JANUARY 8 ― It’s a question I hear increasingly these days. International news media report on repression in Kashmir, mounting Hindu chauvinism, widespread protests against new laws, assaults on women, and more. The India the world once celebrated ― the world’s fastest-growing free-market...
JANUARY 8 ― It’s a question I hear increasingly these days. International news media report on repression in Kashmir, mounting Hindu chauvinism, widespread protests against new laws, assaults on women, and more. The India the world once celebrated ― the world’s fastest-growing free-market liberal democracy ― seems to be giving way to a violent, intolerant, illiberal autocracy.
First, there have been the social consequences of deepening democracy. Viewed by many observers as a fragile transplant at independence in 1947, democracy has become deeply entrenched, empowering previously marginalized castes and communities. Thanks to the implementation of the Mandal Commission proposal in 1989 to provide “reservations,” or quotas, in government jobs, universities, and the like to the “Other Backward Classes” , the former underclass has become a potent political force.
Fourth, the liberalisation of the statist Indian economy from 1991 onwards, in response to global market realities, led to the empowerment of an increasingly wealthy business community that was anxious to see more obstacles removed and rent-seekers eliminated, and willing to finance political change to make it happen. Modi and the BJP benefited from this, too, not least in generous funding from the capitalist nouveaux riches.
Sixth, this rise in Hindu consciousness occurred at a time when Muslim Pakistan stepped up its campaign of inciting, financing, and carrying out terrorism in India. Support for militancy in Kashmir gave way to outright military aggression, such as the attempt to seize the heights of Kargil, from which Pakistani troops were repulsed after a short but bloody war in 1999.
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