Syeda Zara Kazmi
For over seven decades, India’s vibrant democracy has stood as a beacon of pluralism and rights in a tumultuous region. As the world’s largest democracy, it showcased that a diverse nation could uphold lofty constitutional ideals while securing freedom and representation for all citizens, regardless of faith, caste or creed. However, recent years have seen that democratic edifice steadily undermined from within by a concerted erosion of institutional integrity, civic freedoms, and social cohesion. A range of anti-democratic markers – from suppression of dissent and minority persecution to electoral irregularities and abuse of constitutional norms – have converged, signaling an unmistakable backslide by the Modi-led government towards outright authoritarianism. Unless urgently corrected, India risks squandering its democratic birthright. No examination of Indian democracy’s current perils is complete without a candid assessment of the divisive words and deeds of PM Narendra Modi himself. As head of the Hindu nationalist BJP party, Modi has frequently resorted to incendiary rhetoric that questions the patriotism of religious minorities and casts them as urdering societal threats. In a shocking speech in December 2023, Modi stunningly claimed “The Muslim population is growing so rapidly that soon India’s Hindus will cease to be a majority in their own homeland.” This blatantly false trope of a “Muslim demographic threat” defies census data showing the rate of Muslim population growth is actually declining over time. Such fearmongering rhetoric from the nation’s highest leader has directly enabled a systemic targeting of Muslim citizens’ rights, livelihoods and physical safety by Hindu supremacist groups acting with impunity. From lynchings and church attacks to discriminatory citizenship laws, an unmistakable pattern has emerged of an agenda to establish Hindu majoritarianism at the expense of India’s celebrated pluralism. The PM’s overreach extended to unilaterally stripping the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status in August 2019 – defying United Nations resolutions and inflaming tensions in an already restive region. Thousands were preventatively detained and an oppressive security crackdown imposed in what Modi’s government euphemistically dubbed a “return to normalcy.” Modi’s authoritarian impulses extend beyond the mistreatment of minorities. In a recent stunning move emblematic of his disdain for institutional checks and balances, the elected Chief Minister of Delhi, ArvindKejriwal, was abruptly arrested in late March 2024 on murky corruption charges. Kejriwal, a vocal Modi critic, had repeatedly accused the PM of attempting to bully the Delhi regional government into submission for his own political motives. The dubious circumstances of the high-profile arrest – with a compliant judiciary and media mostly turning a blind eye – plainly evoke memories of political score-settling common in dictatorial regimes.These high-handed actions from Modi indicate his increasingly personalized consolidation of power across India’s democratic institutions. With loyalists occupying key posts in agencies from the Election Commission to law enforcement, Modi appears intent on establishing himself as an unaccountable strongman through the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of checks and balances. Indeed, even a cursory survey of India’s imperiled democratic pillars lays bare how precipitously freedom has decayed under Modi’s tenure: The independent media faces escalating government retaliation and economic strangulation for any critical coverage. Over 30 journalists currently languish in jail on sedition charges or trumped-up allegations of supporting terrorism through their reporting. Civil society and peaceful protests remain under constant siege through excessive force and arbitrary detentions, with activists and dissidents routinely shipped off to undisclosed locations. The notoriously vague Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) has become a go-to cudgel against critics. The legitimacy of elections remains clouded by credible evidence of voter suppression, polling process mismanagement, and partisan bias from oversight institutions that once served as exemplars of propriety. At every turn, Modi deploys populist rhetoric demonizing minorities alongside a systematic campaign of democratic deconsolidation, seeking to replace pluralism with a monomyth of Hindu nationalism. The consequences risk upending 75 years of democratic growth and ushering in an era of authoritarian intolerance out of step with India’s eclectic traditions. Enduring democratic values require constant vigilance and defense. On this score, India’s people, civic institutions, and the global democratic community increasingly face a moral imperative to speak out. The greatest democracy on earth did not survive British colonial subjugation just to succumb to virulent nativism and strongman politics within. India’s citizens – minority and majority alike – have sacrificed too much to see their freedoms and pluralism stripped away by the cynical ambitions of an aspiring autocrat. The world watches apprehensively as this onetime beacon of democratic empowerment teeters between a return to its First Principles or a freefall into single minded demagogic repression. If Modi’s India is to remain worthy of its grand democratic inheritance, then its people must soon find their voice in denouncing such dimming of the republican flame before it fully extinguishes under this prime minister’s naked aspirations towards dictatorship.
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