The Great Indian Rope Trick: Does the Future of Democracy Lie with India? by Roderick Matthews

Author:Roderick Matthews [Matthews, Roderick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette India
Published: 2015-03-11T18:30:00+00:00

Part 3

Democracy in South Asia

As the Second World War came to an end, there were no functioning democracies to be found in South Asia. The nearest thing was in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where a British reform package of 1931 had introduced a degree of responsible government, including adult suffrage. Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Afghanistan continued as traditional monarchies, while Burma, which had endured three miserable years as a battlefield, simply swapped Japanese occupation for a return to British colonial rule. British India was enjoying a measure of regional self-government, but it was based on a limited franchise and remained firmly under central viceregal authority; there had only ever been one round of elections, in 1936–37.

The withdrawal of British imperial power over 1947–48 from the region allowed a democratic upsurge, as local elites took the reins of power in the former colonies. With varying quantities of optimism and generosity these elites then either wrote their own constitutions, as in India, or accepted foundational documents written for them by the British, as in Sri Lanka and Burma.

But over the ensuing decades, democracy did not fare well across the region. By 1980 Sri Lanka had firmly enshrined Sinhalese majority rule, and was about to plunge into a prolonged civil war. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma were under military rule, Nepal was an autocracy and Afghanistan a war zone. India had flirted with dictatorship, but had pulled back from the brink in 1977.

By 2014 the picture had changed yet again, with elections held regularly in all the major states. Even Myanmar, formerly Burma, had moved to nominally civilian rule in 2011, though the President was an ex-soldier and the army remained the premier institution in the country.

Is this, then, a story of success? After the abrupt transition from colonial rule to self-government, has South Asia learned to live with democratic norms? Optimism is not yet entirely justified. Although the results of elections are now generally respected in the region, the quality of the polls is not always beyond question. Armed groups still operate in parts of some states, and the self-serving nature of ruling elites still denies good governance to many. How robust are the democracies that have emerged, and will they put down institutional and cultural roots that can survive the buffeting of natural disasters, regional tensions, international terrorism and the personal ambitions of politicians? Bloodless coups may be a thing of the past, but how soon will South Asia enjoy bloodless elections?

Generalizations about the region are hazardous, especially if connected to any putative inability of non-Western people to manage democratic institutions. The very apparent differences between the historical arcs of North and South Korea, the capacity of several semi-authoritarian regimes to nurture prosperity, or the ease with which the Japanese took to social democracy should provide ample warning that glib statements about Asian people and democracy are inappropriate. For comparison, we should consider that judgements made in 1969 about any supposed affinity for democracy among Europeans would have had to include the

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