The crisis surrounding the impartiality, independence, and constitutional credibility of the Election Commission of India (ECI) not only delegitimises the ECI itself but also creates a stepping stone for the dismantling of electoral democracy in India. The authoritarian actions of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, make him merely an accomplice in Hindutva politics, which is destroying Indian democracy by eroding public trust in the ECI as an independent constitutional institution central to upholding democratic values and practices in the country. However, Hindutva politics, led by the Prime Minister Mr Narendr Modi, has either dismantled or occupied all public institutions in the name of making a Hindu state where Hindus will be slaves of the Hindutva crony capitalism established by the BJP.
The recent allegations against the Chief Election Commissioner of India are not merely about irregularities or administrative oversight but about a systematic design to undermine citizenship rights and democracy in India. The CEC is working directly under the Modi government without maintaining political independence and ideological impartiality. While Mr. Gyanesh Kumar is an accomplice, the larger devil is Hindutva politics and its leadership, shaped by the RSS, which intends to create a theocratic Hindu state and get rid of elections, democracy, and all other forms of accountability in order to pursue its ideological project of deepening capitalism in the economy, a Brahminical social order in culture, and authoritarianism in politics. The crisis of credibility of the CEC and the ECI is a strategy in this direction, shaped by the Hindutva ideological project.
Hindutva disdains all forms of democratic accountability. Therefore, whenever a regulatory institution stands in its way, Hindutva regime dismantles it. The current crisis of the ECI is another example of dismantling constitutional institutions to ensure accountability-free governance, in which citizens are going to be subjects of Hindutva rule in India. There is no doubt that the CEC, Mr. Gyanesh Kumar is Mr. Narendra Modi’s Joseph Goebbels in Nirvachan Sadan, the office of the ECI. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) driven by the ECI is designed to disenfranchise citizens of their right to vote and to prevent them from voting against Hindutva politics. It is designed to weaken opposition to Hindutva politics in the name of cleaning the electoral register. Such a drive weakens democracy and deepens Hindutva politics in India in the name of revising electoral rolls.
It resembles January 1933 in Germany, when the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler dismantled the democratic and independent electoral system to pursue the political and ideological projects of Nazism—projects celebrated by Hindutva politics. Like the Nazi regime in Germany, Hindutva wants single-party referendums in the name of “One Nation, One Election,” where citizens can only vote “yes” or “no” for pre-selected Hindutva candidates. Democracy is anathema to Hindutva politics, so unaccountable centralisation is a recipe for authoritarianism scripted by the Hindutva ideological project in India, much as Nazi Germany—which provides ideological inspiration to Hindutva politic which pursues ethno-nationalistic politics at the cost of democratic diversity in India.
Like Joseph Goebbels, Mr. Gyanesh Kumar is ensuring policies, processes, institutional compliance, and voting logistics for Hindutva politics, which subverts democracy in India, while Godi media manipulates people and runs propaganda for Mr. Narendra Modi and his Hindutva politics at the cost of constitutional democracy in India. The curated politics and choreographed leadership shaped by Hindutva ideology pose the greatest danger to Indian democracy. Like Goebbels, the Hindutva ideological and political ecosystem has built a cult personality around Mr. Modi as a messiah, based on fraudulent propaganda intended to undermine all available alternatives to Hindutva crony capitalism in the country.
Hindutva governments led by Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mr. Narendra Modi clearly show that Hindutva is fundamentally against India and Indian interests, as the BJP upholds the interests of global, regional, and national capitalist classes by surrendering national interests to Yankee imperialists, neocolonial and feudal forces in India and beyond. Hindutva governance is all about censorship, persecution, and psychological control of the population by inflicting fear of riots, terrorism, conflicts, and wars to consolidate the Hindutva political base through mass manipulation. This mass manipulation is possible when there are no regulatory mechanisms and institutions to enforce accountability. This is why the Modi government is dismantling the ECI with the help of the CEC, who does Hindutva’s hitman job, while Hindutva will not take any responsibility for it. This is a clear division of labour in which Hindutva has outsourced its plans and projects to different individuals leading various constitutional offices and institutions in India.
Therefore, Hindutva and its leadership need to be exposed while democratic and constitutional accountability is fixed. Modi’s men are constitutional criminals, but the crime syndicate is designed, developed, controlled, and directed by Hindutva politics and its leadership. The heinous designs of Hindutva politics and its reactionary ideology need to be exposed to create political consciousness to defeat Hindutva both politically and ideologically for the sake of unity and integrity of India and the future of Indians. The progress of India on a path of peace and prosperity for Indians depends on defeating Hindutva politics, which can create the foundation for an alternative politics that deepens democracy and citizenship rights in India.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect (North London News) editorial policy.
