In recent years an onslaught of news articles about India has steadily increased in various media outlets. Not all of them are glowing reports. Rather, most liberal media sources portray the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led Indian government in negative light. This is surprising given the fact that Indian democracy lends itself as an alternative to Chinese Communist model of growth internally and externally that is seen as inimical to Western influences. In fact, the recent Chinese excursions in the Pacific and more specifically in the South China sea has elevated India as a security partner by the likes of Australia, United States and Japan. What then is the issue? It is rather the domestic policies of BJP that has become the battering target of the Western media.
In this article we will try to clear some of the misconceptions that are touted by the Western media outlets.
Let us examine the concerns about failing democracy, secularism, and liberalism in India under the BJP regime. We will further address questions such as can the western concepts be applied to India? Does liberalism have the same meaning in India? Does secularism?
As early as 1955, Andrew Palmer (APSR, 1955) lamented that the:
American political scientists are still teaching courses labeled “Comparative Government” with little or no attention to the government and politics of the largest states of the world today, and they are still teaching something called “Political Theory” or “History of Political Thought” with no more than casual reference to the ideas underlying non-Western civilizations. The neglect of Indian polity is particularly striking and particularly serious, for apart from Western political thought it comprises probably the most extensive and most important body of political philosophy. Moreover, it is an integral part of the Hindu civilization of the past and the present. That civilization,…among others…. is alien to Western civilization, although there are many similarities; and the present encounter between the two civilizations comes at a time when both are in a period of crisis and transition. Such considerations are basic to an understanding of the stresses and strains in the relations of India with the Western world. Behind the tensions that arise between the United States and India, for example, lie differences in views of life and modes of thought and conduct, complicated by uncertainty, inner struggle, sensitivity, misunderstanding, and inexperience in playing new and difficult roles.
The above quote still rings true in our present time. If you look at the American universities today, the study of the Indian political system is largely neglected or subsumed under ‘South Asian studies,’ a vast geographical space with different cultural, economic, religious, and political milieu. Within the field of International Relations, study of India is generally subsumed under Sino-Indian relations; Russian influence or Indo-Pakistan relations and currently largely under the Kashmir issue. A country that has a population of 1.3 billion, an economy that is the fifth largest, an educated population (92%) and a young population that is technically adept and global in perspective, this neglect speaks volumes to western ethnocentrism. In Western media, according to Ruchir Sharma jr. the depiction of India is reduced to ‘Caste, Cow, Rape, Curry and Pollution.’ (Citation) In sum, the West remains or chooses to be ignorant about not only the complexity that is India but her power potential.
The idea of ‘illiberal Hindu nationalism’ largely stems from a misplaced notion that the Indian political system can be gauged from the Western concept of secularism and liberalism. This frustratingly ethnocentric analysis is completely out of step of the Indian ethos. The Western model of secularism, which separates religion and state completely, is based on their own particular, historical and cultural context that is not applicable to India. Indian civilization is an amalgam of various religious influences over several thousand years. This ancient Vedic civilization has been able to inculcate and incorporate various religious doctrines—Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and countless other religious sects. Similarly, contemporary Indian political philosophy has a rich history with emphasis on ancient concepts of ‘Rajneeti’ or state craft, ‘Dharma,’ or laws of conduct to the modern infusion of western ideas of liberalism, secularism, Marxism, socialism and so on. According to Bhargava (citation), the Western model of secularism does not account for the religious diversity and cultural pluralism of India. In India, religion plays a significant role in public life, and it is not possible to separate it from politics.
Indian secularism recognizes the existence of all religions and respects them all. This ‘alternative’ secularism is based on the idea of "principled distance" where the state maintains a neutral position with respect to all religions, but at the same time, acknowledges and respects religious diversity. In practice though Indian secularism often oscillates between ‘Pant Nirpekshita,’ or religious neutrality and ‘Sarva Dharma Sambhava,’ or equal respect for all religions. Part of this oscillation stems from the trauma of partition and the debate over minority protection especially of the Muslims and disenfranchised castes. According to Bajpai (2016, 68), “The Indian Congress Party was suspicious of the cynical “divide and rule” colonial policy, unsuited to the inclusive nationalism of the newly independent state. Yet, at the same time, it did not want a Hindu-dominated state, especially after the bloody and traumatic episode of Partition and the creation of Pakistan. As a result, what was called during the colonial era the “minority question” persisted after Independence and beyond.” The concept of secularism was added much later to the Indian constitution as an addendum though a clear separation of State and religion has always been debated and continues to date. An apt understanding of Indian brand of secularism has been explicated by Rajeev Bhargava (citation) who argues that secularism in India is ‘religion friendly,’ and “the state intervenes or refrains from interfering, depending on which of the two better promotes religious liberty and equality of citizenship.
