Guest Post by SANKARAN KRISHNA 

As journalists, academics and other pundits scramble to make sense of the just concluded elections to the Indian parliament, one can discern a few broad strands of opinion. One group – lets call them the Optimists – point to India’s almost seven-decades long experiment with electoral democracy and aver that we have the institutional strength and resilience in civil society to keep Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party confined to a moderate middle that will be, ultimately, not very different from other regimes (single-party or coalition) that have ruled from Delhi. Prominent voices among the Optimists are Ashutosh Varshney, Ram Guha and Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

A second group – lets call them the Alarmists- see the BJP’s clear parliamentary majority (albeit arising from a mere 31% of the popular vote) as inaugurating an era of unapologetic Hindu majoritarianism that could severely strain and irreparably damage the plural fabric of Indian society. They are especially concerned about the fate of the Muslim minority and regard the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat as a foretaste of things to come.  The Alarmists range across activists like the late Asghar Ali Engineer, politicos like Mani Shankar Aiyar and intellectuals such as Akeel Bilgrami.  Continue reading A Chronicle of an Event Foretold? Sankaran Krishna →