Disclaimer: The following article has been modelled closely to resemble literary non-fiction. However, the incidents/events might be eerily similar to the social realities of the times we live in. It’s for the readers to decide.
If there’s a country which has been successful in executing the concept of democracy to perfection
without exposing the flaws of democracy, it should be our country; the world’s largest democracy, India.
India, for the rest of the world, is the hub of different cultures coming together to form the melting pot, but for the citizens of the country, India is holier-than-thou. After 70 years of being an
independent nation, India has achieved what it set out to, i.e., the “acche din”. What if this wasn’t the case? What if democracy had begun to perish in the streets of the world’s largest democracy?
What if the world’s largest democracy existed in a parallel universe with alternate realities?
To begin with, India would be devoid of free speech. Any person who spoke his/her mind—that would have conflicted with opinion of the state-backed majority—would be cornered as an individual
endorsing radicalism. Despite that, if the person had the willpower to carry on speaking his/her mind, threats of rape and death would casually fly into their phone. It is most likely that an individual will be broken by now but if he/she isn’t, the last and final step which is called “minimum government and maximum governance” will be to land bullets in the head while the person is off for a morning walk or standing near the gate in the evening.
The next logical and the most important thing would be to guide or restrict the citizens with respect to the things they consume (both food and content). Any food item which will violate the self-entitled
sentiment of a particular community would be banned and if someone is found remotely close to the
raw materials needed to prepare that food, he/she can either be carefully thrashed in the streets or
behind four falls. They can also be lynched but either way, the activity will be filmed and will be uploaded for educational and academic purpose.
Similarly, people would be stopped from watching content which would falsely expose the state of doing good things only for itself. They will be either shown the door or be made to film one of the above activities. Universities are often the root for rising dissent and are always a threat to the state. In a parallel universe where India’s democracy is broken, the state would brand the students of its own universities as anti-state and rally behind the anti-state ethics to put them behind bars.
Once the intellectuals are taken care of, the authoritarian regime will concentrate on building an image of themselves as the sole fighters of a non-existent threat created to fuel the poisoning of democracy. The theories shall begin to come out: theories that propose one nation with one language, one party, one leader and one religion. Theories that ignite the emotional flame of the otherwise sane patriotic individual and help him become a narcissist nationalist. Histories will be tweaked to suit the theories. Histories will be swept away to hide the flaws in the theories. History, therefore, will act as a weapon and not as a tool.
In a country like India, when the theory of one nation, one language and one dictator becomes a reality, it will be time to see off the democracy our forefathers envisioned. To make it a reality, a language will be legitimised in a way which puts down the other languages; one religion will be exploited to help drive off the illegitimate religions out from the holy land.
Finally, the men and women who run the state will celebrate International Democracy Day and strip an entire section of its people of their basic rights in a bid to celebrate their fascism. It will then remain a land of colliding cultures and not culturally diverse. It will become a land of outlaws and rebels. It will become an atmosphere of suffocation and not innovation. It will propel the state to do
away with dissent and debate replacing them with yes sir and yes ma’am. It shall become the land of
slogans and schemes with catchy names. It will then require history to remind us that the British were here not long ago.