On April 19, 2024, citizens of India, the world’s largest democracy, will start to participate in the Lok Sabha elections. The Lok Sabha is the lower of the two houses that make up India’s parliamentary system. Whoever wins a majority of the Lok Sabha’s 543 seats gains the power to appoint the Indian prime minster and form a government. According to opinion polling, the party with the highest likelihood to do this remains the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party led by current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is looking for his third term in office.

Since 2014, Prime Minister Modi and his BJP have held a majority within India, consistently winning Lok Sabha elections. In taking power, though, serious questions have arisen about Modi and the BJP’s commitment to keeping the Republic of India a secular and democratic nation. Starting in 2021, the non-profit democracy watchdog Freedom House started to rank Modi’s India as only “partly free,” with India’s scores only getting lower since. Thus, it is worth inspecting the current Indian government’s most recent actions to deduce whether another five-year term of Prime Minister Modi and the BJP truly poses a threat to India’s secular democracy. To do this, the presence of key aspects that either boost or hinder democratic society and systems will be inspected within India, including partisan polarization, political opposition, and institutional checks.

Many scholars of democracy have labeled partisan polarization as a hindrance to the continued strength of democratic governance. For instance, political science professor Milan W. Svolik writes how “[e]lectoral competition often confronts voters with a choice between two valid but conflicting concerns: democratic principles and partisan interests” (“Polarization Versus Democracy,” 23). Often, this means that would-be autocrats ask their supporters to sacrifice the former to secure the latter with full knowledge that “most…would rather tolerate authoritarian tendencies than back politicians whose platform these supporters abhor” (“Polarization Versus Democracy,” 23). As Svolik’s argument suggests, polarization has led many Indians to be comfortable with the idea of sacrificing democratic principles for partisan interests. A 2024 Pew Research poll found that 85% of Indians have favorable views towards military or authoritarian rule over their country.

When looking at the extreme state of polarization along religious lines in India, it becomes easier to see why this is. The Hindu-nationalist BJP often utilize anti-Muslim rhetoric to stir up support amongst the nation’s 1.1 billion Hindus, who make up the vast majority of the population. Indian human rights activist John Dayal writes how the BJP “blame Muslims for every setback – poverty, because they have so many children; security, because they are loyal to Pakistan; and cultural homogeneity, because they insist on hijab and live in ghettos labeled as ‘mini Pakistans.’” Aside from using discriminatory rhetoric to draw Hindus to the polls, BJP politicians also initiate openly discriminatory legislation. Take the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), for instance, which was fully implemented on March 11^th, 2024. Conveniently passed a mere two months before the Lok Sabha elections (a fact that opposition parties have evidenced as stirring polarization), this legislation permits religious minorities including Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and others from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to seek accelerated Indian citizenship. Absent from the list are Muslims, despite the fact that many minority Muslim groups have faced discrimination in these nations just as other religious minorities have. The goal of the recent passage of the CAA seems two-fold: to stir polarization before elections and to possibly renounce the citizenship of India’s Muslim population when used in conjunction with another piece of legislation, the National Register of Citizens (NRC). A CBS article details how “[t]he CAA will enable many non-Muslims who fail to prove residency under the NRC to regain their citizenship, but it provides no such route to people of the Islamic faith.” Thus, the BJP’s polarizing strategies are being utilized to convince Hindus to not just outvote and discriminate against their fellow Muslim citizens, but outright displace them from India, as well.

The existence of strong political opposition has been continually labeled as an indicator of a strong democratic government. By contrast, a transition to autocracy is often indicated when opposition is weakened or negated by the government. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt speak to this idea in their book How Democracies Die, as they explain how autocrats ensure that “key players – anyone capable of really hurting the government – are sidelined, hobbled, or bribed into throwing the game” (81). Furthermore, Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt mention how autocrats weaken the opposition through “hid[ing] their repression behind a veneer of legality” (83). Recent government actions by the BJP illustrate this exact method, with CNN reporting how several opposition leaders were suspended after trying to debate on a security breach of parliament in December 2023. Considering that the BJP has a majority in Congress, they undoubtedly have the legal power to take these sorts of actions. Yet, it’s obvious that these suspensions were not done to legally punish unruly lawmakers. Instead, they were undertaken to allow for an easier passing of a contentious criminal reform bill and to weaken the political alliance known as INDIA running against Modi in the upcoming elections. 

Another indicator of a strong democratic government is the presence of institutional checks within a nation’s government. If would-be authoritarians are able to bring institutional checks under control, their hold on power becomes far stronger. In speaking on an autocratic government’s ability to control neutral institutional checks, Levitsky and Ziblatt explain that “[w]ith the courts packed and law enforcement authorities brought to heel, governments can act with impunity” (78). One key institution that maintains neutrality and acts as a check on other legs of the government in most democratic governments would be the federal judiciary. In India, several prominent legal critics have accused the nation’s federal judiciary as essentially acting under the control of Prime Minister Modi and the BJP. An article by Scroll, an Indian news publication, points out that “that the court is seen by some to be failing in its function of keeping a check on the Union government’s actions.” One can point to several prominent actions by the Supreme Court of India to see why this is. For instance, this December the Supreme Court of India removed the Jammu and Kashmir regions’ semi-autonomous status, bringing the Muslim-majority regions under central government control. NBC reported how this “boost[s] the electoral prospects of Modi’s governing Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party” in the Lok Sabha elections. If Modi and the BJP once again win a majority, they will in part have the Supreme Court of India to thank for their victory.

Based on the presence of partisan polarization as well as the continued absence of political opposition and institutional checks within India’s current government, it is safe to say that India’s status as a democracy is waning. Furthermore, if Prime Minister Modi and the BJP secure yet another term in this year’s Lok Sabha’s elections, India’s status as a secular democracy may not just wane, but completely disappear.