It is interesting to note that while reports decry BJP’s ‘illiberal practices,’ they rarely point out that politics and religion are highly interconnected in several Western countries such as Germany, England, Poland, Ireland and non-Western ones such as Israel, Turkey and Indonesia. All these states are known to actively regulate the religious sphere. A recent Pew survey showed that close to thirty countries require heads of states of certain religion or religious denomination. Of these five democratic countries in the Western hemisphere that require this are Sweden, Norway, Denmark, United Kingdom, Belgium! The Heads of States must be led by a particular Christian denomination (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/22/in-30-countries-heads-of-state-must-belong-to-a-certain-religion/)
In reality, no Western country is successful in completely fulfilling the ideal concept of secularism. In other words, secularism remains a contested and unrealized concept in most countries that profess to have separation of Church and State.
Before we embark on analyzing democracy as a concept, we must understand the media’s role in agenda setting, that is determining what topics the public thinks about and considers important, priming, that is highlighting only one issue that can potentially influence how the audience makes evaluations and decisions, and framing, that is, highlighting an issue in a positive or negative light. A clear-cut example of media’s role in agenda setting, framing, and priming is the coverage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019 which is an amendment of the same bill enacted in 1955. The act gives Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who are the persecuted minorities in countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan (all Muslim and theocratic States), and who entered India on or before 31 December 2014. By extensively covering the CAA, media powerhouses such as NYT and BBC brought this issue to the forefront for their international readership. Instead of focusing on the true nature of the Act, that is, persecuted minorities of Indian origin who are persecuted in Muslim majority countries, the publications chose to highlight the potential for increased discrimination against Muslims. This helped shape international discourse around religious rights, national identity, and citizenship policies. The New York Times primed its readers to view the CAA within the larger context of India's political climate under the BJP. It often connected the CAA with other BJP-led initiatives, such as the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir or the National Register of Citizens (NRC), to present a broader picture of the BJP's actions. This established a narrative that associated the BJP with a pattern of policies seen as nationalistic and potentially discriminatory against minorities, especially Muslims. Nowhere did they mention that the similar issues were debated and agreed upon by all major parties especially Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the Indian Parliament that had culminated in the CAA of 2003 under the leadership of National Democratic Alliance. Dr. Manmohan Singh, the leader of the opposition, Congress Party had stated unequivocally that non-Muslims face persecution in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh and that the country should take a liberal approach to granting them citizenship. These media houses chose to frame the CAA issue from a human rights perspective of only Muslims, focusing on the act's potential to discriminate against Muslim migrants and choosing to completely obscure human rights of other persecuted minorities for which the amendment was enacted. It only highlighted the widespread protests and criticisms from human rights organizations to present the act as a contentious and divisive policy. Through this framing, these media houses tried to shape readers' interpretation of the CAA in a negative light, emphasizing its potential to violate principles of equal citizenship and religious neutrality.
Now let us examine the efficacy of definition of pillars of democracy in India. Analyzing the Western and some Indian media will leave one with the impression that India is slowly moving toward autocracy. Most media houses use the concept of democracy contextually and narrowly based on the ideology they adhere to along with a sharp focus on their bottom line, that is, their own profit and loss based on subscription reach.
To date though, there is no agreed upon definition, indices, and measurement of democracy in Social Science literature (Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann, 2020; Canache et al. 2001; Dalton et al. 2008; Welzel and Inglehart 2008; Cho 2015; Schubert 2016; Gagnon 2018). According to Dallmyr, a well-known researcher on comparative democratic theory, democracy must take into account cultural heterogeneity and that “liberal universalism and egalitarianism need to be tempered and corrected through closer attention to cultural heterogeneity and the ‘politics of difference (1997).’ Besides heterogenous understanding of democracy, almost all researchers agree that there are methodological challenges to understanding democracy. To compound that problem is the general Western and/or Eurocentric bias in the study of democracy. How then do the information channels across the world including some of those in India make sweeping generalizations about the condition of democracy in the country and other countries for that matter? This is a fallacy indeed.
