 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Guhatakurtha. Is democracy failing in India? Is democracy being killed, perhaps slaughtered systematically to look at the current state of democracy, electoral democracy, with some describe is actually an electoral autocracy. I have with me here in the studio of NewsClick the co-author of this book. This is the book. It's provocatively titled To Kill a Democracy and it's subtitled India's Passage to Despotism. With me here I am very happy to have Devashish Roychaudhary, fellow Bong from Kolkata. His lead author with him is Professor John Keane of the University of Sydney and the WSB in Berlin and together they have written this book and for the information of our viewers, Devashish is born and brought up in Kolkata, studied at South Point School, Scottish Church, College of the University, studied economics, worked in Kolkata based publications like The Telegraph, Statesman, Hindustan Times and is currently based in Hong Kong but before that he's worked all over. He's worked in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wahein, Bangkok, Beijing. Thank you so much, Devashish. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Paranjoy. Before I ask you a few questions about what, to summarize some of the main points in your book, I want to know from you, why did Oxford University Press not publish the India edition of this book and what happened thereafter? Well, so what happened was that we did this book deal with the headquarters in Oxford in London and the understanding was that after the book was globally launched, it was to be printed in India in a low-cost edition or week after the global launch. So the book launched globally in, I think, last July, last year and just a week after... That is July 2021. 2021 and just a week after that it was supposed to launch here but suddenly we came to know, we were informed that the book was going a fresh set of reviews, in-house review for India and we were very confused because an academic book already has gone through what we would think has been a rigorous review process. Academic, scholarly, but also journalistic. Yeah, so it already went through that rigorous review process and we didn't know why they were doing this all over again for India and when we asked them, they said, well, this is a standard thing, we have to do this. So we said, okay, fine, we'll wait. But then months went by and we didn't hear anything from them and we were getting impatient because it was stupid. The book was written for Indians, for India and I could buy the book in Hong Kong, you could buy the book in Estonia, my co-author can buy the book in Sydney but the book was not on the market in India and we kept asking them and they kept saying that we are reviewing, we are reviewing so we didn't know what was going on and around that time I think when people started asking us, when we were giving talks on the book there was this talk at Manthan that we did over Zoom which is an organization in Hyderabad. Yes, so they invited us to give a talk on the book and some people asked us about the book, why is it not in India yet and then I think journalists started looking into it and when journalists started talking to OUP, it was then that OUP told the telegraph which happens to be my first newspaper, it told the telegraph that they found the content provocative. Who was it? Was a person named? You don't know who. So it was possibly somebody who spoke of the record, somebody, some obviously some high up in the Oxford University Press in India. So this is what they told a journalist in the telegraph or they never told us this. So and it was clearly evident that there was a problem and I don't want to make wild guesses here because our editors or the entire headquarters at OUP has been tremendously supportive of the book throughout. It was only when it came to India that we started facing this problem and so we were very confused. Are you still confused? Well, let's not go there because they have been very helpful throughout and so we asked them, we told them that we see that you have a problem so why don't we take the problem off your hand, give us the South Asia rights back and we will find somebody else to print the book because the whole idea was that you would print the book here and sell it cheap, not import the book here and sell it for 1700 rupees. I won't buy a book for 1700 rupees. This book is priced at 600 rupees, 599, which is by Indian standards, you would see a reasonable price for a book. But the import price or the one that they were selling it at, the hard cover, was like 1600 or 1700. Three times. Almost three times. It was insane and so that was when we took back the rights and we talked to different publishers here. They were very kind. That's when you went to Pan Macmillan in India. Yes. So we gave the rights to Pan Macmillan. When was it published in India? So finally it came out, they moved very quickly and OUP also, the headquarters also helped to move files very quickly to them. So we were in the market I think by January, I think we were on the market. So you lost about half a year? About yes, 5-6 months. More than that, we lost the synergy because when you are launching a book globally and this book, if you flip through it, you will see it got tremendously good reviews. No, it's got excellent reviews. Excellent reviews in all the foreign journals. Millan Vaishnav says, at once quick-paced and sober, the book addresses a key puzzle about modern politics. Why do poor citizens in a poor democracy continue to be left behind? It's just one of the endorsements. So if you look here, I mean, there were so many endorsements that we had to put it here. Correct. Excellent. Very well. Times literally supplement. These are your times, financial times, Los Angeles review of books, et cetera, et cetera. Let's come to that a little later. So we lost that synergy. All right, let me ask you a different question. Let me speculate. Would I be correct in presuming that either there was some pressure on the high ups of Oxford University Press in India not to publish your book and distribute it or do you think this is a classic case of what you might describe as self-censorship