Why India's democratic renaissance matters

A word especially to our youth in India: let us learn not only to count our democratic blessings, but also own them, nurture them, safeguard them while abjuring anarchy at any cost. Build this soft power for reclaiming India's greatness.

- LAKSHMI PURI

From digital delivery to participatory depth, India's civilizational democracy is reshaping the grammar of governance and socio-economic equity. The world must invest in its success.

As a diplomat since 1974, I have felt proud representing the world's largest democracy—a role model for other developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. India kept faith against heavy odds—external and internal—often without being given due credit or support as a systemic exemplar and strategic democratic asset by the so-called established Western democratic liberal order. Against their better judgment and intrinsic interest.

This skepticism was in part a colonial throwback, rooted in misplaced assessments that the India Democracy project was flawed and unlikely to survive—let alone thrive—given its many fault lines of religion, caste, language, and socio-economic stratification. Instead of deep, strategic investments in the world's most authentic democracy, unprecedented in size, scope and the audacity of its imagination, their approach remained narrow, short-sighted and transactional. They often favored undemocratic autocracies and military dictatorships masquerading as democracies in India's neighborhood and beyond.

It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who reminded us that our freedom in 1947 did not import democracy as an exotic plant—it re-rooted it in Indian soil. Particularly in the last decade, we have burnished our civilizational habits to reflect the largest democracy as also the most youth rich, vibrant, diversely united but also the oldest—Swayambhu, or self-manifested one. Its renaissance spans every domain—political, economic, social and technological—drawing from our deepest spiritual, humanistic and philosophical wellsprings, showcased during our G20 Presidency in 2023.