DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL-DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA - FOCUS ON TAMIL-NADU

India's relative success at electoral politics is not due entirely to the long period of British imperial ''tutelage.'' In light of new research on precolonial state formation, we can find elements in India's indigenous political values which support the perpetuation of electoral democracy. However, some elements in the precolonial legacy also support the expansion of ethnic conflict in the context of electoral campaigning. The author illustrates these points with material from the history of premodern and modern Tamil Nadu, a state in south India. She argues that particularism and segmentation would be the characteristics of a truly indigenous Indian democracy.