that somebody in the OUP in India decided, quote-unquote, that your book was too provocative and they didn't want to get into trouble with the Indian authorities? See, I don't want to make guesses here because, as I said, OUP has been very helpful despite all the problems that we went through. But one thing I will mention here is that around the time of the launch, what happened was I wrote a piece for Time magazine in which I blamed the Modi government for screwing up the vaccine policy and that didn't go down very well. And the organizer... This was in late 2021? No, this was right around the time the book was globally launched. So it was a month before I think the book was globally launched and all my author bio in Time magazine carried in and so and so is the co-author of the forthcoming To Kill a Democracy. And soon after the organizer, which is the mouthpiece of the RSS, they did a nasty piece on me in general and... Nasty piece in what sense? I am part of the anti-Modi Brigade out to defame India. And you are an Indian but who writes for western publications and you are very caught up with the western view of India. Western view are not just that I think because I live in Hong Kong, it gets more complicated than that. Because I live in Hong Kong, I am automatically Chinese agent somehow and of course as a Bengali, I must be a communist. No, the communists... I mean they are... I mean in West Bengal, they don't have a single seat in the assembly. Yeah, but you know, but if you are a Bengali, you must be a communist. So I get somehow... You were stereotype. Yeah, so I get somehow I get paid by the West. Somehow I also get paid by China. Sometimes I get paid by China to write for western publications. I really don't know how that works but... You must be rolling... I am rolling... Yeah, I mean I... You would have become what? Jack Ma? I should buy an island in Greece or something, right? Okay, okay. Let's get down to some serious talking. Your book is clearly extremely alarmist about the state of the democratic health of this country. Now, so what's new about what you've written? I mean, Mr Modi, our prime minister on the 15th of August from the rampage of the Red Fort, describes India as the mother of democracy. In the past years, the US has often been called the world's oldest democracy and sometimes... We're here of course supposed to be the world's largest democracy in terms of sheer numbers because the number of people who live in India is more or less equal. We might have already overtaken the People's Republic of China but now there are several definitions of what is democracy and what is not democracy. I'd like to know from you in brief. Why do you argue that India has moved towards despotism and democracy is being killed by the present regime? The main point of this book is to make it clear that this thing that we're hearing now about Modi killing democracy is slightly misleading because the point that we make, just as you said that there is nothing new here, right? Democracy has been facing difficulties in India for a long time. So this is a point that we also try to capture in the book that there is a continuum in the process of killing democracy. It has not just happened in the last eight years. These pathologies that have been very evident even when I was growing up, I grew up under the communists and you know how it was in Bengal and before that the congress and after the communists the TMC, I think when I was thinking about the book TMC there was this panchayat election I forget the year where I think they won 25% of the 60,000 seats uncontested because they would not let anyone in contest. There was nobody contesting the seats. You couldn't even go to the office and register your name. Candidature. Yeah. So what we have tried to capture is the continuum of this degradation of democracy. So we make this point very clear that this is not entirely a new phenomenon but this is often overlooked especially by international observers. One problem is that people when they talk about Indian politics or they concentrate on the center, the federal politics people have not paid attention to what has been going on in the states. The fact is that at the state level institutions capture violent elections they have been pretty common at the state level but we have somehow never factored that. You used to call it boot capturing. Boot capturing once upon a time. Scientific rigging. Before Mandel commission was introduced there were often cases where because the upper caste they controlled the public good. They were private militia. They were private militia. Often the schools as simple things like the schools in villages are often located in upper caste areas and where the lower caste couldn't go to vote. So there has been a systematic exclusion. Let me stick to the so-called western perception of democracy in India and ask you your opinion. In March 2022 a Sweden-based organization called VDEM Varieties of Democracy Institute and they have an index called the Liberal Democracy Index and India was clubbed among the top ten autocratizing nations and it says there is a democratic slide which is continuing and put India in the category of Brazil and Turkey and Hungary and this same organization in 2021 had classified India as an electoral autocracy and it also argues that much of this slide has been after 2014 when Narendra Modi became the prime minister of India. What are your views? Absolutely. So what we have also tried to do in the book is to show that this slide has been happening over the decades but these pathologies have intensified considerably in the last eight years. In what ways? So the civil liberties for example or the way civil liberties are being curbed is quite unprecedented. You would see this in states before but you would not see this at the federal level at this intensity before. In your book you talk about money power in politics. I am coming to that. Criminalization. I am going to ask you what is new? No, no, no. But before I come there there is one point that we have to make despite this continuum of degradation there is one thing which is very unique to this last eight years is the brutalization of your 14-15% of the