India at 75: Still the World’s Largest Democracy?

Today is my birthday, and most of you know that I am “as old as the hills,” as the saying goes. But do you know that I am older than India?! Well, I am older than the Republic of India, which became a sovereign and democratic nation at 12:02 a.m. on August 15, 1947 (my ninth birthday). 

India is perhaps the world’s most complex nation. There was no nation of India until 1947, but the history of the Indian subcontinent is a long and complex one. There were numerous empires, kingdoms, and sultanates that ruled various parts of the area over the centuries.

The subcontinent was (and is) populated by a host of different ethnic groups. Even today India has 22 separate official languages and at least 121 languages altogether.

India is also quite complex religiously. The major religion, of course, is Hinduism. But “India” was also the birthplace of Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. There are also a large number of Christians in India; for example, there are only two countries in the world with more Methodists than in India.

India began to come under greater and greater European influence/rule after about 1500, first by the Portuguese followed by the Dutch and then especially after the formation of the English East India Company in 1600.

After the short-lived independence movement of 1857, “India” was under the British Raj, the rule of the British Crown, from 1858 until 1947, when it finally achieved its independence.

India will soon become the world’s most populous nation. India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country just next year, according to the 27^th edition of the United Nations’ World Population Prospects, released about a month ago.

The population of China was 1,144 million in 1990 compared with India’s 861 million. But with the continuation of India’s rapid growth rate causing its population to surpass China’s, next year nearly 19% of the people in the world will live in India.

With nearly one out of five of the world’s population living in the one nation, India will increasingly have significant impact on the world as a whole.

Is India still the world’s largest democracy? As India celebrates its 75^th birthday today, there will be those who will again point out that, among other things, it is the “world’s largest democracy.”

On January 26, 1950, when the Indian constitution took effect, the Republic of India did in fact become the most populous democracy in the world—and it has been so regarded until the present. But there are some who now question whether India, in fact, is still a democracy.

In The World Ahead 2022, published in Nov. 2021 by The Economist, the first article about Asia is regarding India, and it was titled “A museum for democracy?”

Democracy is in danger there as in other places in the world, including the U.S. That danger both there and here is rooted largely in religious nationalism.

Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in India and Christian nationalism in the U.S. are both linked to religious fundamentalism—and both are a real danger to the perpetuation of democracy.

In my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I have a short sub-section titled “Hindu Fundamentalism.” There I briefly introduce the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That is the Party of Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India, who was first elected PM in 2014.

Under Modi, the BJP is now much stronger than when the first edition of my book was published.

Hindutva is an ideology that disregards Indian Christians and other religious minority believers as true Indians because they have allegiances that lie outside India, and it asserts the country should be purified of their presence.

To be real democracies, both the Republic of India (75 years old today) and the USA (which turned 246 years old this July 4) must accept the diversity and the equality of its citizenry, seeking the greatest good for all citizens regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliation.

Christians in India, of course, oppose Hindu nationalism there. Many progressive Christians in the U.S. also oppose Christian nationalism here (see Christians Against Christian Nationalism).

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** On Aug. 12, The Washington Post posted “As India marks its first 75 years, Gandhi is downplayed, even derided.” I was sad to see that.

 

In Praise of a “Half-naked Fakir”

A tragic assassination occurred seventy years ago next week, on January 30, 1948. That was the day that Mahatma Gandhi was shot and killed by a right-wing advocate of Hindu nationalism. This article is written in praise of Gandhi, whom Winston Churchill called “seditious” and a “half-naked fakir.”

The Life of Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869. He came to be called Mahatma, which is not a name but rather a term of respect. (“Mahatma” is Sanskrit for “Great Soul” and is similar to the English term “saint.”)

After studying law in England for three years, Gandhi returned to India in 1891 but then two years later went to South Africa where he lived and worked as a civil rights activist until 1914.

The first part of the movie “Gandhi” depicts his struggles for justice in South Africa. (My respect for Gandhi was so great that I went to a showing of the movie on its opening day in Japan, where I was living in 1983; it is still on my list of “top ten” movies.)

