India on 79^th Independence Day 2025!

By M.Y.Siddiqui

Republican India is witnessing dismantling of electoral democracy, using the very institution of Election Commission of India (ECI), the very roots of electoral democracy, to uphold the people’s sovereignty, with its inability to be transparent and responsive to the electors on the 79^th Independence Day on August 15, 2025, as a recent expose on massive manipulations of the voters’ lists by the ECI reveals. This spells end of democracy and rule of law based constitutional democratic governance, blatantly signaling emergence of fascism with all powers centralized in one man, while maintaining the apparent façade of the Constitution and the public institutions thereunder. Manned by men of straw, the ECI has collapsed as it has failed to ensure level playing fields for all political parties in conducting free and fair elections.

The two instances of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany demonstrated how democratic systems can be subverted under the guise of legality and national renewal. RSS Pariwar union government, which took route of parliamentary democracy, stripped the parliament of power, passed emergency laws, crushed opposition, captured media, and outlawed political dissents, all the while maintaining the constitutional legitimacy. In both the cases, the fascists gave unto themselves dictatorial power, overpowered democratic institutions and established a one-man totalitarian regime, both using the electoral mandate not to serve democracy but to destroy it. The same syndrome is in force in India and playing out to the people with impunity.

The RSS Pariwar union government deploys mass surveillance, criminalizes dissent, and delegitimizes opposition while holding periodic elections to bear the spectral echo of descent into authoritarianism. Today 83 percent of those between 15-30 years in the labour force remain unemployed. Justice remains elusive. Law and order are crumbling. The legal system is in collapse with over 50 million (more than five crore) pending cases that will take 120 years to clear the backlog. Matching number of cases are pending in revenue courts of SDM, DCLR, District Magistrates, Commissioners,  State Revenue Boards relating to lands across the country. Even the industrial disputes, which move generally faster, suffer delays.   

India is witnessing economic failure, diplomatic missteps and the most insidious damage to its socio-economic fabric, while the RSS Pariwar union government pontificates that they have built a “brave new India”. Prime Minister’s conspicuous silence in the face of repeated humiliations by the USA, having consistently hyphenated India with Pakistan, claimed credit for ceasefire in Operation Sindoor, publicly paraded illegal Indian immigrants in handcuffs and chains, and above all, unsustainable 50 percent high tariffs on the country, such triumphalism only underscores the sheer inversion of meaning characterizing PM’s tenure so far. This inversion very well defines PM’s terms in office that reduced India as a geopolitical inconsequence.

Other important damage is evident in the erosion of country’s pluralistic ethos and the hardening of its deepest societal fault lines. A comparative glance at key social indicators from the pre-2014 era to the present reveals a sharp regression into communal majoritarianism, anti-intellectualism and institutionalized discrimination. The socio-cultural tapestry painstakingly woven over colonial period modernity, the egalitarian impulses of the freedom struggle, and the republican values enshrined in the Constitution of India, have been torn apart. What remains is a nation draped in the anachronistic garb of medievalism. Unlike the damage in other sectors, which may be reversed with time, the rupture in the socio-cultural domain presents a far more formidable challenges in today’s fast paced interconnected world.

The other starkest damage has been to communal harmony. During pre-2014 UPA regime, country witnessed around 600 communal incidents per year, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) data. Under the current regime, the number has surged to over 1000 per year between 2017 1nd 2022, according to NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau). Even more chilling has been the rise of cow related lynching from rare and scattered such incidents, to over 300 cases between 2014 and 2024. Hate speech cases exploded five fold, emboldened by weak or little or nil police response and tacit political complicity or encouragement. Cases like the Bulandshahar lynching of a police officer in 2018 or the Palghar mob killings in 2020 highlight how vigilante justice has replaced rule of law in many regions.

The surge in communal aggression is matched by the shrinking of the democratic space for dissent and expression. India’s global press freedom ranking fell from 140 in 2014 to 150 to 161 out of 180 countries in 2024, according to Reporters Without Borders. Sedition cases, once rarely invoked, 25 cases per year pre-2014, have gone up by 160 percent, to over 70 cases annually. Universities have become ideological battlegrounds, with Mughal and people’s histories purged from curricula and dissenting students at institutions/universities charged under anti-terror laws. The transformation from occasional censorship of dissenting research to systematic erasure of liberal academia is unmistakable.

