Unity in diversity: It’s India’s only realistic path to success

livemint.com:

The late British prime minister Winston Churchill infamously remarked, “India is merely a geographical expression. It is no more a single country than the Equator." The pugilistic Churchill, no friend of India, seldom hid his distaste for Indians, referring to us once as “beastly people." Ignorance levels have dropped since. Today, we are widely known for what we are: a rainbow nation of mind-boggling diversity, a blend of ethnicities, a profusion of mutually incomprehensible languages, and a host of religions, cultural practices and topographies.

Indeed, that is the very beauty of India—brilliantly multi-chrome, not boringly monochrome. Yes, we might have seemed like an artificial construct back in 1947, when the British partitioned the country and the first government of Independent India had the tough job of amalgamating many princely states. But now, no one, but no one, will dispute that we are one country.

While many others have split up, we have not only survived as a union, but lifted vast numbers out of grinding poverty. In GDP terms, India is now the world’s fifth largest economy. Best of all, we have not done this through the barrel of a gun, like China, but by empowering every Indian with the right to vote.

We have the right to express dissent and change governments, peacefully, through the ballot box. For all the Western criticism of imperfections in our democracy, we have remained one. What’s more, we have never seen an insurrection of the kind witnessed by the US on 6 January 2021, when its Capitol Hill was stormed by a mob bent on preventing its election winner from taking office.