Introduction
There are not many titles that have as much resonance as India’s one on the international stage: the “Mother of Democracy”. It’s not a “drop in the bucket” line. The assertion is not vacuous, as official Indian documents have shown a continuous link from the earliest village assemblies to the Buddhist monastic councils through to the contemporary Parliament in New Delhi in the context of India’s G20 presidency in 2023. India possesses one of the world’s oldest traditions of participatory governance, with democratic practices that pre-date many modern constitutional democracies.
With a connected world, claims can spread like wildfire, so can contradiction. Just in the years that India was refining this image in the world, two of the world’s most respected democracy watchers were moving in the other direction. India was dubbed an “electoral autocracy” by the V-Dem Institute of Sweden.[i] Freedom House downgraded the country’s status to merely “partly free”.[ii] It is interesting to note that the country that was dubbed the mother of democracy was suddenly being referred to by some outside observers as little more than its misguided offspring.
This essay does not seek to endorse either narrative. Instead, it critically examines the competing claims surrounding India’s democratic identity. The celebratory narrative and the alarmist narrative are too tidy, too convenient and too divorced from actual functioning of real democracies. Rather, this essay does an easy, but valuable, reminder: India has opted, purposefully and wisely, for globalizing its image as a democratic power. This was a good idea then, during a time when democratic principles were sought after internationally. It also means that each time someone cracks down on a protester or takes a step back on a contentious law or drops a press freedom ranking, it’s no longer a domestic issue. It is proof in a worldwide debate between genuine and marketing India. This ‘contested global image’ then is not a figment of the imagination of the foreign media. It’s the inevitable consequence of a nation that pledged to be the leader of the world through democracy, and at a time when her own democracy is being challenged from within.
Democracy as India’s Diplomatic Currency
But in order to appreciate the significance of domestic politics in India’s foreign policy in today’s world, it is essential to understand how the Indian state chose to develop democracy as a foreign policy instrument.
Begin with the Quad India, the United States, Japan and Australia have formed a strategic partnership. The official mission of the Quad is to preserve the free and open Indo-Pacific region.[iii] Though it is not formally declared by them, everyone in the room is aware of its existence to counter balance the rising China. If there is any language that is shared in the partnership, it is the language of shared values namely, democracy, rule of law, freedom of navigation, and India is the only country in that group that is not a traditional Western style democracy but is treated as equal because it can claim to be the world’s largest democracy. Remove the ‘democracy’ veneer and India’s argument to join that table grows weaker.
This happens with other numbers, too. In 2023, when India hosted the “Voice of Global South Summit”, it claimed to be the voice of more than a hundred developing nations, not because it is the richest or most militarily powerful among them, but because it presents itself as proof that democracy and development can go together in a country of over a billion people,[iv] rather than the more authoritarian development model that China offers through its Belt and Road lending. During the pandemic, India’s vaccine diplomacy sending vaccines to dozens of countries under the “Vaccine Maitri” initiative was not only described as generosity, but also as democratic solidarity, a counter-example to allegations of ‘vaccine nationalism’ among richer democracies. Not least of all, India has undertaken various initiatives aimed at building international support for its permanent membership of the UN Security Council, arguing that being the world’s largest democracy gives it a unique claim to that seat.[v]
Nothing is wrong with any of this. Each nation markets itself with its best attributes and India’s civilisational depth and democratic scale is indeed a strong attribute. The issue arises when the asset is in need of some form of repair or replacement. A country that can out-compete on manufacturing costs can take in a negative news cycle round a manufacturing accident. It would be easier for a country to digest a bad news cycle when students face tear gas if it wasn’t competing on being “the moral alternative to authoritarianism”. But the stakes are higher for a country that has adopted democracy as its calling card.
Cracks Beneath the Brand
None of this implies that India is on the brink of a collapse of its democracy. It implies that India’s democracy is being tested in very visible ways, and every question is now being closely observed by the international community which India welcomed.
Consider political financing, in a sense, In Association for Democratic Reforms v Union of India,[vi] the Supreme Court held that “the Electoral Bond Scheme and the impugned provisions to the extent that they infringe upon the right to information of the voter by anonymizing contributions through electoral bonds are violative of Article 19(1)(a)” thereby reinforcing transparency in electoral finance. However, the verdict also underscored how murky the funding of politics in India had become in the years leading up to the court’s decision, something foreign commentators were quick to highlight when talking about the condition of Indian democracy.
