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To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism
India is heralded as the world's largest democracy. Yet, there is now growing alarm about its democratic health. To Kill a Democracy gets to the heart of the matter.
Combining poignant life stories with sharp scholarly insight, To Kill a Democracy rejects the belief that India was once a beacon of democracy but is now being ruined by the destructive forces of Modi-style populism. It details the much deeper historical roots of the present-day assaults on civil liberties and democratic institutions. Democracy, the authors also argue, is much more than elections and the separation of powers. It is a whole way of life lived in dignity, and that is why they pay special attention to the decaying social foundations of Indian democracy.
In compelling fashion, the book describes daily struggles for survival and explains how lived social injustices and unfreedoms rob Indian elections of their meaning, while at the same time feeding the decadence and iron-fisted rule of its governing institutions.
It points out that what is happening in the country is globally important, and not just because every third person living in a democracy is an Indian. It shows that when democracies rack and ruin their social foundations, they don’t just kill off the spirit and substance of democracy. They lay the foundations for despotism.
Combining poignant life stories with sharp scholarly insight, To Kill a Democracy rejects the belief that India was once a beacon of democracy but is now being ruined by the destructive forces of Modi-style populism. It details the much deeper historical roots of the present-day assaults on civil liberties and democratic institutions. Democracy, the authors also argue, is much more than elections and the separation of powers. It is a whole way of life lived in dignity, and that is why they pay special attention to the decaying social foundations of Indian democracy.
In compelling fashion, the book describes daily struggles for survival and explains how lived social injustices and unfreedoms rob Indian elections of their meaning, while at the same time feeding the decadence and iron-fisted rule of its governing institutions.
It points out that what is happening in the country is globally important, and not just because every third person living in a democracy is an Indian. It shows that when democracies rack and ruin their social foundations, they don’t just kill off the spirit and substance of democracy. They lay the foundations for despotism.
327 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 16, 2021
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February 12, 2024
In the recent times there has been a lot of debate on how the current dispensation is breaking down the Instruments of Democracy and how there is a brazen disregard to the spirit of National unity and the basic constructs of the Constitution. This is raging in the middle of unprecedented polarization of our society and seemingly irreconcilable differences between the polarized factions. Although conflicts and differences are inherent in any democracy, the framework itself had mechanisms to balance them and to resolve them one way or the other without affecting the nature of Democracy. In the past, many such conflicts that were bubbling up the surface were mainly based on Economy, Class and empowerment of masses. Although religion was a subject of contention, there was a clear distinction between “Progressive” and “Regressive” topics and religion was relegated to sides of the regressive hue.
However, post liberalization, contrary to expectation that India would now take leaps and bounds into progressive and developmental direction along with thriving middle class driving the Democratic establishment, it has taken a decisive step in a direction that was hitherto considered the communal and religious majoritarian direction.
“The rapid economic growth post-liberalization, on the other hand, has endowed the seekers of favourable policy with far greater resources to offer party and government bosses in return for state discretion. The ability of despots at state and national levels to ‘raise funds’ has risen exponentially, allowing them more power over other party leaders and centralize authority.”
While the world over, the left seemed to be taking a retreat, with what Anne Applebaum and Francis Fukuyama point out as Alt-right, In India it is compounded by Religious lines and seemingly led by the upper and upper middle class which benefited most from the economic liberalization. This, as Jean Dreze points out as “Revolt of the upper castes” is a catchy phrase that sums up the current state.
So there is a big question that looms in front, that begs to examine, whether this is a sudden and abrupt turn of events or is it a cumulation of successive failures?
The book that John Keane and Debasish Roy Chowdhury have co-authored, “To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism” seeks to examine this.
John Keane is a popular economist and proponent of what he calls as Monetary Democracy as against the Representative democracy that India and many other countries follow. Though he does not completely reject the indirect participation of the Subjects in the decision making of the country, enabled by the Representative democracy model, he seeks to control that by providing checks and balances to the limits of unbridled power granted to the elected executive after the election. The typical manifestation of the problem that John Keane points out is the phenomenon where the Participation of the Citizens in the decision making and country building gets cut off once the elections are over. He seeks to balance the loss of transparency and practice of consultation by introducing monetary mechanisms within the framework of Democratic government. This is significant while the traditional check and balances with Legislative, Judicial and media functions have been relegated to the gallery as cheerleaders of the powerful Executive. Many contradict this view of his while acknowledging the diminished state of Traditional mechanisms. They claim that his model is trying to build power structures of its own.
While that goes on, this book is a comprehensive view on the Indian situation and examines at length, original question of whether the seeds to the current situation have seeds in the past.
The book starts off with acknowledgement of the real Challenges the country faced at the dawn of Independence
“Indian democrats proved that political unity within a highly diverse country could be built by respecting its social differences.”
“Nehru and his Congress party envisaged an Asian democracy that wasn’t simply a replica of the West. It had to solve two problems at once. The new democracy had to snap the chains imposed from the outside by its colonial masters; and unpick the threads of colonial domination at home by creating a new nation of equally dignified citizens of diverse backgrounds. Democracy was neither a gift of the Western world nor uniquely suited to Indian conditions. India was in fact a laboratory featuring a first-ever experiment in creating national unity, economic growth, religious toleration, and social equality out of a vast and polychromatic reality, a social order whose inherited power relations, rooted in the hereditary Hindu caste status, language hierarchies, and accumulated wealth, were to be transformed by the constitutionally guaranteed counter-power of public debate, multiparty competition, and periodic elections”
“Democracy—say champions of the India Story—was no longer regarded as a means of protecting a homogeneous society of equals. It came to be seen as the fairest way of enabling people of different backgrounds and divergent identities to live together as equals, without civil war.”
