The Indian electorate has sent a strong signal to the BJP and its Sangh Parivar allies to respect the Indian Constitution as the foundation of Indian democracy and address the real political issues of the people rather than delving on abstract slogans of development and change. This is a clear message against the politics of hatred and the strategies to impose fascist agendas upon the common people of this country. The Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh, which has been the playground of Hindutva politics, and states like Tamil Nadu, which has seen attempts by Hindutva forces to shift its anti-Brahminic political tradition to cultural fascism, played a vital role in this current general election to instill hope for a democratic society.  The emergence of the INDIA bloc as a strong opposition in Parliament is an optimistic development as far as common citizens are concerned. It gives us great relief from the politics of hatred and the policies of exclusion in the name of region, religion, and culture. There were also people’s movements who fought these totalitarian policies and independent online campaigners like Dhruv Rathee, Muhammed Zubair, and Ravish Kumar, who reached out to common people by breaking the fortified walls created by the ‘Modi-fied’  ‘Corporate media.’ However, this is not a time to take a rest on the hope that the new oppositional alliance will fulfill our aspirations for a radical democracy. Indeed, it is a crucial time for all progressive people in the country to participate actively in the process of democratizing society. 

Of course, INDIA bloc has got the mandate is to be an effective opposition at the Centre. However, that involves more than raising the same slogans against the policies of the Sangh Parivar. It needs to embark on a common political journey of reimagining a new democracy in India. The pre-poll alliance of various political parties, which have different and sometimes contradictory political agendas, have to think about a common minimum agenda so that they can think unanimously about a new nation.

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The onslaught of neoliberal capitalism and corporate takeover or natural resources demand crucial attention for the restructuring of the economy of our nation. The problem is that many of the opposition parties like the Indian National Congress still uphold the capitalist economic policies that make our economy more elitist and exclusive. The BJP government has only continued the neoliberal policies of the previous government. We need to realize the fact that the interrogations against those corporatist economic and political agendas have come from people’s movements, such as those by farmers and the indigenous communities, and not from established political parties. Mainline parties do not have contributed little to these resistant movements.

The agenda-centered politics of mainline political parties are not helpful enough to address the real political issues of people. Though the political parties have a significant role to play in a representative democratic system, they often fail to fulfill the political aspirations of the common people in this country. Giving political power to common people—the governed—and building a democratic nation goes far beyond the political practice of statism. The state is not to be a centralized power system above common people, who ultimately determine democratic values such as equality, freedom, and justice. We need a counter-politics that attends to people’s movements or social movements that envisage a state from below—a radical democracy of the governed. When we focus on mainstream political parties and discuss their pros and cons, we somehow neglect the possibility of the emergence of a new democracy beyond statism.   

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If common people, their accessibility to national resources, and peaceful co-existence are our prime concerns, we need to think about radical politics rather than discussing how mainstream political parties, even though they are entitled to play a vital role in a representative democracy, ought to function. Decentralization of political power and cultural power should not be a choice of political parties, but should be affirmed within and without. (For instance, not even one-woman MP was elected from Kerala, where the majority of elected MPs are from the India bloc!) Many of us still place our hopes in these political parties and are hesitant to ask whether they can go beyond the juridical and the statist politics and learn the real values of democracy from people’s movements.

We need a radical nation-state that transgresses the majority-minority dialectic. Of course, the modern idea of the state itself is founded on this dialectic, but there is an urgent need to listen to people like Gandhi and the other freedom fighters who formulated an idea of a common belongingness in the fight against colonialism. Ambedkar helps us envisage a common national belongingness that goes beyond the idea of monolithic nationalism and deconstructs internal colonialism. Real democratizing process involves a micro-politics that challenges our embodied notions of hierarchy, patriarchy, and caste. It is a grass-roots political process of envisaging communities of love, respect, and acceptance, which is founded on the ethical political resources of our religions and cultures.  This is a long-term vision of a radical democracy that will annihilate the forces of totalitarianism and fascism; of course, this is not the agenda of mainstream political parties as of now. 

^{AMBEDKAR | PHOTO: WIKI COMMONS}
The illegitimate alliance between cultural fascism and the neoliberal economy demands not only a post-socialist society but a post-secular society in India. Despite earlier efforts to conceive Indian secularism as an accommodative space for all religions that shows a tokenism of sympathy to minorities, we have never tried to imagine a post-secular society that demands internal reformation of our religions and religious identities. Religions remain as closed communities, but they demand a democratic civic life outside! Political parties that challenge the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and anti-conversion Bills in our country never ask religious communities to become open communities to fit into a post-secular democratic society. To them, they are mere vote-banks! A radical vision of a democratic society demands self-reforming religious communities rather than religions simply enjoying immunity for the sake of pluralism. 

There are many crucial questions that this current political scenario poses before us rather than leaving us with great relief and comfort. Of course, there is hope for Indian democracy if we realize the complexity of this political scenario in its depth and overcome it by engaging with local and contextual micropolitics as we see in people’s movements that are engaged in the process of “democratizing democracy.”