Anxieties of Democracy: Tocquevillean Reflections on India and the United States

This volume is a comparative study of democracy in India and the United States, using as its basis Alexis de Tocqueville’s landmark study Democracy in America. It frames the comparison in terms of the distinct trajectories of the United States and India-the former as moving ‘from equality’ at birth towards new forms of inequality over time, and the latter moving ‘towards equality’ from an inegalitarian social order at independence. Examining the experience of democracy in two of the world’s oldest and largest democracies, the essays discuss the effect of democratization on key elements of public life such as citizenship, religion, capitalism, the struggle for equality, and the status of minorities in both the countries.