DIY Democracy

In the 9th episode, Dr. Shashi Tharoor and RT’s Runjhun Sharma challenge the myth that Indian democracy was a gift of the British Empire.

Dr. Tharoor argues that the British exploited existing systems of governance for their own benefit and structured them to keep Indians subordinated. He notes that an Indian had to obtain an official certificate simply to be allowed to sit in front of an Englishman until the 1920s. This is the kind of system it was, Dr. Tharoor says. The English did everything possible to deny democracy at every stage. However, because Indians demanded it and struggled for it, certain limited democratic elements were gradually conceded.

Dr. Tharoor brings up three key constitutional reform acts: the Minto-Morley Reforms of 1909, the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919, and the Government of India Act of 1935. Each was presented as a step toward Indian self-rule, he says. In reality, Dr. Tharoor explains, they were tools of division that introduced communal representation and separated electorates and systems. Indians ended up with no control over what the British truly cared about – law and order, police, intelligence and internal security – all of which remained under British control.

The Indians were given control over education, for example, but Dr. Tharoor recalls an American historian who visited India in the 1930s and was shocked to find that the education budget for the entire British-ruled Indian population of 330 million people was smaller than the budget for high schools in the state of New York.