Taipei, March 20 (CNA) Democracy in India is very unique and it hasn't stopped surprising the world for decades, said an Indian scholar at the Taiwan-India Forum held in Taipei Monday to increase bilateral understanding.
Winston Churchill did believed that India was unfit for the practice of democracy, and in the past many experts predicted the country would collapse between 1953-1980.
"But India proved them wrong, " said Dr. Madhav Nalapat, a geopolitics professor at Manipal Academy of Higher Education.
"It [India] has not only become the oldest democracy in Asia but also one of the fastest emerging economies in the world," the guest speaker said at a seminar entitled "Synergy of Democracy, " the first of three panel discussions at the one-day event.
In 1947, the literacy rate in India topped 10 percent. And as late as 1967, there were an average of 6 to 7 million Indians dying of famine per year.
This is why former U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that India was unfit for democracy, a claim later proved incorrect, Nalapat explained.
"Politically, India experienced a highly unstable period in the 1990's with cabinets coming and going, like Italy," Nalapat said.
People say that without political stability, the economy is unable to flourish, but once again India has proven this wrong, he said.
"It's what's unique about our democratic system, " Nalapat said.
Most Taiwanese would describe India as a "chaotic" place, which is partly true, he said. But most are unaware that Indians are law-abiding people, he said.
"Mumbai suffers from floods every year, like New Orleans, " he said. "But you don't see the breakdown of law and order [like what happened in New Orleans] after flooding."
Further, he said, India has the second largest number of Muslims in the world.
"And you don't see Indian Muslims regarded as terrorists or extremists. I'd like to credit this to our system of democracy," Nalapat said.