Is India becoming a dictatorship? If a video with this title attracts 16 million views within a week, you can be sure of one thing: this is a good question worth asking in today’s India. We cannot be sure, though, that we already have a good answer here.
The interesting thing about Dhruv Rathee’s super-viral video is that it does not contain any exposé or any new fact that a regular follower of news headlines may not have known. It is a lucid recounting of everything that has worried Indians and well-wishers of Indian democracy: electoral bonds, the fraud in Chandigarh mayor’s elections, misuse of CBI/ED, decline in media freedom, the witch hunt of opposition leaders, toppling of opposition governments, and what have you. Yet, the video was powerful enough to force the BJP ecosystem to respond to it. The credibility of the presenter, the absence of any anti-Modi rhetoric, and the simplicity of the narrative allow the viewer to register the already known facts, connect them to one another, and see the obvious pattern. A simple pursuit of a good question can take you a long way, even in this allegedly post-truth age.
There is a danger in a good and provocative question. It tempts us to offer a simple yes or no answer. Though Rathee is cautious enough not to say so, the video can be interpreted to mean that India is indeed becoming a dictatorship. That’s how most critics of the current dispensation have seen it. The problem with this answer is not that ‘dictatorship’ is an overly harsh description of the current dispensation The real problem is that it is an over-stylised description that may actually let the present regime off the hook.