'India's greatest moments yet to come'

New Delhi, Sep 28 India's proudest achievement has been its record as a liberal democracy and while the transition from colony to a functioning republic might not have been perfect, the best is yet to come if it's billion-plus citizens are given a chance to achieve their full potential, says a new book that condenses 5,000 years of Indian history from the ruins of ancient civilisations to an emerging global superpower into less than 300 pages.

"India's proudest achievement has been, without doubt, its almost unbroken record as a liberal democracy. When India finally achieved independence in 1947, many foreign commentators believed that the country would not survive: linguistic and regional differences would make Balkanisation inevitable; caste was alien to the concept of equality and therefore democracy, while high levels of illiteracy were at odds with political expression.

"India's transition from colony to a modern functioning republic has not been perfect...Yet over more than seven decades it has successfully conducted seventeen general elections and hundreds of state polls, with participation rates that regularly outstrip that of the world's next largest democratic nation, the United States," Australian author John Zubrzycki, who has served in the country as a diplomat and as a foreign correspondent, writes in "The Shortest History Of India"

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