Neelanjan Sircar's cretinous 'Political Science'

Neelanjan Sircar is an assistant professor, Ashoka University, and visiting senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research. He writes in the Hindustan Times-

India’s democracy is not well.

India's democracy does not have a body. It can't be ill anymore than it can go on a diet or have breast implants. Believing otherwise will cause you to say stupid shit.

If the centralisation of political power envisioned in the presidential orders on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), endorsed by Parliament, withstand legal challenges, the extent of power arrayed to the central leadership will severely impair the democratic functioning of India.

How? The State was already under President's Rule. Its corrupt and incompetent 'mainstream' political class was despised in the Valley and propped up by massive subsidies from the Center. It was plagued by Pak sponsored terrorism. It can't be the case that measures affecting a mere half a percentage of the population of India will have any effect whatsoever on the democratic functioning of the country.

This centralisation of power will allow the government to weaken or completely stifle much of its political opposition.

Indira Gandhi tried it. She failed. In any case, Dynastic Autocracy is tempered by Assassination. The BJP is not dynastic. It is meritocratic. The reward for serving it arises from popular respect and gratitude. People like Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley may not have made money out of their political career. But they won the admiration and affection of millions of ordinary citizens. P. Chidambaram, an equally brilliant attorney and a very successful cabinet minister, has not won an equal measure of gratitude and support. Why? His party was dynastic, incompetent and corrupt. If the allegations of corruption against him are proved true, he may go to jail. But he has forfeited all sympathy for his current troubles because he himself dished out just such treatment to his rivals when he held power.

Understanding the relationship between the decision on J&K and India’s democracy is not straightforward.

There is no relationship whatsoever. Pakistan, for its own reasons, has been sponsoring terrorism there. However, there are new Islamic grouping which have targeted the Valley in a manner familiar from many parts of the globe. This is an internal security problem and there are precedents, foreign and domestic, for how this problem should be solved.

While many concerns have been raised — from weakening of federalism to human rights abuses — none of these issues, in and of themselves, constitute a breakdown of democracy.

This is because these concerns were wholly bogus.

Federalism is not a core component of democracy, as many democracies like France and United Kingdom do not practice federalism. Furthermore, civil and human rights standards have changed over the years, and many early democracies do not have a great record on this count.

Federalism may be a core component of a particular democracy. It isn't in India. The Union Govt. alone decides what is or isn't a State or a Union Territory.

The litmus test for a democracy is not whether policy decisions have popular support.It is whether the policy decisions themselves are made through democratic procedure.

This is false. Executive privilege severely limits the scope of 'democratic procedure' to affect vital policy decisions.

There is no 'litmus test' for democracy. Why? It is not a chemical compound which can be manufactured in a laboratory. Only a cretin teaching a worthless subject would pretend otherwise.

Robert Dahl, the great democracy theorist of the past century, laid down a simple set of processes to characterise genuine democracy, chief among them inclusiveness and public contestation.

Fuck Robert Dahl. Did he find the cure for cancer? No. He taught a shite subject. 'Political Science' is only studied by utter cretins. His conclusion was that Democracy does not exist anywhere. All that obtains is 'Polyarchy'. Some people have some power. Who knew? Big whoop. Why is this shite being taught at College level? How mentally fucking retarded are its students? In China they have an saying- 'Science students look down on Arts students. Arts students look down on Poli Sci students. Poli Sci students look down on their teachers.'

Inclusiveness means that every citizen should have full access to all information, freedom of expression, and equal voting rights.

So every 18 year old and 80 year old must be given the passwords to all the top secret databases and security files in the country. Why? Does this cretin think that would be a good thing?

Public contestation means that all political organisations and parties should be able to compete in elections and express their opinions on equal footing.

This is false. Only such Public contestation which is not against the Public interest is permissible. My Iyer Liberation Front should not be allowed to compete on an equal footing with big political parties commanding millions of votes. Just because I form a political party does not mean I should be given air-time on TV to express my hatred of Iyengars.

In Dahl’s conception, the proximate threat to a democracy was the centralisation of political power in a single party or a few individuals.

That is not a 'proximate threat'- it is evidence the thing is dead. If a single party or a few individuals have all the power, then there is no Democracy. It is a different matter, that those individuals or that party may by some act of omission or commission surrender political power.

