Remember when the Government of India threw all of Kashmir’s opposition leaders into jail and kept them there, because it could? Rarely has such egregious authoritarianism elicited so little pushback in a democracy. In the last eight years, our prison walls have bulged with political prisoners, languishing in jail on absurd charges, or without any charges at all. Journalists and news organisations that still do journalism have suffered raids and lawsuits. Instead of finding security in what it claims is its immense power, the Modi government has grown increasingly spiteful.
Now it has its hands around the throats of the Congress party, because it can. It has at its disposal servile institutions like the Enforcement Directorate, that long ago gave up any pretence of non-partisanship. It has a parliamentary majority that delivers problematic laws and amendments with little or no discussion. And it has a massive media machine—only part of which is lapdog ‘press’—that blanks out opposition voices, and has served up so much garbage and misinformation to the Indian public that even sane people are afraid to be ‘tainted’ by speaking up for the Congress.
The whole point of a democracy is to have free, vigorous opposition. It is anti-democratic to harass, barricade, and arrest the Congress leadership and party members, no matter what you think of them, for opposing the government and holding it to account. It is wrong to manhandle and arrest them for protesting. It is wrong not just because democracies are structured precisely to allow protest and insistence on accountability by individuals, but also because, whether the BJP likes it or not, the Congress party represents the interests of millions of Indians, who deserve, need, and are constitutionally owed a political voice. That goes for all opposition parties.
The political class always indulges in what we have come to accept as ‘normal’ political bickering, mudslinging, and eye-poking. But what is happening now feels entirely different, far more significant and dangerous. The pincer movement of ED interrogations and raids and arrests now besieging the Congress looks like an ugly witch-hunt that isn’t about financial irregularity. By all means go after law-breakers, but there appears to be little heft to the Young Indian case. Is that why the government waited until it had amended the case to suit its purposes?
The government’s single-point response to criticism of its authoritarianism from the Congress is that Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency. It should take some consolation from the fact that if subverting democracy is some kind of hideous competition, it beats her hands down—but it’s not a competition, and saying that it’s happened before is another way of admitting that it’s happening again, though in a much more sustainable way. Amit Shah did, however, come up with the weirdest response so far to the Congress wearing black to protest price rise: he thinks they were signalling that they’re against Modi laying the foundation of the Ram temple. Wut? I’m guessing he just wanted to remind everyone that Modi laid the foundation of the Ram temple.
Meanwhile, if you’re expecting Modi and Shah to be serious about sunlight in dark places, you must be out of your mind. These are the people who invented the unregulated blackbox called PM-CARES, into which thousands of crores—including of public money—were poured, and who introduced the Electoral Bonds scheme.
If Modi believes that voters will extinguish the Congress, there’s no good reason for him to take this much trouble to press down on its throat, and look so bad doing it. But contrary to what the propaganda machine tells us, there are many people who do, in fact, believe that there is an alternative to Modi. Could it be that Modi is one of them?