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India: The Hollowing Out of the World’s Largest Democracy

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorIndrajit Roy
Published date01 June 2022
Date01 June 2022
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/20419058221108782
26 POLITICAL INSIGHT • JUNE 2022
In March 2021, India’s credentials as
a liberal democracy were seriously
questioned when the think tank
Freedom House downgraded its status
from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’. This decline was
attributed to ‘a multiyear pattern in which
the Hindu nationalist government and its
allies have presided over rising violence
and discriminatory policies affecting
the Muslim population and pursued a
crackdown on expressions of dissent
by the media, academics, civil society
groups, and protesters’. Within a few weeks
a report by the Varieties of Democracy
project noted India’s slide from being the
world’s largest democracy to an electoral
India: The Hollowing
Out of the World’s
Largest Democracy
Under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is
sliding towards ‘electoral ethnocracy’, writes Indrajit Roy.
autocracy. This slide was followed, within
weeks, of India emerging as the COVID
hotspot of the world, reporting thousands
of deaths, and hundreds of thousands of
cases.
Prescient observers of Indian politics had
long seen this decline coming. Accounts
of India ‘faltering in its commitment to
a liberal, pluralistic, democratic order’
were presented in scholarly journals. In
particular, India’s lurch towards a Hindu
state has been noted as the country
© Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo
Political Insight June 2022.indd 26Political Insight June 2022.indd 26 01/06/2022 11:4901/06/2022 11:49

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