Consider press freedom. Internet shutdowns are a case in point of the contradiction: a democracy that claims to be a leader in digital innovation, with some of the world’s cheapest mobile data and a booming IT sector, ordered more internet shutdowns than any other country in the world for six consecutive years, only narrowly losing that top spot to Myanmar in 2024 and even then, recording more shutdowns than any other democracy that year.[vii]
This contradiction is sharper than a statistic, it runs through India’s own constitutional doctrine. In Anuradha Bhasin v Union of India, the Supreme Court held that the “right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a), and the right to carry on any trade or business under 19(1)(g), using the medium of internet is constitutionally protected” and that any limitation on access to the internet shall have to comply with the principles of proportionality, be of limited duration and not permanent, and be issued in a public order which is subject to review.[viii] In theory, this means that India is ahead of many other democracies that have never, ever answered the question in court. In reality, since Bhasin, the shutdown orders have often been issued without ever being published and the Court prescribed procedure for review is not followed with any seriousness. The gap here is not a doctrinal one but rather a constitutional one the text of the Constitution, and the case law, are clear. It is a situation of non-compliance, a more difficult explanation for a democracy to give the watching world than an unsettled state of law is.
Consider protest itself, which is really the most telling criterion of any democracy’s character: that is when it demonstrates its tolerance of disagreement. There are plenty of recent cases in India. The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which took an iconic form at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, were hailed for the peaceful protest, primarily of women, in 2019-2020, while criticism was directed at the state’s actions in some cities. The farmers protest against three farm laws is to become a defining moment in Indian democracy for the international community: a testament to the fact that peaceful, sustained protest can still compel a powerful government to change its course; a testament to the other extreme, that it took a year of hardship at the borders of the capital to be heard.
The latest episode in this series occurred in July 2026, it was one such episode among many; it was a stark illustration of how an administrative grievance can become a litmus test of tolerance for dissent. July 2026 was the last time when the state apparatus showed its might. The incident did not become the main narrative of Indian democracy but it was worth highlighting since it was a recent example of peaceful and narrow administrative grievance turning into a major state confrontation. The satirical online campaign “Cockroach Janta Party”, which first surfaced in May, rapidly turned into a real youth movement when the leak of national medical entrance exam paper forced almost million students to take the test again, besides the news stating that approximately 21 students have committed suicide. The movement’s demands were not radical but simply the resignation of the education minister, a law ensuring exam integrity was introduced, a government assistance fund for the families of the victims, and the monitoring of the testing bodies in parliament through a constant session.[ix]
Tens of thousands of protesters, mainly students between their teenage years and early adulthood, gathered at Jantar Mantar on 20 July and set out to march toward Parliament, many having camped at the site overnight in anticipation of the day ahead. Authorities responded by shutting metro stations, barricading roads, and restricting internet access across central New Delhi even before the march began.[x] The authorities used tear gas and charged protesters with batons long before they even arrived at their target. At the protests, the nightfall showed the blood stains on the stone wall, the barricades had overturned, the glass had broken, the road leading up to the demonstration site had sandals and scarves scattered around, a picture of the crowd being dispersed at this place.[xi] Protesters and eyewitness were described to have been hit, they said while running backward and not at the police. They called the police reaction a “brutal beating” given to a peaceful crowd until the batons came in. Mostly, the police said it was the order they were told to keep away people that caused the march to break, as the crowd tried to come at the barricades.[xii]
The protest leaders went in the next evening to set up for the movement again a stage that had been knocked down, pledging to carry on the fight. The protest leaders and their supporters expressed support on the demand through their public backing of the students, and also criticized the excessive nature in which the police had resorted to violence when the protesters were, in their essence, a group of students who want accountability for the broken exam system and compensation of the mourning households[xiii]. As for the images coming out of this night, teenagers tending to wounds, glasses and torn clothes left over from the riot, and police accounts of a procession that kept coming forward despite the barricades, these things raise more questions about whether a country that promotes itself abroad as mother of democracy can let a peaceful demand for accountability in the country result in tear gas and blood on the pavement?
