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According to him, this was visible in attempts to implement Islamic law such as the hudud penal code in Malaysia, which have been frustrated by the need to consider every voice from the public, including the non-Muslims.

Democracy is from the people, by the people, for the people It seems good, but in Islam not everything can be left just to the people, Aminuddin said in the forum on Islam and human rights.

That is why we cannot do anything. We cant even do hudud, we have to ask the non-Muslims. We cant even [ban] alcohol, we have to ask the non-Muslims.

Aminuddin claimed that Western-style democracy was a ruse by developed countries to colonise Muslim nations through soft power, especially those away from the war-torn Middle East.

He also alleged later on that the United Nations was an invention of the Jews.

The Islamist group then expressed that adultery and consumption of intoxicants must be curbed at all cost, as a child born out of wedlock or an alcohol drinker are not fit to rule a country.

Later in the forum, however, the Islamist group was challenged to explain its participation in the 2013 general election given its views on democracy.

Isma contested seven parliamentary seats in the May 2013 polls under the ticket of PAS splinter party Berjasa, but did not manage to win any.

In this current situation, this is the system We still dont have the power, so we have to sit in the current system, Aminuddin retorted.

Thats why in our call, we urge for Muslims to unite, so that we can implement anything which is in our religious teachings We have to play this game at the moment.

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Democracy a tall hurdle to Islamic state, says Isma leader

In my last column, I had outlined the evolution of Western representative democracy from its initial constitutional form to preserve liberty (government for the people), which, with the extension of the franchise, was conjoined with mass electoral representation (government by the people). This period of mass democracy following the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of mass political parties based on a political agenda of the conflict between capital and labour. But, with globalisation limiting the state's autonomy to pursue the redistributive games on which the domestic politics of these mass parties was based, the political agenda has narrowed to largely technocratic issues. Parties, thus, end up with similar programmes, becoming "competing teams of leaders" emphasising their governing rather than representative roles. Instead of the "government by the people", what we get is a government by a governing class, where parties have become primarily office-seeking organisations. The contest even in parliamentary democracies, then, becomes "presidential" between the leaders of the teams seeking office. One of the key functions they continue to perform is to dispense political patronage.

However, even if the political system is no longer as representative as it was in the golden age of mass democracy, it preserves the essential feature of a liberal democracy: the constitutional order first charted by the United States to preserve liberty. By contrast, as Fareed Zakaria and others have argued, the most common form of democracy to be found particularly in the Third World is "illiberal democracy", which fulfils the representational aspect of democracy through periodic elections but encroaches on personal liberties and the rule of law. Russia and increasingly Turkey today are recent examples. But, India, despite some backsliding, remains a constitutional liberal democracy where the judiciary has by and large preserved liberty. But, as in the West, has the representative element of democracy declined - and if so, is this desirable? Contributions to The Oxford Companion to Politics in India (2009), which summarises the political science findings about various aspects of Indian democracy, provide some answers.

The representative function is fulfilled through political parties. The Congress' single-party dominance has gradually fragmented; no single party at the national level has achieved a parliamentary majority since the 1984 election. This national fragmentation is matched by consolidation at the state level towards bipolarity. These divergent trends are convincingly explained by E Sridharan's application of Duverger's law to a federal polity where elections are based on the first-past-the-post system. This law states that under the first-past-the-post mechanism, voters will increasingly coalesce into two rival parties - third parties and alliances are squeezed out, since they do not have a realistic chance of winning. In a federal system, Duverger's law can apply at the state level, but, as in the different states the two-party system does not consist of the same parties, that leads to a multi-party system nationally. This requires interstate alliances of parties that do not compete on each other's turf, and which, faute de mieux, have to modulate any ideological differences with their coalition partners. This happened with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It is now happening under Narendra Modi, who, as Ashutosh Varshney has noted, has departed in his election speeches from the core Hindutva tenets in order to gain power as the head of a moderate NDA coalition.

As Zoya Hussain notes, the evolution of Indian political parties "through a politics of accommodation and consensus" has led to democratic consolidation, which "binds the political class together despite their different party affiliations". It has given historically excluded groups access to the political system. Though voters see parties as essential to democracy, they do not trust them as vehicles of representation and governance. "The absence of internal democracy, dynastic rule, elite capture, and the inability of parties to offer real choices to the people are among the major issues confronting India's parties".

The seeming governance failure of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in its second term has also accentuated a trend among the middle class for a more technocratic form of governance. As Christophe Jaffrelot recently reported, in answer to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies' State of Democracy in South Asia project: "all major decisions about the country should be taken by experts rather than politicians". In 2008, 51 per cent of the respondents from the "elite" "strongly agreed" and 29 per cent "agreed"; and among the "mass", 29 per cent "strongly agreed" and 22 per cent "agreed". Thus, as in Western democracies, there seems to be a shift in popular attitudes towards technocratic, rather than populist, political modes of governance.

