Skip to main content

Incremental Authoritarianism


Delivering a lecture in Kerala the other day, N Ram, former editor of The Hindu, described Narendra Modi’s style of governance as “incremental authoritarianism.”  Democracy is slowly but steadily being eroded in India by Modi. How does he do it?

·      Consolidation of executive power

·      Undermining of judicial independence or press freedom

·      Weakening of opposition parties

·      Use of state apparatus to target dissent

·      Erosion of civil liberties

·      Nationalist rhetoric used to delegitimize critics

·      Misinformation and disinformation spread via all available forms of media and propaganda machinery

·      Disdain for the Constitution of the country

The Parliament is a mere scarecrow today. A scarecrow in a Waste Land. Mr Modi doesn’t even attend the sessions most of the time. He is abroad usually when the Parliament meets to pass some bills like the ones related to criminal justice such as the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita which replaced the Indian Penal Code. The most recent instance is the Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025.

Modi’s political party possesses what has come to be known as “brute majority” which is also called “tyranny of the majority.” These ‘brutes’ don’t think for themselves. Modi’s wish is their command. If Modi tells them to drink cow’s urine, they will eat the dung too.

Institutions such as the Election Commission, judiciary, and enforcement agencies are mere puppets in Modi’s hands now. Activists and journalists are arrested under draconian laws like the UAPA and sedition statutes. Anyone who dares to question Modi beyond Modi’s tolerance level (which is not much) will face a raid from the CBI, ED or IT department. Most of the media channels that matter have been bought off by Modi’s friends or have been muted enough. India’s position on Word Press Freedom Index is pathetic. Reporters Without Borders describes the condition of India’s press as “very serious.” 

From creativehatti.com

N Ram’s concern is that democracy will soon die in India. Mr Modi will be India’s dictator though elections will continue to take place. India has a long way to go in this regard since Modi is only 74. Contrast that with Trump, 78, and Mao Zedong who lasted till 83+. Celal Bayar of Turkey reached an age of 103! Dictators live long.

And they reward their chelas. Last Republic Day, a woman known as Sadhvi Rithambara was awarded one of the highest civilian honours: the Padma Bhushan. What did this woman do to merit that recognition? She called for a war on India’s Muslims. The Liberhan Commission, formed to investigate the demolition of Babri Masjid, had listed this woman among 68 people culpable of taking the country “to the brink of communal discord.” She was honoured by Narendra Modi for that service!

In 1995, this woman had declared that “Christians will be wiped out from the face of India.” In 2002, she founded an organisation called Durga Vahini, a women’s wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad. One of their major contributions to the country is the blackening of the face of Neetu Sapra, director of a play which Rithambara didn’t like. The Muslims in India are now her hobby horse.

I present this woman only as a case study. There are too many like her in Modi’s India: vicious hate-mongers who go on to win the highest national honours or top positions. That is another way of killing democracy. Subtly.

Back to N Ram. It is much more than incremental authoritarianism that India has to deal with now. How will India do it? I don’t know. I am not even very hopeful. However, I have a friend who is convinced that “the democratic sagacity and wisdom of the Indian mystical pluralism… will cut to size the magical hocus-pocus of the Sangh Parivar” in the due course of time. But dictators live long!




Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanMay 30, 2025 at 6:14 AM

    Hari Om
    This erosion of democracy may indeed be incremental, but it is not slow! The rot is everywhere. Deeply concening... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 30, 2025 at 8:14 AM

      The biggest concern, probably, is that too many citizens seem to approve what the Man does.

      Delete
  2. Liz A.May 30, 2025 at 9:33 PM

    Sadly, this is happening in far too many places.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 31, 2025 at 8:40 AM

      Too many places, yes. Some kind of global phenomenon. Wonder whether any sociologist or some such scholar is looking for the reason.

      Delete
  3. Pradeep NairMay 31, 2025 at 9:37 AM

    Yes, it's sad. Not just here, world over. Many commentators describe it as a backlash. It's a cycle. One gives way to the other. When we have good and convincing alternative, we will see a change. Till then, we wait.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 31, 2025 at 9:40 AM

      That waiting is the only alternative left to us ordinary mortals, it seems.

      Delete
  4. sathishMay 31, 2025 at 7:36 PM

    This is a template set globally, i feel. This dictators were just puppets set the country a business place for arms, chemicals and GMOs!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...
39 comments
Read more

Goodbye, Little Ones

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...
6 comments
Read more