Dharma Democracy : How India Built the Third World’s First Democracy by Salvatore Babones

Dharma Democracy : How India Built the Third World’s First Democracy by Salvatore Babones

Paperback, 290 pages, $39.95

ISBN 9781923224735

Release Date: May 2025

Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognize, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe.  – Sri Aurobindo Ghose

India is one of the world’s great democratic success stories. In this rigorously empirical analysis, a comparative social scientist—an American sociologist based in Sydney—offers a dispassionate assessment of India’s democratic evolution. Benchmarking India against both established Western democracies and its own political past, the book challenges prevailing narratives shaped by ideological biases. Drawing on quantitative data and primary historical sources, the author reveals a dynamic, complex, and resilient democratic system operating in a fractured and deeply traditional society. A must-read for academics and general readers alike, this book cuts through politicized scholarship to offer a clear-eyed perspective on the world’s largest democracy.

Salvatore Babones is a quantitative comparative sociologist whose current research focuses on the political sociology of democracy. He has also published on economic development in post-socialist transition economies and quantitative methods for cross-national comparisons. His 2018 book The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts was named among the “Best on Politics” by the Wall Street Journal.

Endorsements

Dharma Democracy is a lucid and dispassionate excursion into Indian politics where the reader experiences the transformation of India into Bharat, in other words, the making of the Indian Nation. A highly readable work coming as it does from an "outsider."

- Gautam R. Desiraju, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

Salvatore Babones has written a delightful book on the world's largest democratic country, India. It amounts to a sceptic's case for India and for its democratic credentials against the various doubters of today, including the supranational ranking groups who give India laughably low comparative scores. For instance, they put India forty countries below the Maldives (whose constitution denies citizenship to all non-Muslims) and only one country above Iraq. Babones gives you the historical context. He gives you the present-day situation. He writes with verve and wit. Babones makes the case for the world’s poorest democracy. As he says "India’s nation-builders ... and the democracy they produced, though as flawed as any other, has stood the test of time." This makes India the poor world’s outlier. Find out why by buying this enjoyable book.

- James Allan, Garrick Professor of Law, University of Queensland

This book is a commendable historical and political commentary on the conceptual lineages of Indian democracy. In Dharma Democracy, Salvatore Babones brilliantly engages with quantitative analysis of Indian democracy alongside the qualitative clarity in ancient and modern Indian political thought as the core site of the very definition and foundational aspects of the political system of the world’s largest democracy and arguably the third world’s most successful democracy. The author is lucid and thought-provoking. A must read because it demonstrates a fine scholarly achievement.

- Maidul Islam, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

India is often judged on a singular standard of democracy. Yet, no democracy is perfect, no two democracies are identical, and all evolve in their own unique ways over time. Loyalty to India does not require every citizen to be a Hindu. However, does responsible citizenship require respect for the Hindu character of the Indian nation and can this be reconciled with the core tenets of democracy? In Dharma Democracy, Dr. Babones makes a compelling case to study the democratic institutions and practices of the world’s largest, poorest and most argumentative democracy within its own deeply rooted Hindu, civilisational, and historical contexts.

- Ramesh Thakur Emeritus professor, Australian National University, former United Nations Assistant Secretary General, and author of The Government and Politics of India.

Most foreigners who write on India, fall into two categories. Either the judgmental outsider who sees nothing good or the one who goes native and sees nothing worth improving. The ideal person to explain India is one who can have the clinical precision of an outsider, but the loving and deep understanding that only comes to one who is an insider too. These are contradictory impulses, and Salvatore Babones bridges these contradictions with rare aplomb. His Dharma Democracy explains, with insightful detail, what makes democracy so strong and antifragile in India. This one is a must read for all those who seek to understand how democracy works in this complex nation that is seemingly drowning in cacophony and gladiatorial debates, powered by a booming economy, and adapting to fast-changing attitudes which are, counter-intuitively, also rooted in a culture that goes back to the dawn of human civilization.

-Amish Tripathi, Bestselling author & broadcaster