The British wanted India to have a Federal structure- just like Canada, Australia, South Africa etc. Congress- more particularly Nehru- opposed this strongly. However, they may have accepted Federalism had there been no Partition. Once that happened, the vast majority of Indians wanted and got a Unitary constitution with a Centre strong enough to create or redefine States & Union Territories. As the Supreme Court said in 2016, no Indian territory of State has 'a shred of sovereignty'. America has dual sovereignty. It is Federal. India does not. It is unitary.
Harsh Mander was an IAS officer. He should know this just as well as any High School student. Yet, he writes in the deeply anti-national Scroll.
Language, local governance and finance – the debates that defined Indian federalism
There is no federalism because
1) there had to be linguistic re-organization
2) local governance meant famine & ethnic cleansing- as in Muslim League ruled Bengal. The Centre had to take power from the states. It could impose President's Rule & use extra-judicial killing on an industrial scale to contain insurgencies of various types.
3) India could not rely on the British Army & Navy. The Centre had to have much more money so as to fund the military.
The post-2014 assault on India’s federal democracy
is a myth.
follows decades of the uneven implementation and erosion of federalism.
Nehru did have to go at a slower pace than he might have wished. But Indira was a different kettle of fish. She had no compunction in dismissing the Communist Government in Kerala. Under her rule there was no such thing as 'States' rights'. It would be safe to say non-Congress parties are more inclined to 'States' rights' because they fear another Dynastic autocrat of limited intelligence.
The Indian federation under Narendra Modi today is vastly different from the “union of states” imagined by the constituent assembly.
They couldn't be sure the people of at least some of the Princely States might not be loyal to their traditional rulers. However, by the end of the Sixties, India was wholly unitary. The Princes didn't count for shit. Nor did Chief Ministers. Indira was India & India, far from being a 'soft state', was well hard. Heath's Emergency was a miserable failure. Indira's Emergency was a stunning success. The Bench, wen asked to bend, chose to crawl. Millions of men were forcibly sterilized.
There are many aspects to this. Take the growing marginalisation of Parliament
Parliament is only marginal if the ruling party has a big majority. Modi currently is head of a coaltion government.
and the defiant refusal of the union government to consult with opposition leaders and chief ministers on important matters.
There is no such duty though the LoP (or leader of largest opposition party since 2014) is consulted on key appointment as is the CJI or his nominee. But the decision is made by the majority prevails- i.e. in case of conflict, a Judge decides- e.g. in the transfer of Verma as CBI director.
The latest blow was the aborted attempt to thrust on the country a constitutional amendment enabling a countrywide delimitation of parliamentary constituencies and the possible reduction of seats in southern states.
The Government wanted to raise the number of MPs so all States got more seats. The Opposition, rather foolishly, scuppered this. So delimitation will go ahead under the auspices of the Election Commission. The South will lose seats. What about Sikkim or Ladakh or other such places with low population? If they get to have numerical over-representation, surely that is an argument which should apply to the South?
Take the weak and uncertain defence of constitutional rights by the judiciary.
The Judiciary is self-selecting. Also, judges have to know the law. They have to respect constitutional rights. They can't be as ignorant and stupid as Mander.
Take the deployment of every institution including most recently the Election Commission to interrogate their citizenship.
Why is the Election Commission- a constitutional body- doing its constitutional duty? Every country tries to verify its electoral roll from time to time.
Take the conversion of the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA from a guarantee of the right to work guaranteed by the centre to a discretionary grant from the centre with major budgetary burdens on the states;
If you are in favour of Federalism, you should be in favour of this. Otherwise, the Centre provides the service directly and the State is disintermediated. Incidentally, there is no 'right to work'. There is an entitlement for certain classes of people for certain types of work for a limited number of days in certain areas. Sadly, getting the work doesn't necessarily mean you will actually get paid.
and the repackaging of welfare schemes such as of food and housing from rights to the largesse of the prime minister.
A good thing. It gives the PM an incentive to actually deliver. Sadly, if there is no money, there is entitlement failure.
Take the questionable tactics of coming to power in the majority of states at all costs.
Modi should not fight elections. He should kill himself. Indian Federalism demands no less.
Take the surge of crony capitalism.
In Tamil Nadu? In West Bengal?
Take the criminalising of dissent.
