To compare the concept of democracy in India and Europe within a wider project of understanding the relationships between democracy and diversity involves an indeterminacy risk, and a duplication risk. The indeterminacy risk is posed by the concepts of ‘comparison’ and ‘democracy’. Comparison, as is now settled, cannot be cherry-picking, and the content of democracy, admittedly, is indeterminate given the multiple ‘conceptions’ it allows.1 Careful comparison must involve cautious selection of instances of the concept to be compared. However, if the content of the concept is indeterminate, then identifying instances is challenging, making comparison additionally risky