Adding Insult to India, Our Ugly Mirror to Failing Democracy?

Can “democratic” nations built in vastly different eras, slowly facing a dramatic incursion of highly biased religiosity into controlling political elites, sustain true pluralistic representation in national governance? It is a very relevant inquiry on the relevance of secular political systems during periods of hyper-accelerating change. The United States, founded in 1776 and having struggled through a Civil War and its continuing aftermath, is witnessing the virtual total takeover of a mainstream political party (the GOP) by a fundamentalist evangelical movement. India, founded in 1947 (and celebrating her 75th anniversary), has watched the evolution of a virtual takeover of its political governance by a Hindu nationalist party (Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, literally, the “Indian People’s Party”). The answer to the opening question is anything but clear.

We’ve seen parallel movements in Europe (e.g., Hungary’s nationalist Fidesz party and, while only 3% of the nation is in Europe, Turkey’s Cumhur İttifak party). While we have lambasted the Muslim extremism in theocracies like Shiite Iran or Sunni Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, nations that do not pretend to be democracies, both India and the United States, which still claim to be representative democracies, seem to be veering rapidly away from pluralism towards Hindu nationalism, and White Christian nationalism, respectively.

In the United States, our Founding Father’s antipathy against cities vs the countryside, formulated in 1789 when 94% of the population was primarily engaged in farming, created several constitutional biases favoring rural America: how a constitutional amendment would pass, two US Senators from each state regardless of population, an apparent tolerance for gerrymandering to dilute urban voting, etc. In India, born in 1947 of a violent split between what became a predominantly Muslim Pakistan in the north and a primarily Hindu India in the south, those Muslim minorities (and other non-Hindu religions) that remained in India have faced decades of discrimination, particularly since the 2014 demise of the Congress Party and the ascension of Narendra Modi’s BJP. With Modi as Prime Minister, minorities have suffered terribly. Both nations claim to have successfully separated church and state, but…

Symbolically, “beef eaters” (mostly Muslims but also including Christians and others) have incurred the wrath, often facing beatings and even murder, of faithful Hindus who consider cows to be sacred. Modi and sympathetic regional state governors and local legislatures have slowly crushed these minorities, arresting members of the press who oppose them, shutting down newspapers along the way, and letting Hindu nationalists literally get away with murder.

In an August 15th editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Indian born Akhila L. Ananth, associate professor of criminal justice at Cal State Los Angeles, explains her view of Indian politics: “Modi has waged a political war against poor people, farmers, Indigenous and caste-oppressed groups [particularly those at the bottom of the caste system: Dalits] and Muslims, and because of that, Hindu nationalists now feel free to brutalize those communities. In 2019, he abrogated the semi-sovereign status of Kashmir, the territory trapped between Indian and Pakistani military rule. Thousands of people protested when Modi’s government approved a bill that set religion as a condition for citizenship by granting citizenship to only non-Muslims fleeing neighboring countries.

“In March, a school district in the southern state of Karnataka — where my family’s roots are — banned students from wearing hijab. Every day reports pile up on social media of Muslims being slain or sexually assaulted in India at the hands of Hindu nationalists. Meanwhile, journalists critical of Modi have been silenced, incarcerated and harassed. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and other nongovernmental organizations have had to halt or limit operations in India.”

Writing for the August 14th Associated Press, Sheikh Saaliq explains India’s fall in the eyes of democracy watchdogs the world over: “[Despite India’s clinging to the notion, it is the world’s largest democracy] experts and critics say the country has been gradually departing from some commitments and argue the backsliding has accelerated since Modi came to power in 2014. They accuse his populist government of using unbridled political power to undermine democratic freedoms and preoccupying itself with pursuing a Hindu nationalist agenda.

“‘The decline seems to continue across several core formal democratic institutions ... such as the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information, and freedom of association,’ said Staffan I. Lindberg, a political scientist and director of the V-Dem Institute, a Sweden-based research center that rates the health of democracies… Modi’s party denies this. A spokesperson, Shehzad Poonawalla, said India has been a ‘thriving democracy’ under Modi’s rule and has witnessed ‘reclamation of the republic.’

“Most democracies are hardly immune to strains… The number of countries experiencing democratic backsliding ‘has never been as high’ as in the last decade, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance said last year, adding the U.S. to the list along with India and Brazil.” As I watch elected GOP officials and congressional candidates call for defunding the FBI, labeled a “terrorist” organization by some, as lies continue to motivate the grassroots MAGA base to fight pluralism and favor White Christian autocracy, I wonder how long shades of democracy can still hover above the United States. Or are they fading into oblivion?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the fragility of democracy, based on our general trust (misplaced?) in elected officials to protect constitutional democracy, is a facing rising global test of sustainability.