The World’s Largest Democracy Is Failing
Updated at 9:04 a.m. ET on December 10, 2021
When Joe Biden convened his virtual Summit for Democracy today, Narendra Modi was among the attendees. The Indian prime minister is the steward of the world’s largest democracy. Any conversation about global democratic decline, and what can be done to reverse it, would be incomplete without his participation.
Modi’s involvement in the summit nevertheless looks odd—even awkward—considering the role that he has played in precipitating democratic decline. Since coming to power in 2014, Modi has overseen a steady transformation of India from the secular democracy envisioned by its founders into a majoritarian, Hindu-nationalist state—one that demonizes its minority groups, undermines civil liberties, and crushes dissent. The democracy watchdog Freedom House took this deterioration into account when it downgraded India to a “partly free” country earlier this year. Although some democratic indexes have begun to label India a “flawed democracy,” others no longer consider the country to be a democracy at all.
Democratic backsliding of this kind can often be gradual and multifaceted. Perhaps no one better exemplifies what is happening in India today than Rana Ayyub. The award-winning investigative journalist, author, and bugbear of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has emerged as one of the chief chroniclers of India’s democratic decline in the international press; and she writes for . Ayyub’s journalism has earned her plaudits for and , and it has also subjected her to a torrent of online abuse, including doxing and death threats. Recently, she has been charged with numerous criminal complaints that she says are designed to intimidate her into silence.