While acknowledging the challenge, the book gradually and systematically, examines various important indexes of democratic delivery to see how India figured in all of them. The important aspects like Health care, Education, Food security, Water, Land, Legal equality etc. are analyzed in detail. What it brings out is a sad story of how the successive governments undermined the democratic instruments rendering the democracy in India to a reductionist exercise of winning and losing the elections. The resources were consistently being denied to the deprived.
“There can often be immediate medical triggers such as stomach disorder or malaria for many deaths among the poor, but in whatever form they come, hunger lies at their core. These deaths are conveniently attributed to diseases to avoid media attention and political scandal. But the chronically hungry don’t die of pneumonia or tuberculosis. They die because their feeble bodies can’t fend off disease anymore.”
“Caught between an unregulated private health business and the mostly broken public sector, the average Indian citizen is faced by a Hobson’s choice of cheap massacres and expensive slaughter. In a country where the top 10 percent of the population holds 77 per cent of the total national wealth, most don’t in any case get to make that choice simply because their daily lives are plagued by other deprivations. Such as food.”
Historical injustices of land grabbing and unequal allocation of resources are presented as the gradual process of democratic erosion starting with the First amendment of our Constitution by the very proponents of Civil Liberty like Nehru and Ambedkar. The data presented show that the gradual erosion became a sudden torrent with the current dispensation that has reached unbelievable proportions.
“The blueprints for ‘development’ are drawn up by ‘experts’ who know best. Democratic accountability counts for little, or nothing. The top-down decision-making template was wired into policymaking from the early days by Nehru. Kicking off the construction of India’s first major river-valley project, the Hirakud Dam in Orissa, a few months after Independence, he said in his speech to those facing displacement: ‘If you have to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country.’”
“European scholars rue that democracies are often snail-paced in their handling of large and small political matters, but in India it’s exactly the opposite.8 On just one day in 2018 (13 March), the Lok Sabha passed funding demands from ninety-nine ministries and government departments, along with two bills containing 218 amendments—all in thirty minutes and without any debate. The entire annual budgetary plan for a country of 1.3 billion people passed in half an hour. The House Speaker used a special parliamentary procedure called the ‘guillotine’, which enables the Speaker, backed by the brute majority of the ruling party, to railroad financial grants and proposals worth Rs 26 lakh crore ($375 billion). Most budgetary provisions that people think are examined and debated in the House are actually passed every year using the ‘guillotine’ method.”
“Some years, all funding bills are passed in this way without debate, along with important non-financial regulations (Figure 28). The two government bills that were passed that day included the crucial ‘Finance Bill’ with the 218 taxation law amendments. Tucked away on page 90 of the 92-page Bill was an amendment allowing political parties to escape scrutiny on foreign funding.”
As you read the book, one thing that strikes me is the fact that most of us, Indians, were not really committed to Democracy or had an understanding of what democracy actually was. While growing up, I have heard many in my elder generation always fantasizing about a strong leader who can drive the decisions for the entire country as the answer to the shortcomings in Indian Democracy. This has been drilled to hapless youngsters who are the current crop. So it is not surprising that we have reached this point.
“When social life is degraded and governing institutions are floundering, democratic accountability goes missing. Politics becomes a protection racket. Election campaigns resemble street fights.”
“On the other hand, the suggestion that Indian democracy was doing just fine till Modi showed up, is equally fallacious. Many of the institutional pathologies outlined in this book have intensified under Modi, but neither the many curbs on fundamental rights and the dissolution of the checks and balances of power, nor the spate of unlawful arrests of the regime’s discontents are an entirely new phenomenon restricted to the machinations of one party or leader. One of Bollywood’s most celebrated lyricists, Majrooh Sultanpuri, found himself in jail for criticizing Nehru in 1949. It was under Nehru again when one of the most flagrant exercises of mass detentions in India took place—during the 1962 war with China, when about 3,000 Indian-Chinese were rounded up from Assam and West Bengal and taken to an internment camp in the deserts of Rajasthan. All because the Nehru government deemed them a security risk simply because of their ethnicity. Their property was seized and auctioned, and many of them were deported to China, even though they were Indian citizens who had lived in India for generations. India’s colonial-era sedition laws and the draconian security and anti-terror laws designed in subsequent years have consistently allowed rulers to attack their real and imagined enemies with impunity. To what extent the rulers use these provisions is subject to their inclination and legislative might. Only now, it seems to be part of the natural order of things, a functional requirement of governing. Unlike the US Bill of Rights, India’s fundamental rights are not inviolable. 3 Rights such as free speech and expression, assembly and movement can be—and regularly are—tempered by ‘reasonable restrictions’ on the grounds of protecting the inviolable but conveniently inexact notions of preserving ‘law and order’ and the ‘sovereignty, unity and integrity’ of India.”
Our Leaders, apart from those pioneers who were involved in nation building, were busy breaking down the democratic institutions to suit their short term needs. The Emergency in India which ran for a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 is not an aberration but a milestone in the process of dismantling the democracy in India. When delivery of basic needs were denied, the dangerous fantasy kept getting stronger, finding more buyers for that. The successive leaders neither gave attention to strengthening the democratic institution nor emphasizing the values of democratic institutions to the next generation, as they were busy playing their number games. This led to progressive weakening of the democratic institutions over the time. The current dispensation only is serving the Demand for a “strong centralized leadership which is the popular ask.