Which happened six decades ago.
All of these have profoundly shaken democracy and India's federal character.
No. Rahul's cowardly refusal to step up to the plate meant that India became less dynastic & more democratic. Rapid economic growth means States have more capacity. That means they have a greater incentive to fight their corner.
Federal institutions like the Inter-State Council and the Finance Commission charged with equitable financial devolution principles have given way to the reshaping of taxation and resource distribution in favour of the Centre, and the overriding of state policies through centrally sponsored schemes.
This happened long ago. It must be said, Modi gave the States a soft landing when it came to the switch to GST.
We see the naked use of Governors to control opposition-ruled States
not as naked as previously.
in ways that violate both the letter and spirit of the constitution.
Sadly, the Constitution is heavily weighted to the centre.
And the conflicts in sensitive border areas of Kashmir and Manipur have again been handled in ways that weaken state authority and exacerbate local community anxieties.
Both are affected by what is happening across the border. There is a limit to what can be achieved politically.
At a time when the Indian constitution is under grave assault,
Mander is raping the Truth. Thankfully he has a tiny todger & so Truth doesn't notice.
the Centre for Equity Studies
founded by Mander & other such useless cunts 25 years ago
planned with the publishers Speaking Tiger a series of short monographs that attempt to identify, unpack and explain the basic ideas of the Constitution.
They told a bunch of stupid lies.
We identified many of the key ideas for this series, from a reading of the text of the preamble of the Constitution. These were: Secularism, Socialism, Democracy, Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
Cow Protection is a Directive Principle. Guess which religion considers the cow to be sacred? What is important about the Constitution is that it declares itself autochthonous & gives itself unlimited power to amend or abrogate itself. There is no imprescriptible right which the Government can't violate 'in the public interest'.
However, we felt that there were at least two other essential ideas of the Constitution that needed to be added to our literal reading of the words in the preamble. One of these was Scientific Temper. The other was Federalism.
So, this cunt admits that there is no fucking Federalism in the Constitution.
Shortly to be released is Federalism: Making and Unmaking of a Union of States. It sets out how the idea of federalism was imagined, debated, pledged and implemented after freedom and the grave dangers it faces in Modi’s India.
I suppose some enemy of India might consider it worth financing this shithead.
What the author Avinash Kumar accomplishes is to admirably capture crucial elements of the reverberant sweep of the thinking of the makers of independent India.
Ambedkar rightly dismissed his contribution to the Constitution as 'hack work'. Nehru, from 1928 onward, was the main shaper of independent India.
How they sought to weave a democracy from this boundlessly diverse land with followers of every major religion in the world, more than 500 often restive princely states, and – according to a recent survey – 780 languages and 66 scripts.
Britain had done that. If the minorities had been agreeable, India could have had universal suffrage- just like Ceylon- from 1931 onward.
The word federalism is never mentioned in the constitution. Yet when BR Ambedkar introduced the draft constitution, he described it as a “federal constitution”. He argued that India’s Constitution really is federal at its core.
Because the Princely States still counted for something. The thing was 'soft soap' or mere puffery- nothing more.
Federal ‘middle-path’Gandhi was firmly opposed to centralised states.
He was even more firmly opposed to sex. So what?
His influential Hind Swaraj published in 1909 was
crazy shit. Nehru finally had the guts to tell Gandhi that in the Nineteen Forties. Gandhi threatened to publish this view of his. Nehru said the equivalent of 'publish & be damned'. Gandhi realised that everybody now thought he was a fucking nuisance.
not just a landmark critique of modernity and Western civilisation.
Gandhi was deeply ignorant. He thought Japan had become a de facto British colony!
It contained a blueprint for free India as a true federation of self-sufficient village republics founded on the principles of non-violence and truth.
& not having sex. The race would die out quickly enough unless, obviously, the Muslims took over the place & enslaved the Hindus.
But Ambedkar passionately rejected Gandhi’s idealisation of the village republic. Villages, he said, were cesspools of caste inequity and oppression.
Also, they smelled of shit. But so did the cities.
The federalism voted for by the constituent assembly was very distant from Gandhi’s swaraj.
They couldn't be sure some of the Princes might not start recruiting ex-soldiers & seek to strike deals with regional parties. Churchill was talking of a 'Prince-stan'.
