{"id":4055,"date":"2024-06-15T17:07:33","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T17:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krishiblog.com\/sap\/?p=4055"},"modified":"2024-08-19T15:47:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T15:47:14","slug":"indian-democracy-is-on-a-precicipe-but-america-responds-by-pretending-its-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/indian-democracy-is-on-a-precicipe-but-america-responds-by-pretending-its-thriving\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Democracy Is On a Precipice, But America Responds By Pretending It\u2019s Thriving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cTen years from now, India is going to be a vibrant democracy, as it is today, in terms of free and fair elections,\u201d US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti said at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New Delhi, India on May 9, 2024. Ambassador Garcetti\u2019s remarks, offered in larger context of a conversation where he framed India\u2019s connection with the United States as a \u201cdating\u201d relationship in which the two countries may have already \u201cmoved in together\u201d but very clearly \u201cdon\u2019t want to get married,\u201d were tailored for wooing Indian audiences but conveyed startling ignorance of the nature of democracy. Adolf Hitler, it is infamously said, was democratically elected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The health of a democracy is judged on much more than whether or not voters are allowed to check a box once every few years, and Indian democracy, aside from presumed \u201cfree and fair elections,\u201d is on the brink of extinction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Garcetti\u2019s claim to intimacy with India due to traveling there at 14 and again as a university student, he seems unaware that legislators in the country have \u2014 apparently without any repercussions \u2014 repeatedly and openly distributed chicken and liquor to voters as recently as this year and distribution of cash, liquor, and drugs to voters traces at least far back as 2014, the year the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attained the national power it still retains. Yet his diplomatically crafted outlook also suggests he is either ignorant \u2014 or, more likely, deliberately turning a blind eye \u2014 to the disastrous perspective on the future of Indian democracy proffered by most international bodies, including his own US State Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The April 2024 US State Department\u2019s \u201cCountry Report\u201d on human rights in India is damning. Documenting \u201csignificant human rights abuses,\u201d the report expands on extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, misuse of an anti-terror law to target human rights activists, minorities, and journalists, and more. India responded by rubbishing the entire thing. Following that, Garcetti wove his narrative about the US-India romance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at democracy from the perspective of values rather than simply voting systems, it has been on a steep decline in India since even before the BJP took power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Sweden-based Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) has rated India as an \u201celectoral autocracy\u201d since 2008, noting that the descent into such has included \u201cgradual but substantial deterioration of freedom of expression, compromising independence of the media, crackdowns on social media, harassments of journalists critical of the government, as well as attacks on civil society and intimidation of the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India, \u201cwith 18% of the world\u2019s population, accounts for about half of the population living in autocratizing countries,\u201d states V-Dem. Autocratic countries are defined by the National Geographic Society as places where \u201cone ruler has absolute control and decision-making power,\u201d in this case the BJP\u2019s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every other major global watchdog has continued to rate India\u2019s democracy abysmally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporters Without Borders places India at 159 out of 180 countries, highlighting how, with \u201cviolence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and political alignment, press freedom is in crisis in \u2018the world\u2019s largest democracy\u2019.\u201d The Economist Group\u2019s \u201cDemocracy Index,\u201d in 2023, listed India as a \u201cflawed democracy\u201d below countries like Brazil. Freedom House, in 2024, ranks India as \u201cpartly free,\u201d listing it at only a 66 out of 100 \u201cfreedom level,\u201d noting, \u201cIndia\u2019s Freedom in the World score has steadily declined for much of the last decade, dropping 10 points since 2013.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Open Doors USA \u2014 the most prominent international watchdog for Christian persecution \u2014 currently ranks India as the 11th most dangerous country in the world in which to be a Christian. For the previous four years, India was the 10th most dangerous country for Christians. Conditions did not improve there, but merely worsened in other countries. Notably, on this list, India places below countries like China or even Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That takes us to the ideological basis underlying the BJP, which is the background behind both incessant calls for genocide of minorities in India as well as overall concerns about the health of democracy in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BJP, which is the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary, is founded on an ideology of exterminating non-Hindus from India on the premise that only Hindus are true patriots of the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Modi, behaving like the priest of the nation, inaugurated a controversial temple to the Hindu deity Ram, there are now talks of rewriting India\u2019s Constitution as one for a \u201cHindu Rashtra\u201d \u2014 Hindu Nation \u2014 instead of a secular republic. In the midst of all this, BJP leaders and sympathizers are officiating calls to wipe out non-Hindu Indians, in some cases even describing Islam as a \u201cfast poison\u201d and Christianity as a \u201cslow poison.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mentality is grooming a genocidal attitude, already manifested in 2023 in Manipur, towards India\u2019s religious minorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Ambassador Garcetti, pleading his diplomatic take, talks of India remaining a \u201cvibrant democracy\u201d in the next decade. Indeed, it could be one, but only if Hindutva \u2014 that is, the currently predominant ideology of Hindu nationalism \u2014 fades away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If these trends continue, will democracy in India survive? This is not a diplomatic question. Yet, is diplomatic language the need of the hour?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The health of a democracy is judged on much more than whether or not voters are allowed to check a box once every few years, and Indian democracy, aside from presumed \u201cfree and fair elections,\u201d is on the brink of extinction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oped"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4056,"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4055\/revisions\/4056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saperspectives.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}