The status of minorities, especially Muslims, reveals further institutional exclusion. Muslim representation in Lok Sabha (House of the People) has declined from 30 MPs in 2009 to 24 in 2024, and for the first time there is no Muslim minister in RSS Pariwar union government. Anti-conversion laws, once a rarity has now spread to 12 BJP ruled states, further criminalizing inter-faith relationships and religious change. The CAA and the push for NRC signal concerted calculated efforts to draw the contours of Indian citizenships around Hindu identity. There is a deepening siege on Muslim civil rights.

Castes and gender justice that had seen incremental progress in pre-2014 decades have taken a hit. Atrocities against Dalits rose from 39,000 cases in 2013 to over 50,900 in 2022 as per the NCRB, while in pre-2014, governments avoided breaching the Supreme Court mandated 50 percent reservations, a 10 percent quota for economically weaker sections among upper castes, effectively dilutes affirmative action and possibly paving the way for abolition of caste based reservations. Institutional murders of students and flogging of Dalits marked a return of caste pride couched in euphemisms like social harmony, replacing the rhetoric of social justice.

Even welfare schemes, earlier seen as neutral instruments of inclusion, have become vehicles of majoritarian grab and possession. While earlier governments maintained a universal approach to schemes like MNREGA, and the PDS, recent years have seen exclusions. Muslim farmers are being denied PM KISAN benefits in BJP ruled states. Despite initial success, the Ujjawla scheme faltered with more than 25 percent of beneficiaries reverting to firewood or cow/buffalo dungs due to high refill costs. Welfare distribution has been openly communalized as seen in vaccine campaigns tied to temples and slogans like “80 versus 20” in Uttar Pradesh implicitly pitting Hindus against Muslims.

Culturally, the nation has undergone a profound homogenization. The BJP’s aggressive push for Hindi as a national language led to fierce protests in the Northeast and the South. Folk cultures and regional traditions have been overshadowed by state promoted Hindu festivals, while artists like M.F.Hussain have been posthumously targeted and some film makers boycotted for their ideological stance. The shift from celebrating diversity to imposing cultural uniformity is symptomatic of the regime’s “One Nation, One Culture” policy drive. Along side the cultural narrowing has come a rise in pseudoscience and anti-intellectualism. Scientific funding dropped from 0.8 percent of GDP in 2013 to 0.6 percent in 2023, while government sponsored ideas saw bizarre claims like plastic surgery existing in Vedic times that gains official endorsement. The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 promotes Sanskrit and ”Indian Knowledge Systems” at the cost of critical thinking. The push for   “Bhartiya Science” exemplifies the RSS long held disdain for evidence- based rationality.

PM era has witnessed criminalization of humanitarian compassion, a most disturbing sign. Over 20,000 NGO licences have so far been revoked under the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA), including Amnesty International and CARE India Christian Community and institutions have been targeted in BJP ruled states. Humanitarian works, especially in minority and tribal areas are now frequently branded “anti-national”. The public discourse has normalized previously taboo expressions of hatred what was once isolated hate speeches. Inflammatory hate speeches and hate crimes have now become routine. Some prominent figures have openly called for violence against Muslims, and such persons have been rewarded by the regime. “Sab Ka Saath, Sabka Vikas” has turned into dog whistles like “Goli Maro Saalon Ko.” and chanted by BJP supporters in rallies or otherwise.

The normalization of hate has led to urban segregation and ghettoization. Discrimination against housing of Muslims, once limited to certain areas, has become systemic across India. The bulldozer has become a political symbol, routinely deployed in BJP ruled states to demolish Muslim owned houses, often without due process of law. The infamous “Corona jihad” narrative of 2020, which blamed Muslims for spreading Covid-19, further entrenched social apartheid. Taken together, these trends indicate a breakdown and a re-writing of India’s social contract, where the pre-2014 era was marked by the constitutional values of secularism (religious neutrality), social justice and pluralism. The PM era since 2014 has seen a wholesale shift towards majoritarian dominance. Indicators point to a social order that is more intolerant and more unequal.

The assessment made so far indicates the damage inflicted by the current regime to India’s social and cultural ethos, which is far more intractable. The deliberate reshaping of public morality, national identity and institutional impartiality has pushed the country into a dangerous new phase, where the very idea of India as a religious neutral (secular) inclusive republic is actively under siege. Repairing this will take political determination accompanied by cultural and moral renaissance of a scale unseen in India’s history. Until then, the social scars of the RSS Pariwar’s years will continue to harm the republic!

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