“The legislature is supposed to enact laws, the executive implement them, and the judiciary test their constitutionality, to examine and decide whether they violate constitutional rights. With the legislature’s role rapidly becoming ornamental, it’s the executive, in effect, that both enacts and arranges the enforcement of laws. This puts India firmly on the road to a new kind of despotism. Citizens are stripped of their powers as voters and citizens. As subjects, they elect lawmakers but are divorced from lawmaking. The injustices of the legal system only increase this distance between people and the law.”
In the end what the book presents is not all grim and dark. What they present is the result of concerted and coordinated right wing push happening all over the world as presented by multiple authors such as Anne Applebaum, Francis Fukuyama et. al. From Viktor Orban to Putin the extreme fascist right push is everywhere. On the other hand the forces that are presented as the side that could resist this surge of despotism stands eroded of trust.
“Among the most potent long-term gifts of the democracy founded in India last century is the way it has stirred up hopes for a dignified society of equal citizens. The founding democratic vision was built on hope. It remains the condition of possibility of hope. Think of how democracy stirs up a sense of possibility.”
“Even when people are ground down by social indignities, a democracy encourages them to look beyond their present miserable horizons, to expect and to demand positive improvements. Democracy even stretches the scope of hope. Hope isn’t just the anticipation of a future that’s judged to be possible. Hope can also be the active remembering of a past that can be rescued and resuscitated, brought back to life in much-changed circumstances, with an eye to the future.”
“They remind their Indian audiences, and the rest of the world, of the global importance of B.R. Ambedkar’s and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s understanding of democracy as a way of life that not only licenses citizens to rebel against social injustice and lawless power but also enables them to see that if despotism replaces democracy then this isn’t because despotic power is somehow inevitable, but because citizens allow it to happen.29 That means, when the going gets really rough, democracy fosters hope against hope. It stirs up insurrections. It gives energy to the sense that it’s possible to change things, to build a better future guided by precious precepts”
However, what this book talks about is the revival of hope as a potent weapon against such threats finding strength from Past. After all hope is the only commodity left with the people who have lost their way into the miasma of despotism.
However, post liberalization, contrary to expectation that India would now take leaps and bounds into progressive and developmental direction along with thriving middle class driving the Democratic establishment, it has taken a decisive step in a direction that was hitherto considered the communal and religious majoritarian direction.
“The rapid economic growth post-liberalization, on the other hand, has endowed the seekers of favourable policy with far greater resources to offer party and government bosses in return for state discretion. The ability of despots at state and national levels to ‘raise funds’ has risen exponentially, allowing them more power over other party leaders and centralize authority.”
While the world over, the left seemed to be taking a retreat, with what Anne Applebaum and Francis Fukuyama point out as Alt-right, In India it is compounded by Religious lines and seemingly led by the upper and upper middle class which benefited most from the economic liberalization. This, as Jean Dreze points out as “Revolt of the upper castes” is a catchy phrase that sums up the current state.
So there is a big question that looms in front, that begs to examine, whether this is a sudden and abrupt turn of events or is it a cumulation of successive failures?
The book that John Keane and Debasish Roy Chowdhury have co-authored, “To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism” seeks to examine this.
John Keane is a popular economist and proponent of what he calls as Monetary Democracy as against the Representative democracy that India and many other countries follow. Though he does not completely reject the indirect participation of the Subjects in the decision making of the country, enabled by the Representative democracy model, he seeks to control that by providing checks and balances to the limits of unbridled power granted to the elected executive after the election. The typical manifestation of the problem that John Keane points out is the phenomenon where the Participation of the Citizens in the decision making and country building gets cut off once the elections are over. He seeks to balance the loss of transparency and practice of consultation by introducing monetary mechanisms within the framework of Democratic government. This is significant while the traditional check and balances with Legislative, Judicial and media functions have been relegated to the gallery as cheerleaders of the powerful Executive. Many contradict this view of his while acknowledging the diminished state of Traditional mechanisms. They claim that his model is trying to build power structures of its own.
While that goes on, this book is a comprehensive view on the Indian situation and examines at length, original question of whether the seeds to the current situation have seeds in the past.
The book starts off with acknowledgement of the real Challenges the country faced at the dawn of Independence
“Indian democrats proved that political unity within a highly diverse country could be built by respecting its social differences.”
“Nehru and his Congress party envisaged an Asian democracy that wasn’t simply a replica of the West. It had to solve two problems at once. The new democracy had to snap the chains imposed from the outside by its colonial masters; and unpick the threads of colonial domination at home by creating a new nation of equally dignified citizens of diverse backgrounds. Democracy was neither a gift of the Western world nor uniquely suited to Indian conditions. India was in fact a laboratory featuring a first-ever experiment in creating national unity, economic growth, religious toleration, and social equality out of a vast and polychromatic reality, a social order whose inherited power relations, rooted in the hereditary Hindu caste status, language hierarchies, and accumulated wealth, were to be transformed by the constitutionally guaranteed counter-power of public debate, multiparty competition, and periodic elections”
“Democracy—say champions of the India Story—was no longer regarded as a means of protecting a homogeneous society of equals. It came to be seen as the fairest way of enabling people of different backgrounds and divergent identities to live together as equals, without civil war.”
