A nice paper by Sunil Khilnani of Johns Hopkins University. He discusses how intellectuals and thoughts shaped Indian democracy etc, in initial years:
I’d like this evening to talk about India’s democracy; the most expansive and arguably most significant experiment with democracy since the late eighteenth century. Habitually noted as a success of some sort, the Indian experiment is just as often absolved from serious interrogation. Following the political congratulations, intellectual condescension all too often settles in, in large part because the Indian case seems too exotic to understandings based on the Western experience. Indeed the emergence of India’s democracy is a direct challenge to the axioms of classical theory—particularly those which stress social homogeneity and political unanimity.
Superb account..
