Book Excerpt |'Democracy On Trial: Majoritarianism And Dissent In India’ by Zoya Hasan

Dissent and democracy are closely associated with each other. Dissent is widely considered as a vital good, one whose relative absence is seen as fostering forms of censorship or intellectually and politically homogenizing forms of culture. The absence of dissent reduces democracy to a mere contest for power and competition between political parties and special interests jockeying for benefits after elections. India is a country with a long history of dissent and argumentation, ‘even if its forms have evolved through the centuries’, notes Romila Thapar.

The core values underlying the Indian Constitution reflected a philosophy of rights—the right to religious freedom, assembly, free press, and equality. The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression, which provides citizens the right to disagree and criticize the government without fear of persecution by the state. However, there was a marked tendency during the past few years to regard any criticism or Opposition as anti-national and divisive, with the state being called upon to punish critics for their presumed lack of commitment to the national interest. Even a critical discussion on phone, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook is fraught with danger for the average citizen not keen on spending time in police custody or jail. Critics and dissenters were hounded rather than protected by law enforcement agencies.

The Emergency

The suppression of dissent has a long history. The imposition of the Emergency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from 1975-77 posed a great danger to dissent and democracy. It marked a turn to authoritarianism purportedly in the national interest. Political freedoms were suspended which set off nearly two years of widespread arrests, censorship of the press, and curtailment of civil liberties and limited the power of the judiciary to review and check the executive’s actions. Opposition leaders were rounded up in midnight raids, arrested and jailed. For the 21 months that the Emergency lasted, it seemed that India was going to follow the political fate of many of its neighbours and newly independent states curtailing democracy. But in 1977, Indira Gandhi called elections and the Congress Party suffered a major defeat, signaling mass Opposition to authoritarian rule. Democracy was not only restored, it took stronger roots.

In many respects, the form of authoritarianism under this regime resembles the Emergency in terms of its restrictions on civil liberties, acute centralization of power, and pervasive fear. But the resemblance stops with the authoritarian thrust. It differed in several important ways. The Emergency regime carried no weight with the public at large. It had no ethnic dimension, it was not targeted against minorities. Indira Gandhi was not backed by an ideology that pitted one section of society against another. There was certainly no targeting of intellectuals and attacks on reason and scientific temper, and no party leaders and street vigilantes giving lessons to all and sundry on nationalism. Repression was directed against Indira Gandhi’s opponents and those of her son Sanjay Gandhi who was notorious for his shenanigans. It did not have any grandiose projects of rewriting history, reorganising culture to highlight Hindu supremacy, or presenting a narrative vilifying a particular religious community, and using state power to impose this agenda.

Importantly, the Emergency’s aftermath gave legitimacy to new forms of dissent which had taken shape during this period. There was an upsurge of political activism, most notably the birth of the civil liberties movement which made a significant contribution to the restoration of democracy. Mass Opposition and protests enlarged the political arena and expanded the field of political democracy. The greatest beneficiary of the new atmosphere of freedom was the Hindu right and the Jana Sangh, which was in the forefront of Opposition to the Emergency. A slew of leaders came out of the Opposition to the Emergency and who were incarcerated who formed the leadership of the Hindu right in subsequent years. Four decades later, the same formation regards Opposition against the regime as anti-national.

Afterlife of the Emergency

Democracy is proclaimed more easily than it is practiced. Top leaders of the current regime frequently recall the Emergency to caution citizens against the possible re-enactment of those dark days, and the curbs on political freedom between 1975 and 1977. Events since 2014 indicate that curbs on freedom and dissent come in different guises and forms, and through different devices, and not always through a formal declaration of Emergency. In the period under discussion, there was no Emergency, no press censorship, no lawful suspension of laws but the clamp down on dissent was taking place through a combination of means discussed below. This is more dangerous because repression was not always visible as it was after the declaration of Emergency.

Dissent was restricted by coercive and non-coercive actions. Coercive actions relate to criminalizing dissent and a deliberate equation of dissent with terror. The powers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) were enhanced by the Finance Act of 2019 which allowed the agency to enter any property for search and seizure without registering a complaint with a magistrate or competent authority. Non-coercive means comprised efforts to roll back civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations by using a law on foreign funding, the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) to regulate foreign donations to non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

FCRA was amended in 2020 to further restrain the advocacy work of NGOs that benefitted from foreign funding. The Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) was used against the political Opposition by amendments to the Finance Act in 2019. There were other restrictions, which consisted of reducing the remit of the historic Right to Information (RTI) whose provisions have been considerably watered down. These changes made it easier to restrict civil society activities and ensure it quiescence.

(Excerpted from ‘Democracy on Trial: Majoritarianism and Dissent in India’ by Zoya Hasan with permission from Aakar Books)