Introduction
In May 2024, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) secured a third consecutive term in national office, reaffirming its
electoral dominance despite mounting concerns over democratic backsliding.
While the country remains a functioning electoral democracy—with regular elections, an active press, and a formally independent
judiciary—many observers have noted a stark contradiction: democratic
structures endure, but the spirit of democracy appears increasingly hollow.
Minority rights are under siege, dissent is criminalised, and institutions
meant to check executive power have been either weakened or co-opted. India’s
democratic crisis is no longer a looming threat—it is an unfolding reality.
This essay argues that India’s democracy is being
hollowed out from within. The façade of constitutional democracy masks a deep
erosion of substantive democratic values such as pluralism, accountability, and
inclusion. Drawing on insights from critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, and Antonio Gramsci, this analysis interrogates the disconnect between
democratic form and function and examines how power operates beneath the
surface of procedural legitimacy.
The discussion unfolds in four parts. First, it
explores how democratic institutions have been hollowed out while retaining
their formal shell. Second, it examines the rise of majoritarian politics and
its impact on representation. Third, it analyses the political economy driving
democratic decline. Finally, it considers the shrinking space for dissent and
the role of media in manufacturing consent. Together, these reflections aim to
expose the contradictions of India's “hollow republic.”
The
Democratic Façade: Institutions Without Substance
At first glance, India appears to fulfil the
procedural requirements of a thriving democracy. Elections are held regularly, courts issue
rulings, and parliament continues to function. Yet beneath this formal structure lies a deeper
crisis: the institutional shell of democracy remains intact, but its
substance—deliberation, accountability, and pluralism—is steadily eroding. What
persists is a façade of democracy, behind which the concentration of power has
grown unchecked.
Over the last decade, executive authority has expanded
dramatically. The Prime Minister's Office has centralised decision-making,
sidelining both parliament and cabinet. Ordinances bypass legislative debate,
while federalism is increasingly compromised. Opposition parties face the selective use of
investigative agencies.
Meanwhile, civil society organisations are restrained by the Foreign
Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), which curtails foreign funding and
advocacy efforts.
Paradoxically, even democratic institutions are used
to suppress dissent. Broad laws on sedition and terrorism (UAPA) are frequently
applied against activists, students, and journalists, often pre-trial. Courts
increasingly defer to executive interests, especially in politically sensitive
cases. Although elections remain competitive, they are distorted by opaque
campaign financing and state-controlled narratives.
This erosion reflects what Jürgen Habermas termed the colonisation of the lifeworld—where
systems of power displace democratic deliberation. In place of “communicative
rationality,” where democracy rests on inclusive dialogue, Indian institutions
now reflect “instrumental rationality,” where outcomes are determined by elite
interests and bureaucratic control. Herbert Marcuse similarly warned of repressive tolerance,
where forms of freedom are permitted only so long as they do not challenge
domination. In India today, the performance of democracy persists—but its
emancipatory core has been gutted.
Majoritarianism
and the Crisis of Representation
One of the most troubling features of India’s
democratic decline is the growing appeal to majoritarianism—the idea that the
will of the majority overrides constitutional protections for minorities and
dissenters. While this tendency has existed historically, its
institutionalisation under the BJP has triggered a crisis of representation. In
this system, democratic legitimacy is no longer derived from inclusive
citizenship but from the projection of cultural and religious uniformity.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed
National Register of Citizens (NRC) exemplify this shift. By explicitly
privileging non-Muslim migrants, the CAA institutionalises religious
discrimination. The NRC threatens to render millions stateless—particularly
Muslims and low-income communities lacking documentation. Simultaneously,
anti-Muslim violence, including mob lynchings, has become both more frequent
and more normalized, creating a pervasive climate of fear.
Censorship further entrenches this majoritarian logic.
Films, scholarship, and media reports critical of the government are routinely
attacked or banned. Pro-government media networks dominate airtime, reinforcing
a homogenized vision of national identity and stifling dissenting narratives.
Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony offers a powerful framework
for understanding this process. In Gramsci’s view, power is sustained not only
through coercion but through cultural leadership—the construction of “common
sense” that aligns popular belief with ruling-class interests. In contemporary
India, the state and its media allies manufacture a hegemonic consensus in
which Hindu majoritarianism is equated with patriotism, and pluralism with
disloyalty. The crisis of representation, then, is not accidental—it is strategic,
converting democracy into a mechanism for exclusion under the guise of national
unity.
