In 1941, there were only eleven democracies in the world—Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US and Chile. This number went up in the second half of the century as democracies were established—in the most difficult circumstances possible—such as in Germany, India and South Africa. Further, decolonization created new democracies in Africa and Asia, and regimes became democratic in Greece (1974), Spain (1975), Argentina (1983), Brazil (1985) and Chile (1989). The Soviet Union collapsed, creating many more democratic countries in central Europe. Democracy took on varying institutional forms, based on the basic principle of a government made up ‘of the people’ as opposed to a composition of the elite, such that in the year 2000, American think tank Freedom House classified 120 countries, or 63 per cent of the world, as democracies.7
However, in this millennium, there have been many setbacks to the establishment of democracy. Hegemonic powers have initiated war on other countries in the name of establishing democracy, leading to millions of lives lost, and immense wealth and history destroyed.
It is true that dictators have been brought down in undemocratic regimes. The ‘Arab Spring’ began with the people’s revolution in Tunisia in 2010 as they brought down a dictator and established a representative government. Other countries in the region, such as Egypt and Libya, also tried, but their fate was different.
It was 2011, and I was standing in the middle of Tahrir Square in Cairo, carrying a placard that read ‘Indians for Egyptians’. Thousands of us were in the midst of the Egyptian uprising against President Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled the country for over thirty years. Standing amid a sea of humanity screaming for freedom and democracy, I was hit by the familiarity of these two words: ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. I had missed hearing of them since I moved from Paris to Cairo a year and a half earlier.
At the time that I had relocated to Cairo, I was twenty-nine years old and had just quit the race to build a ‘career’. I chose to exit my successful investment banking career, left my job managing a hedge fund in Paris, and moved towards doing everything that I truly loved. This meant that I chose to live in Cairo, where my partner at the time was also living, where I read books and wrote opinion pieces for various Indian newspapers on social issues, and developed my not-for-profit organization working for improving the status of women in the Middle East and India.
I thought I had adjusted to living in Mubarak’s Egypt. In the old and dusty city of Cairo, even as an ordinary foreigner, my movements were always under the scanner. The local groceries delivery boys, for instance, would report information about me to the authorities, however irrelevant it may be to the working of the Egyptian government. Inquiries would be made by government officials each time the day after I had invited a large group of non-Egyptian guests to my home. The government had a way of knowing my change of home address or job, and they would inform me with attempted subtlety that they were tracking my movements. For example, just a day after my partner and I relocated to a new apartment in Cairo, we found in our letterbox a magazine whose cover loudly proclaimed ‘India–Egypt friendship’. It was published by the Foreign Ministry, and addressed to both of us.
When I heard of the likelihood of the uprising one day before it happened, I was tempted to brush it off as a rumour. At that time it had seemed so implausible to believe that the Egyptians would rebel against the regime. But it was a marvellous phenomenon—on 25 January 2011, 90,000 people who had never dared to raise a word against the establishment flocked not just to Tahrir Square in Cairo, but also to the streets of Aswan, Ismailiya, Mahallah and other Egyptian cities, screaming ‘kaifaya’ (enough).
On the second day of the uprising, I joined the Egyptians at Tahrir Square—once a regular traffic roundabout, now a full-fledged revolution ecosystem. The military with its guns, anti-regime activists from every rank of society, the international media with their cameras and, occasionally pro-regime supporters on horse, donkey and camel back—they were all there. The picture was complete and incredible.
I stood in Tahrir every day thereafter, adding my energy to the masses. As journalists were being targeted by Mubarak’s forces, I sneaked out several editorials to the Times of India in New Delhi by fax, reporting whatever I saw and felt. Emails were being scanned, social media was completely blocked, mobile phone lines were cut, and low-flying choppers over our roofs watched us round the clock. At night, households in each neighbourhood would take turns to guard the roads, bridges, museums and other public property in their area. At daybreak, we would pick up brooms, sweep the streets and man the traffic intersections ourselves, because these public services had been suspended.
From this intimate perspective, in my view, the uprising was fuelled by the Egyptian people’s great expectations of more jobs and prosperity, and they saw the fall of Mubarak and the establishment of democracy merely as a means to fulfil them. In comparison to the elite in their country, they felt so desperately deprived of resources, power, jobs and opportunities that they were now ready to lay down their lives
