Are you one of those Indians who go on a pilgrimage to England to pay homage to former colonial masters? Not only did your former master introduce to you a method of governance which far exceeds any method India uses to govern its own country, but they also taught you their language, which is spoken by the entire country- basically India's national language.
I can tell you are not ashamed of your past and you will say "why should i be?" and I will say "that's right". Democracy was the greatest thing that ever happened to India.
Whatever China is doing now is working so it will stick with that for now, but maybe China will go democratic one day too, but not now, maybe later in the future.
Original Post By ZhengHe
A serious claim for early democratic institutions comes from the independent "republics" of India, sanghas and ganas, which existed as early as the sixth century BCE and persisted in some areas until the fourth century CE. The evidence is scattered and no pure historical source exists for that period. In addition, Diodorus (a Greek historian writing two centuries after the time of Alexander the Great's invasion of India), without offering any detail, mentions that independent and democratic states existed in India.[8] However, modern scholars note that the word democracy at the third century BC and later had been degraded and could mean any autonomous state no matter how oligarchic it was.[9][10]
The main characteristics of the gana seem to be a monarch, usually called raja and a deliberative assembly. The assembly met regularly in which at least in some states attendance was open to all free men, and discussed all major state decisions. It had also full financial, administrative, and judicial authority. Other officers, who are rarely mentioned, obeyed the decisions of the assembly. The monarch was elected by the gana and apparently he always belonged to a family of the noble K'satriya Varna. The monarch coordinated his activities with the assembly and in some states along with a council of other nobles.[11] The Licchavis had a primary governing body of 7,077 rajas, the heads of the most important families. On the other hand, the Shakyas, the Gautama Buddha's people, had the assembly open to all men, rich and poor.[12]
Scholars differ over how to describe these governments and the vague, sporadic quality of the evidence allows for wide disagreements. Some emphasize the central role of the assemblies and thus tout them as democracies; other scholars focus on the upper class domination of the leadership and possible control of the assembly and see an oligarchy or an aristocracy.[13][14] Despite the obvious power of the assembly, it has not yet been established if the composition and participation was truly popular. The first main obstacle is the lack of evidence describing the popular power of the assembly. This is reflected in the Artha' shastra, an ancient handbook for monarchs on how to rule efficiently. It contains a chapter on dealing with the sangas, which includes injunctions on manipulating the noble leaders, yet it does not mention how to influence the mass of the citizens a surprising omission if democratic bodies, not the aristocratic families, actively controlled the republican governments.[15] Another issue is the persistence of the four-tiered Varna class system.[13] The duties and privileges on the members of each particular caste which were rigid enough to prohibit someone sharing a meal with those of another order might have affected the role members were expected to play in the state, regardless of the formal institutions. The lack of the concept of citizen equality across caste system boundaries lead many scholars to believe that the true nature of ganas and sanghas would not be comparable to that of truly democratic institutions.[14]
