Abstract: Why did democracy take root and thrive in India when it struggled to survive in every other poor, post-colonial society? Conventional accounts of democracy unequivocally proclaim "no middle class, no democracy." India was born as a very poor country with a miniscule middle class, yet its democracy has never faltered — not even under the strain of the 1975-1977 Emergency. Salvatore Babones argues that Western political science has misunderstood the robustness of Indian democracy because it has failed to see that poor people can build a strong civil society even in the absence of a large middle class. Basing his analyses on the theories of Emile Durkheim, he takes a sociological approach to the study of Indian democracy in which nation-building takes priority over institution-building. In his view, Indian democracy succeeded because India's colonial-era nation-builders laid foundations that were strong enough to support Indian democracy through the many challenges of its formative years.