It is becoming increasingly apparent that some people have a major problem with India’s greatest badge of honour—its democracy. Or rather, they have such a huge problem with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that according to them India is ceasing to be a democracy just because he is in power. He may have been elected with a landslide, but according to them, they are the ones who know what India needs and not the “unwashed masses” who voted him to power. No wonder every second day we hear new terms being coined to describe India—“partial democracy”, “electoral autocracy”, by the so-called custodians of democratic values. Amusingly, this week, in that unelected citadel of British democracy, House of Lords, their lordships expressed their concern about the backsliding of democracy in India, without realizing the irony of the situation. It’s appearing as if some people, frustrated with the way the Indian political landscape is shaping up, and the way India’s geostrategic heft is increasing, are trying to knock off India from its high perch; while others, like the “lords” of the British Empire-Without-an-Empire, are having their Churchill-told-you-so (about India) moment by imagining the worst of India.
The sharpest reply to all this came from External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, who when asked about the downgrading of India as a democratic country, rightly replied, “You use the dichotomy of democracy and autocracy. You want the truthful answer—it is hypocrisy. Because you have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world, who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval, is not willing to play the game they want it to be played. So they invent their rules, their parameters, they pass their judgements and then make out as though this is some kind of global exercise.”
The problem is that this narrative in the West is being fed from within India itself. It’s sad to see the Opposition, particularly Rahul Gandhi become a part of this narrative-mongering. In an interaction with a US university, the democratically elected MP from Wayanad, brazenly said, “yes democracy is weakening…even Gaddafi and Saddam allowed voting”. So, the gentleman who was until recently the president of a party that is the main political Opposition in India, a party that has ruled this country for eons, in one fell swoop brought India down to the level of two of the world’s worst dictatorships. Does he realise the implication of the message that he sent out to the world—that India is unfit to be in the company of big powers or be home to big business? Can “responsible”, senior leaders afford to be so casual in their comments? He even cast aspersions on the institution of the judiciary, saying that it is failing. According to him, even the Indian media is failing, a conclusion he arrived at apparently because the media does not give him enough airtime. Surely that is a strange claim, for even Rahul Gandhi would have noticed that whenever he is in the news, all media spotlights are on him. But for that he has to be in the news. Interestingly, to prove his point that democracy is failing, he claimed that his microphone is switched off when he speaks in Parliament. The allegation perhaps had to do with an incident in 2018 when a technical glitch made his microphone malfunction for a few seconds when he was speaking in Parliament. However, to red-flag that incident at an international forum as an instance of democracy being killed is a bit of a stretch. The irony of such claims is that it was one of his family members who muzzled democracy in the country by imposing Emergency and it is again his party, which is being accused of muzzling inner party democracy even in 2021.
Questions will naturally rise about the intention behind such comments. Doesn’t the Congress leader realise that casting of aspersions on Indian democracy will not go down well with the Indian voters? If the intent is to convince Indians that they do not have democracy because they have chosen the wrong leader, it’s unlikely to have any impact on the ground. For, democracy is a living breathing entity for Indians. And it is as perfect or imperfect as any other robustly democratic country with strongly functioning institutions. The failure of Rahul Gandhi’s party to win elections is not Indian democracy’s fault. He needs to look closer home for it.
Certain sections of the western world can make all sorts of claims about Indian democracy’s health. But Indians are intelligent enough to know that such claims are not true. Indians have nothing to be apologetic about. However, politicians definitely need to rise above politics when talking about India internationally.