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Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-State Fusion in India
... The election results were seen as an affirmation of Narendra Modi's politics, who has been accused of systematically undermining secularism, political pluralism, and intellectual freedom [16,21,33]. Modi's political program blends a managerial rhetoric of efficiency and innovation with the conservative ideology of Hindu hyper-nationalism [33]. ...
... The election results were seen as an affirmation of Narendra Modi's politics, who has been accused of systematically undermining secularism, political pluralism, and intellectual freedom [16,21,33]. Modi's political program blends a managerial rhetoric of efficiency and innovation with the conservative ideology of Hindu hyper-nationalism [33]. Central to the "NaMo" brand -an acronym for Narendra Modi -is a focus on digital technologies for political outreach. ...
... To be transparent, we are concerned about democratic backsliding in India [16,21,33]. However, we tried to separate our political views from the description of the campaigns. ...
Political organizations worldwide keep innovating their use of social media technologies. Here, we document a novel configuration of technologies and organizational forms used to manipulate Twitter trends in the 2019 Indian general election. The organizers rely on an extensive network of WhatsApp groups to coordinate mass-postings by loosely affiliated political supporters. To investigate the campaigns, we joined more than 600 political WhatsApp groups that support the Bharatiya Janata Party, the right-wing party that won the general election. We found direct evidence of 75 hashtag manipulation campaigns, including mobilization messages and lists of pre-written tweets. We estimate the campaigns' size and whether they succeeded in creating controlled social media narratives. We show that the campaigns are smaller than what media reports suggest; still, they reliably produce Twitter trends drawing on the voices of loosely affiliated supporters. Centrally controlled but voluntary in participation, this novel configuration of a campaign complicates the debates over the legitimate use of digital tools for political participation. It may have provided a blueprint for participatory media manipulation by a party with popular support.
... However, in 2016, obliging governors of the states of Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradeshwhich were ruled by parties that were in opposition at the Centrereported that the constitutional machinery in these states had broken down, leading to the federal government dismissing the state governments and assuming direct rule. In both cases, the Supreme Court intervened to restore the dismissed governments(Khaitan 2020). ...
The present study explores the relationship between trust in state governments and changes in subjective well-being in India, drawing upon the nationally-representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS) panel data for 2005 and 2012. Our econometric results confirm that people’s trust in state governments is positively associated with changes in their subjective well-being in economic aspects. To take into account the endogeneity of people’s trust in the state government, we have used the 2SLS model where the trust is instrumented by (i) whether the winning legislators belonged to the ruling party, and (ii) whether the margin of victory over the closest rival exceeded 12 %. The robustness of the results has been confirmed by the Lewbel IV model in which the internal instruments are used in addition to the two external instruments. The policy focus in rebuilding trust in state governments destroyed by the relentless pursuit of Hindutva and over-centralisation are discussed.
... In this, the BJP merely tapped into rising levels of support for strong leadership (even military), rising levels of religious identification, and growing feelings of discontent with the working of democracy, all of which pre-dated the 2014 general elections (Sircar 2020). Strong levels of support for the current regime among a majority of the population may embolden the BJP to neutralize potential checks on its powers, such as the Supreme Court, the Election Commission, critical journalists or opposition leaders (Khaitan 2020). ...
This article analyses the significance of polity-wide parties’ understanding of state and nation for their ability and willingness to accommodate territorial diversity. To illustrate this point, we first introduce a typology containing four ‘ideal-types’ of state nationalism: dominant, integrationist, composite, and plurinational. Subsequently, we apply this typology to two plural and multi-level polities, Spain and India, during two critical junctures: their founding constitutional moments and more recent episodes of change associated with ‘the Catalan question’ in Spain and the rise of the BJP in India, respectively. Our analysis underscores how varieties of state nationalism inform the nature and evolution of the territorial constitution, in form and in practice, and the extent to which such shifts are linked to party competition and changes in the party system.
Contemporarily, the world is experiencing a severe contestation of
political ideas as nation-states are increasingly drawn toward finding their relevance in conservative nationalism. With the cold death of Fukuyama's End of History, ideological conflicts are born anew. Illiberal political ideologies are being revived, political distinctions are drawn, discourses are monopolized, and the return of the idea of the sovereign is upsetting the impartiality of legal order. The paper seeks to examine the resurrection of these ideas which are espoused in the politics of Hindu nationalism in the theoretical framework provided by German political theorist Carl Schmitt. His writings on politics, liberalism, and constitution outline a blueprint of illiberal authoritarianism. With the electoral mandate, powerful constituencies, and rising middle-class support, it is critical to develop an understanding of why Hindu nationalism appeals to the society and deliberate over what future holds for the modernity as fringe ideas are now becoming mainstream in India.
How do ethnically divided countries create inclusive and stable democratic institutions? Why do some kinds of federalism fail while others evolve? Scholars looking for answers to these kinds of questions have tended to focus on the West. Yet there are important lessons arising from the substantial democratic and federal reforms that have taken place in Asia over the last few decades. These reforms signal a new model of federal democracy in Asia, comprising multilevel ethnoterritorial federalism, mixed-majoritarianism and a party system that includes both ethnic and multi-ethnic parties. This model has emerged as a response to ethnic conflict and secession risks and reflects the high diversity of clustered communities and cross-cutting cleavages. Despite its overarching majoritarianism, the federal model has led to highly fragmented party systems and coalition governments, with positive implications for democratic stability. Together, these features go some way towards blending otherwise conflicting consociational and centripetal paradigms.
When adjudicating religious disputes, constitutional courts often resort to a particular discursive register. The notions ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect’ are an integral part of this religion-specific constitutional register. But what do judges mean when they deploy the language of tolerance and respect? And what substantive role, if any, do both notions play in the constitutional interpretation of religious freedom? This article seeks to answer these conceptual and substantive questions by comparing constitutional case law on religious freedom from India, Israel and the United States. It also provides linkages to ongoing processes of (alleged) constitutional retrogression in the three jurisdictions.
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