Some of the hoardings welcoming the G20 foreign ministers and delegates to their meeting in Delhi on March 1-2 had the visage of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the words, “Mother of Democracy welcomes you.” The words describing India as the “Mother of Democracy” had been used by Modi in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021. He had said, “I am representing a country which has the distinction of being named as the ‘Mother of Democracy’. We have had a great tradition of democracy for thousands of years.”
India’s traditional formulation was that it was the world’s ‘largest democracy’. Indeed, Modi himself used this term in his September 2020 speech to the UNGA. Asking the General Assembly how long could India “be kept out of the decision-making structures of the United Nations,” Modi spelt out India’s credentials with the words, “This is a country, which is the largest democracy of the world…” However, after laying the foundation stone of the new Parliament building in December 2020, Modi had dwelt in his speech on the democratic practices prevalent essentially in pre-medieval India. He had said, “When we glorify our democratic history with confidence, the day is not far away when the world will also say that India is the Mother of Democracy.” That seems to be the beginning of this new formulation.
Following Modi’s description of India as the “Mother of Democracy”, the Indian Council of Historical Research undertook the task of giving it academic backing. Scholars cutting across disciplines advanced views that Indic governance structures were inherently democratic. Some asserted that despotism was unknown to Hindu governance and that a king’s power was constrained by dharma and ‘sabhas and samitis’. Rulers were attached to their people by bonds of trust and were inclusive in their approach. In addition, there were political entities which were ‘republics’ that were not based on hereditary lineage.
The motivation for focusing on the ‘democratic’ nature of Indic governance is to establish that democracy is intrinsically Indian and not a Western import. There is an obvious desire to contest the Western view that the ideas of democratic governance originated in ancient Greece and Rome as well as to establish that Indic political structures were founded on inclusiveness and the welfare of the people and that its ideas are worthy of universal study and acceptance of the claim of India being the Mother of Democracy. There is also the suggestion that Western scholarship and the Indians who followed its paths after the country’s Independence ignored these aspects of Indic traditions; that they also overlooked the fact that the Republic’s Constitution, too, derives from these continuities and is part of the Indic governance heritage.
Aware that these assertions about ancient Indic governance structures may be dismissed ab initio if stretched beyond a point, some scholars acknowledge that ancient Indian polities were no ‘Utopias of equality’. They, however, seem reluctant to delve into the impact of caste on Indic governance. Whatever may have been the origin of the caste system, its baleful influence on Indic governance can hardly be denied; intellectual rigour demands that the caste system be taken into account for a full and true evaluation of Indic governance structures.
Clearly, a great attempt is now underway to provide a conceptual underpinning to Modi’s assertion that India is the Mother of Democracy. This is part of the projection that centuries of attacks and foreign rule sullied India and that the glories of Indic civilisation are now being restored, including in their political aspects. Thus, a vital conceptual difference — India being the Mother of Democracy as opposed to India being the largest democracy — is being underlined. As part of this process, it is being argued that universal adult franchise cannot be considered a pre-condition of a true democracy.
There is little doubt that the term, ‘Mother of Democracy’, will now fully enter the Indian diplomatic lexicon and will gradually replace or will be used in conjunction with the old formulation of India being the world’s largest democracy. The international community readily accepted that yoga is associated with India and non-violence with Gandhiji. Consequently, the UNGA passed resolutions designating June 21 as International Yoga Day and October 2 — Gandhiji’s birthday — as the International Day of Non-violence. However, it is unlikely that the global community will easily accept the idea that India is the Mother of Democracy. Hence, Indian scholars and institutions will have to do a lot of work if they wish to give this view wider currency in the global academic community. In this process, they may have to overcome entrenched prejudice and ignorance about ancient Indian governance structures. The other approach can be of not being bothered about foreign scholars on this issue.
The international political community has accepted the idea of India being the world’s largest democracy. The fact that India has formed governments on the basis of free and fair elections consistently since the adoption of the Constitution in 1950 and that fundamental rights and freedoms are largely respected under the law have attracted admiration in the developing world as also in advanced democracies. However, earlier, if it was the Soviet Union that posed a challenge to democracies because of ideological considerations, now it is China. President Xi Jinping recently asserted, “There is no universal model of governance and there is no world order where the decisive word belongs to a single country.” Will the idea of India as the Mother of Democracy be an accretion to the country’s soft power in the present global climate?
In the context of the forthcoming G20 summit, will this assertion impress the political leaders and the international media that will come to India to cover the event? China is hostile to the notion that democracy is a superior model of governance; Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy; Russia and Turkey are autocracies with democratic pretensions. The other established democracies may note the idea and may even make polite noises about it but the danger is that they may find it pretentious till Indian scholarship establishes the idea conclusively in the global consciousness. That will not be an easy undertaking.
Vivek Katju is a retired Indian Foreign Service office