Ambedkar clarified that India was not a classic federation, like the United States. It was a “Union of States,” not a federation born of agreement among sovereign units. In this way, India became a federation but one that tilts to the centre, balancing unity with regional autonomy.
Ambedkar wasn't a fool. He knew he was a token appointment- just as his pal, Mandal, was Jinnah's token Law Minister. The wool was being pulled over the eyes of the Princes. Fortunately, they were as stupid as shit.
As the decades passed, the Gandhian moral beacon that “What touches all must be decided by
me. Gandhi thought he was super-smart.
all” has for the most part progressively faded in the imagination and practice of the federal ideal in India.
The ideal was a strong unitary state which could kill Muslims or Commies if they wagged their tails.
During the constituent assembly debates between 1946 and 1949, Ambedkar was joined by Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel to prioritise national unity and integrity over regional autonomy.
Nehru had always seen Federalism as an Imperialist ploy. There's a good reason Hindu India chose his path- not that of the Maha-crackpot.
In the shadow of the horrific Partition bloodbath of religious violence and the sometimes reluctant integration of the princely states, they chose for India a federal structure but with a strong central bias.
No. They chose a unitary structure with the Centre redrawing the boundaries of states- the way Curzon had done to Bengal.
Nehru felt this was essential for stability and unity in the vast hinterland of illiteracy, communal forces, caste and ethnic divisions. He was convinced that a strong Centre also was essential to establish a secular, socialist welfare state.
He knew that the Presidencies would dominate unless power was centralized. Still, Delhi was a backwater compared to Bombay or Calcutta or even sleepy Madras.
Some in the constituent assembly like Sarangdhar Das
from Orissa who feared a revival of feudal power
and Frank Anthony
who supported the First Amendment saying if India needed a Dictator, let that Dictator be Nehru.
advocated for maximum powers to be vested in the Centre to ensure national unity and stability in light of the challenges India faced post‑Partition. Brajeshwar Prasad feared that the creation of semi‑sovereign states could lead to dangerous centrifugal forces, that regional forces might tear the country apart.
The Muslims might rally under the banner of the Nizam.
Others like BM Gupte felt that the truly federal idea had been given short shrift. He argued: “The units are kept completely dependent on the Centre for finances. This so‑called independence is just a façade because the provinces rely entirely on the Centre’s good will for financial support.”
The Planning Commission concentrated power in the PMO. To get anything done, industrialists had to go to Delhi & pay obeisance to the Dynasty.
Linguistic reorganisation of statesLinguistic and regional aspirations soon began to test India’s quasi-federal system.
It had already prevailed with Burma going its own way & Sindh being split off from Bombay.
A powerful demand rose from the ground after independence to reorganise states boundaries on linguistic grounds.
This had already happened. Orissa had been split off. But there were other more contentious cases.
The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich famously described a “language” as “a dialect with an army and a navy”.
Which Yiddish lacked. But Hebrew soon got both.
It was language that was to result in the bloody separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan.
Religion. This fucker's family ran away from Lahore not because they spoke a different language but because they were Hindus.
The language agitations in India were not on the backs of armies and navies, but spurred by passionate and sometimes militant activists.
Religion, too, mattered. That is why Punjab & Haryana were created.
The Congress committee known as the “JVP” committee – named after its members Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and Pattabhi Sitaramayya – both advised against linguistic reorganisation and the creation of new provinces because they felt that maintaining national unity was the priority of the time.
But Andhra Pradesh had to be conceded after a Telugu politician went on hunger strike & then actually died. A Sikh leader went on an even longer hunger strike but gave up after he put on too much weight.
But linguistic aspirations refused to die down. In December 1952, Potti Sriramulu died after a hunger strike demanding a Telugu-speaking state. This sparked rioting and many died. Nehru eventually agreed to the creation of Andhra Pradesh and to establish an independent commission to address other statehood demands.
This had happened under the Brits as well.
After the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, the Telangana region of Hyderabad State was merged with Andhra Pradesh, the Malabar district of Madras Presidency was joined with Travancore-Cochin to create the state of Kerala, Kannada-speaking regions from Bombay, Hyderabad, and Madras Presidency were added to Mysore State to form Karnataka, and the Bombay State was expanded by merging it with Kutch, Saurashtra, and Marathi-speaking parts of Hyderabad.
