Democracy and pluralism

Muslim world needs more role models of modernisation

An election, even a free one, is not the most important test of democracy. Getting voted into power is not the most important sign of real democracy. Ensuring that governments can get voted out of power, and that transitions are peaceful and orderly, is far more important. Thus, India passed its first true test of democracy only in 1977 when the Jawaharlal Nehru-Indira Gandhi era came to an end and a new political formation came to power in New Delhi. The smooth change of governments since then has established the credibility and survivability of Indian democracy. There are many regimes around the world that have long claimed to be democracies merely on the basis of the fact that the regime in power gets periodically re-elected. It is not the election of a regime, nor its re-election, that really defines democracy, but the defeat of an incumbent regime and the election of a new one. By this logic, there are as yet few real democracies in the world. This is why the exit of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak is just the beginning of democracy-building in Egypt. Egypt needs not just an elected government, but one that is willing to lose an election to make the transition to real democracy.

But periodic elections, and change of governments, are also not enough to make a nation qualify as a real democracy in the modern world. With freedom to elect must come the freedom to think and act freely. In other words, pluralism is an equally important qualification of an enlightened society. Pluralism is not token multi-culturalism. Pluralism is the willingness to accept a multiplicity of faiths, beliefs, languages and forms of cultural expression. There are many democracies, both in the West and the East, that do not necessarily accept pluralism as a defining value. Many western democracies are Christian rather than secular. Many Muslim democracies are Islamic and some even reject secularism as a value. Countries like Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia have shown the way forward by embracing pluralism, even if not secularism in the way the West and India understand it. In Malaysia the State has embraced Islam in a variety of ways, but has remained plural in its orientation. In Turkey and Indonesia the State is not just plural but also secular.

Egypt has had a proud track record of being secular but has come increasingly under pressure from Islamic elements to embrace Islam as a state religion, as Iran has done. The true test of enlightened modernism has to be that Egypt embraces democracy in the real sense, so that governments can be elected and defeated, and at the same time remains plural and secular. If democracy comes with majoritarianism and the imposition of an Islamic Constitution, as in so many Muslim nations, then the popular uprising in Egypt would not make the world a safer place.

India has much to feel proud of given its track record not just as a democracy, but as a plural and secular democracy. India’s nascent majoritarian and minority communal movements must recognise that without pluralism, secularism and democracy India would not just be diminished but runs the risk of being dismembered. India's rise as a plural and secular democracy in the developing world is a matter of great pride and ought to be held up as a beacon of hope to unfree people living in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes the world over.