Indian Prime Minister Modi's visit to the US has drawn the attention of Americans to India - the world's largest democracy. At first glance, India and the US - the oldest democracy- are natural partners if not allies. Yet the relationship has been filled by mistrust and sometimes outright animosity over the 76 years since India's independence. This post is not about the US-India relationship. Both countries are democracies if you go by the usual definition of the word, i.e., people's rule from the Greek. However, ever since the time of the ancient Greeks, the devil has been in the detail. Even over the course of US history the term started as a system where only white property-owning men could vote. With the extension of the vote to blacks and women democracy as we know it in this country has come a long way. Hence the term "liberal democracy" which includes ideas like the separation of powers, independent judiciary and a system of checks and balances between the branches of government. This evolution has obviously not taken place uniformly world-wide and is constantly under attack wherever we look. Just in the last century, the mantle of democracy has been claimed by regimes of various stripes. Today, despotic regimes in North Korea, China, Russia and Turkey claim, with a straight face, to be democracies. In India, Modi's government is using majority Hindu animosity or indifference to the condition of religious and other minorities to cement its hold on power. And here in the US, Republicans continue to spread conspiracy theories and lies, in spite of having won the majority in the House in the last election. There is nothing democratic about drawing congressional maps to minimize the political influence of whole sections of the population in order to continue to oppress them and then resorting to illegal acts to undermine the election result if you don't win. The party claiming to be for family values, personal responsibility and individual liberty should not be banning books, telling teachers how they should teach, interfering with the practice of medicine or pushing more and more powerful firearms into the hands of anyone who wants them. Do we have a perfect system? Of course not. But Republican policies aimed at our society's problems are causing new and worse problems and are no different from those of totalitarians everywhere. The fact that a majority of Republican voters continues to support Donald Trump in spite of his atrocious behavior should galvanize the rest of us in every election going forward. Americans over a certain age say they remember where they were when they heard of the Kennedy assassination. 1/6 is the Kennedy assassination of our time. I remember sitting glued to the TV watching the riot on Capitol Hill. It was akin to the last second field-goal which decides the game. If Trump had succeeded that day, the democracy we take for granted might have come to an end. Our democracy survived that day and we need to be ever vigilant.
Returning to the title of this post, calling yourself a liberal democracy does not make you one. People in countries like the US, Canada, Western Europe and India know what it means to live in a liberal democracy but have started to take it for granted. I encourage readers to look up the definition of "liberalism" - spoiler alert, it is not what it has come to mean in the popular culture. Also, a lot of people who think of themselves as liberals are decidedly not. The same goes for those who consider themselves conservatives who are anything but if you go by the definition. I believe that middle-of-roaders tend to be classical liberals who believe in individual liberty, equal justice and free markets and that it is up to us to preserve and build on what we, together, have developed over the centuries.