Zoya Hasan’s ‘Democracy on Trial’: Intensity of collective decadence

While reading this book, I experience the anguish of a distinguished professor as she looks at the rise of the triumphant Hindutva, or the aggression implicit in the politics of majoritarianism and hyper-nationalism. Yes, Zoya Hasan’s new book reminds us once again that not everything is fine with our democracy because the present political regime, as she tries to convince us, is never tired of repressing critical and dissenting voices, negating the spirit of cultural/religious pluralism, and demonising those who do not follow the dictates of the politics of majoritarianism as ‘anti-national’ conspirators.

Of course, the university-educated liberal/left intelligentsia will hear the echo of their own voice in Prof Hasan’s arguments, and the information she has provided in the reasonably structured six chapters of the book. But then, it will be really wonderful if this book transcends the boundaries of the JNU-IIC circuit, and invites those who are perplexed and puzzled, and do not have the conceptual framework to understand “how the regime has used political and institutional mechanisms to undercut the pluralist nature of state and society, which is essential for the sustenance of a secular and democratic frame in a diverse society”.

To begin with, let us look at some hard facts Hasan wants her readers not to forget. For instance, 86 per cent of those killed in lynching incidents in 2017 were Muslims. Or, for that matter, it is indeed an issue of concern that although Muslims are 14.2 per cent of the population, they constitute only 4.9 per cent of state and Central government employees. Likewise, the lowest percentage of Muslim MPs (merely 4.2 per cent) was registered in 2014; and “for the first time in Independent India’s history, the ruling party did not have a single Muslim MP”. How can you and I forget that 96 per cent of the sedition cases were filed after 2014, and between 2014 and 2020, 10,552 people were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA)? This sort of targeted violence — a consequence of ‘majoritarian consolidation’ — does indeed indicate the threat to the democratic fabric of our social/political culture.

As you begin to read the book with care, you are bound to feel the intensity of our collective decadence — the steady fall of democracy as a way of living, acting and thinking. Democracy dies if the act of “dismantling the Opposition” becomes the new normal. Any alert observer of the Machiavellian strategy of the ruling regime will agree with Hasan when she points out how it often uses money power and state agencies like CBI and ED to “break legislators and state governments run by Opposition parties”. Isn’t it sad that we have normalised “hate speeches”, and even Ministers do not hesitate to refer to Muslims as “termites”, or “Babur ki aulad”?

Hasan sees great danger to democracy in the “shrinking space for dissent” — the way all sorts of protests are ruthlessly repressed, some of our leading public universities are attacked and stigmatised, or, the ‘political control of media’ negates the spirit of factual reporting and critical analysis. To refer to Hasan’s own words, it was sad to see “television anchors from leading national channels riding with the drivers of bulldozers that were used to destroy Muslim homes, shops and small businesses in the aftermath of violence stoked by Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti processions in Delhi in 2022”.

Even though Hasan’s text does not seem to have the flavour of political theory, or the kind of analysis through which the likes of Rajni Kothari and Sudipta Kaviraj enchanted their readers, this book is important because it helps the reader understand how the present regime relies on “communal appeal to the Hindu majority — both to its sense of pride and victimhood”. Likewise, she helps us comprehend how the “promotion of corporate power” has resulted in the “extraordinary concentration of wealth in the coffers of a few corporate actors”.

However, I feel it would have been better had Hasan dared to reflect on the failure of the liberal/left intelligentsia to transcend the comfort zone of select academic enclaves, evolve a dialogic language, emerge as “organic intellectuals”, communicate with those who are otherwise ridiculed as “Sanghis”, and make them see the violence and economic exploitation implicit in the unholy mix of religious fundamentalism and neoliberal capitalism. And, eventually, convince them that India’s salvation lies in the path followed by the likes of Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, Ambedkar and Maulana Azad, and not Godse, Savarkar and Golwalkar.

— The former JNU professor writes on culture, politics and education