A political leader with strong central powers could subvert political opposition by using government resources to intimidate opponents and frame laws for personal advantage.

The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has certainly done that. But Assassination is a great curb on Hereditary Autocracy. The Hindustan Times is owned by the Birlas and run by a lady from that family who is also a Congress nominated Upper House member. It has dredged up some cretinous, careerist, academic to write this shite.

Alfred Stepan and his co-authors have argued that the persistence of Indian democracy stems from its federal structure, which respects and allows compromise between multiple ethnic and religious identities. This prevents the centralisation of power that constitutes democratic breakdown.

Alfred Stepan didn't know from shit.  He thought Yogendra Yadav was smart! India's democracy persists because Hindus are the majority. They want to gradually change their customary laws rather than compete with each other in maintaining irrational shibboleths. Elections are a great way of legitimizing such changes. This is an ongoing process. The reason the BJP, not the Communists, prevailed in becoming the default National party was because the BJP embraced Hindutva. It chose to identify with the majority of the populace- not vilify and castigate them.

Naturally, this democratic procedure of generating agreement among various stakeholders and competing interests can be frustratingly slow and requires painful compromises.

Which is why Democracies under the Rule of Law have extensive Executive Privilege. In Westminster style Democracies, Parliamentary deadlock generally leads to an immediate General Election. The UK foolishly passed a 'Fixed Term Act' under the coalition, which is why Bo Jo is in such a pickle now.

Indeed, Samuel Huntington presciently understood that, after the end of the Cold War, economic or ideological conflict would eventually give way to “cultural” conflict across the world — that a single, national identity would come into conflict with ideas of “multiculturalism.”

Huntingdon was wrong. He didn't predict what we have today- a situation where Saudi Arabia is cozy with Israel and UAE supports India, not Pakistan, on J&K.

His arguments find resonance in the rise of Hindi-speaking Hindu nationalism in India. It is exactly this cultural axis of conflict that explains jibes at “minority appeasement” or a deracinated “Khan Market liberal.” In India, this cultural conflict has the taken the form of defining a Hindi-speaking Hindu nationalist identity at the expense of other regional, linguistic, or religious identities within its own borders.

Modi and Shah are Gujeratis. They do speak Hindi, but it is their second language. Hindu Nationalism was strongest in  Maharashtra- not a Hindi speaking state. Caste trumped creed in Hindi speaking areas- till recently. What changed? Congress vilified Hinduism. Everybody, save the BJP, was so busy courting the Muslim vote- confident that Hindus would vote their caste- that they didn't seen that the world-wide upsurge in 'Islamophobia', justified or not, would push the Hindi speaker into the arms of the BJP more especially after they cleaned up their act and concentrated on bread and butter issues and 'last mile delivery'.

Hindu nationalism can't 'centralize power' in either a leader or the army because Hindu laws and customs are of local, not scriptural, derivation. What it seeks is popular legitimacy for its ongoing process of weeding out socially harmful practices.

Our cretinous author, despite living in India and coming from a Hindu background, pretends otherwise.

This obliges those supporting this form of nationalism to centralise power in a leader or the military which can effectively stifle opposition from these competing identities.





As the figures show, India has by far the highest level of support for a strong central leader — increasing in the most recent survey to 56%.

Why? Two reasons. Manmohan was a weak leader. His party was hopelessly corrupt. There appeared to be a causal connection between his weakness and the burgeoning of corruption. The other reason was that Narendra Modi had a good track-record as CM of Gujarat and people believed his claim that he could do as good a job as P.M. Why? Because he frankly said that he delegates everything and then just checks on 'last mile delivery'. This is the opposite of a 'personality cult'. However, Modi was portrayed as a Hitler or a Mussolini- i.e. a strong leader- so everybody started saying 'we want a strong leader'.

The results for military rule are more worrying. Support for military rule in India has spiked to 38% (almost 2 out of every 5 respondents) in the most recent survey in 2015,again the highest among the countries and the highest ever observed in India. Does that mean Indians are increasingly displaying anti-democratic preferences?

No. It is because Indians are tired of corruption. The Army is seen as less corrupt than any other Institution- even the Judiciary. But there is no chance of the Army taking power and this is common knowledge. Thus, the poll is meaningless. This is a classic example of junk social science. Nothing can be deduced from preference intensity for an infeasible option. One may as well ask 'Would you prefer the country to be run by Angels from Heaven?'. The answer is a proxy for something else.

