It had been India’s pride – rightly – to be the world’s most populous democracy. We would claim parity with the USA – acclaimed as the world’s “greatest” democracy – to be the largest in the category.

The quality and spread of democracy within in India did not, ironically, count in the elevation of the country to the top table of democracies. Only in 1975 in the wake of the imposition of internal emergency and the clampdown on the press and the judiciary did the outside world awake to the paucity of the domestic dimension of Indian democracy. 

Thus, when Indira Gandhi split the Congress party in 1969 in the name of purging conservatives it had come to light that there had been no organisational elections in the party for two decades. That was despite immense public interest and keen contest in even students union elections.

The High Command

Further, not many years earlier, when Gandhiji had tried in vain to overrule the Congress working committee on crucial issues like participation in legislative politics, or council entry as it was called, or conditional support to the British war effort at the cost of non-violence, the Anglo-Indian newspapers dubbed him “The High Command” – a pejorative allusion to the Nazi command structure. Nehru would angrily resent it.

Now most Indian political parties are oligarchies, without internal democracy or member participation in decision-making and revel in it. The High Command has become a term of endearment and used to the leadership of even Mayawati's party. For instance, the Janata Party, which had seen birth to contest and overcome the Congress party on the issue of democracy, has itself become a caricature of its original self.

More interestingly, Chandra Shekhar as the sole proprietor of the Janata party bartered it for Dal in Charan Singh's Lok Dal through an arrangement with Charan Singh’s son, Ajit Singh. Ajit Singh became president of the resultant Janata Dal.  

The epidemic of splits and mergers has ultimately left just a couple of parties with internal democracy. The rest are dynastic and oligarchic.

Besides Sonia Gandhi's Congress party, these include Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajvadi Party, the two Dravidian parties DMK and AIADMK, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Shiromani Akali Dal, Laloo Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), H D Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular), the remnants of Chautala's and Ajit Singh's parties in Haryana, Ram Vilas Paswan's party in Bihar, and even the surviving splinters of the Asom Gana Parishad in Assam.

Shibu Soren's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand and Biju Janata Dal in Orissa are minor editions of the same genre.

Bal Thakray’s Shiva Sena, which even after a standoff between the supremo’s heirs, has not ceased to be the fuehrer’s fiefdom as its support to the Congress party’s candidate in the recent presidential election demonstrated. Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party is also in the same boat. Mamta Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress is perhaps a borderline case.

Left and Right

On the other side, the CPI after it gave up democratic centralism in Inderjit Gupta’s time and the BJP have periodical turnover of office-bearers and organisational elections. The CPM has had one change of leaders in about three decades. Its splinters, the Forward Bloc and RSP who sail under the umbrella of Left are apparently too miniscule to afford change of leadership.

In short, the health of democracy in the world’s most populous democracy is far from inspiring. It is as if Nehru’s “tryst with democracy” has gone sour because his political heirs have no stake in democracy and do not practise it. The country has not also been able to evolve the required institutional mechanism to keep the spirit of democracy alive. Perhaps the Election Commission and the judiciary can retrieve the situation.