This essay argues that a number of the policies that the current, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government in India is pursuing threaten to rend the very fabric of India’s democracy. Its policies toward press freedoms, civil liberties, and judicial independence are all profoundly inimical to the functioning of a democratic state. Unless these policies are checked or reversed the future of India’s democracy may well be imperiled.
About the Author
Šumit Gangulyis Distinguished Professor of Political Science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington, and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author (with William Thompson) of Ascending India and Its State Capacity (2017).
India’s covid-19 response has accelerated the country’s slide toward competitive authoritarian rule by centralizing decision making, undermining federalism, and providing new pretexts for stifling dissent.
India has long baffled theorists of democracy. Democratic theory holds that poverty, widespread illiteracy, and a deeply hierarchical social structure are inhospitable conditions for the functioning of democracy. Yet except…
