Democracy under Siege: Unleashing Democratic Regression in India

In the era of 21st century where democracy is the only worthwhile game in town, the political landscape of India has parted ways from pluralism. The ship of its fate has been sailing in troubled waters of dictatorial tendencies. This ugly reality is revealed by recent suppression of dissent. The Muslims are on the brunt end of this stick.

Political engineering is engulfing the current political activity. The alarming regularity is witnessed when the setting Chief Minister of Delhi Arwind Kejriwal, without any conviction, was imprisoned as reported by Hindustan Times. Similarly, two out of three of the new election commissioners were appointed on political grounds. Furthermore, freezing of the Congress bank account cast a doubt on the credibility of competing for public office. As the electoral battle looms, both the Congress and the Communist party have charged with penalty of 1700 crore and 1 crore respectively.

         India is moving towards a consolidated polity under the notion of one nation, one party. The Swedish V-Dem Institute (Varieties of Democracies) has labelled it an electoral autocracy. According to this report, the level of the playing field has been significantly curbed. The incumbent regime of the BJP creates fissures by using sedition, defamation, and counter terrorism laws to mute its critics. It is turning into a dystopian state. The limitation of breathing space for Muslims unveils the blueprint for BJP’s aspiration for India.

       BJP, for the sake of racial as well as religious superiority, following in the footprints of Hitler, is sloganeering an anti-Muslim rhetoric. Recently, Prime Minister Modi delivered an inflammatory speech during election campaign rally in which he tagged Muslims as ‘Infiltrator’ as per Al Jazeera’s report. India, once used to be a secular state, has been mired in religious pride. Falsely, one of the media anchors justified the benefits of drinking cow’s urine with scientific reasoning. Similarly, in ‘India Today’ culture of wearing toe rings was linked with normalization of blood pressure in women’s uterus. More than that, it is also asserted that 10 grams of cow’s ghee produces a ton of oxygen.

If you look at Indian society, it’s a society made up of minorities. There’s nobody who’s not a minority, whether it’s ethnicity, caste or religion. But the whole effort now is to confect a political constituency – an ethnic or a religious constituency that can coalesce into a political majority in order to deal with this model of representative democracy. That process has been a hundred years in the making in this part of the world.
Arundthati Roy

          Media, playing the role of key player for BJP based government, is fracturing communal harmony. Different anchors, testimony to the facts, are not only involved in the hate speech against Muslims but also serve as conduit for disseminating misinformation. Arman Chopra pledged to the Government of Rajasthan for demolition of a temple in the response bulldozed mosque’s gate in Jahangir. Similarly, Arnab Goswami, a renowned journalist, incalculably accused Muslims of Palghar lynching, which was denied by home minister of Maharashtra. Furthermore, Amish Devgan, an anchor of news 18, used vile disgraceful language against prominent Muslim Sufi Khawaja Mohiuddin Chishti. The champion of democracy, the west, has turned a blind eye to democratic regression in India.

  A glance on current situation of minorities in India, not only Muslims, validates the discriminatory behaviour of authorities. The BJP leaders and its affiliated groups portray Muslims as threat to national security. Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, concluded that “The government has not only failed to protect Muslims and other minorities from attacks but is providing political patronage and cover for bigotry.”  It became the daily practice for the government to link any peaceful protests with separatist groups. Similarly, the protests of thousands of farmers against the farm laws in 2022 have been connected to the Khalistan’s agendas. Even the premier in Lok Sabha called the peaceful protestors parasites.

 What would be the fate of civic rule in India? Are populist narratives impeding the democratic endeavours in India? The populist political party BJP wins the support of masses by blaming opposition, sometimes even neighbours, for the problems facing India. The extent of this polarization is so deep that the watchdog of democracy has indeed become a mad dog. This election in India will yield the result in the favour of the populist regime. This begs the question on the fate of civic liberties and social justice in India.       

         India is under the clash of religions and civilizations. Many intellectuals’ fears about the future fate of India as BJP burns the midnight oil to get super majority in Lok Sabha. After settling into power, it seems that BJP will change the constitutional structure of India. Modi always makes racial pride as the centre of his policies, in spite of them impeding cultural, regional, and religious harmony. It seems that the notions of India being the world’s largest democratic state, a secular and a pluralistic society is a distant memory now. Those days are long gone when India was seen as a beacon of hope in South Asia.