Measuring democracy is an equally contentious issue. While there are several indices of democracy, they are all dependent on the choices of researchers and various governmental and non-governmental agencies. One of the most ambitious projects to measure democracy is V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) which currently has the world’s largest data set on democracy. According to Lindberg and Medzihorsky of V-Dem Institute (2020), ‘democracy, understood very generally, means rule by the people. Beyond this basic feature, there is little agreement. Most democracy measures reflect a very narrow conception. For example, in Polity IV, the United States is rated as fully democratic for most of the 19th and all of the 20th, disregarding issues, such as slavery, women’s exclusion, and so on.” The limitations in the study of democracy ‘included questionable and very narrow conceptualizations of democracy; uncertain reliability of sources, ratings, and political considerations; opaque or untested modes of aggregation of source data into indices; and lack of estimates of measurement error, among other things’ (Staffan I. Lindberg, Juraj Medzihorsky, 2020). V-Dem’s methodology boasts of use of historical data going back to 1900, “use of multiple, independent coders for each evaluative question; inter-coder reliability tests incorporated into a custom designed Bayesian item-response theory measurement model; provision of confidence bounds for all point estimates associated with expert-coded questions as well as for all indices; multiple indices reflecting varying theories of democracy; fully transparent aggregation procedures.’ Indices are aggregated to seven key principles-electoral, liberal, majoritarian, consensual, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian.
The V-Dem project has in turn been criticized for the shift in discourse from the contested notion of democracy to decontesting it and hegemonizing one notion of liberal democracy (Wolff, 2022). According to Sanyal and Arora (2022) A common feature among the various indices is their reliance on perceptions or opinions of a select group of experts. Transparency regarding the selection and expertise of these researchers is often lacking. Additionally, the subjective nature of the questions raises concerns about comparability between countries, accuracy, and fairness. Some questions may not be meaningful indicators of democracy, and certain sub-indices may be more suitable for specific countries, resulting in potentially biased assessments. As an example of how subjective sub-indices are, India’s Liberal Democracy Index declined sharply since 2014. Other cited measurement index such as Liberal Democracy Index decreased India’s freedom status from 0.567 in 2013 to 0.357 in 2021, and the Electoral Democracy Index decreased it from 0.695 to 0.444 during the same period. India has been termed an "electoral autocracy" in the 2021 report. Cross-country comparisons also reveal surprising results, such as India's rank on the Liberal Democracy Index being lower than countries like Lesotho and Kosovo, despite their shorter democratic histories. Hence, what is needed is greater transparency and consideration of contextual factors as necessary to ensure a more comprehensive and objective assessment of democracy Sanyal and Arora, 2022).
Scholars of comparative politics argued that importing Western frameworks uncritically into non-Western contexts could distort understanding of alternative democratic expressions. Researching democracy beyond the West requires attention to the heterogenous, context-specific intermingling of universal and indigenous ideas that shape unique polities like India. Western indices measuring pre-defined attributes gloss over complex ground realities. Indian democratic shortfalls from a decontextualized liberal perspective do not necessarily indicate fundamental failures. Rather, the Indian polity integrates ancient Indic and modern Western strands into an unconventional but rooted democratic fabric.
In conclusion, it is imperative to underscore that India has a distinct model of secularism and democracy due to its civilizational history Western media often misrepresents Indian policies due to lack of contextual understanding. Rigid measures struggle to accurately capture India's democratic realities. while constructive criticism is valid, commentary on Indian democracy requires appreciating the country's complex social and political fabric beyond stereotypes.
References:
Bhargava, R. “What Is Indian Secularism and What Is It For?” India Review 1, no. 1 (January 1, 2002): 1–32.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14736480208404618
Coppedge, M and Gerring, J., et.al., June 2011. Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach, Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core Vol. 9/No. 2
Coppedge, M, Gerring, J, et al., 2019. The Methodology of Varieties of Democracy, Bulletin de Me´thodologie Sociologique, Vol. 143 107–133
Dallmayr, F. 1997. Introduction: Toward a Comparative Political Theory. The Review of Politics 9(13): 421–428.
Lindberg & Medzihorsky, 2020. Patterns 1, 100056 July 10, 2020 ª 2020 The Author(s). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2020.10005
LIJPHART, A., 1996. The Puzzle of Indian Democracy: A Consociational Interpretation, American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 2
Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann · Ulrich Stadelmaier, 2020. Measuring meanings of democracy—methods of differentiation, Vgl Polit Wiss (2020) 14:401–423, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-020-00461-6
Palmer, N.D., 1955., Republished online in 2013: Indian and Western Political Thought: Coalescence or Clash?* | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core
Sanyal, S., Arora, A., 2022. Why India Does Poorly on Global Perception Indices: Case study of three opinion-based indices- Freedom in the World index, EIU Democracy index and Variety of Democracy indices https://eacpm.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Global-perception-indices_Final_22_Nov.pdf
Wolff, J., 2022. The Reconstitution of Liberal Hegemony in Comparative Regime Research: V-Dem’s Discursive Turn from the Contestation to the Decontestation of Democracy, EDP Wire.
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