One of Modi govt’s biggest ‘achievements’ is for the world turn sceptical about India’s democratic ethos

By now, New Delhi’s mandarins must have prepared a standard list of denials of accusations by foreigners about the increasingly frayed nature of Indian democracy.

The visits to India of both the US Defence Secretary, Lloyd James Austin, and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, began with reports that they would raise the question of democracy being under threat in India.

It is a new phenomenon, wholly associated with the present government. Never before did India face any accusation of being undemocratic. Instead, it was lauded for being virtually the only country which did not succumb to dictatorial rule in the post-colonial period and chose the path of being an open society, of being “famously democratic”, as The Economist said.

Since it is quite different now, with various Western think tanks calling India an “electoral autocracy” or “partly free”, one of the tasks of the Indian government has been to fend off such criticism. Keeping in mind the dictum that offence is the best form of defence, Indian spokespersons have even mocked Western critics as “self-appointed custodians of the world who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval”, as External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar put it.

It is unlikely that either Austin or Blinken were ticked off with such words. Instead, the Minister fell back on the BJP’s supposed ‘mission’ of righting “historical wrongs” which the party claims to have proudly undertaken after decades when India was under the “wrong” set of rulers, as per its fallacious contentions.

One of the ‘wrongs’ that was sought to be ‘righted’ by the BJP was by removing the constitutional provision which conferred a special status on Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with the terms under which the former princely state acceded to India. But what was left unsaid was that the process of “correction” required the posting of half a million troops in the Valley, the incarceration of hundreds of politicians and activists and the shutting down of the Internet – measures which are generally associated with an authoritarian regime.

It is anybody’s guess for how long the government’s claims of ‘preserving democracy’ will pass muster with a sceptical world. But the paradox of its assertions conflicting with the ground reality cannot but become more apparent with the passage of time.

One example of the unflattering reality is the recent attempt by the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, to reassure the Muslims that they have nothing to fear since they are the blood brothers of the Hindus with the ‘same DNA’. It is obvious that the soothing words of someone who is regarded as the head of the Hindutva family would not have been necessary in a democracy where all citizens are supposed to be equal irrespective of their creed.

But it is not only Bhagwat’s ‘support’ for Muslims which underlines one aspect of the harsh ground reality, but also the criticism which the RSS chief has faced, probably for the first time, from the Hindu Right who are supposedly on his side of the ideological fence. However, since anti-Muslim sentiments have long been the main feature of the RSS worldview, Bhagwat’s about-turn has raised the hackles of some of his own followers.

The BJP’s reservations about the minorities are a part of its belief that it is only the adherents of the so-called Indic religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism – with their roots in India who are the “true” citizens while the Muslims are “outsiders”. Hence the exclusion of Muslims from the categories of immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who will be allowed to become Indian citizens under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The CAA is one of the “undemocratic” laws which have attracted worldwide censure, much to the BJP’s chagrin, not least because an elderly Muslim protester against the law in New Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh locality, the 82-year-old Bilkis, who was nicknamed the “Dadi (grandmother) of Shaheen Bagh”, was chosen to be among the Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year.

Like the protests against the CAA, the protests against the farm laws too have been lauded all over the world with celebrities like Greta Thunberg and Beyonce lending their support to the cause. Issues such as these, along with the incarceration of prominent social activists on the grounds of being “urban Naxalites”, are some of the reasons why Indian democracy is believed to be under stress.

It is worth noting how other democracies are seemingly more concerned about India joining countries like Russia, Turkey and Hungary where a “recession” of democracies” is taking place, to quote Blinken. It is not only the need of Western world for India to counter China which is behind the concern for the well-being of Indian democracy. India was also seen as a beacon to demonstrate how a large, multicultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic country can remain united because of its pluralism.

An erosion of Indian democracy, therefore, will be a loss not only for India, but also for the world.

(IPA Service)

Views are personal