While acknowledging the challenge, the book gradually and systematically, examines various important indexes of democratic delivery to see how India figured in all of them. The important aspects like Health care, Education, Food security, Water, Land, Legal equality etc. are analyzed in detail. What it brings out is a sad story of how the successive governments undermined the democratic instruments rendering the democracy in India to a reductionist exercise of winning and losing the elections. The resources were consistently being denied to the deprived.
“There can often be immediate medical triggers such as stomach disorder or malaria for many deaths among the poor, but in whatever form they come, hunger lies at their core. These deaths are conveniently attributed to diseases to avoid media attention and political scandal. But the chronically hungry don’t die of pneumonia or tuberculosis. They die because their feeble bodies can’t fend off disease anymore.”
“Caught between an unregulated private health business and the mostly broken public sector, the average Indian citizen is faced by a Hobson’s choice of cheap massacres and expensive slaughter. In a country where the top 10 percent of the population holds 77 per cent of the total national wealth, most don’t in any case get to make that choice simply because their daily lives are plagued by other deprivations. Such as food.”
Historical injustices of land grabbing and unequal allocation of resources are presented as the gradual process of democratic erosion starting with the First amendment of our Constitution by the very proponents of Civil Liberty like Nehru and Ambedkar. The data presented show that the gradual erosion became a sudden torrent with the current dispensation that has reached unbelievable proportions.
“The blueprints for ‘development’ are drawn up by ‘experts’ who know best. Democratic accountability counts for little, or nothing. The top-down decision-making template was wired into policymaking from the early days by Nehru. Kicking off the construction of India’s first major river-valley project, the Hirakud Dam in Orissa, a few months after Independence, he said in his speech to those facing displacement: ‘If you have to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country.’”
“European scholars rue that democracies are often snail-paced in their handling of large and small political matters, but in India it’s exactly the opposite.8 On just one day in 2018 (13 March), the Lok Sabha passed funding demands from ninety-nine ministries and government departments, along with two bills containing 218 amendments—all in thirty minutes and without any debate. The entire annual budgetary plan for a country of 1.3 billion people passed in half an hour. The House Speaker used a special parliamentary procedure called the ‘guillotine’, which enables the Speaker, backed by the brute majority of the ruling party, to railroad financial grants and proposals worth Rs 26 lakh crore ($375 billion). Most budgetary provisions that people think are examined and debated in the House are actually passed every year using the ‘guillotine’ method.”
“Some years, all funding bills are passed in this way without debate, along with important non-financial regulations (Figure 28). The two government bills that were passed that day included the crucial ‘Finance Bill’ with the 218 taxation law amendments. Tucked away on page 90 of the 92-page Bill was an amendment allowing political parties to escape scrutiny on foreign funding.”
As you read the book, one thing that strikes me is the fact that most of us, Indians, were not really committed to Democracy or had an understanding of what democracy actually was. While growing up, I have heard many in my elder generation always fantasizing about a strong leader who can drive the decisions for the entire country as the answer to the shortcomings in Indian Democracy. This has been drilled to hapless youngsters who are the current crop. So it is not surprising that we have reached this point.
“When social life is degraded and governing institutions are floundering, democratic accountability goes missing. Politics becomes a protection racket. Election campaigns resemble street fights.”
“On the other hand, the suggestion that Indian democracy was doing just fine till Modi showed up, is equally fallacious. Many of the institutional pathologies outlined in this book have intensified under Modi, but neither the many curbs on fundamental rights and the dissolution of the checks and balances of power, nor the spate of unlawful arrests of the regime’s discontents are an entirely new phenomenon restricted to the machinations of one party or leader. One of Bollywood’s most celebrated lyricists, Majrooh Sultanpuri, found himself in jail for criticizing Nehru in 1949. It was under Nehru again when one of the most flagrant exercises of mass detentions in India took place—during the 1962 war with China, when about 3,000 Indian-Chinese were rounded up from Assam and West Bengal and taken to an internment camp in the deserts of Rajasthan. All because the Nehru government deemed them a security risk simply because of their ethnicity. Their property was seized and auctioned, and many of them were deported to China, even though they were Indian citizens who had lived in India for generations. India’s colonial-era sedition laws and the draconian security and anti-terror laws designed in subsequent years have consistently allowed rulers to attack their real and imagined enemies with impunity. To what extent the rulers use these provisions is subject to their inclination and legislative might. Only now, it seems to be part of the natural order of things, a functional requirement of governing. Unlike the US Bill of Rights, India’s fundamental rights are not inviolable. 3 Rights such as free speech and expression, assembly and movement can be—and regularly are—tempered by ‘reasonable restrictions’ on the grounds of protecting the inviolable but conveniently inexact notions of preserving ‘law and order’ and the ‘sovereignty, unity and integrity’ of India.”
Our Leaders, apart from those pioneers who were involved in nation building, were busy breaking down the democratic institutions to suit their short term needs. The Emergency in India which ran for a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 is not an aberration but a milestone in the process of dismantling the democracy in India. When delivery of basic needs were denied, the dangerous fantasy kept getting stronger, finding more buyers for that. The successive leaders neither gave attention to strengthening the democratic institution nor emphasizing the values of democratic institutions to the next generation, as they were busy playing their number games. This led to progressive weakening of the democratic institutions over the time. The current dispensation only is serving the Demand for a “strong centralized leadership which is the popular ask.
