other countries (it’s said that when Indians cast their vote they often vote their caste), the idea of India that its people have come to accept is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, conviction, costume and custom, and still rally around a democratic consensus. That consensus is around the simple principle that in a democracy you don’t really need to agree except on the ground rules of how you will disagree. The reason India has survived all the challenges that have beset it for 60 years is that it maintained consensus on how to manage without consensus. For instance, India dealt with religious differences by embracing them, permitting all religions to flourish while ensuring none was privileged by the state. This included the granting of group rights, under which Muslims could be governed by their own Personal Law, distinct from the common civil code. If America is a melting-pot, then India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast. No one speaks seriously any more of the dangers of disintegration that, for years, India was said to be facing. Though there have been caste conflicts, linguistic clashes, communal riots and threats to the nation from separatist groups, political democracy has helped to defuse each of t h e s e . Separatist movements in places as far-flung as Tamil Nadu and Mizoram have been defused in an unsung achievement of Indian democracy. The formula is simple: Yesterday’s secessionists become today’s chief ministers, and (thanks to the vagaries of politics) tomorrow’s leaders of the opposition. T he explosive potential of caste division has also been channelled through the ballot box. Most strikingly, the power of electoral numbers has given high office to the lowest of India’s low. Who could have imagined, over the last 3,000 years, that an “untouchable” woman would rule as Chief Minister of India’s most populous state? Yet Mayawati has done that three times in Uttar Pradesh, and now seems poised for national office. Democracy has proved an extraordinary vehicle for social advancement. The result is that no one identity can triumph in India: the logic of the electoral marketplace makes this impossible. When the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 1998 after a majoritarian Hindu-chauvinist campaign, it rapidly already learned that any party with aspirations to rule India will have to reach out to other groups, other interests, other minorities. Democratic politics has taught the more communal-minded of Indians that there are too many diversities in our land for any one version of reality to be imposed on all of us. Three years ago, after the awe-inspiring experience of the world’s largest exercise in democratic elections, India saw a Roman Catholic political leader (Sonia Gandhi) making way for a Sikh (Manmohan Singh) to be sworn in as Prime Minister of India by a Muslim (President Abdul Kalam) - in a country 81 per cent Hindu. (This, when the world’s oldest democracy has not yet elected a President who is not white, male and Christian.) India’s founding fathers wrote a constitution for their dreams; we have given passports to their ideals. Democracy has sustained a larger idea of India, an India which safeguards the common space available to each identity, an India that remains safe for diversity. That idea has knit together a country that many thought would not survive, and whose sixtieth birthday is therefore well worth celebrating.