75 years after independence, what future for Indian democracy?

The Red Fort is pictured during preparations for India's Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi on August 12, 2021. © AFP - SAJJAD HUSSAIN

Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

14 mins

This August 15, 2021, the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of India's accession to independence begin in New Delhi, with the wave of the saffron-white-green tricolor flag.

As tradition dictates, it was the Indian Prime Minister who hoisted the flag on the ramparts of the historic Red Fort, before delivering his speech to the nation calling on the Indians to remember those who helped liberate the country after two centuries of British colonization.

Publicity

Read more

Independent India is 75 years old.

This is an opportunity to retrace the trajectory of this country which is considered to be one of the rising powers of the globe.

The founding fathers of modern India had laid the foundations of a federal, democratic and secular country, but the Hindu nationalists who have ruled the country for seven years have constantly questioned the pluralist and liberal model, eroding the country's democratic institutions.

What future for Indian democracy?

Combined responses from Jules Naudet, sociologist * and Gilles Verniers, political scientist **.

RFI: Is India still the “

biggest democracy in the world

”?

Jules Naudet

: There is not much left of Indian democracy, insofar as during the last seven years, the government of Narendra Modi has striven to weaken democratic institutions and to extinguish all sources of dissent one by one. and criticism. This government has weakened NGOs by preventing them from receiving financial support from abroad. He took advantage of the coronavirus crisis to muzzle journalists who criticized his catastrophic handling of the pandemic. It demands, with a sense of understated euphemism, that social networks like Facebook or Twitter control false information and content likely to "

disturb public order.

".

In the middle of the second wave of the pandemic which was particularly deadly in India, when the Supreme Court urged the central government to take charge of the crisis, the latter reacted by responding to the judges that "

an overzealous judicial intervention, even if intentional, can lead to unintended and unintended consequences

”.

The government urged the court to trust the executive.

We are in the process of killing the rule of law which began before the health crisis.

When the executive asks the judiciary to "

trust

" it, we can legitimately worry!

Gilles Verniers

: What has been taking place in India since 2014 is practically a change of political regime. The Bharatiya Janata Party (the Indian People's Party, BJP), the ruling party in New Delhi, enjoys a vast majority in parliament. He uses these powers to profoundly transform the nature of democracy in India. The process took place in two phases: during the first phase, during Narendra Modi's first term, from 2014 to 2019, it involved disseminating anti-minority Muslim and Christian speeches through vigilant groups attached to the Hindu nationalist nebula. From 2019, with the second victory of the BJP, we are witnessing a change in the nature and pace of intervention of Hindu nationalists,who now rely on the mechanisms of power to transform the nature of the regime and that of the state. The government has introduced a whole series of laws which favor the construction of an “ethnic democracy” or identity where the powers are at the service of the majority community, in this case the Hindus. This is the meaning of the change in status of the state of Kashmir which deprives this only Indian state with a Muslim majority of representative political institutions. The new citizenship laws introduced by the government have for the first time imposed a religious criterion for the acquisition of nationality. The objective is clearly to establish a Hindu nation,with the adequacy between national identity and the identity of the majority group and where minorities are relegated to a secondary status. It is really towards this model, inspired somewhat by the system of the “Israeli Jewish State”, that India is heading.

One would have thought that Indian institutions, reputed to be vibrant and free, such as the press, the judiciary or the electoral commission, would better resist these abuses of democracy and the rule of law.

Why was this not the case?

Gilles Verniers

: You know, institutions work if we let them work. Historically, Indian institutions have not always resisted well in the face of authoritarian powers. Take the example of the period of state of emergency that India experienced between 1975 and 1977, under Indira Gandhi. The judiciary had gone to bed. The press then tried to resist, but was quickly brought to heel. For the institutions to do their work of counter-power, a democratic framework is needed, a rule of law whose prerogatives are recognized by all. Otherwise, institutions find it difficult to fully play their role. This is currently the case in India where Parliament has barely met since the legislative elections of 2019. At the head of the Supreme Court,we have seen a succession of “Chief Justice” who are not necessarily controlled by the government, but who have elective affinities with power. The independence of the electoral commission is also questioned. It is these drifts as well as the spectacular increase in attacks on civil and religious freedoms that explain why India is now losing its rank in international rankings, to the point of being demoted to the rank of countries "until being demoted to the rank of countries "until being demoted to the rank of countries "

partially free

s ”by the NGO Freedom House and“

electoral autocracies

”by the Swedish V-Dem institute.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures after his speech to the nation during a ceremony to celebrate India's 74th Independence Day, which marks the end of British colonial rule, at the Red Fort in New Delhi August 15, 2020 © AFP - PRAKASH SINGH

Jules Naudet

: We are not yet in a situation of perfect dictatorship. On the other hand, what we have is a populist, ultra-authoritarian regime, founded on the charismatic figure of Narendra Modi. However, the latter's political legitimacy is above all anchored in the north of India, while he does not exercise the same influence on public opinion in the southern states, nor in Bengal and Maharashtra. . With elections recently lost in a number of these regional states, it is very likely that the support that the government has in the upper assembly (equivalent to the Senate, Editor's note) will be weakened, preventing it from going further in the realization of his agenda for the Hinduization of India.

