B.R. Ambedkar had hoped that with independence, there would be no need for citizens to resort to civil disobedience to press their demands. Satyagraha in the Gandhian style might have been necessary in a colonial context, but now, with freedom and the enactment of the constitution, surely all disputes can be settled by Parliament, the executive, or the courts—or so one would have thought. As it happened, however, street protests have continued to play a very important role in Indian politics. Fasts, strikes, boycotts, and sit-ins are organized by every conceivable group for every conceivable demand.

Speaking to the assembly that drafted the country’s constitution, Ambedkar remarked that “democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic.” When Ambedkar said this, he had principally the inequities of the caste system in mind. How could one build a nation of citizens in a society where so many were regarded by custom and scripture as less than human? Béteille broadens the argument: it is not just the lack of equality, but also the lack of impersonality, that is an obstacle to democracy. How does one build institutions when the obligations of caste, kin, and community play such a large and sometimes determining role in public life?

As a constitutional democrat, Béteille is as critical of satyagraha as Ambedkar; as a sociologist, he is obliged to appreciate why it persists in independent India. For “in a political system in which the principal parties, whether in office or in opposition, have shown themselves to be venal and self-serving, it would be folly to close the door on civil disobedience.” It is another matter that contemporary Gandhians lack Gandhi’s civility toward his political opponents, his sense of restraint, his ability to distinguish between laws that are merely inconvenient and those that are seriously unjust, his readiness to call off an exercise of satyagraha if it had exhausted its energies or threatened to turn violent.

Envisaged as a constitutional democracy, the Republic of India is increasingly becoming a populist one. Those holding offices mandated by the constitution can be arrogant and overbearing; and so, too, can be those who oppose particular laws or particular governments in the name of the “people.” “Our politicians may devise ingenious ways of getting around the Constitution and violating its rules from time to time,” Béteille remarks, “but they do not like to see the open defiance of it by others. In that sense the Constitution has come to acquire a significant symbolic value among Indians. But the currents of populism run deep in the country’s political life, and they too have their own moral compulsions. It would appear therefore that the people of India are destined to oscillate endlessly between the two poles of constitutionalism and populism without ever discarding the one or the other.”

III.

IN A BOOK PUBLISHED in 2007, the year marking the sixtieth anniversary of Indian independence, I argued that while a democracy had to be founded by visionaries, it could be run in mid-career by mediocrities. Such was the case with India, and with the United States, for the distance between Mahatma Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi was no more, and no less, than the distance between George Washington and George W. Bush. Five years later, I see that this might have been an excessively sanguine judgment. The people who rule India today are worse than mediocrities. Forget idealism or vision, they are not even competent, being motivated rather by vanity, greed, or nepotism (or all of the above).

“The state is impersonal; the Argentine can only conceive of personal relations,” wrote Borges. “Therefore, to him, robbing public funds is not a crime. I am noting a fact; I am not justifying or excusing it.” The causes of corruption in India are somewhat more sociological— not so much “personal” as “kin” and “community” and interest group. Public funds are diverted not to one’s friend or mistress, but to one’s nephew or caste-mate. But the effect is the same, namely, the undermining of institutions meant to serve society as a whole rather than a particular slice of it.

Some institutions have stood apart from the trend. The Election Commission of India runs polls efficiently and fairly; the comptroller-and-auditorgeneral rigorously scrutinizes public spending; the Finance Commission allocates funds to states in a non-partisan manner. Unlike in neighboring Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and China, the armed forces have stayed scrupulously away from politics. Many (but by no means all) judges of the Supreme Court are competent and honest.

On the whole, though, public institutions in India are defined more by corruption and incompetence than by transparency and accountability. The Gandhian period seems, in retrospect, an aberration. Inspired by the idealism and the spirit of self-sacrifice of the national movement, two or three generations of politicians, civil servants, and judges subordinated their personal ambitions (and kinship ties) to the impersonal goals of the institutions they had chosen to serve. As late as the 1960s, most cabinet ministers and all Supreme Court judges were, in a financial sense, incorruptible. But as the impulse animating the freedom struggle receded, the basic building blocks of the society reasserted themselves. Whether acting in their private or their public capacity, officials of the state would now privilege the interests of their family, caste, and community above those of the institution itself.

As the state has grown more arbitrary and corrupt, there are some countervailing trends within society. The French sociologist Louis Dumont famously described Indians as “Homo Hierarchicus.” Certainly, no other civilization had such rigorously elaborated social divisions. The suppression of untouchables in traditional India was far more substantial than that of serfs in medieval Europe. The oppression of women was a constitutive feature of Hindu and Islamic traditions. Unlike Christianity, both encouraged polygamy; one refused to allow widows to re-marry, while the other proscribed women from appearing in public places (including in schools).

Low castes and women are still discriminated against in India, particularly in the countryside, where hierarchies are more entrenched, and where physical violence against those seeking equal rights is less likely to be written up in newspapers or punished by the law. Yet the steady trend is toward greater social equality. Like the Indian Parliament, the Indian workplace is far more socially representative than it was fifty years ago. Civil servants, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and teachers come from all castes and both genders. As urbanization and industrialization proceed, the old discriminations will fade away further.

Another solid achievement of modern India is its linguistic pluralism. Indians are free to speak, to learn, and to administer themselves in the language of their choice. The decision not to impose a single national language has saved the country from the civil strife that has bedeviled Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The Indian record on religious pluralism is more mixed. When Nehru was prime minister, his insistence on treating Muslims as equal citizens helped to heal the terrible wounds of partition. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, Hindu fundamentalism was on the ascendant, provoking a wave of religious riots. In the last decade communal tempers have cooled somewhat. The middle class is no longer so enamored with the idea of a “Hindu Pakistan,” while Indian Muslims have resolutely turned their backs on jihadism. Regular attempts by terrorists from across the border—as in Mumbai in December 2008—have failed to disturb the social peace.

Sixty-four years after the British departed, the Republic of India remains a work in progress. The experiment has clearly not failed, nor has it emphatically succeeded. Home to the most elevating as well as the most depressing aspects of the human experience, it inspires—in this citizen at any rate—pride and embarrassment in equal measure.

Ramachandra Guha is the author of India after Gandhi and Makers of Modern India. He lives in Bangalore. This article appeared in the July 12, 2012 issue of the magazine.