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India masters liberal democracy: American sociologist
Babones expressed support for the recently implemented Citizenship Amendment Bill
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- Salvatore Babones is an American sociologist and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney / Linkedin
Salvatore Babones, an American sociologist and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, highlighted India as the world's sole post-colonial, highly traditional nation to successfully navigate the complexities of running a liberal democracy. He made these remarks during CNN-News18’s Rising Bharat Summit.
“India has a democracy, a liberal democracy, a robust liberal democracy… India’s critics love to say that India is not a liberal democracy. India’s democratic institutions are modeled after institutions in North America, Western Europe, and Australasia. India’s institutions would not be out of place in any of those regions of the world. India is, in effect, the world’s only post-colonial, highly traditional country that has cracked the code about how to run a liberal democracy,” Babones said.
Babones expressed support for the recently implemented Citizenship Amendment Bill, referring to it as a "good policy." “And it’s only possible in India because India is an inclusive society. An inclusive democracy,” he said.
“The Citizenship Amendment Act is there because people from all around the region, not only the three countries in the Act, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh… but people from all around the region want to seek refuge in India because of India’s traditions of liberty that are not present in their own countries.”
Asked about his earlier statement on India's intellectual class, Babones clarified that many negative reports about the country in Western media come from Indian and Indian-origin intellectuals.
“I said anti-India as a class. As a class, not as individuals. What I mean by that is nothing remarkable. Australia’s intellectual class is anti-Australia as a class. America’s intellectual class is constantly critical of the United States and its institutions. There’s nothing surprising about that. I said that as an explanation because I wanted Indians to understand that all of the negative reporting about Indian democracy does not originate with western experts who are independently coming to India to evaluate your country.”
“It originates with Indian intellectuals who are writing for western outlets, Indian intellectuals who are coming to speak at western academic conferences, Indian-origin intellectuals who are writing in western academic journals,” the sociologist said.
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