hi everyone I am Subash Gatade.
I'm part of new socialist
initiative and I welcome you all for
this inaugural lecture in the democracy
dialogue series I'm extremely thankful
to prof. Suhas Palshkar who readily agreed for
this lecture
despite his busy schedule and he'll be
enlightening us about trajectory of
Indian democracy and its contemporary
challenges prof. Suhas Palshikar is known all
over India through which Indian Express
column as a public intellectual who has
the courage to speak truth to power
and earlier he was with Pune University professor of
political science and now I'd present
he's a editors of journals and also he
manages PC atheist election program that
studies he manages and he has many books
to his career the most interesting thing
about the swastika is that he writes
them in Marathi as well so he has many
books to instigate in Marathi also
either one of the few public
intellectuals who is a bilingual and if
this before I invite professor well
chicken I would just like to tell you
about this city's democracy dialogue
series we feel that is far this we are
starting this city this inaugural
lecture and this is part of the ongoing
conversation among activists circles as
well as academic circles about the fate
of democracy which which is there is
which is failing challenges the
democracy has sprayed tremendously but
simultaneously you have witnessing
emergence of right-wing and fascist
fascist forces so we are facing a real
dilemma about what what about what has
to be done with this democracy how how
should progressive forces look at the
question and how what are the tools with
which we can find we can continue this
fight this is the inaugural lecture in
the series and we continue to
continually how these lectures will be
calling the scholars as well as
activists and those who are interested
that they be updated about these series
then please give your contact details or
email address on the chat box secondly
we'll be having a question answer
session also after focus chicas picture
so your queries also you please share on
chat box I once again welcome process
was called sugar and ice and thank you
for that please welcome from the Suarez
Pacific thank you thank you for watching
before we begin I saw a couple of checks
saying that they can't hear so might be
just better if you make sure that
everyone has their system working but
all the same thank you very much Falls
you for making it convenient to attend
this lecture this afternoon these are
tough times that we are going to new
experiments are being made and this
lecture through zoom and Facebook life
is one such experiment where we can
connect to each other despite the odds
that currently travelers let me begin
with a couple of graphically nodes one
on a personal and the other on the
question of the current moment the
personal note is that some of the things
that I am going to say today actually
originated in a short track that I wrote
in 2017 on Indian democracy when I was
writing the conclusions and then the
preface to that tract I realized that
Indian democracy was already changing by
the time I had written it and therefore
some of the issues that I flagged there
I thought I should take them up here for
further elaboration and maybe benefit
from the discussion that we would have
subsequently after my lecture the mood
about the current movement is that some
of us would be this
intrigued by the pandemic and it's
likely effect on overall public life and
democracy in general but I will not
touch that aspect much this evening for
the simple reason that in my empty
articles in the Indian Express I have
already talked about how this entire
experiment of lockdown actually hurts
the very idea of what is public how the
public is constituted and therefore
globally not just in India hurts the way
democracy is understood and practiced so
we will touch upon it passingly but
except for this I will not get into
these issues so then let us begin with
just a note of caution when we talk of
democracy because all of us were
Democrats were interested in progressive
democratic forces gaining ground
it is sometimes there is a tendency to
believe that there is a linear
progression of democracy one suspects
however by looking at the actual
experience of democracies across the
globe that democracies are not
necessarily moving in a linear fashion
they always face ups and downs and what
is even more curious is that you cannot
rest assure that once you have installed
democracy it will be there always
democracy means tending democracy
you
or that discipline media well sir this
obligatory ha right that that's fine
that's fine yeah sorry sorry for
interrupting but this is fine
now you can you can be seen yeah yeah so
how's this all really of course I gotta
say Miss Korea about Newt cottage
assault yeah yeah I'm sorry for that you
are learning as you start seeing it so
I'm sorry about that and resume what I
was saying was that Krissy there are at
least three tensions involved in the
idea the first tension begins with the
question of what is the demos who are
these people that one is talking about
and we know that in every society while
this question looks very innocuous life
there are actually exclusions one tends
to imagine the demos by either excluding
the migrants or excluding the people on
the margins or excluding the minorities
and so on and so forth and therefore why
democracies seems to be a
straightforward package that it is about
the people who these people are is one
irritant that always faces is a
practitioner of democracy the second
irritant is what do these people do and
they are also again we find that there
is always this tussle between what the
people should be doing because on the
one hand in democratic theory and some
of you might be knowing this already so
forgive me for repeating it in
democratic theory there is a lot of
emphasis on initiative and participation
or action by the people but at the same
time we also know that governments all
over the world would insist instead on
people responding to comments responding
to authorities and therefore a certain
emphasis on obedience is always there
now ironically while passive citizenship
means that democracy is muted
active citizenship if so factor does not
guarantee that democracy will be Lively
so there is much to democracy than