There can't be dual sovereignty- i.e. Federalism- if States aren't well defined.
In 1960, Maharashtra and Gujarat were created from the former Bombay province, and in 1966, Haryana was separated from Punjab. Tripura and Mizoram were created on the basis of languages that were not even in the list of 22 languages scheduled in the Constitution. These were Kokborok and Mizo respectively.
This trend has continued. New States like Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Telengana etc. have been created. Orissa may be split up.
Avinash Kumar describes how the imposition of Hindi as the national language was associated with fears of a centralised state encroaching on regional aspirations, from the times of Lal Bahadur Shastri to Narendra Modi.
Indira Gandhi killed off that bogeyman & thus got DMK support when she split from the Syndicate.
When in the 1960s, prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s government dropped English as the second official language with Hindi, 27-year-old Chinnasamy from Tiruchi left a note stating “I plan to die in order to protect Tamil. One day, my goal will be met”, before setting himself on fire. Six more youths set themselves aflame or consumed poison and 70 lives were lost before Shastri withdrew his order.
Indira was the only sensible Congress-wallah at that time. Kamraj & Bhaktavatsalam shat the bed.
The government promulgated a three-language formula, requiring all students to learn English, Hindi and any one modern Indian language, but Tamil Nadu under Annadurai refused to implement this.
Nobody cared.
Fast-forward to 2025. Udhayanidhi Stalin of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam declares that “If Hindi is imposed on us, not hundreds, but thousands of youths are ready to sacrifice their lives to protect Tamil and our rights.”
Udhaynidhi will succeed his father. That's a good thing. Tamil Nadu will continue to grow.
While the legitimacy of linguistic states are accepted in principle, the Indian state has been consistent in resisting demands of religious states. Nehru firmly turned down the demand for a separate Punjabi Sooba for Sikhs. This demand was partially conceded in 1966 only after it was reframed to focus on linguistic rather than religious grounds.
Fuck off! It was explicitly religious. It was hugely comic that Hindus were saying ' mērē nāla hidī vica gala kara. Mainū pajābī nahīṁ ā'undī',
Over the decades, regional aspirations not restricted to language – but not on the basis of religion – formed the ground for the creation of new states. Sikkim became a new state after it joined the Indian union in 1975.
Because the majority was Nepali not Bhutia.
Goa became a state in 1987 as well as various states in the north-east responding to regional aspirations. Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand became states in 2000, and Telangana in 2014.
Will UP be further split up?
Fiscal federalismAvinash Kumar describes fiscal federalism as “both a tool of cooperation and a source of friction”.
Revenue sharing is always contentious.
He identifies it as being the most contested arena in India’s federalism.
There is no Federalism. There is a Union Government & a State government.
The Constitution empowers the Union to collect major taxes such as income tax, corporate tax, and excise duties, while States can levy taxes on land, agricultural income, alcohol, and sales of goods, among others.
Such was the previous position.
Ambedkar in the constituent assembly was a strong advocate of defending the states’ right to levy and collect sales tax, so that at least one major source of revenue lay with the states, securing for them some autonomy in financial decision-making.
Everybody knew there was no alternative. You had to keep that which worked and add to it at the margin. It would take decades to implement a centralized fiscal apparatus.
The Planning Commission was criticised by states at times for being top-down in determining the scale of central resources available to states and how they will deploy these.
It was also criticised for being utterly shit.
From the late 1960s onwards, the Central government through the Planning Commission launched a growing number of important centrally-sponsored schemes for combating poverty, including programs for livelihoods, credit, food and housing. These on balance had positive results from the prism of equity, but also had the effect of expanding further the central control over dissemination of resources to the states.
The problem was that there was precious little to 'disseminate'.
The Finance Commission is appointed by the President, and helps determine how tax revenues are distributed between the Union and States. It is supposed to function as a transparent arbiter and a defender of State finances and the finances of local governance bodies. Its performance has however been uneven.
There is little point having a Finance Commission if you have no fucking money.
The greater control over resources by the centre faced less resistance as long as the Congress was in power in the centre and the majority of the states.
It faced little resistance when opposition leaders were locked up.
As this changed, state governments of other political parties began to express their dissatisfaction with this tilt of India’s federal arrangements to the union government.
