Every Republic Day invites remembrance, but not all remembrance is equal. Some anniversaries commemorate events; others demand reflection on ideas. January 26 belongs to the latter category.
It marks not merely the enforcement of a constitutional text, but the inauguration of a moral experiment—one of the boldest in modern political history. On this Republic Day, it is worth recalling a fact that remains both surprising and foundational: India adopted universal adult suffrage from the very first national election it conducted.
When Indians went to the polls in 1951–52, the right to vote was not rationed by property, education, gender, caste, or social status. Every adult citizen, irrespective of literacy or economic standing, was entitled to an equal political voice. At a time when several established democracies still placed restrictions on voting, a newly independent, impoverished, and deeply stratified India chose to trust its people fully.
This decision was neither accidental nor merely procedural. It was civilisational in intent. The framers of the Indian Constitution were acutely aware that democracy, if filtered through privilege, would reproduce colonial hierarchies in indigenous form. Universal suffrage was therefore not an administrative convenience; it was a philosophical statement about the moral equality of citizens.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar articulated this tension with characteristic clarity in his concluding address to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949.
He warned that India was entering “a life of contradictions,” where political equality would coexist with deep social and economic inequality, and cautioned that if these contradictions were not resolved, “those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy.” The franchise, in this sense, was not a reward for social progress but a tool to achieve it.
Jawaharlal Nehru, too, understood the symbolic weight of the Republic. In his famous “Tryst with Destiny” speech on the eve of Independence, he spoke not only of freedom from colonial rule but of a larger obligation to the people of India, declaring that “a moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”
Universal suffrage was one of the earliest and most concrete ways in which that utterance was institutionalised.
What made India’s choice radical was not simply its scale—though administering elections for hundreds of millions of voters, many of whom could not read, was unprecedented. It was radical because it inverted the dominant theory of democratic readiness.
Instead of waiting for citizens to become “fit” for democracy through education or economic development, the Republic assumed that political participation itself would be educative. Democracy was not the destination of development; it was its engine.
The early Election Commission of India, under Sukumar Sen, translated this philosophy into practice with remarkable ingenuity. Symbols were assigned to candidates so that illiterate voters could participate meaningfully. Ballot boxes travelled to the most remote corners of the country. The act of voting became a civic ritual through which citizenship was learned, asserted, and normalised.
Over seven decades later, this original act of faith continues to shape India’s political life. Elections remain the most participatory public exercise in the country, cutting across class, caste, region, and language.
This idea—that democracy is ultimately a moral commitment to equality rather than a mere institutional arrangement—has also been echoed by contemporary leadership. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has observed, “Democracy is not just a structure; it is also a spirit. It is based on the belief that the needs and aspirations of every human being are equally important.”
Governments rise and fall not through force or inheritance, but through the arithmetic of popular consent. Even the most powerful leaders must periodically submit themselves to the judgement of the electorate.
In recent years, debates around democracy have often focused on institutions, procedures, and norms—and rightly so. But Republic Day is an occasion to remember that the Indian democratic project began not with mistrust, but with radical inclusion. It began by assuming that the poorest, the least educated, and the most marginalised citizen was as capable of moral and political judgement as anyone else.
That assumption remains the Republic’s most precious inheritance.
As India marks another Republic Day, amid global democratic anxieties and domestic contestations, the memory of that first election offers both humility and resolve. The Republic was not built on the perfection of its people, but on faith in their equal worth. To honour the Constitution is not only to protect its institutions, but to renew that faith—again and again, at every ballot, in every generation.
(Anoop Verma is Editor-News, ETGovernment)
