Hacker News Reader

Comment by typon | Hacker News Reader

India being "a counterweight to the rise of authoritarianism in the 21st century" while Modi and BJP are in power. This is so misguided its funny.

View on HN

Don't conflate encouraging cult-like following and at times divisive politics with authoritarianism. There are free and fair elections in India. In fact, Modi (and BJP) have lost several recent state elections and handed power over to the opposition. There are a ton of political parties, especially regional, that give BJP a run for their money a.k.a political pluralism.

The reason Modi is running away with national elections is because of the absolute incompetence of the main opposition, the Congress party. Their decades of mind boggling corruption has finally caught up to them and their reluctance to look beyond the Gandhi family for leadership is costing them dearly. That combined with BJP's election machinery (which Modi has built) means that opposition has to raise their game spectacularly, which they are not able to do.

> Don't conflate encouraging cult-like following and at times divisive politics with authoritarianism

But, if I don't, how will I be able to call Trump a facist? /s

In all seriousness, your reply could have been written about the United States word for word. Some people simply see cult like following and divisive politics as being facism. For those people, your explanation explains nothing.

Amen! Majority of the middle class is not so convinced by the BJP at national but against the corruption and elitism of the Congress. Atleast here in HN, ppl should be objective to make their own judgements!

Wasn’t Modi democratically elected — twice?

Exactly! People seem to conflate anti authoritarianism with being pro democracy. It absolutely doesn't have to be the case and India is a great example of it.

Yes. So? You can have a democratically-elected authoritarian. The authoritarian part is about how they govern, not how they get to power. (And, perhaps, how they stay in power. Venezuela is a good example of authoritarians, once in power, stacking the deck so that the next election keeps them in power. And as they become more unpopular, they continue to stack the deck farther and farther. I don't know if Modi and BJP are doing that.)

The problem is that most of your understanding about Modi government is coming from western media which has repeatedly shown to be inherently bias against India [0] becoming strong. Part of the reason could be that India didn't join western club after Independence contrary to their expectations and chose to remain non-align (though it gravitated more toward USSR).

You wouldn't hear that though Modi has won federal elections twice, his party has lost many state elections during the same time. But he hasn't really done anything nefarious that could stop such losses. People has chosen Modi because at this stage, there's no alternative strong figure that can solve many India's problem. YOu'd hear about MOdi removing article 370 from Kashmir, the Citizen bill, but you won't get the details about the real reason of why those are needed to solve the problem India has been facing since independence but no prior gov attempted to implement them (despite agreeing in principles on multiple occasions) just because of vote-politics.

0: https://www.organiser.org/Encyc/2020/5/22/Foreign-Media-and-...

> YOu'd hear about MOdi removing article 370 from Kashmir, the Citizen bill, but you won't get the details about the real reason of why those are needed to solve the problem India has been facing since independence but no prior gov attempted to implement them (despite agreeing in principles on multiple occasions) just because of vote-politics.

So what is the real reason then to solve the problem India has been facing since independence?

Do you know BJP, the party Modi represents lost elections in most states of India ?

https://images.app.goo.gl/hGeeKMso9o99gxxA9

Reply on news.ycombinator.com