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24 April 2015

At arm's length

Srinath Raghavan

Travelling around India ahead of the fourth general elections in 1967, the correspondent of The Times (London), Neville Maxwell, reported widespread apathy towards democracy. He claimed that "the great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework has failed...." this would be India's "fourth - and surely last - general election". Maxwell also felt that "the army will be the only alternative source of authority and order." Enamoured as he was of the Maoist revolution in China, Maxwell was a jaundiced observer of Indian democracy. But he was far from being alone in thinking that India would sooner or later slip under military rule. After all, by the late 1960s many of the first nationalist governments across the newly decolonized world were being replaced by military dictatorships. 

Five decades on, such prophesies about the future of Indian democracy seem risible.Yet to understand the durability of our democracy, we need to explain why India never came close to experiencing military rule. This is the question that Steven Wilkinson sets out to answer in this brilliant book. 

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