In May 2014 Narendra Modi climbed the steps of Parliament for the first time as the leader of the nation. Before he went in, he knelt and touched his forehead to the step. He called the building the temple of democracy.
He was right to bow. A man from a humble backward-caste home reached the highest office in the land. This was because of the Constitution which guarantees equality under law and free and fair elections.
Now India stands to lose equality under law and the right to a free and fair voting system.
For centuries this land was ordered by birth because of the prevalent caste system. Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the chief architect of its Constitution, B. R. Ambedkar, helped establish the principle that every adult, of every caste and every faith, had the right to vote. Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Dalits stood in the same queue.
Tragically, the BJP government set about undermining that inheritance. Muslims were targeted first. Cow protection laws were tightened and turned into weapons, and lynchings followed. Then came the propaganda about Muslim infiltrators, a new citizenship law and the amended Waqf law. Muslims increasingly felt like second class citizens.
Then came the Christians. Anti-conversion laws were made draconian in state after state, until it became unsafe even to call a home meeting or carry a Bible.
In the most recent case the state of Bengal has become a nightmare for Christians. Christians gatherings are being attacked across the state and false cases registered by right wing fanatic groups. One of our own Bishops Anil Bhowmick was beaten up, his clothes torn and a false case was registered against him.
Now Christians are contesting the FCRA Amendment Bill that would let the government take over the assets of institutions whose licences are not renewed. Tens of millions of Indians served by Christian schools and hospitals would feel it.
All this serves to demonize the Christian community. The all India Christian council leaders have deposed before the Joint Parliamentary Committee and have rejected the new amendments and shown how it creates all kinds of problems for the recipients’ of Christian charity.
But then, was this not always the RSS agenda? Was the goal not to hollow out the Constitution and leave minorities and others as second-class citizens? Can an India of first and second class citizens stay as a united nation?
Having tasted power, the BJP could not risk losing it at the ballot box. So it went after the referee. In 2023 the government removed the Chief Justice of India from the panel that chooses election commissioners and put a Union minister in his place. The Leader of the Opposition now sits on that panel as a minority of one.
With a compliant Election Commission in place, the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls began. The reason given was that illegal immigrants had entered the system. No evidence of that on any serious scale has been produced. By the opposition's count, close to 140 million names have been struck off. The Commission disputes the figure. No one disputes that it runs into the tens of millions.
Then the plot to disenfranchise people took a twist. Anyone suspected of opposing the BJP or the RSS now stood to lose the vote. The opposition says most of those struck off are the poor: Dalits, Adivasis, the backward castes and migrant workers. Many of them are Hindus. Young voters were hit hardest. A government that brands journalists, filmmakers and students anti-national will in time decide that its enemies should not vote.
Some believed those in power would stop at targeting the minorities. They were badly mistaken. The BJP wants a one-party system. It wants to move India from an electoral democracy to a religious nationalist autocracy. In short, a legalised political Hindu nation where anyone who does not subscribe to its extremist ideology becomes a second class citizen.
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition, has been protesting against vote theft for a long time. Many did not listen. Then on 23 September The Indian Express published an investigation by Ritika Chopra. Two of the three election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had objected in writing for ten months to how the revision was being run. According to the investigation, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had been taking decisions on his own. A national storm followed.
On 10 October, the youth protest movement Cockroach Janta Party tried to hold a peaceful protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The government turned Delhi into a virtual police state to stop it. More than 50,000 police and paramilitary personnel were brought in. The movement’s founder, Abhijeet Dipke, was taken off his plane when it landed. Young people were taken off trains before they could reach the capital. Thousands were detained without due process. The police did not spare even the lawyers. Within a couple of days Jantar Mantar was struck off the list of places where citizens may protest.
For months, evidence that eligible voters had been wrongly removed from the electoral rolls was placed before the Supreme Court, but no relief came. On 10 October, Kapil Sibal, one of India’s most senior lawyers, said he was tired of approaching the court and had little hope left. The following day, Sunday 11 October, he appeared at a special hearing on the police restrictions and detentions surrounding the protest. The court directed authorities to ensure normal transport services and lawful freedom of movement, and said it wanted to restore his faith in the institution.
On 12 October, Rahul Gandhi led tens of thousands of protesters through New Delhi to the Supreme Court, where petitions were presented challenging the electoral roll revision and the conduct of Gyanesh Kumar.
The court agreed to hear the petitions. But that is not enough. It will be judged by what it does, not by what it says. The Supreme Court has disappointed citizens before when it comes to protecting fundamental rights.
Mr Modi and the Home Minister Amit Shah are in no mood to admit any wrongdoing. But resistance is rising across India, and it is coming from the young and the old and from all sections of society.
What must happen is clear. Put the Chief Justice back on the election commissioner selection panel. Stop all the deletions until an independent audit has examined the removal of more than 130 million names from draft electoral rolls. Every citizen who has been struck off the rolls needs to be given the reason and a fair hearing. Go back to the electoral rolls used prior to the revisions and sort out the mess before the next election. The Supreme Court erred in allowing the elections in Bihar and Bengal to go on in the midst of this serious problem. Restore the fundamental rights of all citizens. Stop the anti-conversion madness.
Mr Modi’s government has spent huge sums building an image of Modi, in India and abroad, as the strong and wise Vishwaguru, the teacher of the world.
Key to that image-building was him bowing down before the temple of democracy. Today its doors are being shut on the very people it was built for and India as a nation is unlikely to survive if it is divided into first class and second class citizens.
Archbishop Joseph D'Souza is President of the All India Christian Council and archbishop of the Anglican Good Shepherd Church of India.