Yogendra Yadav, too, notes that "the issue of political representation itself is declining in salience due to a shift in the locus of decision making from the legislature and executive to independent bodies and the judiciary". Thus, as in Western democracies, the representational aspect is declining, while the constitutional aspect endures.

These emerging trends will be strengthened by the attitudes of the growing urban middle class. As Minna Saavala (Middle-Class Moralities) argues, the traditional urban middle class is being replenished by a "neo-middle class" of other backward classes migrating from the villages. They are an aspiring class, whose caste identity has been eroded. They demand growth that offers them a brighter economic future. They are also intensely religious; they adhere to Hindu rituals in a form of Sanskritisation. But, like their upper-caste compatriots, they want a meritocracy and are against reservations. They are part of the Modi wave. Going by its recent manifesto, the UPA seems to be stuck in its "rights-based" welfarist mode. As in the West, unsustainable political entitlements to income streams are being undermined by globalisation, which leaves the sustainable income entitlements generated by economic growth as the only viable model for continuing economic progress.

Clearly, Indian democracy is veering towards the Western model; elections have become a verdict on the suitability of different teams from the political class, and voters are increasingly uncommitted to parties but are exercising their democratic right to "throw the rascals out". Against this backdrop, good governance while maintaining liberty is likely to be the future of Indian democracy. This is no bad thing; as long as liberty is preserved, in Alexander Pope's words, "For forms of government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best" (An Essay on Man).

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Deepak Lal: Democracy in distress - II

In 1967, the Times of London carried a series of articles titled Indias Disintegrating Democracy written by their Delhi correspondent Neville Maxwell. This is how he describes the mood of the country: the administration is strained and universally believed to be corrupt, the government and the governing party have lost public confidence and belief in themselves as well...[there is] a deep sense of defeat, an alarmed awareness that the future is not only dark but profoundly uncertain. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

These words may well be used to describe the current mood of the country.

However, Maxwell got one crucial detail wrong. He concluded that, while Indians would soon vote in the fourth and surely last general election, the great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework has failed.

India remains an outlier amongst the democracies of the world- an unlikely candidate for the persistence of democracy. We continue to have large levels of illiteracy and poverty, the integrity of most of our government institutions has been compromised by successive governments (with the notable exception of Election Commission), corruption and populism is the norm in our public life and our society continues to struggle with divisions along the lines of religion, caste, language and gender.

The democratic promise of compensating inequality of resources with equality of voice has remained largely unfulfilled as successive generations of politicians have taken the public for a ride. To borrow a phrase from Joseph Stiglitz, the principle of one person-one vote has been replaced by one rupee-one vote.

The odds of history was certainly against us and the decision to trust a largely illiterate and poor population with universal adult franchise in 1947 was, as Ramchandra Guha calls it, an act of faith on part of the framers of our constitution. These fears have been repeatedly expressed since our independence- that an unstable and hierarchical society with large levels of poverty and illiteracy is not suited for the flourishing of democracy. Take for example Indonesia, another developing country that is going into national elections simultaneously with India. Although it received independence in 1945, it became a democracy only 16 years ago with the fall of Suhartos dictatorship.

Our electorate has repeatedly proven these naysayers wrong by coming out to vote in large numbers. The record turnouts in the third phase of the current elections, which happened in some of the most backward regions of the country, have yet again vindicated the wisdom of our forefathers. Orissa saw 67% voting (which was more than Delhi) and Jharkhand had a 58% turnout, an increase of 3% and 8% respectively.

Even the disturbed regions of Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh and Assam had a healthy turnout and relatively peaceful voting. In Bastar, a Maoist stronghold, more than 1 out of 2 registered voters came out to reaffirm their belief in democracy. In Jammu and Kashmir, disregarding a boycott call by separatists, 66% of the electorate turned up to vote in the third phase, an increase of almost 20% from the general elections in 2009.

Mukulika Banerjee notes in her article Elections as Communitas that the most enthusiastic voters in Indian elections are not the well-educated urban middle classes but those who are the poorest, most discriminated against, and least educated, mainly living in villages and small towns. Paradoxically, the biggest defenders of democracy have been those whom it has failed in the most spectacular way. However, they choose to respond with the ballot instead of the bullet.

Banerjee offers several explanations for the puzzle of democracys success in India- a visionary constitution that acts as a bulwark against authoritarianism, the inclusive social policies of successive governments that have tried to integrate the disadvantaged sections of society, levelling impact of election campaigns where the high and mighty are forced to step down and plead with the voters, the festive atmosphere on election day that makes voting a sacrosanct and an egalitarian experience where people across caste, class and religion stand in one line waiting for their chance to vote, the civic pride of being able to flaunt the black ink on your finger once you have voted and so on.

