Modi’s India Is Where Global Democracy Dies

To Mr. Modi’s critics, the refashioned image atop the Parliament — a project that was rammed through without debate or public consultation — reflects the snarling “New India” he is creating.

In his eight years in power, Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government has profaned Indian democracy, espousing an intolerant Hindu supremacist majoritarianism over the ideals of secularism, pluralism, religious tolerance and equal citizenship upon which the country was founded after gaining independence on Aug. 15, 1947.

Drawing comparisons to Nazi Germany, the regime uses co-opted government machinery, disinformation and intimidation by partisan mobs to silence critics while dehumanizing the large Muslim minority, fanning social division and violence. Civil liberties are systematically violated.

India, the world’s largest democracy, is where the global battle between liberalism and tyranny is being lost.

Last year Sweden’s V-Dem Institute downgraded India to an “electoral autocracy,” and the Washington-based Freedom House lowered it to “partly free.” The demotion of India, with its 1.3 billion people, tipped the global balance of freedom firmly in favor of tyranny, Freedom House said, with less than 20 percent of the world’s population now living in “free” countries.

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