It is rare that the opening sentences of a book grip you, leaving you nodding in silent agreement. Yet this is what happened when I picked up veteran academic and writer Zoya Hasan’s new book,?Democracy on Trial: Majoritarianism and Dissent in India, published by Aakar Books. Its opening sentences read, “India is a thriving democracy when it comes to elections but a diminishing democracy when it comes to equality and freedoms. The very idea of a democracy based on equal rights irrespective of caste, class or faith has changed under the pressure of majoritarian politics which gained ground after the assumption of power by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in 2014.”
Hasan’s words took me back to Sambhal in western Uttar Pradesh where a large section of the electorate, mostly Muslims, were subjected to violence when they came to exercise their franchise in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Many voters showed their bruises to the media and alleged they were not allowed to cast their vote because of their religion. The allegation could not be proven yet the lingering thought remained: why were most people with injuries from a single community? Were they being wilfully denied their democratic right under an avalanche of majoritarianism with compromised institutions?
Failures of Congress
A little later in the book, Hasan provides the answer, writing, “Majoritarianism dominates politics in the current conjecture.” She then analyses how, even as we criticise the right-wing government today, the groundwork for its rise, incredibly, was laid by the Congress. Back in the mid-1980s, when the BJP was gasping for breath after winning two seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha election, the Congress’ politics gave the still nascent BJP the lifeline it needed. It came with the party’s dubious role in the entire Ayodhya saga; first the opening of the mosque’s lock in 1986, then the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 with Prime Minister Narasimha Rao at the helm.
As Aakar Patel analysed in?Our Hindu Rashtra?(Penguin), “In 1986…the court ordered the opening of the mosque to Hindu worshippers with the acquiescence of the Rajiv Gandhi government.” Three years later, Rajiv Gandhi allowed the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to lay the foundation stone of “a future Ram temple”.
Hasan doesn’t hold back, writing, “The party’s ill-advised actions and inactions ended up creating a space for the Hindu right to play a more central role in public life. This undermined its own monopoly over political power.” Since 1992, the Congress has not formed the government at the Centre on its own. In 2014, the party notched up its worst numbers.
For all its paradoxical attitude towards minorities, the decline of the Congress has given a free run to majoritarian politics with the BJP using every trick in the book, and many outside the book, to ride roughshod over democratic norms, particularly, the pluralist ethos of the country. For instance, Hasan brings up the increasing political subjugation of the media. For long, India had a tradition of free press, broken only briefly during Indira Gandhi’s ill-advised Emergency. Yet, the media houses objected to many of her manoeuvres, unlike today when, as Hasan puts it, “Media (is) on government duty”. It is, of course, partly caused by the widely prevalent corporate ownership of media houses, as she points out.
“Indian news media landscape is vast but this vast landscape is owned by a few corporate houses. This trend started when Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries entered the media sector taking over Network 18, and several television channels, including CNBC TV 18, CNN-IBN and CNN Awaaz as well as online websites.” Needless to say, most media house owners have close ties with the government. It translates to prime-time anchors working like the government’s cheerleaders. This works for the corporate house, and it works for the government.
Shaheen Bagh and CAA
The passage of laws like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which introduces religion as a factor in granting Indian citizenship, and its links to a National Register of Citizens contradicts the protections provided to all communities in the Constitution, like the right to equality enshrined in Article 14. Hasan has discussed this constriction of rights threadbare in another of her recent works,?When People Rise in Protest, co-authored with Avishek Jha and published by Three Essays Collective.
Tracing what came to be called the Shaheen Bagh movement led by the homemakers of a south-east Delhi colony, Hasan contends that “the Shaheen Bagh protests were largely organised, led, and sustained by Muslim women who previously did not have an autonomous or significant presence in public life.” Hasan says Shaheen Bagh was a powerful symbol of civil disobedience in the face of countless pressures. The government, on its part, refused to talk to the protesters, and some of the statements from its top Ministers targeting minorities did not help. The Uttar Pradesh government used disproportionate force. The disengagement with a section of the citizenry was complete.
Rahul Bhatia’s new book,?The Identity Project?(Westland Books), also does not hold back on the controversial Act, stating, “The CAA gave refuge while the NRC took it away.”
Earlier, in 2020, Seema Mustafa had edited a volume on the protests in?Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India?(Speaking Tiger Books) in which Hasan contributed an essay on ‘Occupying Streets: Women in the Vanguard of the Anti-CAA Struggle.’
In the Introduction, Mustafa points out that a group of women, led by elderly women in their eighties, “came out of their homes to safeguard their homes.” They wanted to ensure that their citizenship was not brought into question, that their youth remained assured of a future as equal citizens of India, and that their menfolk remained safe and secure, she writes.
Hasan’s books — like the tomes of Bhatia, Patel, and Mustafa — hold a mirror of Indian society and polity. They warn readers that India is at risk of soon having a democracy in body but not in spirit.
Published - October 30, 2024 08:30 am IST