The decisions on J&K exhibit two highly centralising features. It used the governor, a central appointee, to express the will of the people in a state without paying heed to regional political actors.

But this has been the usual process for decades! It is not a new feature.

And it has unilaterally demoted an existing state to a Union Territory, with a promise to restore statehood if it “behaved properly.” (This is to say nothing of the explicitly anti-democratic detention of all key political leaders and snapping of all modes of communication in Kashmir.)

It is settled in Law and political practice that the Union of India alone decides, wholly unilaterally, what is or isn't a State or Union territory. Furthermore, the Preventive Detention Act being used in Kashmir was passed by Sheikh Abdullah. A Democracy under the Rule of Law which properly implements those Laws is not doing anything anti-Democratic.

These are anti-democratic moves not because they have subverted federal structure — but because the central leadership has arrayed to itself the power to intimidate and stifle regional opposition.

'arrayed to itself'? Does this cretin mean 'arrogated'? But arrogate means to take something without justification. Thus, there is a Judicial remedy. There is no evidence that the Supreme Court considers any 'arrogation' to have occurred. This worthless pedagogue can produce no evidence of any such thing.

What Shah has done is not meant to stifle 'regional opposition'. It is meant to intimidate and extinguish separatism and Pak sponsored terrorism. This is entirely constitutional. It is his sworn duty as Home Minister.

The fact that the majority of Indians likely support these is of little consequence.

It is the only thing of consequence. Nothing else matters. That's how Democracies work.

If the majority can dispossess a minority of the right to politically express themselves in the future against the ideals of inclusiveness and public contestation, the outcome of this process cannot be said to uphold democracy. (In fact, this was Dahl’s very response to the majoritarian claim.)

In the Indian sub-continent, as elsewhere, population exchanges on the basis of Religion have occurred and can continue to occur. Minorities have a right to exit. They may believe they also have a right to kill policemen and soldiers and to ethnically cleanse their neighbors of other religions. But that right lapses after they get shot in the head.

The truth is, the number of Muslims in the Valley who have extreme views is quite small. However, previously, there was money for 'stone pelters'. It remains to be seen whether that funding has indeed been curtailed.

Dahl may have felt that the right of the Ku Klux Klan to kill black people was unjust restricted by the Federal Government. But he kept quiet about it. Why can't this cretin keep quiet about his own foolish views? The answer is that the Congress Party- and the Birla heiress who runs the Hindustan Times- are now openly anti-National. Why? The Nation is determined that these corrupt crooks be made to answer for their crimes. Thus, the time has come to start denouncing the India as a Fascist country killing Muslims so as to be able to claim political asylum in the West and thus baffle extradition laws.

Some will say that such draconian measures were necessary in Kashmir,

Every sensible person will say that draconian measures were necessary in Kashmir because it was being targeted not just by the Pakistani ISI but even crazier types of nutjobs.

and that the government will show restraint in other cases. But that isn’t a certainty.

Nothing is a certainty save that this cretin will write worthless shite.

The current dispensation has consistently followed the philosophy of the ends justifying the means, be it in taking over the legislatures of Goa and Karnataka, or doing away with Article 370.

'Taking over the legislatures of Goa and Karnataka'?  When did that happen? Does this cretin means that a coalition government was formed? But that happens all the time. There was no 'take over'. The BJP knows very well that improper means, be they be used to whatsoever ends, will face a judicial challenge. India is a Democracy under the Rule of Law- not under the Rule of cretins with credentials in worthless subjects like Political 'Science'.

If its current moves on Kashmir withstand legal challenges, there’s nothing to say that the same thing will not be applied in Odisha, Tamil Nadu, or West Bengal.

This is like saying, 'if the law refuses to punish criminals, they will commit more crimes'. Where is the evidence that the law will refuse to punish crimes in India? Obviously, if the Law ceases to be upheld, then anyone can do anything provided he or she is stronger and more ruthless.

When populations start exhibiting anti-democratic preferences, and when courts abdicate their constitutional responsibilities to block centralisation, democracies break down.

Very true! When cats starts saying 'bow wow' and when the Law of Gravity abdicates its Cosmic responsibilities, then cats will fly around barking like crazy.

What a wonderful subject 'Political Science' is to be sure! Neelanjan Sircar's parents must be so proud!