“The legislature is supposed to enact laws, the executive implement them, and the judiciary test their constitutionality, to examine and decide whether they violate constitutional rights. With the legislature’s role rapidly becoming ornamental, it’s the executive, in effect, that both enacts and arranges the enforcement of laws. This puts India firmly on the road to a new kind of despotism. Citizens are stripped of their powers as voters and citizens. As subjects, they elect lawmakers but are divorced from lawmaking. The injustices of the legal system only increase this distance between people and the law.”
In the end what the book presents is not all grim and dark. What they present is the result of concerted and coordinated right wing push happening all over the world as presented by multiple authors such as Anne Applebaum, Francis Fukuyama et. al. From Viktor Orban to Putin the extreme fascist right push is everywhere. On the other hand the forces that are presented as the side that could resist this surge of despotism stands eroded of trust.
“Among the most potent long-term gifts of the democracy founded in India last century is the way it has stirred up hopes for a dignified society of equal citizens. The founding democratic vision was built on hope. It remains the condition of possibility of hope. Think of how democracy stirs up a sense of possibility.”
“Even when people are ground down by social indignities, a democracy encourages them to look beyond their present miserable horizons, to expect and to demand positive improvements. Democracy even stretches the scope of hope. Hope isn’t just the anticipation of a future that’s judged to be possible. Hope can also be the active remembering of a past that can be rescued and resuscitated, brought back to life in much-changed circumstances, with an eye to the future.”
“They remind their Indian audiences, and the rest of the world, of the global importance of B.R. Ambedkar’s and Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s understanding of democracy as a way of life that not only licenses citizens to rebel against social injustice and lawless power but also enables them to see that if despotism replaces democracy then this isn’t because despotic power is somehow inevitable, but because citizens allow it to happen.29 That means, when the going gets really rough, democracy fosters hope against hope. It stirs up insurrections. It gives energy to the sense that it’s possible to change things, to build a better future guided by precious precepts”
However, what this book talks about is the revival of hope as a potent weapon against such threats finding strength from Past. After all hope is the only commodity left with the people who have lost their way into the miasma of despotism.
August 1, 2023
This book is excellent, if depressing. Some may believe it is a book about our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. While he features prominently in the book, he is but the latest actor in a series of depressing casts.
As in Germany after World War I, Modi came to power because the conditions for despotism were ripe. People before him planted the seeds. Therefore, I consider the book to be balanced, well-researched and well-written.
The book is a portrait of a country in trouble. We, in India, must pay heed to this book, or else we will fail. There is no time for complacency.
As in Germany after World War I, Modi came to power because the conditions for despotism were ripe. People before him planted the seeds. Therefore, I consider the book to be balanced, well-researched and well-written.
The book is a portrait of a country in trouble. We, in India, must pay heed to this book, or else we will fail. There is no time for complacency.
September 1, 2021
A very good read, that makes for depressing reading. Read this to find out how railing about a party / politician / regime is pointless, they're just symptoms and Indian society is the disease.
November 29, 2025
الديمقراطية في مجتمعات الجنوب العالمي إشكاليّة بطبعها، خصوصًا حينما ترضخ تحت ضغط المقارنة في حالات مثل الهند حينما تُقارن بجارتها الصين، وما حققاه كليّهما في أعقاب قيام الدولة بالتزامن، ولكن أنا كشخص أؤمن بحتمية الديمقراطية ولو على حساب الخبز، دائمًا ما جذبني المشهد الهندي، سياسيًّا وثقافيًّا واجتماعيًّا وإثنيًّا، وكل شيء. كما أن هناك هندي مُولع بالحجِاج كما يرى أمارتيًّا سن، فأنا عربيّ مُولع بالهند. ما علينا، ينطلق هذا الكتاب من منطلقات تختلف عن الأعمال التي تناولت الديمقراطية الهندية، كمرثية وداع لها، انطلاقًا من صعود بهاراتيًّا جاناتا سياسيًّا متمثلًا في شخص مودي. رغم الجودة التي تتحلى بها تلك الأعمال مثل
Indien - Hass als Ideologie
India: The Modi Question
إلا أن كتاب موت الديمقراطيّة يظهر أكثر شمولًا، ليس بطبعه ككتاب سيتفوق بالطبع على الريبورتاج في كل الأحوال بسبب السعة، ولكن لأن منطلقه في بحث عطب الديمقراطية الهندية يعود إلى جذور قبلية أسبق على مرحلة حزب بهاراتيا جاناتا، حيث يُفكك المشهد الهندي ويقطعه إلى أجزاء يتناول كلًا منها إحصائيًّا، كما أن له قطعًا دورًا محمود بالطبع لاشتراك جون كين في الكتاب، في التنظير السياسي لطبيعة السياسة الهندية. الكتاب أيضًا يحتوي على قصص إنسانية نابضة بالحياة على هامش موضوعه الرئيسي، مُبكية حتى في بعض الأحيان، أما أنه مكتوب بلغة صحافية وليست أكاديمية، لذلك يتسع للسخرية والتبسيط، ويعتمد الوضوح كوسيلة واحدة في العرض. ولكن من الرائع، ومن المميز في الديمقراطية، أن الناس رغم كل شيء، يستطيعون أن يقاوموا نزوعها للاستبداد واختطافها، والتمسك بآخر بقاياها، وهذا ما نجهله عربيًّا كأنه طلسم. يقول أمين الريحاني حينما رأى تمثال الحرية للمرة الأولى "متى تحولين وجهك نحو الشرق أيتها الحرية؟"، وبعد قرن وعقود، ما زالت تلك الجملة تصلح
Indien - Hass als Ideologie
India: The Modi Question
إلا أن كتاب موت الديمقراطيّة يظهر أكثر شمولًا، ليس بطبعه ككتاب سيتفوق بالطبع على الريبورتاج في كل الأحوال بسبب السعة، ولكن لأن منطلقه في بحث عطب الديمقراطية الهندية يعود إلى جذور قبلية أسبق على مرحلة حزب بهاراتيا جاناتا، حيث يُفكك المشهد الهندي ويقطعه إلى أجزاء يتناول كلًا منها إحصائيًّا، كما أن له قطعًا دورًا محمود بالطبع لاشتراك جون كين في الكتاب، في التنظير السياسي لطبيعة السياسة الهندية. الكتاب أيضًا يحتوي على قصص إنسانية نابضة بالحياة على هامش موضوعه الرئيسي، مُبكية حتى في بعض الأحيان، أما أنه مكتوب بلغة صحافية وليست أكاديمية، لذلك يتسع للسخرية والتبسيط، ويعتمد الوضوح كوسيلة واحدة في العرض. ولكن من الرائع، ومن المميز في الديمقراطية، أن الناس رغم كل شيء، يستطيعون أن يقاوموا نزوعها للاستبداد واختطافها، والتمسك بآخر بقاياها، وهذا ما نجهله عربيًّا كأنه طلسم. يقول أمين الريحاني حينما رأى تمثال الحرية للمرة الأولى "متى تحولين وجهك نحو الشرق أيتها الحرية؟"، وبعد قرن وعقود، ما زالت تلك الجملة تصلح
April 9, 2023
I don’t know of any other book that presents the truth with clear facts, figures & logic as this one does.
