The past few years have put democratic institutions of the country in a spot amid cult dominance

India has been a democratic country for 75 years, but in the last five to six years, the debate about democracy and authoritarianism has suddenly hit the conscience of Indian academics, media channels, and public space. The question is, why is this the case in the last few years even while the country celebrates the 75 years of Independence and democratic life?

Why are we so perplexed and doubtful of our democratic system’s success after 75 years of its accomplishment? Is it because of rising trends or apprehension of authoritarian tendencies? If we carefully observe the debate, we can conclude that this indeed is the case in the minds of the people.

The first apprehension of this trend comes from the politics of labelling the people into electorally wanted or unwanted categories. Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar (June 6, 2022) in an article said that after July 7, 2022, the current Bharatiya Janata Party will not have a single MP or MLA from the Muslim community, which according to the 2011 Census comprises 14.2 or approximately 172.2 million people in the country. It isolates and reduces the Muslims to politically insignificant constituency, which is similar to authoritarian policy of anti-Semitism. Besides, the nature of politics is divisive and creates a binary geography of friends and foes, which is nourished by rewarding the dissemination of mindless separatist or demonized statements of party leaders, short quotes, videos or messages.

The idea of an internal enemy or outsider living inside is constantly invented or reinvented to create a politics of anxiety among the majority and to polarize them in a fashion that reduces their politically diverse or heterogeneity interests into homogeneous interests. A scientific justification for this aversion of the minority is given through pathologizing or presenting them as conspirator, traitor, unfit so that they can be locked up in the minds of the majority in the line of social Darwinist thinking of survival of the fittest. This trend is so obvious that it draws popular attention towards the challenges of democracy.

Another factor explaining the challenges of democracy and rise of authoritarianism in India can be located into new trends which set up a new moral conscience that gives priority to duties over rights. In a programme titled “Azadi Ke Amrit Mahotsav Se Swarnim Bharat Ke Ore,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that “for the last 75 years, we have only kept talking about rights, fighting for rights, and wasting our time” that kept the country weak. He suggested that for the next 25 years, India must adopt a new vision that prioritizes duties over rights. However, it is noteworthy that he emphasized the duties of the people to the nation rather than duties of the government to the people. The emphasis on duty is situated in an intriguing analogy between the time of colonial rule, when people suffered, struggled, and sacrificed for national freedom, and the present situation, in which an independent nation, though free, still requires sacrifice and suffering for an imagined or utopian future vision of a nation devoid of any socio-political and economic crisis.

Any appeal to suffering is an aesthetic duty that deserves people’s praise, because it is a means to achieve national glory. It can be better dissected by examining the government’s justification for the 2016 demonetization policy, the Goods and Services Tax policy 2017, the Farm Bills of 2020, and the recent Aganiveer scheme, in which the government makes an emotional appeal for the approval of these schemes founded on the imagined cheerful future that can be achieved by prioritizing the people’s duties over their rights and the government’s rights over its duties.

These challenges are exacerbated by views that regard obedience to authority as a virtue and resistance or questioning as evil. It is based on the idea that the leader is infallible or an emperor endowed with superhuman qualities, and the popular media invests in portraying him in such a way that people become curious about what he eats, how many hours he works, and his childhood adventures, which elevates him above criticism. Its goal is to distance him from infallible people, bureaucrats, opposition leaders, and his own ministers, so that failure can be blamed on them rather than on him.

It tactfully moved his acts and choices out of the realm of scientific justification or criticism and into that of religion and faith. Any effort to contest the supreme leader’s choice or action is viewed as a plot or an act of heresy, not just against him but also against the nation.

It fosters an irrationalism based on what Umberto Eco refers to in The New York Review article (June 22, 1995) as “the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation”. In Indian politics, this pattern is fairly obvious; if we look at the last ten years of parliament’s legislative business in terms of passing the bills, we will find that approximately 41 per cent of the bills were passed without adequate debate and discussion, and without involving the standing and consultative committees and stakeholders.

This trend is also evident in the state legislature, where, according to the Annual Review of State Law 2020, 59 per cent of bills were passed in a single day without adequate time for scrutiny. Any attempt by the Opposition to call legislation, bills, or laws into question is undermined by eliciting an emotional response and reaction from supreme leaders through a new rhetoric of action just for the sake of action. The primacy of action over thinking and deliberation is a concerning sign of the rising trend of authoritarianism.

The most important of these are the centralising discursive practices pushed and disseminated through the media by the business tycoon in order to free the welfare state from its democratic commitment to social welfare and allow for rapid privatisation and liberalisation of the economy without delay or dissent. The attempt to proclaim democratic right to dissent inevitably morphs into an attempt to obstruct national glory and is conspired by malign intention of the Opposition, and thus must be dealt with immediately, with or without due process of law.

Here, what is interesting about the discourse is that the Opposition is a powerful evil that, though not able to harness its power in electoral success, is so effective at misleading people for large protests and movements. Therefore, it must be dealt with by deploying democratic tactics that justify and necessitate authoritarian actions, revealing how mechanistically authoritarianism uses democracy and democracy uses authoritarianism.

In conclusion, the current discussion about democratic challenges is quite pertinent and clear, and it requires a critical examination of its pervasive and silent discourse.

(The author is an Assistant Professor at Bhagini Nivedita College, University of Delhi.)