population to mobilize the majority. You are talking about Muslims? Yes. One out of seven Indians? Yeah. So this is a relatively new phenomenon and this pointed brutalization of Muslims to mobilize Hindu vote this adds a completely different layer to your democratic decline. I mean Muslims have of course historically being excluded. We know that which is why the Sachar commission had to be appointed. We know that. But here to pointedly, deliberately humiliate Muslims, brutalize their lives. You talk about the National Register of Citizens you talk about the Citizenship Amendment Act and you see that Islamophobia has been on the rise in the last eight years and would you compare it with what happened in the past, in the 40s? In the 40s I think it's not fair to compare today's India with the 40s because it was the Muslim composition then in parts of India. Muslims are clearly a minority in India now. In many parts of India in the 40s they were not. So I don't think I would go there but the thing is that the blatant hate crime the blatant hate speech from the very highest levels of our polity that we have seen in the last eight years. Mob lynching. And the backing of the state of these vigilante groups. This adds up as I said a completely new layer to this entire concept of this idea of democratic decline because elections by their very nature protects the interests of the majority. Especially the kind of electoral system that we have which is borrowed from the Westminster style first past the post winner takes office. So we have specific institutions to protect the minorities because democracy at the end of the day is judged not by how it treats its majority who are in any case protected by elections for their interest but how it treats its minorities and in that test India has been failing miserably in the last eight years and this failure is a deliberate failure they want to fail because this failure gets them votes. So this is a completely new aspect but now if you go back to the continuum that we were talking about violence, dark money in politics these are yes you're right we have had these same problems before but again these have increased many fold not in just the last eight years mind you. It has happened over a period of time and you would say the same thing about the use of money power the new dimension is electoral bonds you can say or the use of muscle power. Absolutely this has if you just look at the number of crotopathies MPs in the last 10, 15, 20 years you will see how those numbers have increased if you look at the number of MPs with criminal backgrounds and over the last say five elections you will see how they have increased over the years. Okay my last question to you though your book it could be argued is very very bleak almost throughout yet you end on an optimistic note after arguing why we've had so many problems I mean just the sections social emergencies demo side towards despotism you still conclude on an optimistic note when the going gets tough democracy fosters hope against hope it stirs up insurrections it gives energy to the sense it's possible to change things you go on no famine and slavery clean running water better schooling decent healthcare this is exactly what the government wants I mean it is no different every regime has wanted it greater social equality you see in moments when democracy falls sick this is perhaps its most important virtue it inspires citizens to take full advantage of what they have and what comes their way to build a better future not just for the rich and the powerful few the next general elections in India year and a half away the conclusion of your book it's very different I would say that the tone and the tenor of the bulk of what you've written with John Keyne so this is my last question to you and you can summarize your thoughts well I think what I mean there are various sources of hope for me some of these are one is that we have a democratic instinct at least when it comes to politics I think Indians have a democratic instinct and it has been honed for seven decades our vibrant politics endless social movements all of these like judicial activism or these instruments like PIL which allows people to you're talking about public interest litigation yes public interest litigation which allow activists so there is activism there has been a sharpening of our democratic instincts we are remember we are the products of the freedom movement so protest is deeply ingrained in our DNA and any regime which thinks that it can say the farmers agitation yes the farmers agitation even the CAA the anti-CAA, NRC agitation which the regime managed to spin as a Muslim jihad kind of thing but we all know that this was a spontaneous outpouring of protest led by women? yes led by women, led by students who had nothing to do with politics so and also India is not Hungary it might be difficult to or Philippines? I won't say Philippines but yeah maybe Philippines to India or Turkey? culturally very diverse Turkey, Brazil and it is very difficult for it will be very difficult for any regime including the People's Republic of China where you've lived and worked? yes so India is very different in that sense India's diversity makes democracy it's almost it's default setting so you cannot but not have democracy in India okay thank you so much I have run out of time it's difficult to summarize the contents of a book that runs into more than 300 pages on which you worked with your colleague for several years in a short interview but thank you very much on behalf of the viewers of NewsClick I thank you for coming here and giving us your views and ladies and gentlemen this is his book this is Debashish Roy Choudhury's book To Kill a Democracy India's passage to despotism Debashish has written this book with John Keane and do pick it up I'm plugging his book unabashedly it's available by Pan Macmillan and you can find out for yourself why or guess why Oxford University press backed out of publishing the India edition stay with NewsClick keep watching this channel subscribe to this channel press that button and donate generously to free and independent journalism we are not the Godi media thank you very much for being with us