The secular age is never godless but rather the age of the mortal god, the state. What is it that makes the state a mortal god, if not the fact that it is both constituting and constituted? The state is constituted by us mortals, but it paradoxically constitutes us in turn. We can decide as a collective only by a collective renunciation of decision, a delegation of sovereignty to those who represent us. But this renunciation of decision should, in a democratic state, lead to the affirmation of individual will. This can occur if there are institutions and mechanisms that work independently of both individual and sovereign will, serving to strengthen the former and check the latter.
The Republic Relearnt: Renewing Indian Democracy 1947-2024, Radha Kumar, Vintage Books, 2024.
A history of democracy needs to be able to find criteria that would allow it to recognise phases where the mortal god affirms its own mortality by checking sovereign power and bolstering individual will. This history will neither be the history of ideas nor a materialist history from below. It will be a history of the middle – of institutional mechanisms, policy decisions, and legislation that keeps this productive tension between the two levels alive. Radha Kumar’s new book, The Republic Relearnt: Renewing Indian Democracy 1947-2024 is a remarkable example of such a history.
At a global scale, we are living through the crisis of both national and international democratic institutions. At this stage, it is difficult to believe that democracy can survive at the hands of populist and authoritarian figures worldwide, like Trump, Erdogan, Orban, Putin, Netanyahu and Modi. Kumar’s book offers some hope, however, by delineating three waves of democratic renewal that one can find in the history of Indian democracy since 1947.
In every case, these waves of democratic renewal followed phases of authoritarianism or democratic backsliding, and was characterised by attempts to create stronger, more resilient, and more democratic institutions. Kumar characterises these periods as waves of democratic renewal on the basis of data provided by democracy indices like V-Dem, International IDEA, Freedom House, and The Economist Intelligence Unit.
Kumar, who has been intimately involved with the world of policy and bureaucracy for the better part of the last forty years, wrote this book to delineate the ways in which democracy has been renewed in India and the lessons that we can learn from it. In that sense it is not just a history but also a book that looks forward to the advent of a “more anchored, federal republic” which would “fulfil the promises of independence, made seventy-five years ago”.
The book takes a critical stance towards the Narendra Modi administration, arguing that it is “a partially authoritarian regime that harbours xenophobic impulses”, where all available indices show marked democratic decline in spheres ranging from loss of judicial autonomy, brute force propagation of legislation, police impunity, decline of federalism and a movement towards a one-party state, absolute investment of sovereignty in the executive, all topped off by an incredibly successful takeover of the media ecosystem.
The first wave of democratic renewal occurred after the end of Emergency in 1977. It was the shortest wave, lasting only three years, and that is why Kumar calls it an “instant, not a period”. Morarji Desai’s administration instituted checks on executive decision, fought for judicial independence, and protected the freedom of the press. Key legislations like the 43rd and 44th amendments were promulgated that enshrined fundamental rights and put restraints on executive and federal overreach. Article 257A, which had allowed the Union government to send Central forces into a state was deleted. Federalism was affirmed and structural reforms were attempted in the domains of police and administrative corruption.
The proposal for an office of the Lokpal stems from this period. Yet this period was too short for these reforms to be fully implemented. Like the second wave of democratic renewal that would follow, this administration had the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and RSS-influenced parties as one of its major constituents. This presence of RSS members in the Janata Party administration led to tensions, finally resulting in the collapse of the government in 1980 and Indira Gandhi’s re-election.
The second wave of democratic renewal took place in the early 90s, under another Janata Party-led coalition which had the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a partner. This time global democratic headwinds were in favour, and the major reforms were not just in the political sphere but also in the domains of economic liberalisation, social welfare, human rights and in the formation of independent institutions.
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The burgeoning of independent electronic media followed economic liberalisation, federalism was given a boost by the institution of the interstate council to mediate disputes between states and make avenues for better coordination, civil society was encouraged, legislation creating the National Commission for Women (NCW) was enacted by the parliament, and the Mandal Commission’s recommendation for 27% reservation for OBCs in government jobs and educational institutions was accepted.
Kumar writes that economic reforms under the Congress-led Narasimha Rao administration lifted 25 crore Indians out of poverty. Economic liberalisation overshadowed the wide-ranging political reform of the so-called panchayati raj system of elected local governance at town, district and village levels. The 73rd and 74th amendments institutionalised local governance and reserved representation for women in those bodies.
