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The recent happenings in India have failed to awaken the masses. The masses are not to be blamed here. The media is playing a vital role in numbing the psyche of the masses. Such mass suspension of MPs and passing of draconian laws in Parliament shows that the Modi government is very clear in its intent about what kind of India it wants to create.
The election defeat has allowed the ruling class to spread the illusion of total voter support, which is utterly false considering that it was the Congress that got more votes than the BJP in the state elections.
Nevertheless, what the Modi government has been doing ever since the election results is extremely worrying. This is no longer a question about the BJP or Congress. This is not just about your religion versus my religion or your caste versus my caste. What the Modi government is doing concerns all the citizens of India, and not in a very good way. Every man and woman in India is going to be affected by the questionable actions the Modi government is taking in Parliament.
Suspending MPs to strengthen Parliament security?
An unusual breach in Parliament security, suspension of 150 Opposition MPs, and passing of Bills in an empty Parliament that has the potential to alter the democratic structure of India all smell of a larger conspiracy to hack into India’s Constitution.
We, the common people, can all support whatever party we want, vote for whichever candidate we want, work wherever we want, and expect a reasonable level of justice from the police & the judicial system when required. This is all because the Constitution guarantees us freedom & justice. Despite all the flaws in our democracy, most of us can agree to some extent that there is currently a reasonable level of liberty & fairness in our society. We are not some Saudi Arabia, Germany of the Hitler-era, or communist China, where all citizens are controlled & are expected to feel, talk, & behave in a certain manner as mandated by the government.
India is a free and fair society, but slowly it is turning towards dictatorship. The ruling class’s first target is obviously the opposition parties. In a constitutional democracy, it is difficult to directly start controlling the masses using executive powers. That is because the masses will always have the alternative to kick out the ruling elites, as the Constitution provides that guarantee through free & fair elections.
Slow and steady strategy of grabbing power
So the objective is to first neutralize the Opposition. There shouldn’t be any alternative to the Modi government. And if an alternative arises, first the media will jump into the battlefield to neutralize that alternative. The mainstream media has done that job excellently in the past 10 years. It is difficult to count the amount of time the media has spent on neutralizing & ridiculing Rahul Gandhi. Now, the government has directly jumped in. It is very clear that the unethical behaviour of MPs was just an excuse. BJP MPs have taken lots more unethical actions when they were in Opposition.
The main goal was to pass certain Bills that would inevitably allow the government to control the masses. The mass suspension of Opposition MPs provided the ideal condition to pass the Bill to appoint Election Commissioners. The Bill enables the government to indirectly take control of the Lok Sabha & Vidhan Sabha elections. The Bill was first introduced in the Monsoon session when the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court recommended that the election commissioners should be appointed by the President based on the advice of the committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, & the Chief Justice of India.
Legislative route to autocracy
However, the government instead passed the Bill that states that the selection committee will comprise the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha), and a cabinet Minister. The President shall make the appointments based on the recommendations of this selection committee, which will contain a majority of members from the ruling party. One doesn’t need a lot of brains to understand what will happen if election commissioners recommended by the ruling party start conducting elections.
The recommendation of the Supreme Court was perfect as it would have created a selection committee comprising of two largest national parties of India and the Chief Justice of India, thus not giving an upper hand to any political entity. But now it will be the ruling party that will basically appoint Election Commissioners. How do you expect the Election Commission to stay neutral after this Bill?
This Bill was passed in two hours when almost 100 Opposition MPs were absent due to suspensions.
Preserving the world’s largest democracy
Similarly, the government passed the Telecom Bill, which gives extraordinary powers to the government. We are currently living in a digital age where everything from informal conversations to professional work currently uses digital technology to extract, analyze, & produce information. Governments in many countries have shown the tendency to misuse telecommunication laws to surveil people & suspend the internet whenever they want.
The Modi government too has been notorious for suspending the internet in different parts of the country. The new Telecom Bill not only enhances the power of the government to suspend the internet but also puts a question mark on an individual’s right to privacy. The Bill gives unilateral power to the government. It will be especially harmful to whistleblowers and journalists who want to keep their identity anonymous.
Why should we be concerned?
These bills, which were passed in the absence of Opposition parties, will not affect the Congress party, the Trinamool, or Nitish Kumar. They will affect the citizens of India. Who wants a government behaving like a big daddy trying to keep an eye on your conduct & behaviour? Who will trust the election process if the government itself supervises the election? What really is democracy if important Bills are passed after all opposing lawmakers are evicted?
The common man right now is not affected by all these developments. Many of the Indians may even refuse to believe that all these moves by the government have any potential to harm them. But that is how the current RSS-BJP setup is working. They are not going to let anyone feel what is going on until it is too late. First, the media’s spinal cord was broken which acted as an entity to keep the citizens aware of the reality. Slowly but surely they are trying to get control of the institutions. Then it will be the turn of the masses. This is also not the first time in history any political entity has worked to centralize power.
Adolf Hitler’s rise to dictatorial power in Germany was facilitated through a series of legal and political manoeuvres that manipulated the existing constitutional framework of the Weimar Republic. At that time also there was a mysterious fire in the Parliament, after which, Hitler took several executive & legislative measures in the name of national security only to secure his power. In the contemporary world too we can see Israel’s current government trying to suppress its judiciary, Turkey’s Erdogan passing new laws to strengthen his grip over the country.
The occurrences in December 2023 are going to define the way of life of ordinary Indians. The current actions of the government are all designed to increase its authority, and an authoritarian government in the future will definitely dictate the way we live our lives.
