'Full Text | 'Damage to Indian Democracy Under Modi Is Lasting': Pratap Bhanu Mehta'

[Sukla Sen]

To be sure, it's very much a dynamic situation; at one level - we're in the process of a constantly accelerating downslide, while at another, resistances are being waged and the one by the farmers has proved a very big success and to a significant extent has elevated the mood of the actual and potential resistors.

While the journey to the bottom continues, the prospect of a reversal also looking somewhat brighter.

It's a complex and a very crucial phase.

If, in 2024, Modi gets back to power, "India" and Indian "democracy" is just doomed.

Right at this very moment, there's still some space to fight back - needs be fully made use of.

<<I think the description you gave is accurate. India has become more communal; India has become more authoritarian – and I don’t think anybody actually can contest those descriptions. I mean, and you know we don’t have to sort of get into what the prime minister’s intentions are, but we just have to look at the behavioural attributes of institutions: when the Supreme Court refuses to take habeas corpus seriously; when most or at least the television media (I mean, you know… as you know better than anyone else in a sense…) ceases to play the role of the fourth state, I mean you can just go institution after institution, right.

When, as you just saw, in Kashi Vishwanath, the prime minister in a sense is projected as this combination of Shankaracharya and Shivaji. I mean, the entire liturgy is structured around him, this is not just a recasting of Indian democracy, but it is a kind of recasting of the religion and religious forms of Hinduism in a very radical way. You can just pick any attribute it’s very hard to contest the impression that, you know, India has become more communal and authoritarian.

I think, the only qualification I would give to this, and I think that’s where the BJP supporters will push back, is that there is a genuine democratic energy to this authoritarianism which is to say that it does have popular roots and that’s what makes it more disquieting in some ways. Modi is a popular figure he has managed to, in a sense, transform India’s institutional landscape by winning elections. And I think that’s what makes this moment much more complicated to think about.>>

(Excerpted from: <https://m.thewire.in/article/rights/full-text-damage-to-indian-democracy-under-modi-is-lasting-pratap-bhanu-mehta/amp>.)