It is almost forensic in its analysis. The authors have examined the roots of our democracy in a way that is not optimistic. Our democracy did not die in 2014, when Narendra Modi took over, but has been dying a slow death for decades. The current Government has only accelerated its decline.
Any Indian who wishes to understand our failings towards development and progress MUST read it!
I will share the parts I felt are an absolute must for people to know.
It is almost forensic in its analysis. The authors have examined the roots of our democracy in a way that is not optimistic. Our democracy did not die in 2014, when Narendra Modi took over, but has been dying a slow death for decades. The current Government has only accelerated its decline.
Any Indian who wishes to understand our failings towards development and progress MUST read it!
I will share the parts I felt are an absolute must for people to know.
December 21, 2021
3.5/5
An exaggerated title. There's been a noticeable amount of doom-saying that has clouded news about India in the last decade. This book dives deeper and claims that the problems that plague Indian democracy have existed for a much longer time. While it's true that India has never been close to being an ideal democracy I remain highly optimistic for the future because despite small deviations it remains very much a democracy.
An exaggerated title. There's been a noticeable amount of doom-saying that has clouded news about India in the last decade. This book dives deeper and claims that the problems that plague Indian democracy have existed for a much longer time. While it's true that India has never been close to being an ideal democracy I remain highly optimistic for the future because despite small deviations it remains very much a democracy.
November 24, 2022
Fast-reading, well written, and deeply upsetting. We are witnessing the death of India’s democracy before our eyes. The book’s thesis is that India’s deeply undemocratic society cannot form the basis of a true democracy. Endemic poverty, caste inequality, sexism, and more were lying in wait for a truly despotic regime to come along. And Modi’s BJP is just that.
The data presented about inequality, violence, hunger, pollution, and other social ills is sobering stuff. And now we have a ruling cabal utterly committed to power and wealth: happy to make things worse for the poor, the Muslim, the Dalit, and the Adivasi, so long as their rule is secured.
One of the most disturbing chapters is about the ways India’s news media have become nothing more that instruments if propaganda for local and national elites. So, even as things worsen for the bottom billion, the newspapers, teevee, and web media sing praises for the rich. Meanwhile, social media is exploited to spread lies that inflame emotions and push daily life in the direction of fascism.
It’s not a happy read, this book. But it’s an utterly necessary one. Written with the pacing and clarity of Roy Chowdhury’s journalistic flair, backed by Keane’s academic skills, this book is highly readable yet scholarly. Highest recommendation.
The data presented about inequality, violence, hunger, pollution, and other social ills is sobering stuff. And now we have a ruling cabal utterly committed to power and wealth: happy to make things worse for the poor, the Muslim, the Dalit, and the Adivasi, so long as their rule is secured.
One of the most disturbing chapters is about the ways India’s news media have become nothing more that instruments if propaganda for local and national elites. So, even as things worsen for the bottom billion, the newspapers, teevee, and web media sing praises for the rich. Meanwhile, social media is exploited to spread lies that inflame emotions and push daily life in the direction of fascism.
It’s not a happy read, this book. But it’s an utterly necessary one. Written with the pacing and clarity of Roy Chowdhury’s journalistic flair, backed by Keane’s academic skills, this book is highly readable yet scholarly. Highest recommendation.
December 16, 2021
Nothing new. I feel echoes of a more de-spirited Guha. Guha argued in "India after Gandhi", don't worry India will be ok if independence of judiciary plus separation of legislature & executive is maintained. In this book the authors come to conclusion these structures are non-existent or crumbling but "democracy" will correct itself. Just trust "democracy". As an example they point to the farmers protests and shaheen bagh. To me these protests did not engender some systematic change in how democracy is formulated in India. Zetkins argument that fascism is history's revenge for failing to build and equitable society is more instructive. The "first past the post", nexus of money, caste, class, and power in Indian elections, is not broken and doesn't look like that in any short term future. To me it looks like the function of these books is just one thing: read, feel sorry, but end with hope that things will get better and in that way contain the will.
