How illiberalism replaced Nehru’s idea of India

India has recently launched a 75-week-long celebration ahead of next year’s 75th anniversary of independence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi commemorated the start of celebrations by invoking the Salt March, which over nine decades ago marked the beginning of the country’s freedom movement.

The Salt March, or Dandi March, started in Ahmedabad, Gujarat state, on March 12, 1930, led by Mahatma Gandhi in a famous act of civil disobedience against British rule, challenging the colonial power’s monopoly on salt.

The 23-day march to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea was one of the major events of in the movement, when people of all faiths, castes and ideologies joined together in the democratic and secular spirit that became the guiding principle of India’s independence struggle and, in 1947, also of the country’s constitution.

Quite early in its existence as an independent country, India came to play a leading role in international politics and became a leader of developing nations with its commitment to democracy and pluralism.

Yet now, soon 75 years down the line, the international community sees India as an illiberal state headed to become an elected autocracy. The situation has come to such a pass that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during his recent and first official New Delhi visit raised the issues of deteriorating human rights and plight of India’s religious minorities.

Nehru’s “idea of India” was of a nation whose citizenship laws would institutionalize unity in diversity and institutions would defend democracy. The idea has received a deep blow under Modi’s rule. Democracy has lost its sheen and majoritarianism has become a governing principle.

Sanjay Kumar

India’s deteriorating democratic climate now dominates international seminars and discussions. The Financial Times has recently held a festival of ideas where over 100 of the world’s brightest minds gathered to debate some of the biggest issues facing the world today. India under Modi was labeled during the event as the world’s largest “illiberal democracy.”

The label came weeks Freedom House downgraded India’s status in its 2021 report from “free country” to “partly free” due to rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting its minority Muslim population and a crackdown on expressions of dissent by the media, academics, civil society groups, and protesters.

Sweden-based independent research group V-Dem Institute called India an “electoral autocracy” where diminishing of freedom of expression, the media, and civil society “have gone the furthest” under Modi. It said India was “as autocratic as Pakistan and worse than its neighbors Bangladesh and Nepal.”

Illiberalism in India enjoys political patronage never seen before.

Days after the Freedom House report, the chief minister of India’s most populous and largest state Uttar Pradesh and member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Yogi Adityanath declared secularism “the biggest threat to India’s tradition of getting recognition on the global stage.”

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a visionary who laid the foundations of a pluralist and secular Indian nation, made a conscious decision to hone camaraderie among communities, bridge religious fault lines and inculcate a scientific temperament among the people to heal the wounds of the political partition of the British India that caused one of the greatest human convulsions of history.

His “idea of India” was of a nation whose citizenship laws would institutionalize unity in diversity and institutions would defend democracy.

The idea has received a deep blow in the past seven years, under Modi’s rule. Democracy has lost its sheen and majoritarianism has become a governing principle. 

The controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed in parliament in December 2019 made religion the basis of citizenship in open contradiction to the constitution. A law against inter-communal marriage recently enacted by several states discourages people of different faiths from forming unions, and in fact widens and strengthens the religious fault lines Nehru had tried to narrow.

Institutional autonomy is also under constant attack. A large section of the media has been made turned into a propaganda machinery of the government. Whatever little autonomy some digital news media have been exercising, is now being checked under the new information technology regulations.

Dissent is also being treated as criminal activity. The arrest of a young environmental activist, Disha Ravi, for sharing a protest manual with farmers demonstrating against the government was a glaring example of how brazen the regime has become in crushing any critical voice.

Majoritarian politics cannot brook democratic debate. That is what is happening in India today. In its quest to establish Hindu majoritarianism as the country’s guiding force, the BJP is undermining all democratic institutions and silencing those who challenge its exclusive politics.

In its pursuit of Hindu majoritarianism, the Modi government is nullifying the idea of India that has held the country’s head high for so many years. It then comes as no surprise that as independence events are underway, with other freedom movement leaders being celebrated, Nehru has apparently been left out of the celebrations.

*Sanjay Kumar is a New Delhi based journalist with experience of covering South Asia for more than fifteen years. He is the correspondent for  Arab News in Delhi.
Twitter: @destinydefier