malevolent republic a short history of the new india

From today’s standpoint - or even from the times of Indira Gandhi - it seems apt to accept his implicit argument that the country’s polity assumes a different character once it is taken over by autocrats who have far less compunctions about upholding democracy compared to Nehru. Should the country’s polity under the country’s first prime minister be described in much the same manner as that under his daughter, Indira Gandhi? Komireddi’s answer is measured: “The authoritarianism in Nehru existed alongside and was tempered by a genuine aversion to dictatorship and rigid adherence to democratic procedure”. The question, however, is should the republic’s first tyrannies, as well its democratic successes, be reduced to the idiosyncrasies of its first prime minister. In Nagaland to the east, he authorised the bombing of Christians who had the temerity to demand from India what India had sought from the British”.

In Kashmir, he presided over an anti-democratic farce. In Kerala…he engineered the overthrow of the democratically-elected Communist government. “The principled anti-imperialist acolyte of Mahatma Gandhi, who never tired of dispensing pre-elections about peace to foreign leaders had few misgivings about utilising disproportionate force against people he claimed as his own. In its first part, Malevolent Republic asks a difficult question? Can dynastism and authoritarianism be traced to the times when the country was at its democratic best? Komireddi does not absolve India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru in this respect. But Komireddi’s originality lies in weaving them together into a narrative that tells why and how India has become what it is today. There is much in this book, especially in its first part, that we already know - the mistakes of Jawaharlal Nehru, the cruelties of the Emergency, Rajiv Gandhi’s concessions to both the Hindu and the Muslim right wing. Malevolent Republic is a critique in two parts, aptly titled, ‘Antecedents’ and ‘India under Modi’. But it would be wrong to read the book as a primer - the fate of most short histories.

Malevolent republic a short history of the new india