All governments pissed public money against a wall. that was what people objected to.
An important landmark in this resistance was when in its 1989 manifesto the National Front coalition called for greater decentralisation as articulated by non-Congress state chief ministers, each of considerable political stature – Ramakrishna Hegde, NT Ramarao, Jyoti Basu and MG Ramachandran.
They wanted to piss more money against their own favourite wall.
This argued that the States “ought to enjoy genuine autonomy – political, legislative, economic, fiscal and administrative – without submitting themselves to the indignity of becoming supplicants before the Centre, with a begging bowl”. Kumar however points to the irony that although the 1990s and early 2000s was the era of coalition governments in the union that relied hugely on regional parties, in practice even this period did not see a significant reworking of centre-state fiscal relations.
What does that tell you? Growing the cake was more profitable than squabbling over how it was cut up. Also, richer states had higher state capacity & thus could claim more under various Central schemes.
He also describes the impact from the 1990s onwards on India’s fiscal federalism of economic liberalisation policies. The Centre was subjected to greater financial discipline reducing the share of states in the fiscal pool.
Tariff revenue fell as proportion of Central Government revenue which meant it needed to switch to expenditure taxes.
States like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Orissa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal began to lobby and compete for alternative sources of revenue, mostly in the form of foreign direct investment or by directly supporting the setting up of businesses and industries by foreign companies. This new era of “competitive federalism”
i.e. States offering better packages for f.d.i.
however led to greater inequality between states
i.e. some become less fucking poor. Mander does not approve.
and enhanced migration of unskilled labour from poorer states to those that were able to mobilise private and international capital.
Capitalism is very evil. It sodomises poor workers.
Taking federalism to local bodiesIt was hoped that the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments would empower local bodies, bringing to life at last Gandhi’s principle – “What touches all must be decided by all”.
Lord Ripon tried to do it in the 1880s. The problem is that what touches all can't be decided by all if they don't have any fucking money.
However, what actually mostly happened was that the real power of decision-making mostly remained with district-level bureaucracies.
The Brits had a commission on 'Devolution' which reported this over a century ago.
These officials are both influenced and controlled by the state and central governments. Local bodies have no real power over them.
Unless they do in which case the outcome is worse.
It was as late as in 1992 that amendments were brought into the constitution to belatedly and in very limited measure implement Gandhiji’s idea of swaraj or village-led self-rule. Until then the federal contestation was primarily between the centre and the states.
i.e. nothing actually happened.
Urban bodies and people’s direct assemblies did not even enter the picture.
till they did and nothing actually happened.
For this reason, the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments of 1992 were optimistically hailed
by shitheads
as a significant milestone in India's democratic federalism.
Subsidiarity not federalism.
These amendments for the first time conferred a constitutional status to local self-governments – Panchayati Raj Institutions in rural areas and Urban Local Bodies in towns and cities.
What was legal under state law was also legal under the Constitution. But central land had precedence.
These were touted as promoting decentralisation, and bringing the administration closer to the people by ensuring direct people’s participation in governance.
It could work & did work well enough in places. The problem is that if the people are shitty, their participation will have shitty results/
India’s federal structure
No. Its political structure changed. There is no 'federal structure'.
in this way evolved from a two-tier to a three-tier structure. A new Eleventh Schedule was added to the Constitution, listing 29 subjects that could be devolved to the rural bodies and 18 to the urban bodies. Seats were reserved not just for Scheduled Castes and Tribes but also, for the first time, for women. Many states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka did take some steps to empower the local bodies. States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar showed greater reluctance to do this. Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh raised women’s reservations to 50%.
On average they raise less than a dollar per head & thus are reliant on State funds. Still at least three million useless people are getting a modest honorarium.
However, despite the rhetoric and self-congratulation that accompanied the 73rd and 74th amendments, real decentralisation of funds, functions and functionaries to this third tier barely occurred in practice.
If you aren't raising money, you are merely a paid lackey.
When programs like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act were implemented through rural local bodies, this did enrich them with funds but panchayats became as Kumar observed, “implementers of central schemes, not autonomous planning bodies”.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Decentralisation remained administrative, not political, and with little fiscal independence.
But administration costs money. There isn't much of it in places where money is tight.
