Planting Democracy in the World – A Mantra for Freedom

There is a religious hurdle, which needs to be overcome, at least in the Muslim world.


Percentage of muslims living in a non-muslims country who think secularism is good: 99%
Percentage of muslims living in a muslim country who think secularism is good: 1%(which usually means manto and his family)

Gill Sahib,

Very interesting article. I think history has shown that there are three critical things for a country to achieve greatness - a. Democracy with Checks and Balances b. Secularism and c. Free Market Economy. If you put these three things in place in any country, it will become immensely successful. If any of these things are missing, the picture is incomplete.

One thing that I would like to mention is that democracy is a work in progress. One should not implement democracy and expect amazing results the next day. It takes time for the process to take root and become part of the culture. The west has had democracy for centuries and now it is in their blood. The same has happened in India to a large extent. Earlier people could be easily manipulated and fooled into wasting their vote. Now even in small villages in India, people know their democratic rights and will not give in to manipulation. I was recenty watching a program where ordinary villagers were demanding from their MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) how come their road to the village was not repaired, how come there was no water supply etc. The interesting thing is that the MLA could not ignore them and was actually sweating in the face of all these questions on his performance. Now it is routine to see governments being voted out of power for lack of performance.

Good article overall,but your ``fatwa`` on India is nothing more than a biased opinion.Communal riots do happen in India,but it does not make the whole country communal.US and UK can not be compared to India(where democracy is only 57 years old).Racial discrimination was so rampant in US not many years ago and it will be a miracle if it is totally absent now.Similarly ``Skinheads`` and ``Punks`` phenomena are not very old happenings in UK.The point I want to make is that constitutional secularism and secularism practiced by the people,do not always go side by side-it takes very long for people to embibe such values and coming stright out of feudalism doesn`t help either. Why UK and US are miles ahead in democracy is because of the level of awareness of the citizens about their rights and that is the basic difference as copared to India,which has long way to go in that respect.