merely having an active citizen but this
activity passivity dilemma is the other
tension that all democracies often face
and then the third is the ordering of
the principles and again as I mentioned
these principles order in question you
will realize why I am mentioning this
since it is relevant to our own present
circumstance of one both in intellectual
circles but more so in official
governmental circles there is a certain
certain ordering of the principles for
example some of us would like to have
rights at the top priority right so the
individuals rights of communities
etcetera etcetera on the other hand
there will always be some argument in
favor of what is called line order and
that is always there that no higher
order is necessary even an order to be
made quietly value that unless thing is
low an order we will be in a vision
situation and therefore your rights
don't matter if there is no law and
order and our ultimate is waiting but at
the same time you will waiver is that it
has political connotation which
reverberates
in all non democratic and sub democratic
regimes so this was by way of just a
teaser as to what and how one should be
looking at the issues pertaining to
democracy but since we are going to talk
more about India's democracy I would be
now speaking more about how India has
evolved its democracy and what Hills
what challenges
Indians democracy more contemporarily
there is a famous European and North
Atlantic contrast to how democracy
arrived in India and let us be aware of
this contrast when we talk of India's
democracy in North Atlantic societies
democracy arrived mainly by first
constructing the idea of the individual
from the feudal society and from the
breakdown of the feudal society the idea
of the individual was was constructed
and once it was constructed from these
individuals the idea of the people was
subsequently constructed so individuals
come first people as a group the
community the society comes later there
is an advantage in this kind of an
ordering that what is is that if you all
read it in this fashion then individual
dignity and rights of the individual
always becomes the bedrock of that
political process in India however the
ordering was not necessarily this the
ordering was probably reversed in Indian
context and since I come from
Maharashtra I would take the famous
dichotomous examples from Maharashtra
but I guess they are relevant to overall
India experience as well
Tarak I'm fully and the two contrasting
examples in the Indian context in the
19th century Fulop begins with this idea
of individual dignity and individual
rights however soon the Turk ID and
other kinds of qualities overtake this
and instead the people were constructed
as a nation and through considering the
people then the National Movement sort
of was unleashed now I am NOT saying
necessarily that this ordering that
individual should be constructed first
and people should be constructed later
is the right way of doing about it what
I am pointing out is that therefore in
the Indian context the trajectory is
different from say US or North America
or Europe in general this is important
to remember because we always learning
that in the Indian context the value of
liberalism is always understated people
don't understand the importance of
liberalism etcetera etcetera I guess
while our lemonade will be valid this
ordering needs to be kept in mind that
India's democratic politics actually
avoid through a different trajectory and
therefore the task like for example the
task that the Constitution imposes upon
us is to both protect the people but
also then to enrich the idea of the
individual that is something that comes
later and that is something as a
challenge thrown to us in 1950 by the
Constitution
there is another way in which the
arrival of democracy in the Indian
context is different from many other
examples elsewhere and it is that like
many societies india or indian society
is also made up of many groups there is
diversity in India something Elementary
known to all of us however how does one
deal with this question of diversity
what an important question throughout
the national struggle and at the time of
the making of the Constitution and there
again the Indian answer has been
historically different an ambitious as
compared to Europe and the United States
in Europe it so happened coincidentally
that most of their democratic qualities
soon adopted what can roughly be called
as nuclear modulating so they became
Virginia's and therefore they are happy
or at least we're happy till they
discover that there is a problem in
their societies about multicultural
challenges so nuclear homogeneity was
their route to handling the question the
American route North American rule the
u.s. route in particular has been
famously known as the melting water
route where you have a kind of
homogeneous morality so there is no
realism but there is Americanism about
and above everything else the Indian
experiment which was visualized through
the National struggle and which was
formalized through the Indian
Constitution probably thought that we
would start a different together and
this is where I variously describe
somewhat clumsily described as a
ambition there we would retain our
diversity and yet achieve unity the term
unity in diversity is not a very
appropriate term so let us not get into
that terminology but unity and diversity
or unity width diversity was definitely
the ambition to wit simply what the
national struggle and India's
Constitution says is this that in order
to be an Indian you do not have to give
up any of your other identities whoever
you are you are you continue to be that
and then you also attain you contribute
to subscribe to being the Indian also it
is this challenge and remember this was
a challenge this was not something that
was achieved and I'm going into this
London thing precisely because of this
reason that my suspicion is that many
believed and many of us might believe
even today that with the coming of the
Indian Constitution this was already
achieved I would believe that that was
not the case it is the other way around
that the Indian Constitution uses this
as a challenge for something to be
achieved later so the founding moment of
1947 1950 actually defines what we want
to achieve how we want to achieve it and
the task was then left to the next stage
