After six weeks of voting in the world’s largest democracy, on June 4, Indians will learn who is to be their next prime minister. Narendra Modi, standing for a third term, is the frontrunner.
Critics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) warn that India’s democracy has been hollowed out during his premiership, including through its treatment of religious minorities, most notably Muslims, the targeting of political adversaries, and by pushing through laws with little debate in the Lok Sabha, India’s parliament.
Thousands of Indians have taken to the streets to protest against Modi’s policies. And for Indrajit Roy, professor of global development at the University of York in the UK, this pushback by Indians against threats to their democracy is an example of an audacious type of hope.
For Roy, to live in hope shouldn’t be conflated with aspiration, or with a search for a form of political utopia.
This pushback by Indians against threats to their democracy is an example of an audacious type of hope
“Hope is a collective emotion … it’s about collectively thinking of how you want to live your life. Hope is also about not giving up. It’s about pursuing a collective objective, despite lots of difficulties and pursuing them without quitting. Hope is necessarily incomplete … it’s imperfect, it’s always a work in progress.”
In a new book called Audacious Hope: An archive of how democracy is being saved in India, Roy charts the ways various Indians have fought back against threats to democracy.
One prominent example were the countrywide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019. This law, passed in haste in the Indian parliament, gives a fast-track route for citizenship for religious minorities from India’s Muslim-majority neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
While six religions are included, Muslims are not. For Roy, the protests against the law from across Indian society were a good example of audacious hope.
“This was a very clear example of how numerous Indians, despite all odds, were out on the streets protesting a divisive law. And I found that almost moving, touching because they didn’t have to do it. For a lot of them, they wouldn’t be touched, affected by this law at all, perhaps, but it was the principle of a divisive citizenship law which many people were really against.”
The protests -- and the implementation of the law -- were interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. But in March 2024, just a few weeks before the election, Modi’s government enacted the law and new protests sprung up.
Gemma Ware is Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation. Indrajit Roy is a Lecturer in Global Development Politics, University of York. This piece first appeared on The Conversation and is being republished under special arrangement