March 25, 2022
3.5 stars (but I'll round it up to 4, I guess).
The first half of the book reminded me of why I hated the readings I had to do in polisci classes when I was in college. A lot of it felt like it was grasping a part of the story, but never a central focus on it all. The chapters weren't bad but it felt like I was thrown into it in the middle of things and left to figure things out myself. They do discuss Modi head on - in the final chapter, after referring to him tons. There's an assumption of knowledge here that was giving me too much credit.
Also, the first part also came off a little .... too idealistic? There's an implied view of what democracy is - and it goes beyond elections into the sort of government that results from the elections. Those assumptions sound nice - but it sounds like a need for reform rather than a democracy being killed. (That said, the second half of the book goes well beyond this, as you see how the democracy is imperiled).
But you do pick up on things as you go. And the second part is better, as it discusses particular problems killing Indian democracy (too expensive elections, violence mixed with politics, the judiciary losing its independence, a compliant/corrupted media, rising political despotism).
It takes a while for the book to really make it's case - and I had fallen into skim mode by that time - but the case made later on is compelling. And, as an American, deeply depressing because it's very easy to see the exact same things taking place in the era of Trump.
The book ends with a note of optimism that rings a bit off in a book like this with a title like this. Pessimistic books often do this. I guess they want to fuel people to fight back, but wow it feels off in this book.
The first half of the book reminded me of why I hated the readings I had to do in polisci classes when I was in college. A lot of it felt like it was grasping a part of the story, but never a central focus on it all. The chapters weren't bad but it felt like I was thrown into it in the middle of things and left to figure things out myself. They do discuss Modi head on - in the final chapter, after referring to him tons. There's an assumption of knowledge here that was giving me too much credit.
Also, the first part also came off a little .... too idealistic? There's an implied view of what democracy is - and it goes beyond elections into the sort of government that results from the elections. Those assumptions sound nice - but it sounds like a need for reform rather than a democracy being killed. (That said, the second half of the book goes well beyond this, as you see how the democracy is imperiled).
But you do pick up on things as you go. And the second part is better, as it discusses particular problems killing Indian democracy (too expensive elections, violence mixed with politics, the judiciary losing its independence, a compliant/corrupted media, rising political despotism).
It takes a while for the book to really make it's case - and I had fallen into skim mode by that time - but the case made later on is compelling. And, as an American, deeply depressing because it's very easy to see the exact same things taking place in the era of Trump.
The book ends with a note of optimism that rings a bit off in a book like this with a title like this. Pessimistic books often do this. I guess they want to fuel people to fight back, but wow it feels off in this book.
January 2, 2022
An alarmingly faithful account of the current state of Indian democracy. The system is having a malignant tumor. It's metastasis is evident in the various organs of the government. The people are always at the receiving end. Whatever comes they have no choice but to take it lying down. A must read for every Indian who wish to reinforce his/her belief that thigs are not so good as shown in the propaganda.
November 20, 2022
Depressing and frightening.
August 24, 2023
Indian’s passage to despotism
Sitting here in front of my computer, I can look at India on television and think it is such a great country and become a patriot. But when I have a problem and have to visit a police station or a government office, then I will know the real India, a corrupt country with absolutely no value for a citizen. To Kill A Democracy tried to show what is the actual condition of India and why it is important to introspect.
In the beginning of the book, the author described how bad India is in healthcare, hunger and wage slavery. Instead of writing in assumptions, Debasish Roy put the world indices and analyzed the real events very well. India is ranked 145th out of 190 in the healthcare index and 107th rank out of 121 in the global hunger index. India is dying, India is starving. We don’t get to see this information in mainstream media. Real journalism is long dead in India. Very few who survived are censored. This book elaborates each topic and makes a comprehensive argument. The author was careful not to be smart and suggest policies inspired by other countries. He completely stuck to his limits of healthy criticism.
The first assumption I had when picking this book up is, the author can have some political opinion or ambition and that shouldn’t affect my reading experience. But surprisingly I didn’t read a single paragraph that targeted one party or praised one government. The book is neutral and only focuses only on how India is destroying itself from the day of independence. The second half of the book is about corruption. Similar to the first half, the author wrote sufficiently in each aspect like corruption in political parties, government departments, even the judiciary system. He not only argued our judiciary system is ineffective and sluggish, he called our legal system corrupt. Rightfully so. In the first few pages when Debasish was condemning Indian democracy, I thought it was exaggerated. But in the end I’m completely convinced that we are losing democracy and slipping to despotism. Especially the chapters where our parliament system was referred to. Reading about how our governments are slowly becoming unaccountable and how our billions worth bills are being passed within a tea time. I’m impressed how this book elaborated every system and showed they are all losing their essence.
The book itself is a long one, it looks just above 300 pages but it has too many words per page. However, it is quite easy to read. I liked the simple writing style. Never tried to outsmart or argue on assumptions, it was as humble as possible. There were times the author tried to harshly criticize the system, but it all went smoothly. I think it is an important book, especially now when every journalist has to be a nationalist and every television channel has to praise India’s international ties. Now more than ever, it is important to retrospect the country and realize where we are and where we are heading to.
Sitting here in front of my computer, I can look at India on television and think it is such a great country and become a patriot. But when I have a problem and have to visit a police station or a government office, then I will know the real India, a corrupt country with absolutely no value for a citizen. To Kill A Democracy tried to show what is the actual condition of India and why it is important to introspect.