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Lok Sabha elections: Proof that democracy persists in India

File photo of Sonia Gandhi addressing an election rally

"BJP is leaving no stone unturned in crossing every boundary and limit to capture the Prime Minister's chair. This is dangerous for democracy," she said while addressing a rally in Surguja Lok Sabha constituency of Chhattisgarh.

Politics is meant for development but some people yearn only for power and their hunger for the same can make them to go to any extent. This was happening in the country now, Mrs Gandhi said.

"I know only that the democracy of any country is not safe in the hands of only one person and therefore this time you have to take the decision carefully," she said, without naming BJP's prime ministerial candidate, around whom the saffron party's campaign is centred.

Asking the electorate not to be swayed by "falsehoods" parroted by BJP, she said they need to think which way the country should take.

"Election comes and goes. Somebody wins and somebody loses. But doing anything for winning, branding falsehoods as true....Will this sustain our democracy? You have to think about it," Mrs Gandhi said.

The Congress president alleged that despite the BJP government in Chhattisgarh receiving huge central aid for various schemes, nothing has changed on the ground for the tribals.

"Chhattisgarh government has failed to secure the rights of the tribals. It has openly looted iron and coal of the state to give them away to a few persons. Even rivers were given to mafias. I feel really sad for this," she said.

The Congress' Ram Dev Ram is pitted against BJP's Kamalbhan Singh Marawi in this constituency which is reserved for the scheduled tribes.

Story First Published: April 18, 2014 17:32 IST

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Democracy not safe in the hands of one person, says Sonia Gandhi

WASHINGTON In a 2006 interview, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the Constitution is "basically about" one word "democracy" that appears in neither that document nor the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is America's way of allocating political power. The Constitution, however, was adopted to confine that power in order to "secure the blessings of" that which simultaneously justifies and limits democratic government natural liberty.

The fundamental division in American politics is between those who take their bearings from the individual's right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of freedom, and those whose fundamental value is the right of the majority to have its way in making rules about which specified liberties shall be respected.

Now, the nation no longer lacks what it has long needed, a slender book that lucidly explains the intensity of conservatism's disagreements with progressivism. For the many Americans who are puzzled and dismayed by the heatedness of political argument today, the message of Timothy Sandefur's "The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty" is this: The temperature of today's politics is commensurate to the stakes of today's argument.

The argument is between conservatives who say American politics is basically about a condition, liberty, and progressives who say it is about a process, democracy. Progressives, who consider democracy thesource of liberty, reverse the Founders' premise, which was: Liberty pre-exists governments, which, the Declaration says, are legitimate when "instituted" to "secure" natural rights.

Progressives consider, for example, the rights to property and free speech as, in Sandefur's formulation, "spaces of privacy" that government chooses "to carve out and protect" to the extent that these rights serve democracy. Conservatives believe that liberty, understood as a general absence of interference, and individual rights, which cannot be exhaustively listed, are natural and that governmental restrictions on them must be as few as possible and rigorously justified. Merely invoking the right of a majority to have its way is an insufficient justification.

With the Declaration, Americans ceased claiming the rights of aggrieved Englishmen and began asserting rights that are universal because they are natural, meaning necessary for the flourishing of human nature. "In Europe," wrote James Madison, "charters of liberty have been granted by power," but America has "charters of power granted by liberty."

Sandefur, principal attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that since the 1864 admission of Nevada to statehood, every state's admission has been conditioned on adoption of a constitution consistent with the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration. The Constitution is the nation's fundamental law but is not the first law. The Declaration is, appearing on Page 1 of Volume 1 of the U.S. Statutes at Large and at the beginning of the U.S. Code. Hence the Declaration "sets the framework" for reading the Constitution not as "basically about" democratic government majorities granting rights but about natural rights defining the limits of even democratic government.

The perennial conflict in American politics, Sandefur says, concerns "which takes precedence: the individual's right to freedom, or the power of the majority to govern." The purpose of the post-Civil War's 14th Amendment protection of Americans' "privileges or immunities" protections vitiated by an absurdly narrow Supreme Court reading of that clause in 1873 was to assert, on behalf of emancipated blacks, national rights of citizens. National citizenship grounded on natural rights would thwart Southern states then asserting their power to acknowledge only such rights as they chose to dispense.

Government, the Framers said, is instituted to improve upon the state of nature, in which the individual is at the mercy of the strong. But when democracy, meaning the process of majority rule, is the supreme value when it is elevated to the status of what the Constitution is "basically about" the individual is again at the mercy of the strong, the strength of mere numbers.

Many conservatives should be discomfited by Sandefur's analysis, which entails this conclusion: Their indiscriminate denunciations of "judicial activism" inadvertently serve progressivism. The protection of rights, those constitutionally enumerated and others, requires a judiciary actively engaged in enforcing what the Constitution is "basically about," which is making majority power respect individuals' rights.

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Democracy proceeds from liberty