This article explores the complicated relationship between Hinduism and Democracy. It argues that modern Hinduism proved receptive to democratic ideals because democracy provided one plausible solution to the riddle of authority that beset Hinduism in the course of attempts to reform it. The article describes the ways in which Hindu nationalism poses a threat to democracy, and the resources Hindus can draw upon to resist this threat.
About the Author
Pratap Bhanu Mehta is president of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a member of the global faculty of the New York University School of Law. He has taught at Harvard and Jawaharlal Nehru universities, and is author of The Burden of Democracy (2003).
Gauging electoral competitiveness relative to economic development reveals not only that Arab countries “underperform” but, strikingly, that non-Arab Muslim-majority countries tend to “overperform.”
Almost a half-century after being forced from their homeland, Tibetans abroad, led by the Dalai Lama, have democratized their institutions in hopes that they may one day form the basis…
Read the full essay here. Turkish state policy toward the Kurds, the Republic of Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, has evolved from denial and mandatory assimilation to cultural recognition to acknowledgment…