Despite its various and more widespread reforms, this democratic wave was sullied by the inability of the Rao administration to rein in social and religious tensions which were inflamed by the BJP’s Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the deaths of thousands in the ensuing violence. Caste- and religion-based violence spiralled, but at the same time the formation of oversight institutions and the devolution of governance at local levels allowed the most comprehensive wave of democratic renewal from 2004-14 to become possible.
The third wave of democratic renewal from 2004-14 was the longest and most stable one, yet at the same time it laid the ground for the decline of democracy that would follow. That is why Kumar calls it “India’s Weimar Moment”, referencing the Weimar Republic of Germany in the 1920s whose weakness and incompetence led to the rise of Nazism. The economy under the Manmohan Singh government grew at a rapid pace, 275 million people were lifted out of poverty, jobs in the formal sector were created even as inequality increased. Governmental data became more easily available to the public, federalism was bolstered by the rise of regional parties which were essential to the coalition, civil society was allowed considerable interface with governmental bodies, police reform was attempted, and press freedom increased with the proliferation of electronic media outlets.
At the same time, this democratic wave was, as Kumar writes, the moment when “the BJP’s political Hindutva began to come into its own”. Singh’s second term saw a rise in inequality and a fall in economic growth with allegations of political corruption that were amplified by the 2011 movement led by Anna Hazare.
For Kumar, what transpired in 2014 with the election of Modi as prime minister was nothing but the foundation of India’s second republic, whose “goals and practices are, in most respects, antithetical to those of the founders of the first republic”. On all fronts, from the social, to the political, the legislative and the economic, Kumar analyses the BJP’s performance and finds it propelling a democratic backsliding that is once again concurrent with global trends from Japan to Europe and the United States.
Minorities have suffered extreme social and political marginalisation, economic inequality has ballooned, and federalism has received a body blow. Autonomous institutions like the judiciary and the Election Commission (EC) have been hollowed out, and the executive has been strengthened at the expense of the legislative. Bodies like the NCW, and the Central Information Commission (CIC), created during the waves of democracy renewal, have been weakened by amendments.
Educational institutions have come under sustained attack, and the independent press has been absolutely made toothless through the means of censorship, financial pressure, and state action. A one-party state has been set up as the regulative ideal for Indian democracy. At the same time, Kumar recognises that “despite Modi’s inclination and his administration’s consolidation of power, Indian conditions for the emergence of totalitarianism remain incipient rather than crystallised”.
The penultimate chapter of Kumar’s book is titled “Recurrent Faults: Language, Religion, Dissent” and it summarises the way in which these three issues kept vitiating the democratic promise enshrined in the constitution. While chronic, these issues were better handled during waves of democratic renewal than during democratic backsliding.
In the concluding chapter, Kumar attempts to bring some lessons for a future democratic renewal, such as more federalism by allocating seats in the Rajya Sabha where all states get equal numbers, strengthening the judiciary and the EC, and abandoning the first-past-the-post system, and creating more emotional identification with governmental institutions. The diaspora has a big role to play in this fourth wave by influencing the democratic governments of European countries. For Kumar, democratic opposition across the world must come together and support each other in order to stave off the authoritarian future that awaits us.
Despite overall pessimism with regards to the contemporary enshrining of India’s second republic under Modi, Kumar believes that the story of democracy requires us to believe that a third republic is possible, and a fourth wave of democratic renewal can be brought into being if we can synthesise the lessons learnt from the three earlier waves.
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As she argues forcefully in her conclusion, “One overwhelming lesson from the three waves of renewal…democrats won each time they renewed the constitutional vision of a freer and more egalitarian society, and Indian voters showed unlimited patience in accepting very limited fulfilment of that vision. Democrats lost when it seemed apparent that they no longer upheld the constitutional vision.” Kumar’s book demonstrates how the promise of a freer and more egalitarian society has always had its own force in bringing about the three waves of democratic renewal.
The Republic Relearnt provides a very sober, informative and well-researched analysis of the history and present state of Indian democracy. Constitutionalism might be a ‘thin’ narrative as opposed to the ‘thick’ narrative of Hindutva ethno-nationalism. But the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha election as well as contemporary debates on the Constitution and B.R. Ambedkar show how the discursive terrain has subtly but slowly shifted from that of Hindutva ethno-nationalism to constitutionalism, one on which the ruling BJP will always be on the backfoot. Kumar’s book demonstrates how democracy has been renewed three times already by petitioning the immortal ideas enshrined in the Constitution and realising them in actual material and institutional practice. In doing that, her book offers us a blueprint for any efforts to bring about a renewal of democracy in the present.
Huzaifa Omair Siddiqi is assistant professor of English, Ashoka University.
