Neha Aggarwal’s Reviews > India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy > Status Update

India’s first general election was, among other things, an act of faith. A newly independent country chose to move straight into universal adult suffrage, rather than–as had been the case in the West–at first reserve the right to vote to men of property, with the working class and women excluded from the franchise until much later.

Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. ~Ambedkar

“India’s existence has been a puzzle not just to casual observers or commonsensical journalists; it has also been an anomaly for academic political science, according to whose axioms cultural heterogeneity and poverty do not make a nation, still less a democratic one.”