This is not a fresh grievance, in the aftermath of the 20 July events, a large proportion of India’s English and Hindi television news coverage focused on the official line and the damage to traffic and property around Jantar Mantar, rather than on the students own accounts or on the footage, widely shared on social media, of non-violent protesters being hit as they retreated. Concentrated media ownership, ads depending on government and government-friendly business, and a climate of harassment and legal harassment for government critics of the government are all reasons why India’s press freedom ranking has been falling for years, as highlighted by Reporters Without Borders, which has labelled the mainstream TV media “godi media” a term that loosely translates to “lapdog media”.[xiv] In response to this deficiency, a large portion of Indian viewers has been tuning into international news outlets, independent digital newsrooms, and unedited social media footage to piece together the truth, as a tacit indictment of the mainstream media’s lack of willingness to hold the government to account.
The purpose of this mention of this episode is not to give a verdict as to who was right. It’s about demonstrating how these moments are now working internationally. In less than hours, images from Jantar Mantar were picked up by international wire agencies and picked up by Al Jazeera to France24 to Time magazine and fed into the same international discourse that India has been trying to influence for years in its favour, as a decision by domestic police on crowd control became evidence in an international debate about India’s democratic branding and its democratic behaviour. Not small things either were the failures to close the courts to the protesters complaint, to halt criticism of the protesters actions by opposition politicians, or to silence a movement that actually began as an online joke that managed to get government ministers to sit down for talks. They are precisely the sort of openness that defines a fractured democracy from a closed authoritarian regime. In this episode, India did not resemble the perfect “mother of democracy” it was touted as by its own diplomats, nor did it resemble the “fully backsliding” country its most strident opponents claim it is. It seemed, to quote a Wall Street Journal headline, like a democracy in the middle of an argument with itself, one that is still, crucially, open to public debate.
That confrontation had a result. On 25 July 2026, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned. This was the main demand of the Cockroach Janta Party protests since they began in May.[xv] But the government only agreed after two months of protest and a night of violence, not before it. This raises a question: is this a democracy that corrects itself, or one that only listens when things get bad enough?
But, as well as the sound of individual protest is a quieter, structural narrative, the health of India’s federalism. Few things get noticed in the international media like a protest, but few things matter as much as the erosion of fiscal and political powers to the centre in a manner contrary to the intent of the Constitution’s framers, as related to the “constitutional vision” theme of this essay; in the case of India a vast and diverse nation, a truly inclusive democracy can’t be achieved without the centre supporting state governments. It requires the states to play their part as equals and not as junior branches of the same office.
Building the India of 2047
No one of these is exclusive to India and there is no problem that cannot be solved. Each of the enduring democracies the U.S., the U.K. and France has a long history of tensions between their ideals and their practice. It is not important whether such contradictions exist or whether the gap between claim and practice is narrowing or widening as this nation is heading towards the 100th celebration of Independence in 2047.
There is no need to give up on the “Mother of Democracy” story in order to close this gap. It needs to be fulfilled more regularly. On the issue of political funding, that involves a more transparent framework to fund political parties and not simply hoping that the Supreme Court will strike down a new and improved scheme. It means on the issue of freedom of the press, treating internet communication in the context of protests as many courts have suggested: a fundamental right that can only be restricted in the narrowest, and clearly best justified, of circumstances, not as a standard means of crowd-control. On federalism, it involves bringing an element of predictability and rules-based relationship between the Centre and the states so that political competition is not a deadweight for the common man and is not a source of paralysis for the administration.
Most of all, on the point of dissent, it means not only acknowledging that “what a government does to its most inconvenient, least powerful critics” is a better measure of a nation’s true state of democracy than any diplomatic communique could be, it means recognising that it is. The Government doesn’t have to accept all the demands of the protesters. But a democracy that purports to be the mother of all democracies, must be capable of demonstrating to the world that peaceful assemblies are a right that can be protected, not removed. Nothing else, of course, is more distinguishing of a government that can afford to be criticized than that one habit.
Then the “Mother of Democracy” tag will not require a marketing campaign, because India would have achieved this the integrity of its courts, the competitiveness and transparency of its elections, the balance of its federalism and the freedom of its citizens to criticize the government aloud and openly without fear. It will just be true, as a reputation which has been gained on a regular basis will always be more convincing than a reputation proclaimed in a slogan.
