When Old Elite Mistakes Control For Integrity And Mourns Its 'Lost Democracy'

Democracy’s Heartland: Inside the Battle for Power in South Asia. Dr SY Quraishi. Juggernaut (2025). Pages: 520. Price: Rs 539.

Dr SY Quraishi’s Democracy’s Heartland: Inside the Battle for Power in South Asia arrives with considerable weight of expectation. Authored by a former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India, the book promises to be a definitive comparative study of the often chaotic yet stubbornly enduring democratic experiments across the subcontinent.

It attempts a grand regional sweep, positioning South Asia as democracy’s “most vital and contested terrain.” Seemingly frustrated by the sidelining of other South Asian democracies in global debate and discussion, Dr Quraishi argues for a more comprehensive approach to the study of South Asia that does not defer solely to India.

The book’s initial premise is ambitious and intriguing. Dr Quraishi draws on his decades of first-hand experience, both at the helm of the Indian electoral behemoth and as an international election observer, to take readers on a political tour of the region. He meticulously details the electoral machinery and parliamentary structures of nations such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and even Bhutan and Afghanistan.

The reader is provided with a structural primer on how democracy survives, adapts, and sometimes fails in this dense, diverse, and politically volatile geography. He offers untold stories from the front lines of elections, covering everything from India’s electoral juggernaut to Pakistan’s power struggles and Nepal’s constitutional churn.

The attempt is to paint a picture of resilience born of struggle, a narrative that seeks to counter the Western perception of South Asia as merely chaotic or fundamentally undemocratic.

Arguably an important scholarly contribution at a time when democracies in the Indian subcontinent seem to be undergoing significant turmoil, the book correctly argues that no other region has embraced the democratic experiment so fully or so fiercely.

Yet this veneer of comparative political analysis begins to crack precisely when the focus tightens on India. The scholarly assessment intended for a regional audience subtly transforms into a highly selective, institutionally nostalgic critique directed at the current Indian political landscape.

The comprehensive overview of procedural complexities and institutional design gives way to a predictable, politically freighted lament that reveals less about the region’s democracy and more about the anxieties of a specific class of Indian elite.

The Selective Definition of ‘Anarchy’

One of the most jarring aspects of this supposedly objective appraisal is the author’s utterly asymmetrical application of democratic standards, reflected in subtle wording and selective probing. This is where the book’s intellectual integrity falters, exchanging academic rigour for partisan convenience.

Consider the chilling dichotomy one finds implied in the argument of this particular vintage of India’s establishment. For this school of thought, the violent spectacle, the burning down of national infrastructure, mob justice targeting the families of political representatives, and the sustained attempt to cripple the function of a democratically elected government, is often contextualised, softened, and even lauded as the “vibrant, fierce” expression of the democratic instinct.

“The recent Gen Z agitation in Nepal was not against Democracy but a demand for more Democracy.”

But what then is branded as anarchy? According to the institutional echo chamber, it is the uncompromising procedural integrity of the Election Commission of India (ECI) under the current regime, specifically the rigorous drive for a pure electoral roll through the Special Integrated Revision (SIR) process.

The systematic removal of deceased, duplicate, or non-existent voters, a foundational pillar of free and fair elections, is suddenly subjected to the language of suspicion and administrative overreach.

This is the very essence of the paradox at play. Voter roll purification is cast as a sinister partisan manoeuvre to disenfranchise, while the unrestrained, often violent protest that seeks to overturn institutional outcomes is portrayed as the healthy, beating heart of democracy.

Institutional Trust and the Shadow of the Past

Dr Quraishi’s criticisms of the ECI’s functional integrity often converge on the need for a more credible system of appointing Election Commissioners, typically advocating a collegium model. This critique, while structurally sound in principle, takes on a loaded meaning when contextualised by the author’s own institutional journey.

The former CEC was appointed in 2010 under the Congress-led UPA Government, a detail that is no longer merely biographical but has become a significant factor in how his subsequent critique is perceived. The pervasive criticism levelled by him and other former establishment figures often implies that the independence and integrity of institutions have declined only after a particular political party came to power.

Downplaying the horrors of democratic erosion during the Emergency era, he conveniently draws on selective information, often depending on biased, unreliable global indices to drive home the argument of democratic decline post-2014.

This framing feeds a dangerous and intellectually dishonest narrative: the institutional integrity worth championing is the kind that existed when the establishment was in charge, a period when political discretion rather than a reformed, transparent process placed people in the chair. It suggests less a genuine search for institutional independence and more a lament for the loss of apolitical patronage.

The question must be asked: does this scholarly work critique the institution, or does it mourn the loss of institutional control by a specific ecosystem? While supposedly an account of democracies around the world, the specific attacks on a political party rather than on structures and processes read as shallow and motivated.

The Elitist Fear of the ‘Mandate’

Quraishi rightly flags the challenges of “illiberal populism” and “fascistic majoritarianism,” terms that have become rhetorical weapons of choice for the Lutyens’ Delhi elite to describe any political force that derives its mandate from a strong, unified, and culturally rooted majority in India.

However, the real threat to democracy is not the mandate of the majority, which is fundamentally the purpose of the democratic vote, but the tyranny of the entrenched elite that has historically controlled the levers of power, the narrative, and the cultural discourse. The book treats the latter, pre-2014 establishment control, as the normal state of affairs and the former, the powerful and decisive popular mandate, as decay.

His observation that the high number of MPs with criminal cases shows that a “good election does not mean a good democracy” is accurate, but critically incomplete. It is a legacy of the very political ecosystem that flourished under the patronage of the older establishment, where competitive populism necessitated fielding candidates with muscle and questionable funds.

In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, “Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.” To highlight the symptom without rigorously confronting the systemic failure of the past that birthed it is to offer a critique that is both convenient and self-serving.

Concluding Remarks

Democracy’s Heartland is a necessary book for the debate it provokes, but not for the conclusions it suggests. It is valuable as an insight into the political anxieties of an institutional class that finds itself suddenly unmoored from its traditional power centres.

The book’s compass points to decay in the very actions that are arguably strengthening India’s democratic foundations: the purification of the vote, the people’s mandate for change without outright violence, and the dismantling of old, entitled institutional arrangements.

While the efforts to include the rest of South Asia in the cradle of democracy are well taken and lauded, the lack of stability and the near fact-like telling of the stories of these nations fade them, yet again, into the backdrop.

To truly understand Democracy’s Heartland, one must look beyond the memoirs of the disaffected elite and listen to the fierce, undeniable voice of the people. Dr Quraishi, unfortunately, misses the mark on being a good listener.