Dharma Democracy : How India Built the Third World’s First Democracy by Salvatore Babones

Dharma Democracy : How India Built the Third World’s First Democracy by Salvatore Babones

Paperback, 290 pages, $39.95

ISBN 9781923224735

Release Date: May 2025

Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognize, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe.  – Sri Aurobindo Ghose

India is one of the world’s great democratic success stories. In this rigorously empirical analysis, a comparative social scientist—an American sociologist based in Sydney—offers a dispassionate assessment of India’s democratic evolution. Benchmarking India against both established Western democracies and its own political past, the book challenges prevailing narratives shaped by ideological biases. Drawing on quantitative data and primary historical sources, the author reveals a dynamic, complex, and resilient democratic system operating in a fractured and deeply traditional society. A must-read for academics and general readers alike, this book cuts through politicized scholarship to offer a clear-eyed perspective on the world’s largest democracy.

Salvatore Babones is a quantitative comparative sociologist whose current research focuses on the political sociology of democracy. He has also published on economic development in post-socialist transition economies and quantitative methods for cross-national comparisons. His 2018 book The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts was named among the “Best on Politics” by the Wall Street Journal.