Democracy and dissent in India

Join Mr Anand Grover, Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India, as he discusses how the government's actions have severely undermined democracy in India. This talk will explore the criminalization of dissent and the compromise of independent institutions over the past decade.

Constitutionally governed liberal democracies, like India, are supposed to respect dissent and protests as these are seen as vital to democracy. Moreover, in such democracies, the judiciary reviews the actions of both the Legislatures and the Executive and is required to be independent of them. There are also a host of other institutions, including the media, the Election Commission, data-collecting institutions, and statistical or scientific institutions, which perform the role of checks on the Executive and are required to be independent.

In the last decade, India has been passing through what has been termed a “democratic recession.” In real terms, this has meant that the independence of the aforesaid institutions has been severely compromised, and those who dissent or actively protest, or are part of movements that oppose the government, are not only not permitted to do so but are criminalized.

This has been seen in the Bhima Koregaon cases, cases relating to protests on the Citizenship Act amendment, as well as the jailing of politicians from mainstream opposition parties. In such cases, it is not the ordinary law, such as the Indian Penal Code, that is used against the opponents, but deliberately draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), a terrorist law, and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), in which getting bail is extremely difficult because of the procedures in such laws. Incarceration of dissenters is now a common occurrence.

The talk by Mr Anand Grover will highlight the above actions by the Government, which have severely undermined democracy in India.

About the speaker

Mr Anand Grover is a Senior Advocate practicing in the Supreme Court of India; an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown Law Centre, Georgetown University, Washington; a Commissioner in the Commission on Drug Policy and Member of the UN AIDS Reference Group on HIV

This event is jointly organised by SOAS South Asia Institute and Platform for Indian Democracy.

Image credit: Naveed Ahmed via Unsplash