The dialectic of politics and law and the resilience of India’s post-colonial governance: Ultima ratio regum?

Abstract

[Indian democracy, with its vitality, resilience and blemishes, is puzzling. Many democrats and human rights activists find it hard to reconcile the country's democratic achievements with its tragic failures. The article analyzes the Indian structure of governance in order to identify general rules of successful democratic transition and consolidation, and formulate some policy recommendations for the Indian and other emerging democracies. In contrast to conventional theory, the article explains the 'counterfactual' nature of India's democracy and governance in terms of the ability of India's political actors to conflate the indigenous sense of dharma — righteous conduct — with modern concepts of rights, both individual and collective — acquired in course of British colonial rule. Several generations of political leaders who straddle the worlds of modern India — her legislatures, courts of law and sprawling bureaucratic agencies — and the traditional worlds of castes, religions, ethnic groups and regional language communities have striven to devise new rules and institutions that would connect the modern and traditional faces of this complex country. This, I argue here, has led to the deepening of democracy, which is contingent on the political process that draws as much on the indigenous norms and colonial modernity as on the extension of representation down to the level of the village community, and the empowerment of marginal social groups, lower social classes, religious minorities and women.]