of democratic politics that opens up
from the 1950 onwards or 1950s onwards
as we call it the independent Indian
democratic politics though therefore
democratic politics did not begin in
1950 an important journey within this
democratic politics begins in 1950 and
it is this it's not just running a
democratic government it's not also only
the challenge thrown up by the milkers
famous speech at the closing of the
Constituent Assembly meeting where he
says that we have achieved political we
are installed political democracy the
challenge is now to move to social
democracy etc that yes but something
more than that which is that the
architecture of a new
was created and then we asked ourselves
whether we can really bring that into
reality that was the challenge that
India's democracy actually agreed to
face from 1950 onwards my contention is
that unfortunately from 1950 onwards
much of our politics underplayed this
challenge we did not stand up to that
challenge always not let me give up on
that challenge not that me unsubscribe
to it but at the same time we did not
take any special efforts to fulfill that
challenge instead as formal democracy or
formal democratic governance inaugurates
in India we entered into a phase of
schizophrenic
treatment of democracy it was
schizophrenic in the sense that on the
one hand we the people as the
Constitution says and therefore we kept
celebrating the idea of the people we
kept subscribing to the value of the
power of the people yet at the same time
in practice we also subscribe to and
succumb to an imposing state authority
now this dilemma in the sense is not
unique to India only it is inherent in
democracy but it became unique to India
because in India we sort of reverse the
logic of democracy the logic of
democracy already in a relation that we
trust the people and suspect the elite
it so happened in 1950s onwards
initially in the first couple of decades
that we reverse that logic and started
saying that we trust our political elite
but somehow we don't have enough trust
in our people we
suspect the people what slipped up a
garage at one place describes as
demobilization started happening you had
this huge mass energy created through
the national struggle and suddenly after
1947 there was this project of D
mobilizing the masses take them out of
the political rim keep them at the
threshold and innocence mute them that
was what was happening around 1950 and
onwards this was not a conspiracy this
was sometimes a well-intentioned idea
this was sometimes and inevitable
consequence of moving from National
Movement to a democratic governance
system but that is what happened and
that is why the democracy that emerges
through the 1950s was a much more docile
democracy then both democratic theory
and India's Democratic ambitions
actually visualize it was no sign not
just because people were immobilized it
was also docile because as another
inevitable consequence of any modern
democracy particularly like India where
you have to also have development there
was a focus on creating the state as the
major apparatus as if the state was
going to protect democracy that's the
tension between state and democracy was
not fully evolved fully developed in
actual politics to simplify what
happened therefore was that we took the
state far too nightly and therefore more
and more power started getting vested in
the state more and more powers get
started getting taken away from the
people as a result of that as you can
imagine our democracy became leadership
center and this is nothing to do only
with morovian you may
leadership Sentret even otherwise in the
sense that when you only mobilize the
masses then public participation always
becomes predicated on what the leaders
tell them so on the one hand you have
the gun here in New Jersey of leadership
but not withstanding that the additional
factor was that once people were asked
to stay back home now they expected a
cue from the leader as to what was to be
done and therefore the energy of
democracy was squeezed out
so this first phase which many of us
particularly in contrast to the current
regime would still like to appreciate as
a major development of democracy also
had a hidden somewhat implicit problem
and that somewhat implicit problem was
the naivety of believing in the system
the naivety of believing in the state
and the simplicity that people will have
to depend upon the leaders for political
cues through this as we run along in the
1960s therefore certain problems started
emerging in the practice of India's
democracy and they are there with us
even today in fact they are now becoming
more and more crucial more and more
serious the first is the twin problem of
violence
it's a twin problem twin problem in the
sense that in the first flail place how
to handle how to treat or how to
understand private organized violence is
one side of this problem the other side
of the problem is how to keep state
violence under control and we have not
been able to handle either of these on
the one hand private violence in the
form of what
is in government parlance called as
militancy insurgency and so on and so
forth
keeps increasing at the same time and as
a retaliation to that violence the state
also becomes more and more violent and
neither theoretical nor empirically we
have any clear solution on this question
of violence the second problem that has
emerged subsequently and through this
period is that our public policy has
always been unable to accommodate the
interests of the most marginalized and
the two most marginalized communities
whose interests have generally been
hoodwinked at our the anniversaries and
the deaths in case of these two sections
of the Indian society the shield trials
and the Scheduled Castes while all lip
service is done legal paraphernalia is
in place if you start looking at public
policy you will always find that in our
public policy and governments these two
marginal sections and therefore
logically other marginal sections also
have been often cite track further
marginalized in fact there is an amnesia
when it comes to public policy there is
an amnesia about the interests of these
sections so that is the second problem
that has arisin smoo over early post
independence movement in the field of
democracy the third which ails us even
today and probably that is why I am
