The introduction of universal adult suffrage in India was both a political necessity and an act of extraordinary political daring and imagination. It was an act of political necessity because to deny Indians the right to choose their own rulers would have delegitimised India’s claims to independence and nationhood. The bedrock of the nationalist movement was the claim that Indians were not infants; they were capable of self-government. It is no surprise that the introduction of universal suffrage was almost the only Article that passed without any dissent. There had been consensus on the idea since the 1920s. The only other alternative, indirect democracy, was quickly and rightly sidelined.
But its introduction was also daring. Giving millions of unlettered and impoverished citizens the vote was an unprecedented revolution in the history of democracy. All existing theories of democracy counselled against it. And almost all subsequent social science predicts that such a system could not work; you had to be a middle income country to enjoy the fruits of democracy. The vibrancy of Indian democracy has confounded all theories.
The advocates of universal suffrage knew what they were doing. Reading the Constituent Assembly debates leaves you in no doubt that giving everyone the vote was a profound affirmation of human equality. It was also meant to herald a change in consciousness: as the people acquired a sense of their own power, they would slowly but surely unsettle entrenched hierarchies, learn to question authority and acquire a sense of their own dignity. While democracy may not always do things efficiently, the framers had no doubt that giving the right to vote would energise individuals like nothing else would. That energy, in turn, would be the basis for long-term change and innovation. The idea that authority is a conditional grant from the people, and has no other foundation, is itself a revolutionary idea. India was the first country in which political equality was introduced before any major social movement on social/economic equality. In Europe, political equality had followed various revolutions. In much of the post-colonial world, societies opted for revolutionary communism. India was one of the few societies where political equality was going to be the path to social change.
As radical as the idea of universal suffrage was, democracy in India also proved to be conservative in two senses. It was the best antidote to revolutionary proclivities, and saved India from the perils of authoritarian government. But it also proved to be a slow dissolvent of hierarchy, rather than a harbinger of rapid change. Elites quickly discovered that democracy, rather than being a threat to their power, could be used to legitimise it in new forms. More disappointingly, we also discovered that representative government was not always responsive government. The form in which the power of the people is organised makes elections a very blunt instrument of accountability. And there was the profound political truth that universal suffrage could be both a force for unity and source of divisive apprehension. After all, the distinction between the minority and majority, the consolidation of ethnic headcounts, were also products of apprehensions about universal suffrage. Identity politics was born in the crucible of democratic politics: sometimes it deepened democracy; often it put it at risk.
But for all its infirmities, the introduction of universal suffrage in the new republic was nothing short of a revolution in its own right. Almost all the weaknesses of democracy in India have their sources less in universal suffrage and more in other social structures. If democracy hasn’t done as much for the poor as we had hoped, it is in part because of the design of the state. If democracy has unleashed destructive identity politics, it has more to do with our nationalist anxieties than universal suffrage. But what universal suffrage has achieved is immeasurable. It has allowed us to preserve that most invaluable political value: freedom. It has produced a questioning of authority of the kind the Constitution framers had hoped for. And it has allowed millions of the marginalised to claim their rightful dignity as citizens, and not subjects. Nobody ever made the case that universal suffrage would be the panacea for all ills; but its indispensability for India is beyond doubt. The wisdom of our nationalist leaders was to take a bet on the people. The people of India have in turn redeemed that faith in ample measure, sometimes against the impatience of their own elites.
(The author heads the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi.)
