When Leaders Become Idols: The Dangers of Political Hero-Worship

 

Political leadership often requires public confidence. Citizens must be able to trust that leaders possess the judgement, integrity and competence necessary to govern. Yet confidence in a leader can gradually become something more dangerous: unquestioning loyalty. When a politician is treated not merely as an elected representative but as an infallible saviour, politics begins to shift from institutional democracy towards personality-centred rule.

The idolisation of politicians is therefore not simply an expression of admiration. It alters how citizens evaluate power, how political parties function, how institutions respond to authority and how public debate is conducted. Over time, it can weaken the very mechanisms that protect a political community from error, corruption and authoritarianism.

From Political Support to Personal Devotion

Citizens naturally identify with leaders who articulate their concerns, represent their aspirations or appear capable of resolving difficult problems. Charismatic leadership can unify a divided society, inspire collective action and communicate a sense of national purpose.

The danger begins when political support is separated from critical judgement. The leader is no longer evaluated according to policies, constitutional responsibilities or measurable outcomes. Instead, the leader’s personality becomes the primary object of political attachment.

In such a political culture, criticism of the leader is interpreted as betrayal. Policy failures are excused, uncomfortable facts are dismissed and institutional checks are portrayed as obstacles created by enemies. Political loyalty ceases to be conditional upon good governance and becomes an emotional commitment to the individual.

This is the central distinction between democratic trust and political idolisation. Democratic trust remains accountable; idolisation demands submission.

The Erosion of Institutional Politics

A healthy political system distributes authority across institutions. Legislatures make and examine laws, courts interpret constitutional principles, civil servants administer policy, journalists investigate those in power and citizens hold representatives accountable through elections and public debate.

Political idolisation reverses this institutional logic. Instead of seeing the leader as occupying a temporary constitutional office, supporters begin to imagine the office itself as deriving legitimacy from the leader. Institutions are valued only when they endorse the leader’s decisions. When they resist, question or limit executive authority, they are described as obstructive, disloyal or illegitimate.

This gradually weakens the distinction between the government, the ruling party, the leader and the nation. The leader may come to be presented as the embodiment of the people, making opposition appear not merely politically mistaken but hostile to the nation itself.

Once this identification becomes normal, institutional restraint becomes difficult. Officials may hesitate to offer unwelcome advice. Legislators may abandon independent deliberation. Public agencies may prioritise the leader’s image over their constitutional duties. The political system continues to possess institutions in form, but their substantive autonomy declines.

The Decline of Accountability

Accountability depends upon the willingness to ask whether decisions were lawful, effective, ethical and in the public interest. Political hero-worship interferes with each of these questions.

Supporters may defend actions they would condemn if undertaken by an opposing leader. Evidence of wrongdoing may be dismissed as propaganda. Administrative failures may be blamed entirely on subordinates, hostile institutions, foreign forces or previous governments. Successes, meanwhile, are attributed personally to the leader.

This creates an unequal distribution of political responsibility: the leader receives credit without accepting blame.

Such a culture also affects journalists, intellectuals, civil servants and members of the ruling party. Those who raise concerns may face public attacks or professional consequences. Others learn to remain silent, moderate their criticism or present information in ways that please political authority.

The result is not merely dishonesty. It is the destruction of corrective feedback. Governments need accurate information to recognise failing policies and respond to crises. When a leader is protected from criticism, errors are not corrected early. They grow until their consequences become impossible to conceal.

The Weakening of Political Parties

Political parties are meant to represent ideas, interests, social groups and competing visions of government. Although leaders are important, a party must remain larger than any one individual if it is to retain internal vitality.

Personality-centred politics weakens this structure. Internal debate is replaced by displays of loyalty. Candidate selection increasingly depends upon personal allegiance rather than competence or public credibility. Party workers are expected to defend every statement of the leader, even when it contradicts earlier positions or declared principles.

This transformation has long-term consequences. A party that organises itself around a single individual may struggle to produce capable successors. It may lose ideological coherence and institutional memory. When the leader retires, dies, loses an election or experiences a decline in popularity, the party can enter a crisis because it has failed to cultivate collective leadership.

Political idolisation therefore weakens not only opposition parties but also the leader’s own organisation.

The Polarisation of Public Life

When politics becomes centred on personalities, disagreement becomes intensely personal. Citizens are divided into admirers and enemies rather than participants in a shared political order.

Policy debates are then interpreted through the question of loyalty: Are you for the leader or against the leader? Complex issues involving economic policy, national security, welfare, education or social reform are reduced to tests of political identity.

This encourages moral absolutism. Supporters imagine their leader as uniquely virtuous and opponents as entirely malicious. Because the leader is believed to represent the nation, tradition, progress, justice or some other sacred collective value, criticism is treated as an attack upon that value itself.