mentioning it is our general failure to
make institutions democratic and
efficient we have failed to do either
our institutions are neither efficient
non democratic in their functioning and
that is one of the most notable failures
of India's Democrat
not just today but historical we created
the Constitution the Constitution
provides a certain institutional
framework subsequently we created a
number of other institutions but these
institutions have never fulfilled their
democratic purpose nor fulfill their
governance purpose it is this problem
that arose not today today not yesterday
but it never first let's a quarter of a
century of democratic experience since
the nineteen fifties then probably as
these three critical issues started
mounting we had a series of what
probably could be described as decadal
challenges they were not exactly decadal
but almost decade of challenges to
democracy starting with 1975 and in this
audience I will not go into what they
wear but just list them because my point
is something else rather than
criminalizing those but 1975 the
national emergency 1984 the program
against the six 1992 the institutional
failure in protecting a disputed site
despite central government assurance and
state government assurance to the
Supreme Court and finally 2002 again and
organized violence against one community
the anti-muslim violence in Gujarat now
what is common and what is not common in
these four is really the point which
will tell us something about the problem
of our democracy 1975 we always take
pride in saying that at least and at
last the perpetrators were politically
punished that is to say the ruling party
was defeated the government was defeated
and I ousted
great however institutionally we didn't
learn anything from 1975 in other words
the institutional response to 1975 was
negligible and I will conduct this up
later on when I talk of the present
moment but at least one can say that in
1975 there was a political punishment
for 1984 1992 and 2002 no political
we take to the characters who
participated perpetrated or supported
those instances nothing happened and for
a democracy this is far more serious
than merely the incidence of emergency
of 1975 because here is an instance
there there is no disincentive
politically it's not a question of how
many people have been in reason it's not
a question of whether trial has been
committed or not it is a political
question because these were political
crimes against democracy and therefore
my point is that if you look at these
three you will find that there is no is
incentive for doing such things and
similar things so if you are a
politician you can with impunity
plan your political career today without
fear of any political punishment for
what excesses commissions omissions that
your political career might involve and
that is something serious about this
thing with this intermission of these
three four challenges let me then come
to the more critical historical context
to our present moment today I would
suggest and post facto it is always easy
to suggest such things but I was to
suggest that we need to go back to the
politics since nineteen led 1980s in the
1990s and onwards who understand where
we are currently today this is a
politics you can say post emergency if
you want to stretch it back but to
simplify matters and since in political
parlance 1990 is seen as a kind of
moment when many things were happening
I am flagging off 1989-90 as the point
which constitutes the larger backdrop of
our
current moment this labs the backdrop of
politics since 1990s is in the sense
full of contradictory Ness it is
contradictory because it is
simultaneously described rightly as a
period of Democratic expansion on the
one hand but as I move to argue it is
also a period of narrowing of democracy
and that latter part becomes visible to
us only by hindsight today so we need to
learn from this experience so I am not
blaming those who called 1990s as a
period of Democratic expansion but what
I am suggesting is that we need to learn
a lot from this experience for the 19th
why did democracy expand how do you
democracy expand in the 1990s the story
is probably well known if you want at
least two well-known names who have told
this story partially one is the phrase
that yogin rayado popularized democratic
up searched or the rise of the plebeians
the term which is also the title of the
book by Christoph Jeff follow geoff
irwin sanjay kumar have written a book
with this title so what happens during
this period from 1984 85 onwards but
more specifically from 1990 onwards ah
rise of the Obie C's which is expansion
of India's democratic politics exception
of the Ritz particularly in North India
where historically they had not asserted
and earlier so in the sense one can say
that it was a new phase in the America
right there with politics then there
were so many political parties that
politics suddenly becomes competitive
and therefore even structurally it was
interesting that politics was becoming
more and more competitive fourthly there
was an expansion of the waterways of
India's elections not just in percentage
terms but as our studies have shown it
is in the 1990s when
the women the pellets the iDevices
started working in greater numbers than
before so an expansion of the voter base
toothless and as Chris of Jafar has
shown there was a remarkable change in
the social composition of India's
political elite now this one might
criticize also as immediately a kind of
descriptive expansion of representation
but all the same it was very important
that for the first time in central to
North India but elsewhere also a very
dramatic change in the polity social
composition of our representative
started happening and that continues to
happen as a farmer and one of his
colleagues have shown in a recent
article gifs were near and afirma have
shown that that trend continues even to
date illnesses one might add to this
Democratic expansion the consensus at
least in political parties on the
question of affirmative action so
suddenly something that was very
controversial a couple of years ago in
89 90 by 94 95 it had become a matter of
consensus among those political parties
or in fact I will say all political
parties including the BJP and therefore
it this period is rightly called as a
period of democratic expansion what
