India is an Electoral Autocracy
The BJP and its goons seem to have forgotten about the crucial difference between exercising the fundamental right to protest and dissent and a predetermined conspiracy to incite public disorder or anarchy. These two are very distinct, separate concepts. The BJP is a malignant cancerous tumor of authoritarianism and dictatorship in the healthy body of Indian democracy.
Shall we return to a world wherein ‘public order and peace’ would have been acceptable as a valid ground for heavy, systematic crackdown on the Quit India Movement of the early 1940s, or the Civil Disobedience Movement that took place after the Second Round Table Conference in London? It is very shameful to state this but the current reality of the BJP government’s systematic suppression of public dissent eerily resembles the days of heavy colonial repression received by Indian national freedom movements of the 20th century.
Yes, the Emergency can indeed be considered a dark phase of Indian democracy, but what is happening currently is a very systematic, under-the-hood vicious campaign of tearing apart the very democratic fabric of India. What we are witnessing currently is an undeclared state of emergency — which does not fall under the ambit of national security or public safety, but to protect the personal and political power and fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its apex leadership. Public dissent should be cherished as a symbol of a thriving democratic ethos — not suppressed or dismissed under the garb of a conspiracy to incite anarchism.
The matter is not just restricted to public protests but has spilled over other parts affecting a healthy democratic atmosphere such as manhandling of opposition leaders, illegal detentions, and basic free movement of people from one part of the country to another. An informed person of requisite prudence and knowledge will be of a capacity to define the difference between preemptive punitive measures carried out for suppression of a public protest (being held for legitimate demands only) and genuine curtailment of free speech and free movement to counter a predetermined conspiracy for preserving public order and avoiding anarchy.
What Viktor Orbán was to Hungary, Narendra Modi is to India today. What India needs is its own version of a Magyar-style cleansing of a post-Orbán Hungary.
These so-called ‘Global South’ countries do not possess the widespread public and political will to fight back against an autocratic takeover, the elites (and even people) here would rather turn a blind eye and look the other way. India is going the Russian way. There needs to be strong action before some Indian version of Alexei Navalny, Alexander Litvinenko or Sergei Skripal is either poisoned or tortured in custody or found dead at an apartment or a parking lot.