Such polarisation damages ordinary social relations. Families, workplaces, educational institutions and communities become sites of political suspicion. People begin to consume information only from sources that reinforce their existing loyalties. Dialogue becomes difficult because disagreement is no longer about evidence or policy; it is experienced as an assault on identity.

The Production of Political Myth

Idolised leaders are often surrounded by carefully constructed narratives. Their achievements are magnified, their failures are minimised and their personal history is transformed into a story of exceptional destiny.

Political communication increasingly relies on symbolism, spectacle and emotional identification. Public events, slogans, visual imagery and media coverage present the leader as tireless, self-sacrificing, courageous and uniquely connected to ordinary citizens. Government programmes may be associated more strongly with the leader’s image than with the institutions responsible for implementing them.

Mythmaking does not always require entirely false claims. It often works through selective emphasis. Some facts are repeated constantly, while others disappear from public view. Gradually, the boundary between the actual person and the constructed political persona becomes difficult to recognise.

This matters because democratic judgement requires citizens to assess leaders as fallible human beings. A mythic figure cannot be evaluated normally. Every action must be interpreted as wise, strategic or necessary, even when its justification is unclear.

The Normalisation of Contradiction

One revealing feature of political idolisation is the ability of supporters to accept contradictory positions without seriously questioning them.

When the leader changes policy, abandons a promise or adopts an argument previously condemned, followers may immediately adjust their own views. The leader’s judgement becomes the standard by which truth is measured. A position is not supported because it is independently reasonable; it is considered reasonable because the leader supports it.

This reverses the proper relationship between citizens and representatives. In a democracy, citizens should judge leaders according to principles and evidence. Under political idolisation, citizens revise their principles to accommodate the leader.

The consequences extend beyond individual policies. Society loses the habit of consistent reasoning. Public memory becomes shorter, and documented contradictions cease to matter. Political argument is reduced to the defence of whatever the leader currently says or does.

The Risk of Authoritarianism

Not every popular or charismatic leader becomes authoritarian. However, political idolisation creates conditions in which authoritarian practices are more easily accepted.

A leader portrayed as the sole protector of the nation can claim that extraordinary powers are necessary to overcome extraordinary threats. Legal restrictions, independent institutions and opposition voices can then be presented as luxuries that obstruct decisive action.

Supporters may accept the weakening of civil liberties because they trust the leader’s intentions. They may defend selective enforcement of the law because they believe only the leader’s enemies will be targeted. They may tolerate censorship, surveillance or institutional interference because these measures are described as necessary for stability.

The problem is that constitutional safeguards are not designed only to restrain malicious leaders. They exist because all human beings are fallible, power is susceptible to abuse and good intentions cannot replace lawful limits.

A society that depends upon the personal virtue of one leader has already weakened its political security.

The Impoverishment of Citizenship

Political idolisation also diminishes the role of the citizen. Citizens cease to see themselves as active participants responsible for examining policies, questioning representatives and contributing to public life. Instead, they become spectators waiting for the leader to solve every social problem.

This produces political passivity. The leader is imagined as the source of national transformation, while the responsibilities of communities, local institutions, professional bodies and ordinary citizens receive less attention.

At the same time, public participation may become performative. Citizens demonstrate loyalty through slogans, symbols and online campaigns but engage less seriously with legislation, budgets, administrative performance or local governance.

Democracy, however, requires more than periodic expressions of enthusiasm. It requires sustained civic attention, institutional knowledge, public reasoning and the willingness to hold even admired leaders accountable.

Admiration Without Abdication

The answer is not to reject strong leadership or deny the emotional dimension of politics. Political communities need individuals capable of courage, communication and decisive action. Citizens may reasonably respect leaders, celebrate their achievements and feel inspired by their public service.

But admiration must remain compatible with scrutiny.

A democratic political culture should be able to say that a leader has acted wisely in one matter and poorly in another. It should distinguish criticism from hostility and loyalty from obedience. It should value institutions even when they inconvenience the government of the day.

Leaders themselves have a responsibility to discourage personality cults. They should acknowledge institutional contributions, tolerate internal disagreement, accept correction and resist attempts to identify their personal authority with the fate of the nation.

Political parties must strengthen internal democracy and develop leadership beyond a single figure. Educational institutions and the media must cultivate the ability to evaluate claims rather than merely reproduce political narratives. Citizens must learn to ask not only whether they trust a leader, but whether power is being exercised transparently, constitutionally and effectively.

Conclusion

The idolisation of politicians is dangerous because it transforms temporary authority into personal supremacy. It weakens institutions, discourages criticism, distorts information, polarises society and reduces citizens to followers.

No political leader, regardless of popularity, ability or achievement, should become exempt from scrutiny. The greater the authority entrusted to an individual, the greater the need for institutional restraint and public vigilance.

Democracy is sustained not by the belief that exceptional leaders will always protect society, but by the recognition that no person should be permitted to stand above law, evidence and accountability. Mature citizenship therefore requires a simple but demanding discipline: respect leaders where respect is deserved, criticise them where criticism is necessary and never surrender political judgement to personal devotion.

One-Party Dominance and the Democratic Character of Indian Politics: An Academic Analysis

The phenomenon of one-party dominance occupies an important place in the study of democratic party systems. It refers to a political condition in which one party repeatedly wins elections and exercises prolonged control over government, while opposition parties continue to exist but remain electorally weak, fragmented, or unable to form a credible alternative. This must be distinguished from a one-party state, where opposition is either legally prohibited or practically suppressed. In a dominant-party democracy, political competition formally exists; in a one-party state, it is structurally denied.

The Indian experience of one-party dominance is especially significant because it emerged within a formally democratic framework. After independence, the Indian National Congress occupied a position of extraordinary political centrality. It controlled the Union government, dominated most state governments, and served as the principal vehicle through which diverse social, regional, caste, class, and ideological interests entered electoral politics. Rajni Kothari famously described this arrangement as the “Congress System,” while W. H. Morris-Jones characterised the Congress as an “open umbrella.” These descriptions indicate that the Congress was not merely an electoral party but a broad political formation capable of absorbing multiple interests within itself.

The question, therefore, is whether such dominance adversely affected the democratic nature of Indian politics. The answer requires a balanced assessment. The dominance of the Congress did not abolish democracy in India. Elections remained competitive, opposition parties were allowed to contest, civil liberties largely survived, and voters retained the right to remove the ruling party. Unlike authoritarian one-party regimes, India did not legally restrict political competition. The Congress repeatedly won elections under conditions of universal adult franchise and multiparty participation. In this sense, one-party dominance in India was not inherently anti-democratic.

Indeed, in the early decades after independence, Congress dominance contributed to political stability and democratic consolidation. India was a newly independent, socially diverse, and economically fragile state. The Congress, because of its nationalist legitimacy and organisational spread, provided continuity in governance and helped integrate diverse groups into the democratic process. Its broad coalition-like structure gave representation to different ideological tendencies, caste groups, regional elites, minorities, and emerging social interests. This inclusive capacity reduced the risk of political fragmentation and helped institutionalise parliamentary democracy.

However, the same dominance also generated several democratic deficits. First, it weakened the role of formal opposition. Since the Congress absorbed many competing interests internally, much of the real political contestation took place within the ruling party rather than between government and opposition. This restricted the growth of alternative parties and limited the development of a strong adversarial democratic culture. Opposition parties existed, but they often lacked organisational strength and national reach.

Second, one-party dominance encouraged factionalism within the ruling party. As Ramashray Roy’s analysis of Congress politics suggests, internal compromise and conciliation did not always resolve conflicts; they often deferred them. Factional struggles became central to the party’s functioning. While such factionalism prevented the complete concentration of power in one group, it also diverted political energy away from developmental and ideological goals. Personal ambition, patronage, and sub-coalitional bargaining frequently overshadowed programmatic politics.

Third, dominance blurred the distinction between party and state. When one party remains in power for long periods, it can gradually acquire privileged access to public institutions, administrative networks, and state resources. This may not always take the form of open authoritarianism, but it can reduce institutional neutrality. The bureaucracy, media, public sector, and local political machinery may begin to operate in close alignment with the dominant party. Such a situation weakens accountability and creates an uneven field for opposition parties.

Fourth, policy debate may become narrow under a dominant-party system. A strong democracy depends not only on elections but also on sustained scrutiny, deliberation, and disagreement. When the ruling party faces limited opposition pressure, parliamentary debate and public policy discussion may lose depth. The government may become less responsive to criticism, while the opposition may struggle to influence the legislative agenda. This reduces the deliberative quality of democracy.

The Emergency of 1975–77 demonstrated the most serious danger of one-party dominance. Under Indira Gandhi, the Congress leadership concentrated power to such an extent that constitutional freedoms were suspended, opposition leaders were jailed, censorship was imposed, and democratic institutions were severely weakened. The Emergency showed that prolonged dominance, when combined with centralised leadership and institutional weakness, could produce authoritarian tendencies. However, the defeat of the Congress in the 1977 election also revealed the resilience of Indian democracy. The electorate punished authoritarian overreach, and power changed hands through constitutional means.

The decline of Congress dominance after 1967, and more decisively after 1989, opened the way for greater political competition. Regional parties, caste-based movements, linguistic identities, and coalition governments gave Indian democracy a more plural character. This phase corrected some of the representational limitations of the Congress system. It allowed states and social groups previously marginalised within national politics to acquire greater bargaining power. At the same time, coalition politics also produced instability, opportunism, and fragmented governance.

In recent decades, the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party has revived the debate on one-party dominance in a new form. Since 2014, the BJP has achieved a level of national influence unmatched by any party after the decline of the Congress. Its dominance has been shaped by organisational discipline, ideological clarity, social coalition-building, leadership appeal, welfare delivery, and the weakness of the Congress and other opposition parties. However, the 2024 Lok Sabha election showed that this dominance is not absolute. The BJP remained the largest party but lost its single-party majority, making coalition partners more important. This indicates that Indian democracy still retains corrective mechanisms.

Thus, one-party dominance has had both integrative and adverse effects on Indian democracy. It helped stabilise the republic in its formative years, widened political participation, and incorporated diverse interests into electoral politics. But it also weakened opposition, encouraged factionalism, blurred party-state boundaries, reduced policy scrutiny, and created conditions for centralisation. The Indian case demonstrates that the democratic impact of one-party dominance depends on the strength of institutions, the independence of civil society, the vitality of opposition, the federal balance, and the ability of voters to remove rulers from office.

In conclusion, one-party dominance did not destroy the democratic nature of Indian politics, but it did affect the quality of democracy. Indian democracy survived not because dominance was harmless, but because dominance was never permanently secure. The electorate, federalism, regional parties, social movements, and periodic opposition consolidation prevented the conversion of dominant-party democracy into one-party authoritarianism. Therefore, the central lesson from India is that democracy requires more than electoral victory. It requires meaningful competition, institutional autonomy, internal party democracy, and a political culture in which no party is allowed to become indistinguishable from the state.

The Training, Qualifications, Character and Powers of Ministers in Ancient India: A Study in Harmony - Sandeep Balakrishna

A KEY LINK TO UNDERSTAND both the theoretical and practical functioning of politics and statecraft in ancient India up to the destruction of the Classical Era is not to view it from the prism of what is known as democracy. While we can find contemporary terminological equivalents to adequately describe and analyze various aspects of Hindu polity, we must have a vivid picture of its practice. The chief sources that enable us to get this picture include epigraphs, language, literature, writers on Rajyasastra and Dharmasastra, numismatics and what are derisively dismissed as “oral legends.”

It is also incorrect to somehow “prove” that democracy existed in ancient India—i.e., the sort of democracy that has been in vogue for roughly the last three hundred years. At best, it can be said that some practices and elements familiar to us today did exist back then. But in this case, the parts do not make the whole. It is akin to saying that all creatures that have wings are eagles.

A reasonable definition of ancient Indian polity and statecraft is that it was a Circumscribed Monarchy where the power of the king was constrained by a Council of Ministers. Every writer on Indian polity from Manu onwards held that a good administration was one where the King and the Council of Ministers were mutually afraid of each other, and in turn, all of them were afraid of public opinion. For more details on public opinion in ancient India, see the essay series linked below.

Unlike contemporary democracies, the ruler had to compulsorily be a warrior first and an administrator next. Among other things, good administration was defined as a powerful method of preventing war and winning it if it occurred despite solid administration. Almost every royal fiat had to be whetted by the Council of Ministers before execution. In turn, these top echelons kept a hawk-like vigil on the daily life of the people, generously rewarding their good conduct, service, fidelity to tradition, and punishing faults and crimes in a timely fashion. Although this system eventually thawed and was vandalized to the point of extinction, its foundational features remained intact in the DNA of our people even after India attained a questionable independence. To quote the memorable words of the stalwart of epigraphy R. Narasimhacharya, these features contained in our historical records “bear testimony to the prowess, piety, generosity, patriotism and toleration of our princes and the people.”

P.K. Telang also describes this system beautifully:

The word Rajan (or King) means one who can keep the people contented. Power and authority were implicitly admitted to rest on the sanction and the good-will and consent of the people. The ultimate right of the people to be the sole arbiters as to the kind of government they would have and the persons they would have to govern them, was recognized. This recognition was given concrete form in two restraints on the power of the King…He could not transcend Dharma. What is Dharma? The custom of the people, admitted and sanctified as binding law and imprimatur of those who were the knowers and guardians of the people’s culture. He could not break the word of the Brahmanas. Who were the Brahmanas? Those who having acquired culture and knowledge, gave everything to the service of the country and the service of the people without expecting anything in return. Their watch-words were self-renunciation and self-sacrifice in the service of the nation. You will note how both these checks would lead to the substantiation of the ultimate power of the people.

But this does not mean that the system was perfect in all respects. There are numerous instances that show conflicts between the King and the Council of Ministers.