however happens in this period of
critics function is it's contradictory
and that contradictory is that while all
of this is happening
there is also an imperceptible but today
we can see it by eyesight narrowing of
democracy generally this narrowing was
on the question of agenda from 1990s
onwards
agenda-setting 70 became a function of
media rather than what predicts itself
most Mundell I will say 19 1992-93
things were sort of imbalance but post
Munden media started setting dodging
that it is the time when there was a
room in television channels it was a
time when television channels started
becoming popular also and since that
time the print but more than the print
the electronic media setting the
political agenda deciding what will be
not only the headline not only the
talking point in drawing rooms but
actually what politicians who will be
talking about media have started
deciding this and that continues to this
date so a general setting will out of
the realm of politics interestingly this
time in step with what one scholar has
described as people it as default resize
ation of development john harris and
india scholar has written a short tract
on this question of how with the coming
of a new liberal economic policy setting
the very politics of development
disappears and development becomes a
politicized process it ties up with that
in the sense this is also a time and
that is very curious then many people
started participating in politics then
political elites from new communities
were coming into the political process
politics gets the new bed of its
capacity to decide so politics is there
politicking is there defections are
their competition to become chief
minister is there but what is chief
minister as what politics does got
curtailed be politicized alongside
and also as the functional of this
development there was a reading of the
political meaning and I am not using the
term rigging in a constitute a routine
sense it is simply that a certain
consensus emerges unknown political
parties so while as I say the moment I
go the politics becomes competitive that
computation becomes vacuous because they
are not competing for anything
substantial this period is famously
called as the period of the three ms
bundle my ship and market that's the
short form while I am using it I must
also admit that this idea of three M's
originates probably outside of politics
and intellectual circles in media and
that is the force M that sort of
predominates all of us but anyway now
what happens is that there is much sound
and fury around the nineteen ninety 92
period and by nineteen ninety-three
ninety-four you will find a the Mundell
question as I said sort of disappears
because nobody is known pentesting the
question either of affirmative action or
even for that matter the question of
political share of members of the
backward community the media kept
laughing but politics and all political
parties started taking politicians from
Backward Classes seriously by 1993-94
and that's why risk of a formalized
pointed our to this transition to the
descriptive aspect of representation
consensus in the sense the energy of we
see politics that was emerging them was
subsumed by this consensus the same is
true of the so-called market related
controversy in intellectual circles that
continued and continues as a matter of
debate for political parties of vapor it
simply
suddenly stop generating any political
debate because all party started
subscribing through it and remember this
was a time when it didn't even matter
who is in power in Delhi because
everyone was in power somewhere if you
were not in power in Delhi
you were empowering children what do you
have in power somewhere either in at one
another or you were in power in Odisha
and so on and so forth so all political
parties wherever they work father
started surreptitiously cautiously or
brashley following the same logic of
economic policy finally ultimately even
quietly at least the Left Front
government investing once again no
controversy the only third issue that
remained controversial was the money
issue and we're on the one beer issue
there was a grand standing by everyone
we know that actually the controversy
was defused because nobody was actually
taking a contrarian position on these
issues and this consensus was actually
inaugurated by no one else but while
Marat himself then he had offered a
solution to their problem in 92 itself
which of course was not successful that
time he misses therefore if you look at
electoral party politics you will find
that the venue was actually preset no
difference in the menu guess the
difference in political parties that we
are operating
finally this is also the career of what
I have described as narrowing of
democracy because however bad our
elections have been historically
probably most 1990 and this is ironical
when session actually streamlined
elections it is also the time when
elections become only money centered and
big-money this is not a small-time
politician making money out of politics
etc but actually money back politics
there are at least I'm also it was said
to be there but suddenly starts becoming
the politics but the longer and shorter
therefore is that there was this
considerable narrowing of our democracy
while also opening up certain polish
Democratic possibilities during this
time the unwritten conclusion of this
entire period into two phases so far the
first I have clumped into a large long
post independence phase from 1950 to
almost late nineteen eighties and the
next from 1990 onwards if you were to
ask me what is common throughout this
period and what has been sort of
strengthening throughout this period I
will take you back to what I initially
said was the challenge thrown to us by
the Constitution and by the National
Movement it was a twin challenge the
challenge of now creating strong
individual citizen armored with dignity
and rights the second was to handle
democratically our diversity you will
find that entire period of our political
experience of post-independence period
we underplayed these challenges we
ignore these challenges so today as I
will see now in the light of
of my presentation these challenges are
probably the challenges of Indian
democracy we find ourselves at a
threshold where there is no political
precedence then we have actually
strengthened these two things we never