Following the end of World War I, Gandhi began to protest Great Britain's control of India. By 1920 he was the leader of the movement for Indian independence, which he finally saw come to fruition on August 15, 1947—just 5½ months before his assassination.

The Work of Gandhi

The lifework of Gandhi was multifaceted, but perhaps of greatest importance is his role in leading India’s struggle for independence from Great Britain.

In 1930 he launched a mass protest against the British salt tax, including civil disobedience activities such as leading the Salt March to the Arabian Sea where they could make their own salt by evaporating sea water.

That march galvanized opposition to Britain’s rule over India, and it resulted in Gandhi and some 60,000 others being arrested.

In 1931 Gandhi was released from imprisonment and allowed to attend the Round Table Conference on India in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress.

Earlier that year, Winston Churchill had referred to Gandhi as a seditious, half-naked fakir. (According to Merriam-Webster second definition, a fakir is “an itinerant Hindu ascetic.”)

Upon his return to India, and after being jailed and released again, Gandhi continued his work as the leader of the independence movement based on his core value: satyagraha (truth-force), which basically means non-violent resistance toward that which was considered evil.

Here is a picture of Gandhi in 1946 at an All-India Congress committee meeting with Jawaharlal Nehru, who became the first Prime Minister of India the following year. 

Gandhi’s long, hard, non-violent work led to India gaining independence in 1947.

The Influence on and of Gandhi

Gandhi was a Hindu, and remained so throughout his lifetime, although generally there is little difference between being Indian and being Hindu. But he had great admiration for Jesus Christ and in many ways lived and acted like a follower of Jesus.

A Methodist missionary to India has shared (here) these words he heard Gandhi speak:

I have a great respect for Christianity. I often read the Sermon on the Mount and have gained much from it. I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity, but the trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings.

As is widely known, Martin Luther King, Jr., was influenced by Gandhi and his practice of satyagraha.

There are many reasons to praise Gandhi, who, like King just 20 years later, was tragically assassinated in spite of his non-violent activities for truth and justice.

In Praise of Lesslie Newbigin

In the Jan. 8 posting on this blog, I made reference to the prevalent worldview of India. I do not know a lot about India, and, unfortunately, nothing from first-hand knowledge; I have long had the desire to go to India, but have not yet (and may never have) the opportunity to do so. But I have read rather extensively about India and the religions of India, and through the years I have been an appreciative reader of one who spent nearly four decades in India.

Lesslie Newbigin was born in northern England on December 8, 1909, so this past December there was some recognition in the media about the centennial observance of his birth. After completing his education at Cambridge University, he was ordained by the Church of Scotland in 1936 and sent as a missionary to Madras, now Chennai, the fifth largest city in India. In 1947 he became one of the first bishops in the newly formed Church of South India.

After serving a few years as the Executive Secretary of the International Missionary Council, Newbigin went back to India and continued to serve there until his retirement in 1974. But after returning to Great Britain, he continued an active life of teaching and writing. An article about him in the January 2010 issue of Christianity Today is titled, “The Missionary Who Wouldn’t Retire.” He had years of meaningful ministry back in England before his death in 1998.

I am particularly fond of Newbigin because of his book Honest Religion for Secular Man (1966), which I read during my first year in Japan, in late 1966 or early 1967. Since then I have profited from other books written by Newbigin, particularly The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989), which I have just finished for the second time.

In my Jan. 22 posting, I wrote about contextual theology. That is the subject of the twelfth chapter of Newbigin’s 1989 book, in which he writes, “True contextualization accords to the gospel its rightful primacy, its power to penetrate every culture and to speak within each culture, in its own speech and symbol, the word which is both No and Yes, both judgment and grace” (p. 152).

And then last fall, there was some discussion on this blog about religious pluralism. In that regard, I am in full agreement with Newbigin who contends that “we must reject the ideology of pluralism. We must reject the invitation to live in a society where everything is subjective and relative, a society which has abandoned the belief that truth can be known and has settled for a purely subjective view of truth” (p. 244 of the same book).

I have a list of the ten philosophers/theologians I have been most influenced by and most appreciative of. Newbigin is on that list, so I am happy to share this posting with you, in praise of Lesslie Newbigin.

Here is a 1996 picture of Newbigin: