The world's largest democracy

It's election time in India, and the loudspeaker vans are out daily, canvassing support with the aid of loud, raucous Bollywood anthems.

I don't know how many alphabets there are in India, let alone how many languages, to say nothing of the religions and regional loyalties, - and that's before you start to talk about caste. India is diverse by definition, and it is to their enormous credit that Indians have embraced democracy on the Westminster model and created a stable government and a thriving economy.
But while in America, at least in some ways " It all started with Columbus," various periods of foreign domination were just part of the history of India. People sometimes forget that India has a rich and lengthy cultural heritage, stretching back way before the British Raj, or even the Mogul empire. India has been around for a long time, and while it was never one nation until the Brits arrived with their cunning schemes to "divide and rule," it was a truly multi-cultural society with some highly developed aesthetics and refined scientific concepts. 

Brahmagupta established
the first rules for dealing
with zero as a number

Take Crores and Lakhs, for example. No, you can't order Chicken Crore Masala or Lakh Bhajis; the concepts have nothing to do with cuisine. These are sophisticated units of measurement that stem from a sophisticated appreciation of mathematics.

Our Western system goes up to a million, after which billions and trillions vary in size, according to whether you are European, American or Don't Know. It was one of the great jokes of modern economics that politicians around the world talked glibly about billions without defining whether they were talking American billions (a thousand million) or European billions (a million million.) There's a sizeable difference there, before you even venture into trillions. Sadly, the UK government decided to downsize to American billions in 1974 and proper British billions went the way of Avoirdupois weights and measures.

India has slightly more practical concepts, of a lakh (one hundred thousand) and a crore (ten million.) After more than sixty years of independence, India shows no sign of talking the same language when it comes to big numbers. And why should they? Mathematics in India was a gift from the Persians; democracy was a gift from the British; it would be interesting to debate which has been a more practical gift. 

Electioneering in India can be quite entertaining. 

Photos in yesterday's Times of India (Another colonial heritage, right down to the font,) showed a troupe of actors telling the anti-capitalist story with sketches promoting the Communist Party. There is plenty of music and singing when the politicians are on the road, in addition to glad-handing and baby-kissing. One nearby village had a big rally earlier this week, with hundreds of plastic chairs laid out neatly in rows. There was a scaffolding dais that was being draped with party flags while the sound engineers struggled to test the audio system even as the party faithful were arriving. 

Bunting and flags are everywhere together with hundreds of posters portraying images of the candidates. In this part of Kerala, they all bear a remarkable family likeness. They all have a broad smile with perfect white teeth; they have thick black hair and a very bushy, neatly-trimmed moustache. They all wear a ground-length dhoti, and a plain, short-sleeved, open-necked shirt. Yes, they are mostly men.

I am always amused to see the hammer and sickle stencilled on walls and printed on leaflets and flyers. In my youth, this was the symbol of oppression; of drab people from drab countries that were united under Russia in plots to destroy all the good things in life - like cricket and the BBC Home Service.
Here in India, the communists all look quite normal, and probably a bit more fun than some of the earnest career-politicians in the other parties. 

I wonder if the outcome of the elections will make much difference to the one sixth of the global population who live in India.
Looking back on the country since I first came here in 1970, it's made amazing progress. Maybe it's the imperial heritage of parliamentary democracy.

Or maybe they're just good at maths.