stand on individual liberty and dignity
then we never stand then diversity in
our democratic context so they were easy
prey for those who came to power
subsequently and are empowered correctly
so that takes me to the latter part of
my point which is what is our current
challenge in order to be schematic and
without giving any labels to what the
current moment or current regime is for
the time being I would just place before
you seven or eight
characteristics seven or eight
characteristics that mark the current
moment
structurally in terms of political
structure or the structure of political
competition what do we see around today
first unprecedented centralization in
the office of the Prime Minister not the
p.m. only p.m. of course always has been
very powerful but in the office of the
Prime Minister coupled with again an
unprecedented personalization of society
you will find that here there is a
resonance to 1975 and yet I am using the
term unprecedented not because I have to
want to be a serving but I sincerely
feel believe that in comparison to what
is happening today
to the structure of politics what Indira
Gandhi did appears quite amateurish and
therefore I am using this term there is
a systematic method what is happening
today
and therefore we need to look at this
personalization of authority in the
office of the Prime Minister as the
first major characteristic the second is
the became of our federal politics not
only in constitutional term not only in
terms of center state relations that of
course but more than that there is a
complete became suddenly of this central
advance that the nineteen nineties had a
brought many Federalists in India have
always argued that 1990s was a time when
India's
federalism was suddenly blooming and
then you find that it sort of evaporates
so federal the key is the second the
third which probably even doesn't
require
in Econ ink is the unprecedented
vacation
by the judiciary again unprecedented
notwithstanding what happened in ADM
Jabalpur during the emergency and ATMs
open who today would look like at least
a sincere attempt to justify what they
were able today the judiciary doesn't
even have to justify its
application and it is this judicial
application which marks the structural
problem in the present circumstance
number four this beginning of the
politicization of the armed forces it's
just the beginning one hopes that it
could be arrested but if it goes on then
we would have probably contributed a new
leaf to our overall crisis of democracy
the next is the which skills of
investigative agencies nothing new
everyone has been doing it in their hand
they did it very well and today it has
been happening and then there is a
subordination of the entire bureaucracy
again something that has happened
earlier also and we are experiencing it
today also so in essence there are
equals of 1975 there is an improvement
on the 1975 there is a systematize ation
of the 1975 movement again today add to
this some other things that are
happening in the structural realm today
for example the irrelevance of political
parties which is now increasing in 1975
that probably wasn't there today
including the ruling party all political
parties are suddenly becoming irrelevant
to what is happening in the realm of
politics and finally the closure of all
Popular Resistance these are the
structural aspects of our current
democratic movement if you combine them
together then perhaps you would agree
therefore that our current moment is not
nearly in movement
usual challenges to democracy because
you will recall I started by saying the
Democrats is never a kind of highway
journey it gets into divergence it goes
somewhere come back comes back it means
pushing that is what I said at the
initial point however I suspect and I
will place it before you that this is
not a moment of just routine diversions
in India's politics through routine
challenges it is a moment of hijack
where does this movement of hijack take
us I have consistently argued and many
others have now been arguing the same
thing so I am NOT saying that it is
something extraordinary that I have
argued that while these structural
aspects are there that I listed which
should worry us there are certain
process related aspects of our current
moment which probably mark the current
moment beyond everything else so let me
take you through these boosts process
related aspects or characteristics of
our current moment and I would argue
that unless we understand these two
carefully we would not understand what
is wrong with our democracy today yes
the list that I gave you is of all the
wrongs and I will still say that they
need to be addressed urgently but these
are the crux of the entire matter what
are these - they are famously described
as populism and majoritarianism distance
causes particularly and scholars Indian
scholars based in West would normally
flag off populism as a major challenge I
have no dispute with them my only
problem is about the language because
populism is the language of global
democratic discussion so they use that
language but I lose what I am going to
argue that the latter challenge of
mutual materialism
it is much more serious than
the challenge of populism and I will
come to that but let's first spend a
couple of minutes on this question of
listen what is populism of course in the
Ragan they were also called list and if
you start looking around you don't have
to only in deadly for populist leaders
they are everywhere there so in this
sense populism in the sense has always
been there and ml as an element of other
politics concept should however and I
must warn those who are not from the
discipline of political science that the
term populism would have any number of
definitions however a large body of
scholars agrees that there are three
elements which are part of populism so
there is agreement on these three and
then there are many others who had
something else and so on the three are
in the first place it kind of anti elite
idea of people obviously populism refers
to people and what we were sovereignly
but this idea is it's not this entity
elite but NT something what purism
is to always NT something so we are the
people and then there are you who are
the other so populism requires and that
is the interesting point about populism
that through the discussion of populism
