Critiquing Liberal Democracy, Nation-State, and Development as 20th-Century Templates

The modern world order rests on three foundational pillars inherited from 18th- and 19th-century Western thought: liberal democracy, the nation-state, and capitalist development. These ideas emerged from the Enlightenment and were institutionalised through revolutions, colonial expansion, and post-war international architecture. The Westphalian system (1648) established state sovereignty as the organising principle of international relations, and the nation-state became the default political unit. Representative democracy, government through competitive elections and majority rule, was codified as the universal standard of legitimate governance, especially after the collapse of colonial empires in the mid-20th century.

India's own constitutional framework drew heavily from this inheritance. The Constitution of India (1950) adopted parliamentary democracy, fundamental rights, and a federal structure, all rooted in Western liberal traditions, even as the framers adapted them to India's plural social reality. The Preamble commits India to justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity: values that overlap substantially with the Enlightenment project. Yet Indian thinkers from Rabindranath Tagore to B.R. Ambedkar raised early doubts about whether Western templates could be transplanted without modification onto a society with different historical, cultural, and civilisational foundations.

The 21st century has intensified these doubts. The rise of elected authoritarianism, ecological breakdown, extreme inequality, and the crisis of multilateral institutions have prompted a global rethinking of whether the 20th-century templates of democracy, nationhood, and development are adequate, or whether they have become obstacles to genuine human flourishing.