As India Turns 75, its Democracy is Under Threat

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

India celebrates 75 years of independence Aug. 15. When the country became independent in 1947, many commentators held little hope that this vast country would stay united, much less maintain a democratic government.

But now India boasts the world’s sixth-largest economy and fourth most-powerful military. And its population will surpass that of China by 2023, making India the world’s most populated country.

The actions of India’s founders proved significant. The first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, established norms for future leaders, including deference to the judiciary and parliament. India’s first general election in 1952 broke international records after 81 million people cast their votes.

India was not simply an electoral democracy but a constitutional one with strong institutions that possessed legitimacy within society and upheld a tolerant vision of Indian identity as reflected in the Constitution.

India has suffered no coups or civil wars, although elections and civil liberties were suspended from 1975 to 1977 during the “emergency” of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. However, democracy persisted despite her personal dictatorship. She lost the 1977 general election.

Today, though, the country is guided by an exclusivist ideology that threatens to undo earlier achievements. The Hindutva vision of a homogenous body politic united by shared culture and belief clashes with the reality of India and the pluralism of India’s founders.

Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru emphasized India’s historical role as a home for many faiths and peoples, including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis, and others. The Indian state would act as a steward of this essential pluralism rather than stifling or merely tolerating it.

But the Hindu nationalist view, asserted by writers like V. D. Savarkar, and now espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party, sees India as the eternal homeland of a homogenous people sharing a particular cultural-religious identity. It excludes hundreds of millions of Indians whose ancestors have lived in India for centuries.

Majoritarianism, the emphasis on the exclusive rights of a majority over the political system, has become ingrained in Indian political culture. This is true not only among Hindus, but also ethnic and religious majority communities at the state and sub-national level. Freedom House downgraded India’s status from “free” in 2020 to only “partly free” in 2021.

India also remains rather poor. In absolute terms, 175 million people live beneath the international poverty line of less than $1.90 a day. Much of the rest of India’s 1.3 billion people live on less than $5.50 a day. GDP per capita has grown only modestly in less than sixty years, from $82 in 1962 to $1,900 in 2020, with much of this growth taking place after 1991.

India’s life expectancy has seen admirable growth from only 32 years in 1947 to nearly 70 in 2019, though it varies widely between states.

Agricultural production still employs 42 per cent of the Indian workforce, a significantly higher proportion than the industrial and service sectors, while only contributing to 14 per cent of India’s GDP. In terms of employment and output, industry struggles behind services and agriculture. Manufacturing has long hovered around 16 per cent of GDP.

But the service sector is a notable success story, accounting for 50 per cent of the economy. Software exports currently stand at $93 billion per year. The tech sector is predicted to reach a trillion-dollar value by 2030, beginning from virtually nothing in 1991.

India’s relatively well-developed university education system and widespread knowledge of English have given an edge to service products in a competitive global economy.

When Nehru first articulated his doctrine of non-alignment, India sought to protect its strategic autonomy and avoid entangling alliances. He believed that if India did not join either of the two Cold War blocs, it would not be viewed as a threat by any country.

This has changed. Although threats from Pakistan have historically occupied the bulk of Indian defence attention, China’s military build-up over the last decade has heightened military tensions with Beijing.

Defence spending increased nearly fourfold over the last thirty years, to $72.9 billion in 2020, making India’s defence budget the third largest in the world. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced plans to unify the military commands by 2024 and provide seamless command and control over the borders with Pakistan and China.