In the beginning of the book, the author described how bad India is in healthcare, hunger and wage slavery. Instead of writing in assumptions, Debasish Roy put the world indices and analyzed the real events very well. India is ranked 145th out of 190 in the healthcare index and 107th rank out of 121 in the global hunger index. India is dying, India is starving. We don’t get to see this information in mainstream media. Real journalism is long dead in India. Very few who survived are censored. This book elaborates each topic and makes a comprehensive argument. The author was careful not to be smart and suggest policies inspired by other countries. He completely stuck to his limits of healthy criticism.
The first assumption I had when picking this book up is, the author can have some political opinion or ambition and that shouldn’t affect my reading experience. But surprisingly I didn’t read a single paragraph that targeted one party or praised one government. The book is neutral and only focuses only on how India is destroying itself from the day of independence. The second half of the book is about corruption. Similar to the first half, the author wrote sufficiently in each aspect like corruption in political parties, government departments, even the judiciary system. He not only argued our judiciary system is ineffective and sluggish, he called our legal system corrupt. Rightfully so. In the first few pages when Debasish was condemning Indian democracy, I thought it was exaggerated. But in the end I’m completely convinced that we are losing democracy and slipping to despotism. Especially the chapters where our parliament system was referred to. Reading about how our governments are slowly becoming unaccountable and how our billions worth bills are being passed within a tea time. I’m impressed how this book elaborated every system and showed they are all losing their essence.
The book itself is a long one, it looks just above 300 pages but it has too many words per page. However, it is quite easy to read. I liked the simple writing style. Never tried to outsmart or argue on assumptions, it was as humble as possible. There were times the author tried to harshly criticize the system, but it all went smoothly. I think it is an important book, especially now when every journalist has to be a nationalist and every television channel has to praise India’s international ties. Now more than ever, it is important to retrospect the country and realize where we are and where we are heading to.
March 3, 2024
This whole book is like an extended version of Interview between Anil Kapoor and Amrish Puri from Nayak.
* One after another, he pulls every thread, and just when you think what they are saying can't get truer and bleaker, they give facts and numbers from official accounts to show a picture that need to be changed immediately.
* It's a truly depressing book and you will hate yourself for being part of so many problems that our country's democracy is facing. Even if you are not part of any, you will be ashamed of not doing anything about it.
* The sad part is, it's not revealing anything new, just old facts that have been true since independence, the book just gives the updated numbers and stats, which have become worse.
* Not a BJP bashing book, it holds every party accountable for their actions and inaction as well. TMC. Congress, Janata Dal all are culprit, and this book does a great job explaining it, with proper stats and history as well.
* Judiciary, Legislative, Bureaucracy, Police all are complicit in this grand erosion of Democracy in India, and no one holds each other accountable. Instances of each and cases studies of each have been discussed in detail.
Anyone who can buy it, should read it.
* One after another, he pulls every thread, and just when you think what they are saying can't get truer and bleaker, they give facts and numbers from official accounts to show a picture that need to be changed immediately.
* It's a truly depressing book and you will hate yourself for being part of so many problems that our country's democracy is facing. Even if you are not part of any, you will be ashamed of not doing anything about it.
* The sad part is, it's not revealing anything new, just old facts that have been true since independence, the book just gives the updated numbers and stats, which have become worse.
* Not a BJP bashing book, it holds every party accountable for their actions and inaction as well. TMC. Congress, Janata Dal all are culprit, and this book does a great job explaining it, with proper stats and history as well.
* Judiciary, Legislative, Bureaucracy, Police all are complicit in this grand erosion of Democracy in India, and no one holds each other accountable. Instances of each and cases studies of each have been discussed in detail.
Anyone who can buy it, should read it.
June 17, 2023
Almost gave it a 4 star for the chapter on health/Covid-19 which I thought is poorly researched and written in an otherwise extensively well referenced and researched book which critically analyses post-colonial India politics, democracy, social change, social institutions and their shifts and drifts through Nehru, Gandhi, 90s, 2000s and the recent BJP/Hindutva era. While the severity of criticism is bestowed most in tbr recent decade, the analysis penetrates into the history of decay of social institutions through congress and previous regimes. A good book to read before Parakala Prabhakar’s “The crooked timber of new india”.
February 29, 2024
I found To Kill a Democracy very informative and deeply troubling. I have recommended it to several friends.
The authors use the Covid pandemic as a stress test of India's democracy, and they conclude that India's democracy didn't hold up well. It would have been very interesting if the authors had used the government's Swachh Bharat Mission as another test case.
I think the first 30 pages, about the "India Story", should have been shorter. I'm glad that I didn't give up on the book, because it became much better after that.
I don't agree with reviewers who claim that the book ends on an optimistic note.
The authors use the Covid pandemic as a stress test of India's democracy, and they conclude that India's democracy didn't hold up well. It would have been very interesting if the authors had used the government's Swachh Bharat Mission as another test case.
I think the first 30 pages, about the "India Story", should have been shorter. I'm glad that I didn't give up on the book, because it became much better after that.
I don't agree with reviewers who claim that the book ends on an optimistic note.
January 1, 2022
A professor of politics has only used his poor research to reinforce preconceived notions.
December 5, 2022
A slow read but an eye-opener and a guide to the issues plaguing India
August 15, 2025
An eye opener. Filled with relevant statistics from health indices to those on social/economic and politics.
April 17, 2024
Reminds me the quote of Theodore Roosevelt,"Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining."
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