For many observers of Indian political life, the defeats of Narendra Modi's party in the recent regional elections reflect the anger of voters against the central government because of its catastrophic management of the second wave of the pandemic which has claimed millions of people. dead in India. How to explain that the Modi government, which prides itself on bringing the country into the digital age, was so unprepared to face the pandemic?

Gilles Verniers

: One might indeed think that a great catastrophe is an opportunity for an authoritarian and populist political leader to play the role of the providential leader.

Narendra Modi made a fundamental mistake in declaring victory over the pandemic prematurely, as he did at the United Nations podium last September or at the Davos Forum, instead of preparing the country for a second wave that was much more ferocious than the first.

The triumphalism at the top of the state, the concentration of power and the cult of a leader who would be the source of all ideas mean that those responsible for health issues have paid no attention to signals from the field or to reports. awarded by the scientific community announcing the imminence of a new wave.

Jules Naudet

: The management of the Covid-19 pandemic has been revealing of the incompetence of public governance of the Modi government. The register of this Prime Minister is the populist register. It is based on a kind of resentment of Indian citizens against the English-speaking elite. Modi has exploited this resentment by presenting himself as India's champion of vernacular languages ​​in the face of the educated elites who form the infrastructure of public governance that has been built in the wake of successive governments since independence. As Modi was in a clientelist logic, he placed allies, not necessarily the most competent, in positions of responsibility, thus depriving himself of the most effective executives. To this first populist mechanism is added a second mechanism, which is anti-scientism,whose origins can be found in the "

hindutva

”(Hinduism), the ideological matrix of Hindu nationalists Deeply anti-scientist, this ideology opposes the supremacy of Hindu religious traditions to the forces of science.

In the midst of the second wave of the pandemic, we saw the Minister of Health himself, as well as doctors and other chief ministers of the regions, defend drugs made from urine and cow dung.

This explosive mixture of anti-elitism and anti-scientism has averted the eyes of scientists who sounded the alarm bells.

What impact could the setbacks of his health policy have on the political fate of Narendra Modi?

Gilles Verniers

: Since the health crisis linked to the particularly deadly second wave of the pandemic, Modi's popularity has been declining. This is the first time since 2014 that the Indian Prime Minister has lost points in the polls. We can say that there is now a before and an after pandemic, but it is impossible to say, three years before the legislative elections, whether the catastrophic management of the second wave of Covid-19 will be sanctioned at the ballot box. Narendra Modi's future depends on the ability of the Indian opposition to come together. As for the historical matrix of the Hindu movement, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Movement), on which the BJP depends, it will continue to support Narendra Modi as long as its leaders analyze that he is the one who will make them win. the next election.

Jules Naudet

: What amplifies the internal criticism of Narendra Modi is the fact that the upper middle classes, long protected by their networks and their privileges which gave them the impression of being able to escape the fate of the poor masses, see theirs die indifferently, just like the poorest. This heightens their resentment towards power, when they have been the strongest supporters of its liberal policies. Modi is undeniably going through a credibility crisis. Even the mythology built by the "spin doctors" of the prime minister around this single Prime Minister, who is only married to his country, turns to the disadvantage of the person concerned. Those who were shocked by his extremely cold and indifferent way of reacting to the announcements of the Covid dead,say to themselves that since he has no wife or family, he cannot feel the slightest empathy for those who have lost a loved one. Also geo-strategically, Modi suffers from the loss of credibility. He could not keep his promise to deliver vaccines to developing countries, as he had promised, and must now leave the field open to China. Today, this alone plays the role of donor of vaccines to poor countries, while amassing soldiers at the Indian borders. European allies are not left out. During the recent India-Europe summit, they took advantage of the weakening of the Indian government to remind Narendra Modi that human rights were important.Modi suffers from the loss of credibility. He could not keep his promise to deliver vaccines to developing countries, as he had promised, and must now leave the field open to China. Today, this alone plays the role of donor of vaccines to poor countries, while amassing soldiers at the Indian borders. European allies are not left out. During the recent India-Europe summit, they took advantage of the weakening of the Indian government to remind Narendra Modi that human rights were important.Modi suffers from the loss of credibility. He could not keep his promise to deliver vaccines to developing countries, as he had promised, and must now leave the field open to China. Today, this alone plays the role of donor of vaccines to poor countries, while amassing soldiers at the Indian borders. European allies are not left out. During the recent India-Europe summit, they took advantage of the weakening of the Indian government to remind Narendra Modi that human rights were important.while amassing soldiers at the Indian borders. European allies are not left out. During the recent India-Europe summit, they took advantage of the weakening of the Indian government to remind Narendra Modi that human rights were important.while amassing soldiers at the Indian borders. European allies are not left out. During the recent India-Europe summit, they took advantage of the weakening of the Indian government to remind Narendra Modi that human rights were important.   

* Jules Naudet is a sociologist at the Center for Indian and South Asian Studies (EHESS-CNRS) and co-editor in chief of the online journal La Vie des idées (online journal of the Collège de France).

** Gilles Verniers is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University (India) and Associate Researcher at the Center for Human Sciences, New Delhi.  

Newsletter

Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• India