The Dismantling of India’s Democracy

by Prem Shankar Jha

English 372 pages 1 edition

India’s democracy, once celebrated as an unprecedented experiment in pluralism and participatory nation building, now faces a grave crisis. In this urgent and penetrating work, veteran journalist Prem Shankar Jha traces how the country’s hard-won democracy—rooted in diversity and tolerance—has been steadily hollowed out since Independence—slowly at first, and since 2014, with determined ferocity. Structural flaws in our Constitution, like the lack of state-funded elections, Jha argues, were made substantially worse by Indira Gandhi’s ban on company donations to political parties. As parties increasingly turned to clandestine donors for election financing, politics became a near-criminal enterprise, facilitating the rise of a predatory state long before 2014. And now, under the Modi regime, the weaponization of state agencies, the serious undermining of electoral processes and the transformation of governance into a tool of political vendetta threaten to tear down the last remnants of India’s democracy. Jha further argues that the erosion of democratic institutions, the rise of Hindu majoritarian politics and the normalization of state repression are not isolated events but symptoms of a deeper transformation. Drawing on Indian history and global parallels, he makes the bold case that what India is witnessing is not simply a drift towards authoritarianism but the emergence of a distinctively Indian form of fascism. Our only hope cannot be, he says, an electoral victory for the opposition; it must be grounded in a commitment to both political accountability and cultural inclusivity. Rich with insight and analytical clarity from decades of engagement with the subject, The Dismantling of India’s Democracy is both a lament and a call to action. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how a democratic republic can be undone from within—and how it might yet be reclaimed.