In The Troubling State of India’s Democracy, editors Dinsha Mistree, Šumit Ganguly and Larry Diamond assemble work by leading scholars assessing the conditions of India’s democracy across three dimensions: politics, the state and society. The book provides a thorough analysis of ideological, institutional and social shifts towards nationalist authoritarianism under Modi but is not without hope for India’s future, writes Abidullah Baba.

The Troubling State of India’s Democracy. Dinsha Mistree, Šumit Ganguly, and Larry Diamond (eds.). University of Michigan Press. 2024.

India is frequently acknowledged as the world’s largest democracy. Despite many predictions about their demise, India’s democratic credentials and institutions have endured for more than 70 years, with only a brief aberration from 1975 to 1977. Theorists of democracy have long been perplexed by India. Undeterred by low levels of economic development, widespread poverty, and incredibly intricate social and ethnic divisions India’s democracy has defied the odds. However, India’s status as the world’s largest democracy is facing an unprecedented challenge, with its principles of tolerance and systems of checks and balances coming under attack almost every day. 

The Troubling State of India’s Democracy, a new volume edited by Sumit Ganguly, Dinsha Mistree, and Larry Diamond, advances an argument that, India’s democracy has been in steep decline during the Modi years, and this descent is striking compared with many of its peers (sizable emerging market democracies). Some scholars like Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane and Maya Tudor are of the opinion that India’s democracy has already eroded to the point where the system can no longer be classified as a democratic. A V-Dem report further makes this opinion coherent. Others like Summit Ganguly and Christhope Jafferlot in their analysis appear more sanguine, framing the Indian system as an “illiberal democracy” or an “ethnic democracy”. Although India’s tradition of elections remain largely free and fair-as reaffirmed by the Bhartiya Janta Party’s (BJP) state elections setbacks in 2021-its ideological agenda unfortunately runs counter to India’s liberal democratic credentials in several areas (3-4).   

India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader by elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all. 

The book provides a prismatic account of Indian democracy and its many moorings divided in three parts. Part-I, provides an overview of politics of India. It contends that the fragmentation of the congress (the hegemonic party system) particularly since 1967 created space for and enabled the rise of the BJP because of the exposure of social, ethno-linguistic and regional cleavages. While explaining this phenomenon, Pradeep Chibber and Rahul Verma argue that there has been a profound ideological shift in the electorate. The BJP has been the primary electoral beneficiary of this shift. It has now become the national agenda setter by controlling the master narrative. Meanwhile the congress and the rest of the opposition have been reduced to a reactive role, without being able to coordinate, let alone coalesce, as an opposition.  

One of the contributing authors, Maya Tudor, argues that India’s democracy has entered a new era of decline. Under Narendra Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader by elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all. India’s changing national identity and its subscription of “Ascriptive Nationalism” (a kind of nationalism which suggests that the national community people must be defined by an immutable social group), has critically enabled its democratic decline. Hindu nationalism, argues Tudoe, is not only India’s dominant national narrative today but also the fundamental currency of its contemporary politics.  

In explaining the right-wing populism, the book adopts the methodology of Dutch Political Scientist, Cas Mudde, who has identified three aspects of right-wing populism: anti-elitism; a tendency towards authoritarianism; and a majoritarian hostility towards minorities and immigrants. The right-wing populism has popularised a national narrative imagining India to be a Hindu nation that legitimises minority marginalisation, promotes public polarisation, and centralises a great degree of power in its leader.  

How has the interaction of federalism and democracy evolved over time in India?

The second part of this book takes into account the performance of various institutions and how the ruling political dispensation, has at times blatantly, misused these institutions, thus maintaining control over the state apparatus. The public institutions, like Judiciary had traditionally served as important check on the legislative and executive domain of the ruling party is now gasping to breathe vis-à-vis the onslaught of the BJP juggernaut. Both Bureaucracy and Police, and various investigative agencies like Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and National Investigative Agency (NIA) have been used as handmaidens by the ruling BJP for their partisan objectives.

Kanta Murali argues that there is ample evidence that India under Modi and the BJP is moving towards “competitive authoritarianism”, thereby employing an informal mechanism of coercion and control while maintaining the formal architecture of democracy. She poses some intriguing questions like, how has the interaction of federalism and democracy evolved over time in India? Can federalism act as a check on India’s current political trends? While answering the questions about federal sensitivity, she adopts the classificatory framework of American political scientist, Alferd Stepan, who classifies Indian federation as “demos-enabling” (a type of federalism that arises because political leaders decide that only way to hold their country together is to devolve power constitutionally) in the context of fissiparous tendencies.  

The robust communication strategy applied by the BJP has been the hallmark of its political success

On the economic front, the performance of the Modi government has been uneven and the style of economic governance erratic. The key to understand such low performance is marginalisation of technocratic policymakers and the politicisation of decision-making in the governance track. Part-III of the book analyses the interaction between society and democracy. Rahul Mukherji’s chapter helps us to understand how, in a subtle manner, Indian State has moved decisively towards curbing social forces to pursue an alternative idea of India-a more Hinduised and centralised one. Through the unprecedented ideological dominance, and the consolidation of power, the BJP has launched a number of legislative measures that aim at redefining both belonging and citizenship in India. The book also provides a blurb of how ethnic and religious tensions have evolved in the past few decades across India’s politico-socio landscape.  

The authors expose a close symbiotic relationship between religiously motivated violence and competitive electoral politics. According to Christhophe Jafferlot in his chapter, Hindutva, Caste, and State Vigilantism, the rise of the BJP to power was a reaction to the growing assertiveness of the middle and lower castes, which in turn enabled upper castes to stage a comeback at the helm of the central government.  

In its concluding part, the book examines how the changing relationship between the news media and the political system has affected the information flow in light of rising authoritarian populism. The robust communication strategy applied by the BJP has been the hallmark of its political success. By using social media in a centralised manner, the BJP has advanced its agenda and shaped the internet zeitgeist.  

There is no doubt that the world’s largest democracy is under threat, but social scientists have a poor track record of success in predicting the political future. The challenge of restoring the well-being of India’s democracy is no simple undertaking. The current regime has done a substantial amount of damage but the authors do not consider this damage irreparable. There are reasons to believe that the Modi Juggernaut may encounter formidable obstacles in the near future: despite many depredations on the free press, India’s online media has admirably pushed back. Many prominent intellectuals have refused to be cowed, Indian civil society has not proven to be wholly supine, and some lower courts are displaying a degree of autonomy (27). In despair lies hope. 

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: Narendra Modi by Simon Roughneen on Shutterstock.

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