Conclusion
So, is India the Mother of Democracy, or a nation slipping backward? The fairer answer is that India is not a backsliding nation, but living up to the title of democracy’s mother will take more than heritage alone. The democratic heritage of the country is real, as are the institutions that still uphold it courts that entertain challenging petitions, opposition that can voice its grievances without being drowned out by the government, and people who keep coming out to voice concerns, at Shaheen Bagh, at the farmers protest, and at Jantar Mantar in 2026. Meanwhile, the cracks are also real: dirty political money, a diminished room for dissent, a press that has become too timid, and a State that will more often than not resort to violence rather than dialogue.
What this essay has attempted to demonstrate is that these two images don’t compete with one another. They live together at the same time in the same country, same state, same town, in the same house. India has decided to convey to the world a proud tale of democracy in its past, and that is what this world is waiting to see if it matches its present. Each year, each election, each verdict in court, each response to a protest is a component of that continuing test.
The title of “Mother of Democracy” is not something India should forget; as long as it is mindful that it doesn’t become permanent. It is something a country has to continue to work for, every year, with regard to those who are the loudest and weakest critics, rather than the most loyal supporters. Whether India @2047 is recalled as a country that fulfilled its ancient promise or a country that “talked the talk”, rather than walked the walk, will be settled less by what its leaders say at global summits than by what its institutions actually deliver to ordinary citizens. The choice is more about how the votes are funded fairly, how quickly the courts deliver justice, how patient the government is of its own citizens when they go together in peace to request for change, than what is said at the global summits.
[i]V-Dem Institute, Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot (University of Gothenburg 2024). v-dem_dr2024_highres.pdf accessed 26 July 2026
[ii] Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: The Growing Shadow of Autocracy (Freedom House 2026). India: Freedom in the World 2026 Country Report | Freedom House accessed 28 July 2026
[iii] The White House, ‘Joint Statement from Quad Leaders’ (Washington DC, 24 May 2022). Quad Joint Leaders’ Statement | The White House
[iv] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, ‘Voice of Global South Summit 2023: Chair’s Statement’ (New Delhi, January 2023).
[v] C Bajpaee, ‘India’s Never-Ending Quest for Global Status’ (The Interpreter, 10 October 2024) https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-s-never-ending-quest-global-status accessed on 26 July 2026
[vi] Association for Democratic Reforms v Union of India (2024) 5 SCC 1.
[vii] Access Now and #KeepItOn Coalition, Shrinking Democracy, Growing Violence: Internet Shutdowns in 2024 (Access Now 2025) https://www.accessnow.org/report/internet-shutdowns-2024/ accessed on 24 July 2026.
[viii] Anuradha Bhasin v Union of India (2020) 3 SCC 637.
[ix] What Is the Youth-Led “Cockroach Movement” Staging Mass Protests in India? Time (22 July 2026) https://time.com/article/2026/07/22/india-cockroach-janta-party-protest-movement/ accessed on 25 July 2026.
[x] “Now or Never: Students Defy Delhi Lockdown to March on India’s Parliament” Al Jazeera (20 July 2026) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/20/now-or-never-students-defy-delhi-lockdown-to-march-on-indias-parliament accessed on 26 July 2026.
[xi] “Won’t Back Down: Indian Student Protesters Return after Police Crackdown” Al Jazeera (21 July 2026) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/21/wont-back-down-indian-student-protesters-return-after-police-crackdown accessed on 25 July 2026.
[xii] ‘The Student Movement in India Challenging Modi’s Government’ France 24 (22 July 2026) https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260722-the-student-movement-in-india-challenging-modi-s-government accessed on 27 July 2026.
[xiii] “India’s Youth-Led Cockroach Movement Vows to Continue Protest after Police Crackdown” PBS NewsHour (21 July 2026) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/indias-youth-led-cockroach-movement-vows-to-continue-protest-after-police-crackdown accessed on 27 July 2026.
[xiv] Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index 2026 (30 April 2026) https://rsf.org/en/index accessed on 28 July 2026.
[xv] Associated Press, ‘India’s “Cockroach” Movement Ends Protests after Education Minister Resigns (25 July 2026) https://apnews.com/article/56d69c289589f057c0e72cde0c3d75d3 accessed 29 July 2026.