Perspectives on Democracy and Civil Society in India

Abstract

This chapter makes an attempt to provide an outline of the contributions of the Indian democratic socialist tradition to the expansion and radicalization of the canvas of democratic theory and practice in India. While doing so, it also briefly discusses and highlights the historical and cultural context of the emergence of democratic imagination in India.11The democratic socialist tradition in India owes its origin during the Nationalist Movement by way of the establishment of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP). The CSP was a left-wing group, within the Indian National Congress, established to intensify the nationalist movement by turning it unequivocally, anticolonial and anti-imperialist. It also intended to radicalise the agenda of the nationalist struggle by incorporating into it aspirations of a socio-economic transformation of Indian society. After independence, the CSP severed its relation with the Congress and ramified into a number of splintered groups and parties over a period. See, John Patrick Haithcox, Nationalism and Communalism in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968). In addition, the chapter also tries to grapple with certain central issues of democracy and civil society in contemporary India and shows how socialist input into Indian democracy could help in overcoming some of its predicaments. This analysis is done in three sections. The first section discusses the historical and cultural context of the emergence of democracy in India in terms of the nationalist movement and the framing of the Indian Constitution. The second section identifies the central issues that Indian democracy confronts today. Finally, the third section highlights the significance of the Indian democratic socialist discourse both in identifying the problems of Indian democracy as well as in providing amicable solutions to them.