Interactions of the civilizational state of India with democracy: A phase 6

“Coalition politics can never be reversed now because of the radical socio-economic changes at the grassroots due to deepening of democracy” had become one of the core intellectual arguments in the late 90’s and 2000’s when India seemingly produced ever more deeply fragmented verdicts along caste and regional fault lines. There was a smug sense of achievement among these intellectual class about how India will never become a single nation and will always remain a deeply balkanised federal state.

The western political scientists triumphally declared that this is how democracy always progresses, ultimately towards a liberal society with each caste ethnic group fending for itself through its own political infrastructure. “Political coalition creates enough pulls and pressures from different political parties, so India can never become a single cultural state like what the RSS envisages” declared Jefferlot. The three core philosophies of BJP, Ram Mandir, abrogation of article 370 and Uniform Civil Code, were dubbed as fringe majoritarian ideas that will never get mainstream acceptance. In fact, after the 2009 victory of Congress-led UPA, Vir Sanghvi declared that “BJP is a party of old ideas and terminally in decline which may never again come back to power as it will never get enough allies”.

Not to be left behind, the then Indian Express editor, Shekhar Gupta gleefully argued that “the chief minister is the most powerful man in India today and Prime Minister is merely a figurehead with no real powers”. At the heart of this argument was the idea that regional chieftains will be running India for the foreseeable future and will choose a symbolic Prime Minister like Manmohan Singh to simply manage day to day functioning. The lofty term “true federalism” was often bandied about to justify this balkanization of the Indian nation. The Congress party was seen as a natural benefactor of such a “federal polity”. In fact, the Sonia Gandhi model of sacrificing the Prime Minister’s post and belittling it by making Manmohan a mere figurehead was hailed as the best possible way forward for such blooming of a federal, liberal, secular state.