The world’s largest democracy now actually has the world’s largest population to show for it. Over 1.4 billion people and 945 million registered voters, according to India’s Election Commission. Somehow an old Indian citizen and voter like me has been disenfranchised it seems– or so it appears to me – for why else would my application for a new voter card with change of address to Goa from Delhi, be conveniently ignored. It was in January 2019, when I applied for a new voter card because of a change of address to my parents’ home in Goa, so that I could vote in the 2019 general election. We are now approaching the next parliamentary election in 2024, and I hope I am able to cast my vote at least then. As usual, I suspect this too has to do with unprofessional PR agency bosses and their cronies in BBDO Chennai meddling with the authorities concerned.
Of course, democracy isn’t only about elections and voting, though it is an important aspect of it. It is about every individual, especially every citizen, enjoying certain rights and freedoms granted by the constitution, making everyone equal in the eyes of the law. And on that count, I am afraid, India has been flailing as a democracy for the past couple of decades at least.
But let us start with elections first. This year will see as many as nine states go to assembly elections, and I have already written about the one in the Northeast going to the BJP, while Karnataka threw up a surprise result in the form of the Indian National Congress (INC) returning to power in the state, and by a considerable margin. This was due to a very strong anti-incumbency sentiment among voters, according to media reports. We had all thought that the INC had faded into irrelevance long ago and was reduced to now seeking alliances with other parties in order to succeed at the hustings.
That said, four large and important states have yet to hold their elections after the monsoon season this year: Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana. There is speculation over whether Jammu and Kashmir will have elections at all now, after they have become union territories. But in three of the four states that will go to the polls, it will be a repeat of the Karnataka election, in the sense that the two national parties BJP and INC will contest, head-to-head. Telangana will be quite different as there is a regional party in power there and it will in all probability be a three-cornered fight. It is being reported that BJP is seeking an alliance with Telegu Desam in order to defeat TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samiti). In fact, Telangana could be the decider of whether the southern Indian states stay BJP-mukt (BJP-free), as the BJP always likes to promise a Congress-mukt Bharat.
However, the INC will have a tough time, especially in Rajasthan where the Congress-led state government is already being challenged by party dissidents claiming allegiance to a different leader. In-fighting and factionalism could be the undoing of the INC in Rajasthan. Just as happened in Madhya Pradesh, where despite the INC winning the last state election, the government collapsed due to infighting and the defection of a leader to the BJP. One wonders if the BJP isn’t eyeing another young leader in the form of Sachin Pilot and weakening the INC in Rajasthan this time. The Indian GOP has plenty on its plate to sort out, and not much time in which to resolve these tangles.
Meanwhile, following the news on tele, you’d think that Indian democracy is bright and shining with promise, what with a new parliament building being inaugurated in the capital, New Delhi. Large and sprawling, it has been designed to accommodate hundreds of more lawmakers – in an expanded parliament when the next delimitation exercise can take place. For now, the Indian Supreme Court has put on hold any delimitation exercise till 2026, but the ruling BJP has made its intentions to expand the number of seats quite clear.
The new parliament building being prime minister Modi’s pet vanity project, its inauguration received glowing attention on media. Built by the Tatas, though thankfully not designed by them, it was inaugurated on Hindutva ideologue, Veer Savarkar’s birth anniversary. The PM presided over the entire ceremony from start to finish like a reigning monarch. Replete with elaborate Hindu prayer rituals and ceremonies inside parliament premises and rich symbolism of the sengol (royal sceptre) kind, it seemed to officially – even if metaphorically – place the crown on Modi’s head. The nation’s founding fathers must have all turned in their graves on May 28, 2023.
There was much consternation and uproar in the opposition and among educated liberals in the country who wondered why the President of India was not invited to inaugurate the new parliament, when it should have been her prerogative to do so. Besides, there was the unnecessary sengol controversy, stirred by the BJP’s need to revive some symbol from the past to associate with such an auspicious event. It is believed that the sengol was recommended by seers to C Rajagopalachari who suggested it as a symbol of the handover of power from Lord Mountbatten to Jawaharlal Nehru at a ceremony of the transfer of power in 1947. However, the BJP claims that it has revived a powerful symbol – of what I wonder – which was languishing in Allahabad Museum. I’d say, at least it was kept safe and preserved carefully in a museum.
The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that perhaps the opposition and the liberals had missed the main point. That a new parliament building inauguration should take place on Veer Savarkar’s birth anniversary and with such elaborate religious rituals and ceremonies inside parliament is a clear and brazen flaunting of where the BJP wish to take this country. Some commentators on TV news discussions referred to parliament as “a temple of democracy”; it appears that the powers that be decided to actually bring the temple into parliament! Will somebody tell them that we are still a secular republic under the Indian constitution? That it means separation of religion from the state, with no place in parliament for such whimsies. Until the dreaded day comes when they might decide to rewrite the Constitution itself, as they have been doing with India’s history and with textbooks for so many years. But of course, the BJP is inimically opposed to anything that separates religion from matters of the state, as it goes against the grain of the party’s beliefs and especially with their vision of the New India and Hindu Rashtra.
Meanwhile, there are communal flare-ups from Manipur and West Bengal in the East to Maharashtra in the West, much of which is the ruling party’s creation. Then, there was the terrible triple train collision tragedy in Orissa, in which hundreds of people lost their lives and thousands were injured. The prime minister and the railway minister have promised to take action against the culprits, but as always, these tragedies have a way of quietly disappearing from our newspaper pages and television screens. Because to make the authorities accountable, you need an independent and responsible media – another sign of a vibrant democracy – which has become terribly meek and acquiescent in India in recent decades. You need a strong and independent judiciary as well.
This brings us back to the subject of a democracy guaranteeing freedom and rights to all citizens equally. Despite the fact that the Indian economy has grown faster in these couple of decades, the benefits of that growth have not reached everyone equally. One has been reading about how India has been falling in all the various international indices of freedoms, of transparency, of press freedom, etc. All this, at the same time that our economic growth has been steady, even if slow in many years. At the same time that our economic inequality, both of income and of wealth, have been rising. At the same time that our unemployment and underemployment levels also continue to be intolerably high.
But of course, the Indian government has more pressing matters at hand, such as prime minister Modi’s state visit to the US where he is travelling this week, and where he has been invited to address both houses of the US Congress. He will be hoping that his brush with the world’s most powerful democracy will burnish his global image and that of Indian democracy at home.
Unfortunately, the real fault-lines of the conflict in India’s democracy are not merely between diverse Indian religions, castes, communities and cultures. It is between the elected BJP government and the Indian Constitution, between two competing visions of India. It is coming to a head soon, and no, not even the United States of America can stop it. Only we Indian citizens can.
The animated owl gif that forms the featured image and title of the Owleye column is by animatedimages.org and I am thankful to them.
Peripatetic Perch 