Gandhiji in Hind Swaraj had imagined these very communities not just as the bulwark against centralized despotic regimes but also as self-dependent economic communities.
Which didn't have wheeled vehicles. If you can't walk there, don't go there. Gandhi had shit for brains. That is why Mander loves him so much.
The 73rd and 74th amendments while paying lip service to these ideals in practice have done very little to make them a reality.
Because the reality would be too horrible for words.
Hindutva and dismantling federal democracy
Hindus didn't want federalism because they felt threatened by Muslims, Christians & Communists. That is why Indian Democracy is unitary. Hindutva just means ecumenical (i.e. anti-caste & non-sectarian) Hinduism. Hindus must hang together or else get conquered again.
Kumar also maps the uneven implementation of the federal idea in India
it was rejected. Still, the country had no alternative but to work with what already existed only reforming it gradually or in response to pressure from below. But this was also true of the Brits.
in the decades after freedom, and identifies periods marked by its conspicuous erosion. This was visible most of all under prime minister Indira Gandhi;
& Rajiv. But assassination tempers autocracy.
and now even more damagingly under Narendra Modi
He should lose elections & then kill himself. Why are Hindooos not committing suicide en masse? Is it because they want to make Mander cry his little eyes out?
Kumar describes the Emergency (1975-77), under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, as representing one peak of centralization, with the suspension of civil liberties and the undermining of federal autonomy.
OMG! This Kumar dude is a freakin' genius!
The Modi era from 2014 reflects the second peak, a phase of the ideologically driven erosion of India’s federal idea.
It is also the erosion of the India that the country should be ruled by nice Italian lady or her idiot son.
MG Golwarkar is one of the foremost Hindutva leaders who Narendra Modi once identified to be his greatest influence. Golwarkar writes starkly, “We are one country, one society, and one nation, with a community of life-values and secular aspirations and interests; and hence it is natural that the affairs of the nation are governed through a single state of the unitary type.
which is what Nehru created.
The present federal system generates and feeds separatist feelings. In a way, it negates the truth of a single nationhood and is, therefore, divisive in nature. It must be remedied and the Constitution amended and cleaned so as to establish Unitary form of government.”
So Gowalkar & Nehru were on the same page in 1939 (when he published the above). But then the RSS was merely a weaker & more provincial sister of the Congress Seva Dal of which Nehru was a proud member.
Hindutva demands a homogenisation of religion, language and culture, the denial of rights even of citizenship to religious minorities, and unquestioning obedience to the supreme leader.
Which is what the Dynasty used to deliver. Sadly, Rajiv was a bit crap & Rahul more than a bit.
All of this is manifestly incompatible with federal and secular democracy.
Yet, it is what has obtained. That's the reason this cunt's family fled to India not Iran or Afghanistan.
We therefore understand that the rapid centralisation under the Modi government is the outcome of the rise of aggressive Hindutva.
Which triumphed in 1947 after which Muslims became second class citizens unless they were stripped of citizenship by the 1948 ordinance.
Kumar also refers to the deployment of popular films to push the Hindutva narrative at the expense of the complex political histories of states.
Kumar is a kretin.
Films like The Kashmir Files, Article 370, The Bengal Files, and The Kerala Story
made money. The Cinema is a profit driven business.
hinge on false and incendiary narratives of Hindu victimhood and Muslim radicalisation.
Did you know that Osama bin Laden was actually a Jewish Lesbian? There is no such thing as a Muslim terrorist.
This is perhaps the most compelling part of Avinsha Kumar’s monograph, when he explains Hindutva's opposition to federalism is ideological.
As is their refusal to convert to Islam, get gender reassignment surgery, & marry Field Marshall Munir.
We understand that the multiple assaults on federal democracy under Narendra Modi are not simply
imaginary?
the outcome of an autocratic ruler hungry to amplify and centralise his power.
Modi doesn't own his party the way Stalin or Mamta or Rahul own their parties. If Modi does stupid shit, the BJP will dump him.
We recognise it for what it is: an ideological project constituting an assault on both the idea of India but also the constitutional imagination of a secular democracy.
Why stop there? Why not say that Modi is vigorously sodomizing Mander? Such assaults are unconstitutional!
Federalism in the Indian Constitution today stands in mortal danger.
What doesn't exist can't be killed.