An early instance of this conflict occurs during the rule of the daring and indomitable Śaka ruler, Rudradamana I of the Western Kshatrapa dynasty. He placed an ambitious proposal to repair the dam of the Sudarshana Lake at Junagadh. After much deliberation, his Council of Ministers shot it down because it was cost-intensive. But Rudradamana had given his word to the people. And so, he rebuilt the dam using his personal money or privy purse.

Ministers were able to wield such extraordinary clout owing to their selection process, detailed for example, in Kautilya’s Arthasastra. Before being appointed, they were subject to rigorous tests which were above and beyond their scholarship, talent, skill or experience. These tests had everything to do with their personal character, foremost of which was absolute integrity and absolute loyalty to their land. This is the fabled fourfold Kautilyan test:

1. Religious allurement

2. Financial enticement

3. Sexual temptation

4. Inducing physical threat

Depending on which tests the aspirant passed or failed in, portfolios would be allocated. For example, if a candidate failed in all tests but passed the test of sexual temptation, he would be placed in charge of “pleasure grounds” or brothels. The candidate who passed all the tests would be appointed as the Prime Minister.

It is precisely this element that is missing in our IAS, IPS, IFS and other high-level recruitment processes. Thus, it is unsurprising that a barely-disguised, one-man breaking-India force like Harsh Mander still roams around scot-free.

These tests apart, appointments to ministerial offices entailed these qualifications:

• A solid training in the arts including music, drama, poetry, etc.

• A thorough mastery over grammar

• Impeccable and exquisite handwriting

• A cultivation of vision and foresight

• Strong memory

• Eloquence

• Health, vigour and enthusiasm

• Basic or advanced military training

• A demeanor that exuded dignity, poise, composure, charm, and wit

• Round-the-clock availability to everyone including the lowest classes of people

• A genuine attitude of affection and warmth towards all classes of the society

• Ruthlessness sans personal hatred when dealing with criminals

• Purity of life by not missing the key elements of Achara and Vyavahara such as performing the prescribed Dharmic rituals, festivals, Vratas and doing regular Daana.

• The Mahabharata has a beautiful set of verses that gives perhaps the profoundest list of qualifications and qualities a minister must be endowed with.

  Oh Rajan! Take care that your ministers should be men well-versed in the Sastra of politics and the application of the six gunas: noble birth, devout, bereft of faults, good politicians, clever lawyers, and learned in history. They must be skilled to read the unwritten signs and intentions (Ingitajnana) like an open book. They must fully know what should be done and when. They must be heroic and strong. They must well-born and well-bred, keen witted, and must succeed in all works that they undertake. They must be experts in the art of warfare and in the strengthening of forts in order to make them impregnable. They must be deeply learned in the Dharmasastras, they must be broadminded and show mercy in situations that elicit it. They must be wise, endowed with foresight and must command the wisdom to circumvent all future dangers and must have the inner strength to face and subdue the present threats. They must keenly anticipate the motives of their foes and friends alike. More vitally, they must learn how to deal with indifferent and lazy kings who act purposelessly and must guard their secrets, standing firm like rocks.

• O King! These ministers must be strictly Dharmic, generous and immune to all temptations. In a word, such ministers are strong and fit, like patient cows, to bear the burden of the state upon their backs.

  The history and culture of the Indian people and their civilization is an inspiring, sublime, and exalted kaleidoscope pieced with lovely patterns of the lives and legacies of such ministers. From the immortal Kautilya to the true, contemporary Ratna of Bharatavarsha, Sir M. Visvesvarayya. If one Kautilya, one Darbhapani, one Vidyaranya Swami, one Thimmarasu and one Visvesvarayya could sculpt the fortunes of and bring light, prosperity, and joy to an entire Rajya, imagine what an entire cabinet of such light-givers can do.

• Small wonder that Kautilya and other Hindu writers and lawgivers recommended that the King should follow the Prime Minister as “a student follows his preceptor, and a son his father.” In a superb feat of creativity, the Kannada blockbuster movie, Sri Krishnadevaraya brings this feature vividly alive in the scene where Prime Minister Thimmarasu slaps the newly-coronated emperor Sri Krishnadevaraya several times in a row. The Raya’s response: “I understand that there is an intrinsic message of virtue and warning in your slaps. It only shows the depth of your affection towards me.”

  We believe further commentary on this point is superfluous.

• Courtesy: https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/the-training-qualifications-character-and-powers-of-ministers-in-ancient-india-a-study-in-harmony

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*Updated : 2026

THE LOSS OF RASHTRA-RNA: THE TIGHTER WE EMBRACE WESTERN DEMOCRACY THE MORE CHRISTIANIZED OUR OUTLOOK BECOMES by SANDEEP BALAKRISHNA (Dharma Dispatch)

A cultural commentary on key civilisational lacunae in the Indian constitution and how they have played out in practice for seven decades

The profound and irreplaceable loss of spirituality is the cost that the experiment of democracy over the last five hundred years has unarguably extracted from us. It is not mere loss, but destruction, and emotional desolation is the logical consequence of this destruction whose logical consequence in turn is that democracy as it stands, has become deeply dehumanising. In the name of being elected from among the people, the elected representative maintains a big distance after electoral victory or sulks or simmers or plots after defeat. The warmth after electoral victory becomes a façade and people are left guessing about the real meaning of the whim and mood of the representative they elected. This is called political analysis. The dehumanisation is complete both on the part of both the representative and the voter. Let’s aside the realm of politics. At a very fundamental level, this state of being is no way to live.

Neither are these my words. They were uttered and written with unmatched sagacity and spiritual depth by Rishi D.V. Gundappa about a century ago in the repeated warnings he gave, cautioning an India then in a haste to adopt democracy.

It can be argued that another major reason democracy evolved in Europe was to facilitate global plunder under relatively stable conditions at home. European monarchies were essentially oppressive despotisms and the fledgling but ambitious global trading enterprises couldn’t forever remain beholden to the whim of the currently reigning monarch to sanction expensive overseas expeditions. Bloody palace intrigues and succession wars only added to this commercial risk. 

Democracy meant that it was better to have a first among equals than a despot who has no equal. The other major factor was the industrial revolution which pretty much sealed the fate of monarchies. These points become clearer when we note that by the time India formally became a British colony, democracy had been well-established in the UK. And it was the selfsame democracy that sanctioned not only this colonization but passed “laws” for more effectively plundering India. The same democracy also produced several generations of racist academics who in turn fed policy raw material to their political masters.

This cannot be seen in isolation because of a logical question: what was the fundamental character of Hindu monarchies? Short answer: they were largely in tune with millennia-old, established customs, traditions and practices of Raja Dharma which is anything but despotic. Western democracy killed Dharma and “independent” India largely imitated the same democracy. Rajarshis like the Mysore Wodeyars, the Maharaja of Baroda and other truly enlightened rulers had, overnight, become subservient to a faceless democracy which in practice meant that they had to bow down to Congress vermin whose only distinction was Gandhian opportunism.

Civilisational suicide was never embraced with greater fervour.

That said, western democracy has its own intrinsic strength, value, and virtue, and it has endured in the west for so long while it has wilted in most of its former colonies. This is because it evolved over several centuries and was entirely home grown, in tune with the national soil, temperament, and had unique and specific precedents. The European model of democracy requires the constant practice, correction and reform of centuries. This is how DVG puts it:

The strength to govern effectively is a great strength in itself. It requires experience and practice to percolate in the administrative staff. The opportunity for both will be available only when a nation becomes truly independent. A people who are merely clerks cannot develop grand, noble, and lofty ideas and a sturdy work ethic.

This is perhaps the greatest indictment of the IAS. 

India had none of these western precedents and the manner in which we adopted democracy is the reason for the chaotic state we are today in: which writer of the Indian constitution could envisage that in less than seventy years, members of their own party would wage war not just against the constitution but the country itself? The basic trait of Bharatavarsha is Sattva to protect which Rajas is required, the absolute opposite of the west whose basic trait is an unhinged Rajas as a constant whose end goal is the uninhibited enjoyment of Tamas. You cannot outwardly adopt the temperament and tactics of a wolf and pretend that a cow is a wolf.

The other important reason for the chaos-seeded democracy we adopted was the background of the authors of our constitution. In DVG’s words, they were extraordinary scholars endowed with piercing intellect, erudition, logic, and were highly educated. But they were also great theory masters. The overall consequence was the untested imposition of theories like freedom, democracy, liberty, and federalism fashioned in the west on an entire people who lived their lives for more than three millennia based on a thoroughly divergent political, cultural and social inheritance. To put it bluntly, an all-encompassing and far-reaching change for the worse was thrust upon the entire population of the seventh largest country in the world without their consent. From being a duty-bound, participatory “Praja,” the Indian citizen became a mere voter. 

This is civilisational wrecking beyond comparison.

It was the constitution of an ill-informed elite whose outlook was barely Indian, a point which was repeatedly hammered with phenomenal foresight during the Constituent Assembly debates by Damodar Swaroop Seth:

this Constitution as a whole, instead of being evolved from our life and reared from the bottom upwards is being imported from outside and built from above downwards. A Constitution…in which there is not even a mention of thousands and lakhs of villages of India and in framing which they have had no hand, well you can give such a Constitution to the Country but I very much doubt whether you would be able to keep it long.

And Sri Damodar Swaroop ji was right. After a lapse of seventy-three years, we have a mutilated, defaced constitution, worse than just merely keeping it. What Damodar Swaroop meant was the following in practice. Of asking a few simple, rudimentary, every day questions before force feeding the constitution down our throats back then:

1. What are the food habits and diet of these proverbial villagers?

2. What are the unique local/village customs related to worship, traditions, rituals, marriage, death, etc, which they have inherited from time immemorial? 

3. What is their typical daily life?

4. How are disputes resolved at the local level so that satisfactory justice is delivered in the shortest possible time?

5. How do they spend their spare time? What are their typical modes of recreation, sports, etc?

These are the most accurate yardsticks that provide an almost unerring raw material for what is known as policymaking today. Doing this requires the old-fashioned Indian way: of spending time with these real people, eating with them, going to their temples, playing their games, interacting with their kids…But what do our policymakers who go to these criminally expensive schools learn? Numbers. Statistics. Graphs that only a student who pays ₹ 70 lakhs can decipher. But more dangerously, psyche-altering theories that have impoverished entire societies. The more insane the theory, the greater the chances of getting a Nobel. Ask Amartya Sen.

Needless, such warnings by enlightened minds like P.V. Kane, DVG and other such eminences went unheeded.

One fails to understand the meaning of the words, ‘fundamental rights’ in a constitution which took over two years of deliberations, if they could be changed within a year and a half.

P.V. Kane

But the damage had already occurred at the root level. Take the case of the cliché that several folks find it fashionable to utter today: that our constitution has no provision for Dharma, and merely stop at that, not bothering to actually study the details, which is where the real story lies. This is because investigating these details will reveal uncomfortable truths some of which are politically incorrect.

For example, all Dharmasastra texts unambiguously say that the king had no authority to meddle with Sastric rules governing local customs, which were invariably rooted in our conception of Varna. Does any public person today have the guts to call for a thorough rethinking of this fundamental point? The answer is no because the word “honesty” is inseparable from “guts.” What is the bedrock of these local customs, indeed the bedrock of Sanatana civilisation itself? Dharma. Which in daily life also means “duty,” which is what kept our civilisation alive, thriving and resilient for millennia. 

Now, where is the chapter on fundamental duties in our constitution, which has been made out to be some kind of sacrosanct document higher than Dharma itself? The simplest definition of duty is this: it is an attitude of inner life that makes most laws unnecessary because it is distilled spirituality applied in practical life. Because the simplest definition of law is that it is a barbed-wire fence that restrains base human passions. When Dharma is intrinsic to our inner life, we need no outer barbed wires. And an innate sense of duty keeps people from creating mischief in society. 

The Sanatana civilisation until the framing of this constitution was the most glorious, unbroken, glimmering, living jewel of this fact. Instead, by an unthinking emphasis on rights, we gave birth to a political system, which can most appropriately be called Rule by Factions.

At any rate, the injurious consequences were evident almost immediately owing to a rather common sense reason. After India attained “independence” – rather, after the British left in haste – we lacked sufficient numbers of elected representatives who had any degree of competence, capability, wisdom, erudition, and even plain guts to deserve such high offices. Instead of questioning this crater-like deficit, we embraced democracy as a universal good and magic pill. One outcome was that these representatives, deeply aware of their own incompetence began succumbing to mob blackmail. Panicked moves and appeasement replaced decision, the primary function of the elected representative and government. The most representative human specimen who made the most number of panicked moves was Jawaharlal Nehru whose knees turned to jelly at the mob-demand for linguistic statehood. It was all downhill after that.

Indeed, it is noteworthy that there are reams of provisions and directions in our constitution regarding the economic and social aspects of the country but not a word about the key foundations of the Sanatana civilisation: Rna, Rta, Dharma, Yajna, Svadhyaya, Lokasangraha, etc. Almost ninety per cent of urban Hindus wouldn’t have even heard of these terms. As the luminaries of our modern renaissance observed, a secular state cannot and should not mean a godless state.

One can list hundreds of such examples but the summary is this: our constitution is the very antithesis of the civilisation it was supposedly meant to protect. And with the benefit of hindsight, we can make a valid case that the farther we travel down the path of western notions of democracy, the more Christianized will our outlook become...has become.

One inescapable conclusion is that the Indian state, set up after 1947 is fundamentally designed to be an inside ally of a civilisational war against Sanatana Dharma than began a thousand years ago.

Think about something you see every day, something that has become a way of life of Indian politics and politicians. Take a person who is culturally a deep-rooted Hindu. He contests elections, gets into Parliament and almost overnight becomes an alien to his own former self. What remains of his deep roots become mere outward finery now meant to be worn during the five-year circus show called elections because the very constitution upon which he took oath constrains him from discharging a Rashtra-Rna for which the constitution has no provision.

When this happens over more than seven decades, the fault is fundamental: it could be that our political system at its core is still that craven Nehruvian conveyor belt that sucks in the best of people, sucks out the last atom of Dharma in their atma and spits them out after hacking their roots.

|| ॐ तत् सत् ||

Courtesy: https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/the-loss-of-rashtra-rna-the-tighter-we-embrace-western-democracy-the-more-christianized-our-outlook-becomes

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*Updated : 2026

Democracy depends on vibrant ‘gram sabhas’

Gram sabhas' have ceased to be vibrant spaces for popular participation and effective agencies to hold government functionaries to account.

Decentralization is a strategy to empower citizens to control their own destinies. At its core, decentralization signals that citizen collectives can come together to make decisions of allocation and expenditure of public resources. ‘Democratic decentralization’, as practised in India, is where this power is devolved to elected local governments—this was the spirit of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution in 1992-93.

This form of decentralization sought to break away from the conventional planning processes that did not involve citizens. Bringing about reforms in such a context required a ‘big bang’—of the kind attempted in Kerala, where, in 1996, instead of waiting to gradually create and upgrade the administrative capacity of the local government officials and elected representatives, the state government decided to devolve untied funds. The assumption was that these funds would trigger a wave of local accountability. The devolution was accompanied by a state-wide people’s campaign to mobilize people to participate in local governance.

In the democratic decentralization system, gram sabhas were envisaged as key platforms for popular participation. A quorum was defined for convening a meeting, and they had to develop by-laws that specified the number of times they were to meet in a year. Gram sabhas were responsible for catalysing local planning by conducting ‘needs assessment’ exercises, and devising plans for development projects that would be aggregated at the panchayat level. When further aggregated and rationalized at the district level, these would become official inputs into the state government’s annual budgeting process.

This highlights the importance of the gram sabha as a pivotal institution in local planning. However, 25 years since the landmark constitutional amendments, their state is quite different in reality. With low participation, and frequent hijacking by small but influential interests, gram sabhas have struggled to stay relevant. The dip in popular participation has had significant implications for the future of democratic decentralization in India. It is therefore important to take urgent steps to revive the humble institution. 

1. There is a widely shared perception that gram sabhas are only for discussions on benefits from individually-targeted government schemes, and the planning process is seen merely as an exercise in identifying beneficiaries for these schemes. This needs to be countered by running a widespread awareness campaign where the development agenda of local governments, and the role of gram sabhas, is clarified.

2. There is a significant imbalance of power between local government officials and gram sabha members. Government officials are supposed to attend key gram sabhas, and communicate how projects and schemes under their jurisdiction are relevant to communities. The active participation of these officials, and a clear demonstration that gram sabha decisions cannot be simply overruled by the local bureaucracy, would be an important factor in restoring trust. For instance, administrative sanctions for scheme implementation should not take place without authorization at the gram sabha level.

3. There is a perception of rampant corruption by local leaders and elected representatives. The quantum of funds that flow through local governments, and the reports of misuse, add to this suspicion, or at least strengthens the perception that local governments are unable to ensure clean effective spending. Local accountability should be the central theme that binds every gram sabha. An active state government, acting as a watchdog, should complement the role of popular participation, and put pressure on local governments and government officials operating at the grass roots, from both above and below.

4. In most parts of the country, self-help groups have put down strong roots. In Kerala, the Kudumbashree model has demonstrated how these groups can interact with local government, strengthening, as a result, the spirit of local governance.

5. Finally, when it comes to gram sabhas, one size does not fit all—not all gram sabhas care about service delivery issues; there might be ones whose primary concern is the quality of tertiary health, or educational institutes, or job creation.

The functioning of gram sabhas is affected by the manner in which agendas are framed for public meetings, and the levels of involvement of critical actors such as elected representatives, government officials and subject experts. It is evident that there is very little scrutiny of the local governments by the state government. This calls for a more active role from the state government in reforming the organization and the conduct of gram sabhas to improve popular participation. This would form the basis for state governments and civil society to hold gram sabhas and the local government accountable for the delivery of public services. 

In the techno-managerial framework of development, local governments have become contractors who just implement schemes designed and funded by those above them. In this process, gram sabhas have lost their ability to function as vibrant spaces for popular participation, as well as the ability to function as effective agencies to hold government functionaries to account. It is this space that gram sabhas need to regain if the goals of democratic decentralization are to be realized. 

Suvojit Chattopadhyay works on issues of governance and development in South Asia.

Article courtesy: https://www.livemint.com/

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*Updated : 2026