conclusion on the Indian political structure
Answers
CONCLUSION
Politics in India is much rougher and much more corrupt that in the democracies of Europe and North America. Assassination is not uncommon: the revered Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, and the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 were all murdered, although it has to be noted that these were not really political assassinations which happen more at local level. Communal, caste and regional tensions continue to haunt Indian politics, sometimes threatening its long-standing democratic and secular ethos. The language used by political candidates about each other is often vivid.
The parliamentary scene has been transformed in the last six years with the BJP winning an overall majority in both the elections of 2014 and 2019. The leader of the BJP Narendra Modi is a dominant and popular figure. He is the first prime minister since 1971 to win majorities in parliament in back-to-back elections and a survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies found that nearly one-third of people who voted for the BJP last time did so in support of Modi, rather than the party or their local candidate.
Over the last six years, however, a key question has been the influence on the BJP government of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the vast conservative Hindu revivalist organisation where Prime Minister Modi started his career as an activist. The RSS was heavily involved in the 2014 and 2019 elections and Modi and many other senior officials of the BJP, which is independent of the RSS though ideologically close, are still members of the organisation.
The re-election of the BJP to government has fuelled growing anxiety about relations between Hindus and Muslims in India. Some 200 million Muslims live in India and many feel threatened by the growing tide of Hindu nationalism headed by Prime Minister Modi which has led to controversial citizenship-status checks to root out unauthorised migrants in border states. India risks becoming an ethnic democracy with an implied two-tiered citizenship.
No less an Indian figure than Amartya Sen - a Harvard professor and Nobel-prize winning economist - has expressed his concern about the state of India in an article which explained:
"After India secured independence from British colonial rule, it had for many decades a fine history of being a secular democracy with much personal liberty. People showed their commitment to freedom and their determination to remove authoritarian governance through decisive public action, for example in the general elections in 1977, in which the despotic regulations – dressed as “the emergency” – were firmly rejected by the people. The government obeyed promptly.
However, in recent years the priority of freedom seems to have lost some of its lustre for many people, and the current government gives striking evidence of the inclination to promote a different kind of society. There have also been strong attempts to stifle anti-government protests, which, strangely enough, have often been described by the government as “sedition”, providing grounds for arrest and for locking up opposition leaders."
In spite of all its problems, however, India remains a vibrant and functioning democracy that is a beacon to democrats in many surrounding states.