one actually encounters the echoes of
20th century exclusionary politics so it
is either aunty elite or it is aunty
minority sometimes even antim poor so
that is the first element everyone I
agree is that it is empty something in
the India particularly it is empty
is it or that is what is suspected the
second element on which many agree which
is an element of populism is what is
called a moralistic idea of politics
that qualities is a warfare between good
and bad
a great Mahabharat and then there are
the color was to be defeated so the war
between good and bad a moralistic
ultimate moralistic view of public and
quality
so your adversary is not just your
competitor but is a bad element that
needs to be defeated pleased and then
the third element is undermining of
institutions again because people are
supreme so institutions are less
important in fact institutions are seen
as an obstacle in the expression of
popular will
vigilantism will quickly come to your
mind as an instance of this these are
the three elements of populism
however in last couple of years we that
is I was part of that study the local
meeting program of the CSDs and the Azim
Premji University did a study
part of that was tacking on this part it
was not once populism remember it was
not a study of what realism but part of
it was tacking on this question of
populism so our humble submission is
that at least for the time being there
is an attraction towards populism but
populism is not the confirmed attitude
of the Indian people as I said for the
first and the iLET people are quite an
elite or ninety something and it is a 99
but from the two other elements not more
than thirty percent people to place a
right to those whereas in the case of
anti elite attitude almost half of the
people subscribe to them even a nut
shell without getting into the
nitty-gritty of numbers I could argue
that populism is an emerging tendency in
the Indian context though as a political
practice it is a remember so many
politicians political parties leaders
would practising the tricks of populism
in order to make themselves acceptable
so the danger is there no doubt the
danger is limited and also the danger is
competitive in the sense that it's
competitive populism it's not just one
person's core populism though one person
seems to be extremely successful in
reaping the harvest of that populism
there are other popular lists everywhere
there are proper lists in the sense in
under pradesh and telangana there are
few lists or there is at least a
populist in this bengal and so on and so
forth my point is that while therefore
populism is an important issue today in
terms of the political process being
and Satan is in another danger and I
have been arguing that majoritarianism
is that other danger or other problem in
the sense all of you know that visuality
realism in the sheer number terms is
always a problem in electoral or
representative democracy numbers and
nobody should crush that at the same
time when only numbers matter electoral
democracy becomes electoral kind of
currency but I am NOT talking about this
aspect of liberal democracy or
representative democracy what I would
draw your attention to is the phenomena
of group or communities constituting or
claiming to constitute a majority and
therefore claiming that they actually
decide what they've not released now
this group could be just a regional
group or a religious group so this could
be either a regional level
majoritarianism but of course at the
Hollinger level there is a religious
majoritarianism at play during last 25
to 30 years and here the numbers are
slightly worrying then I started sort of
pursuing this question in 2004 we found
that one person in every three was of
majoritarian tendency that is one person
in three persons would say that yes in a
democracy the will of the majority
community matters not the view of the
majority the majority community matters
everything should be decided by the will
of this majority community
3 one person in every three 30 percent
actually even less than one indeed by
2015 this proportion has rising to
almost half that is one person in every
to now subscribes to this idea that the
will of the majority community
actors in public red plus them because
it's not just what people think one
needs to also look at how politics
unfolds and you will find that it is
this politics letter is become popular
and gainful in the past six seven years
which was electorally
on the ascendance earlier also then it
had a safe back but the politics of
hindu-majority really son has become
successful in 2014 and that success is
not limited to only electoral gimmicks
that success is deeply connected to this
popular sentiment about democracy being
the will of a community I would submit
therefore that both popular populism and
majoritarianism as processes are
important challenges that are on the top
of the list of structural aspects of our
current problem or challenge that the
democracy faces I could now return to
the last bit what I wanted to say so
then where are we going where does this
all take us
as I said I would like to describe this
moment as a movement of issac of India's
democracy so from it to say democracy as
I said we inaugurated our democracy with
this idea that people will be to sign we
are now entering probably in the phase
of what can be described as is some
democratic politics
while I'm introducing this lecture
Subash G used terms such as right-wing
and fascist these also are terms which
are often employed in the debates about
what are the challenges and what
actually should be there for the
response to those challenges time
wouldn't permit us to get into semantics
of all these terms but I would simply
defend the term that I am using that it
is a movement of some democratic
politics and I will connect it up at the
end when I conclude what does this
simple democratic woman tell us about
ourselves about our politics about our
as I said it tells us first that we'd
have now probably slowly agreed to the
idea that religious identity politics of
the majority community is a valid and
legitimate democratic expression so this
legislation in being why this kind of
politics it's not just that the party
has won it's not just that they are
popular it's not just that BJP has won
the second election in a row it's
something more than that which is that
