For the better part of the past three decades the Indian polity has been in the throes of four revolutionary changes. They are in the realms of political mobilization, secularism, foreign policy, and economic policy making. These transformations have not moved in tandem but have overlapped with one another. Nevertheless, they collectively represent a steady and potentially fundamental remaking of many features of the Indian political landscape.

Of the four transformative movements, the social revolution in India has been in the making for perhaps the longest time span. It involves the rise of India's lower castes especially in northern India, from what Marx once referred to in another, but related, context as “the sleep of ages.” Such a revolutionary upsurge had already taken place in southern India during the 1960s. Now through the process of growing media exposure, increased literacy, and, above all, through participation in local, regional, and national elections, India's hitherto dispossessed are finding their political voice. Since the 1980s this process has accelerated and altered the texture of Indian politics dramatically by throwing into disarray long-held assumptions about the predictable voting behavior of the lower castes. Instead of routinely turning to the once-dominant Congress Party, lower-caste voters have demonstrated much-greater independence and have switched their loyalties to local, ethnic, and regional parties. Accordingly, their political unpredictability has made and unmade governments at state and national levels. There is little reason to believe that this growing political sophistication will come to a close in the foreseeable future.

India has attempted a bold experiment in democracy and development. There was no dearth of scholars, public intellectuals, and statesman who had argued that democracy could not take hold in a populous, diverse, and poor country. How could democracy be consolidated in the absence of a substantial middle class? Given the many apparent impediments that were strewn along the pathway toward democracy, the dominant strains of social science literature would lead us to conclude that the prospects for the emergence and consolidation of democracy in India were less than propitious.

Despite these hurdles, democracy did emerge in independent India. In considerable measure the roots of India's democracy must be traced to the genius of the nationalist movement. Its leadership managed to successfully draw on British liberal ideas and instill them in the Indian political context. India's principal nationalist leaders, including Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the architect of India's constitution, Bhimrao Ambedkar, had shared a pluralistic vision of India. Mohandas Gandhi, the principal exponent of Indian nationalism, converted the elitist Congress Party to a mass-based political organization. The practice of democracy within the Congress Party long before independence laid the foundations for the future consolidation of democracy in India. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a liberal who nurtured the practice of democracy and respect for minority rights in postindependent India.