The year 2024 has been an extraordinary year of political turmoil, affecting country after country and continent after continent. In our immediate neighbourhood, the Shiekh Hasina administration was overthrown by a popular movement led by students and the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). To our west, a coalition of rebels overthrew the Bashar al Assad administration in a surprise offensive. Both Hasina and Assad fled their countries, the former to India and the latter to Russia.
The two developments show that seemingly entrenched authoritarian administrations can collapse like a house of cards, especially in weak states that have been held together by draconian measures. The immediate causes in each country are, of course, different. In Bangladesh, the Hasina administration ran out of strong-arm tactics to stem the tide of discontent amid a mounting economic crisis. In Syria, the withdrawal of military support by Russia, stretched thin by its war with Ukraine, and by Iran and Hezbollah under attack from Israel, precipitated Assad’s fall, aided by Turkish support for the rebels.
Bangladesh and Syria may be the most dramatic examples of political turmoil in 2024, but democratic administrations have had a tumultuous ride this year. To our east, South Korea suffered a one-day declaration of martial law, followed by calls for impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol. In Japan, the snap election called by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who took office following the resignation of former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, left his party even weaker than before.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron miscalculated in much the same way. The snap election he called resulted in significant gains for both the right and left-wing opposition, culminating in the resignation of Prime Minister Michel Barnier. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Sholz’s coalition collapsed in November. Chances are there will be an early election in February 2025.
In the US, astonishingly, the election denier who attempted a coup in 2020, Donald Trump, was voted into power. In Venezuela, the Nicolás Maduro administration refused to accept the election result, forcing the winner into exile. In Mozambique, daily protests against alleged vote rigging started in October and continue. There too, the Opposition has been forced into exile. In a further upset, the far right has largely breached the European parliament for the first time in its history, though centrists still control it.
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As the autocrats gained, the weakness of international institutions was further exposed. The United Nation’s (UN’s) inability to stem Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians (a reprisal for Hamas’ horrific terrorist attack), or even defend its own humanitarian organisations such as United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), makes it appear even more hapless than it was during the US’s war on Iraq and Libya twenty-one years ago, despite barbaric cases of torture by US and British troops. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defies the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) indictment on war crimes and crimes against humanity, as does Russian President Vladimir Putin; the former with the support of US President Joe Biden. ASEAN is nowhere to be seen as the military engendered civil war in Myanmar enters its fourth year, and North Korea has brought Russia’s war against Ukraine to Asia by sending troops to fight alongside the Russian army.
What of India? The rise of politically instigated communal violence in our country since 2014 has been mirrored in 2024 by anti-India sentiment in the Maldives and attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the former a shift of locus from Sri Lanka and the latter a shift of locus from Pakistan (both of which are preoccupied with economic crises).
As innumerable analysts have pointed out, Indian influence in our increasingly volatile neighbourhood is at one of its lowest points. By closing our borders to the beleaguered democrats in Myanmar, our current administration has alienated states such as Mizoram whose people have kinship with Myanmar’s Chin and Zo; indeed, it has provided an additional trigger for communal conflict in Manipur.
Further afield, we have repeatedly appeased Putin, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pleas have not been able to bring back those of our citizens who were duped into providing cannon fodder for the Russian army. Perhaps Trump will semi-detach Putin from China’s Xi Jinping but that is unlikely to yield benefits for India since all three leaders despise our present and past leadership. As far as our 2023 claim to leadership of the ‘Global South’ is concerned, it is South Africa’s defense of Palestinian rights that has seized civil society in 2024.
The growing power of autocrats is sobering for democrats across the world, but there are glimmers of hope, including in India. Opposition parties did relatively well in the 2024 general election though they lost several state elections subsequently. Yet they are still to act on the opportunities and lessons that Bangladesh’s popular revolt offers. Instead of exacerbating a communal divide in that country, as both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and unfortunately the Trinamool Congress (TMC) are doing, Opposition parties could welcome Bangladesh’s new democratic goals and through such support seek protection for Bangladeshi Hindus. Secondly, they could learn how to unite disparate forces against an autocrat, as Bangladesh and even more so Sri Lanka – which voted social-democrats into power – have done.
It is intrinsic to democracy that its proponents will focus on domestic reform. Yet our own history shows that democracies anchor themselves more securely when democrats across countries and regions support each other. As Ram Jethmalani reminded parliament in 1977, Indira Gandhi lifted the Emergency partly due to pressure from British and US democrats.
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This is a lesson that most democracies appear to have forgotten. Biden’s summit of democracies tried to bring democratically elected administrations together and was a non-starter since electoral processes themselves have been distorted through the use of artificial intelligence, biased election commissions and dishonest media. Had he tried to bring democratic political parties together, whether in or out of power, the result might have been different.
Curiously, this is an opportunity that right wing and/or xenophobic political parties have seized, for example through the National Conservatism movement launched in 2023, which held conferences in Washington and Brussels earlier this year, while Argentinian President Javier Milei hosted chauvinist leaders from the US and Europe in December.
The fact that right-wing parties are mobilising across continents appears to have been largely ignored in our country, though BJP and/or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) members participated in the Washington conference in August 2024, which makes the BJP’s accusation of an international democratic conspiracy to unseat the party wonderfully hypocritical. Instead of shying away from the BJP’s accusation, the more democratic Opposition parties might do better to partner with democratic political parties from across the world to combat an evidently global wave of authoritarianism. They could all benefit from lessons learned by their counterparts in other countries. I can only hope that that will be a goal for 2025.
Radha Kumar is a writer and policy analyst. Her most recent book is The Republic Relearnt: Renewing Indian Democracy, 1947-2024 (Penguin Vintage).