the idea that politics could be
conducted on the basis of the religious
identity of the majority community has
gained ground and therefore what some
scholars have earlier pointed out is
that there is this kind of politics of
the hurt sentiment of the majority
community the politics today is this
politics when people criticize Nehru
then people criticize the past of our
democratic experience it is because of
this employment of the idea that the
majority community has always been on
the receiving side on the receiving end
and let's not get into the factuality of
it because it is not the sexuality which
matters it is the acceptability of a
claim that matters so let's first the
second is that dissent or difference of
opinion is enmity nationally again we
need to elaborate we have been
experiencing it when your offers have
experienced it at our doorsteps this
argument that all difference and all the
sink is anti-national third and more
diabolically and many of us are not made
against this is that consistently a
theoretical argument is being made and
that is that there is a prioritization
of values nation comes before democracy
nation comes first democracy comes later
that's the argument that is being made
you will recall as I said initially
India's national struggle was unique
because it said that nation and
democracy go together so there was not
it choice given it was still that unless
we're democratic we can't be nationalist
and our nationalism means democracy this
combining of nationalism and democracy
in the vanveen a new kind of framework
is something that is being now
challenged not only in fact is what in
theory why purely human that nation
comes first there is a privilege of a
nation democracy comes later and finally
something entirely unrelated to the
politics of the BJP but something that
the government does very smartly is the
erection the creation of a surveillance
state a new state is being created where
there will be surveillance as the
continuous strategy of governance these
things are now happening all around us
in India I must also say I am sure I
would invite the ire of some of us here
that this is a cross-party phenomena if
you look at these three or four things
seriously a new part is contesting these
things surveillance state every party is
actually adopting the surveillance
mechanisms very gleefully very happy
leading this lockdown is actually a kind
of a small-time experiment in creating a
new surveillance state and every party
is doing it everywhere they are in power
and that is really the sub Democratic
aspect of it if it were that the BJP is
the enemy it would have been very easy
but the enemy is actually much more
spread out everywhere
in the political class in the media and
in the public so we are our own enemies
just to quickly summarize and put it in
the global context this is also
Nobles like down of democracy as the
21st century became initially there was
this romanticism of the Arab Spring
which quickly evaporated and since then
everyone is worried about what is going
to happen to democracy not just in these
favorite parts of the world that we live
in but also in the first straight person
delivery and particularly since the
advent of crunk American scholars have
suddenly become aware of this problem
and therefore there has also been a
famous work called how democracies die
this is a book that came in 28th even by
a sniffing Lipsky and like they have
argue that democracy is sort of eroded
so you don't have to go out to attack
democracy democracy can be eroded from
within and that is something that we in
India are witnessing whether we can
reach this or not is it tall order for
just one lecture to argue a wall so I
will not venture into that but I will
conclude with two sort of big question
and send them perhaps in the queue and
answers questions and answers if there
is a need I will come back to this last
bit once again as to what are the likely
signal I use to be clear I am NOT of the
view that this can be very easily
overcome so obviously the scenarios are
only bad and worse so whether we can
have a bad scenario or a worse scenario
as far as India's democracy is concerned
is the only question but to throw to the
questions and also put before you my
answers to those two questions to
conclude the first question would be
this will there be a victory of the high
ideology of exclusion in other words
will India be a Hindu majoritarian State
not state really society
I will not go able to stay will this
Maji of exclusion will really be
victorious my answer to this question at
the moment would be that perhaps not for
another decade and therefore we as
supporters of democracy we as critics of
the hijack of democracy probably have
some breathing space still left to us
that this is probably going to be a time
of struggle a decade of struggle and
maybe then this question the second big
question then is will there be a
complete taming and the legitimacy of
politics of resistance I suspect yes
that is what what is telling us in our
face is a complete taming and diligent
emission of political activism of
political action and therefore of
politics of resistance and by politics
of resistance I am NOT talking of any
revolution I am NOT talking of any kind
of revolutionary politics but simple
acts of politics of resistance in your
own domestic locality in your own
quality that you work in in your own
cities these spaces are getting
completely dried out and if they are
still there they are getting Dee
legitimized so in the sense the scenario
of the sub democratic politics is that
we might remain an election only
democracy as some people have been
arguing in the time to come and it is
therefore that to the extent critic is
an important step to finding solutions
we need to critique the present moment
we need to critique the past that
produce this moment and only then
probably some windows of political
solutions might be received
thank you very much for your patience
and I will welcome your comments both
here today but since time is
your comments can be most easily passed
on to me on the email I would like to
expand this into a more prognostic kind
of analysis of India's current
Democratic moment and your comments will
definitely help and push me into that so
thank you so much and the National
Socialist initiating and thank you
