NEW DELHI (AP) — Demonstrations by India’s main opposition party in Congress on Aug. 5 against rising food prices and unemployment began like any protest in recent memory — an electorally weak opposition taking to the streets against the massively popular government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi moved from New Delhi.
However, the protests quickly took a turn when key members of Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi – Modi’s main opponent in the last two general elections – marched towards Parliament, sparking violent clashes with police.
“Democracy is a memory (in India),” Gandhi later tweeted, describing the dramatic photos that showed him and his party leaders being briefly detained by police.
Gandhi’s statement was widely seen as another desperate attempt by a troubled opposition party to bolster its relevance and was rebuffed by the government. But it resonated amid growing sentiment that India’s democracy — the world’s largest with nearly 1.4 billion people — is on the wane and its democratic foundations are faltering.
Experts and critics say trust in the judiciary as a check on executive power is eroding. Attacks on the press and freedom of expression have become brazen. Religious minorities are increasingly being attacked by Hindu nationalists. And mostly peaceful protests, sometimes against provocative policies, have been stamped out by cyber repression and the jailing of activists.
“Most former colonies struggle to establish a lasting democratic process. India has been more successful at this than most,” said Booker Prize-winning writer and activist Arundhati Roy. “And now, 75 years later, it’s traumatic to see it being dismantled in a systematic and frighteningly violent manner.”
Modi’s ministers say India’s democratic principles are robust, even successful.
“If there is a sense in the world today that democracy in any form is the future, a large part of that is thanks to India,” Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in April. “There was a time when we were the only democracy in this part of the world.”
The story goes on
History is on the side of Jaishankar.
At midnight on August 15, 1947, the red sandstone Parliament building in the heart of the Indian capital echoed with the shrill voice of Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister.
“Just in time for the midnight hour when the world is asleep, India will awaken to life and freedom,” Nehru famously said, words heard by millions of Indians on live radio. He then pledged: “To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge to work with them to promote peace, liberty and democracy.”
It marked India’s transition from a British colony to a democracy – the first in South Asia – which has since transformed itself from a poverty-stricken nation into one of the fastest growing economies in the world, earning a place at the global high table and has become a democratic counterweight to its authoritarian neighbor China.
Except for a brief hiatus in 1975, when a formal state of emergency was declared under Congress Party rule that imposed open censorship, India has stubbornly held to its democratic beliefs – largely due to free elections, an independent judiciary opposed to the executive branch, a thriving press, strong opposition and peaceful transitions of power.
But pundits and critics say the country is beginning to back away from some commitments, arguing the backslide has accelerated since Modi came to power in 2014. They accuse his populist government of using its unbridled political power to undermine democratic freedoms and engaging in pursuit of a Hindu nationalist agenda.
“The decline appears to be continuing in several key formal democratic institutions…such as freedom of expression and alternative sources of information, and freedom of association,” said Staffan I. Lindberg, political scientist and director of the V-Dem Institute. a Sweden-based research center that assesses the health of democracies.
Modi’s party denies this. A spokesman, Shehzad Poonawalla, said India had been a “thriving democracy” under Modi’s rule and had seen a “republic retaken”.
Most democracies are hardly immune to stress.
The number of countries experiencing democratic relapse “has never been higher” than in the past decade, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance said last year, adding the US to the list along with India and Brazil.
Nonetheless, the decline in India appears to be striking.
Earlier this year, the US-based non-profit Freedom House downgraded India from a free democracy to partially free. The V-Dem Institute classified it as an “electoral autocracy” on par with Russia, and the Democracy Index published by The Economist Intelligence Unit called India a “flawed democracy”.
India’s Foreign Ministry has called the downgrades “inaccurate” and “distorted”. Many Indian leaders have said such reports are an interference in “internal affairs”, with India’s parliament banning debate on them.
India is a strong advocate of democracy around the world. During the inaugural summit for democracy organized by the US in December, Modi claimed that the “democratic spirit” is integral to India’s “civilization ethos”.
At home, however, his government defies this very spirit, and independent institutions have come under increasing scrutiny.
Experts point to long-pending cases in India’s Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of key decisions made by Modi’s government as a key concern.
These include cases related to a controversial citizenship verification process that has already rendered nearly 2 million people in Assam state potentially stateless, semi-autonomous powers now revoked over disputed Kashmir, opaque campaign finance laws, Modi’s party disproportionate prefer, and its alleged use of military-grade spyware to monitor political opponents and journalists.
India’s judiciary, which is independent of the executive branch, has been criticized in the past, but the intensity has increased, said Deepak Gupta, a former Supreme Court Justice.
Gupta said India’s democracy appears to be “on the downturn” as the court failed in some cases to uphold civil liberties, denying people bail, and abuses of sedition and anti-terrorism -Laws by the police, tactics used by previous governments.
“In deciding disputes … the courts have done a good job. But when it comes to their role as protectors of people’s rights, I wish the courts had done more,” he said.
The country’s democratic health has also been affected by the status of minorities.
The largely Hindu nation prides itself on its multiculturalism and has around 200 million Muslims. It also has a history of bloody sectarian violence, but hate speech and violence against Muslims has increased recently. Some states ruled by Modi’s party have used bulldozers to demolish the homes and businesses of suspected Muslim protesters, a move critics say is a form of collective punishment.
The government has tried to downplay these attacks, but the incidents have terrified minorities.
“Sometimes you need extra protection for the minorities so they don’t feel like second class citizens,” Gupta said.
That the rising tide of Hindu nationalism helped propel Modi’s party to success is evident in its electoral successes. It also coincided with a rather glaring fact: the ruling party has no Muslim lawmakers in parliament, a first in Indian history.
The inability to fully eliminate discrimination and attacks on other minorities such as Christians, Tribals and Dalits – who form the bottom tier of the Hindu caste hierarchy in India – has compounded these concerns. Even if the government sees the rise of an indigenous woman as India’s ceremonial president as a significant step towards equal representation, critics question this as a political optic.
Under Modi, India’s parliament also came under scrutiny for passing important legislation without debate, including a sectarian citizenship law and a controversial agrarian reform that sparked widespread protests. In a rare retreat, his government withdrew the farm bills and some saw it as a triumph of democracy, but sentiment quickly faded as attacks on free speech and the press mounted.
The country fell eight places to 150 out of 180 countries in this year’s Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, which states: “Indian journalists who are too critical of the government face all-out harassment and campaigns of aggression .”
Shrinking press freedoms in India date back to previous governments, but recent years have been worse.
Journalists were arrested. Some are discouraged from traveling abroad. Dozens face criminal prosecution, including incitement to hatred. At the same time, the government has introduced sweeping regulation laws for social media companies, giving them more power to monitor online content.
“One only has to look around to see that the media certainly shrunk during Mr Modi’s regime,” said Coomi Kapoor, journalist and author of The Emergency: A Personal History, which chronicles India’s only period of emergency.
“What happened in the emergency was open and there was no pretext. What’s happening now is more gradual and scarier,” she said.
Still, optimists like Kapoor say all is not lost “if India strengthens its democratic institutions” and “pins its hopes in the judiciary.”
“If the independence of the judiciary goes, then I’m afraid nothing will survive,” she said.
But others insist that India’s democracy has taken so many physical beatings that the future looks increasingly bleak.
“The damage is too structural, too fundamental,” said Roy, the writer and activist.
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Associated Press journalist Rishi Lekhi contributed to this report.