The Political Economy of Hollowing Out
India’s democratic decline
cannot be fully understood without examining its economic underpinnings. Over
the past decade, neoliberal reforms have advanced alongside growing
authoritarianism—not as conflicting trends, but as mutually reinforcing forces.
Together, they have produced a society in which citizens are economically
precarious and politically disengaged—a condition that critical theorists
describe as managed depoliticisation.
The state has overseen the
rapid privatisation of public assets, from national airlines to ports and
highways, concentrating economic power in the hands of a corporate elite with
close ties to the ruling party. At the same time, labor reforms have diluted worker protections and undermined collective bargaining
rights in the name of “ease of doing business.” Simultaneously, the expansion
of digital surveillance—through biometric IDs, facial recognition, and opaque
data collection—has extended state power into everyday life.
This convergence reflects
what Frankfurt School theorists like Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
identified as the transformation of democracy into a means of elite control. In
such a system, institutions are preserved not to expand participation, but to
legitimize an order where market logic overrides political equality. As Adorno
warned, when freedom becomes a carefully managed experience, politics is
reduced to private frustration and passive acceptance.
Today, Indian citizens are
increasingly positioned not as rights-bearing participants, but as consumers—of
digital platforms, welfare schemes, and aspirational narratives. Financial
inclusion is touted as progress, even as avenues for political inclusion are
systematically narrowed. As Herbert Marcuse famously wrote, “the free election
of masters does not abolish the masters.” In this context, India’s democracy
risks becoming one-dimensional: procedurally intact, but substantively hollow.
Silencing
Dissent and the Manufacturing of Consent
A
healthy democracy requires more than elections; it needs a vibrant public
sphere where dissent and debate are not only permitted but protected. In
contemporary India, that space is under siege. Laws like sedition
and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) have been used to
criminalise criticism of the government. Activists, students, journalists, and
artists have been jailed under vague allegations, often denied bail, and
subjected to prolonged pre-trial detention.
The
coercive edge of the state is reinforced by a captured media landscape. Over
the past decade, media consolidation
has placed much of India’s press under the control of conglomerates with close
ties to the ruling party. Independent journalism is increasingly rare, hampered
by legal threats, advertising pressure, and coordinated online attacks.
Government narratives dominate prime-time television, where dissenting voices
are marginalised or demonised.
This
aligns closely with Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s framework of manufacturing
consent, wherein media systems in formal democracies serve elite interests by
shaping public perception rather than informing civic debate. In India, this is
achieved through selective reporting, repetition of nationalist rhetoric, and
the systematic silencing of critical perspectives.
Theodor
Adorno’s critique of the culture industry is equally instructive. Adorno warned
that mass media, when commodified and standardised, do not educate but entertain,
producing passive consumers rather than active citizens. In India, news
increasingly resembles spectacle—sensationalist, polarizing, and devoid of
substance. Dissent becomes deviance, activism becomes subversion, and democracy
becomes performance.
What
results is not overt totalitarianism but a more subtle regime of consent: one
in which the appearance of freedom masks its erosion. The mechanisms of control
are cultural as much as political, and their most insidious effect is to render
alternatives unimaginable.
Toward a Democratic Reclamation
India’s democratic erosion is not merely the result of
authoritarian overreach. It is a hollowing out from within—where procedural
forms are retained, but the substance of democracy is steadily stripped away.
As critical theorists remind us, domination in modern democracies often
operates not by dismantling institutions, but by redefining their purpose:
shifting them from enabling participation to managing populations, from
ensuring accountability to consolidating control.
And yet, even within this hollowed republic,
resistance persists. The farmer protests, which brought millions to the streets in 2020–21,
exemplified democratic agency from below. Student mobilisations, anti-CAA
demonstrations, and grassroots campaigns for justice continue to confront both
state repression and cultural hegemony. These moments remind us that democracy
is not confined to the formal workings of institutions—it also lives in the
everyday struggles for dignity, recognition, and voice.
Reclaiming Indian democracy will require more than
protecting elections or restoring parliamentary norms. It demands a radical
reimagining of democratic life—one that centres inclusion over exclusion,
deliberation over domination, and structural reform over symbolic gestures.
This means confronting not only authoritarian power, but also the social and
economic inequalities that sustain it.
As Raymond Williams once observed, democracy is “a
long revolution”—an ongoing and unfinished project. India’s future depends not
on restoring a golden past, but on building a democratic order yet to be
realised: a republic grounded not in appearances, but in justice, plurality,
and shared power.
*Author
Bio: Asis Mistry is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science,
University of Calcutta. His work focuses on democratic theory, political
economy, and South Asian politics.
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