Thomas Blom Hansen: Democracy against the Law: Reflections on India’s Illiberal Democracy

The political forces that ‘deepened’ India’s democracy in the 1980s and 1990s – regional movements, lower caste communities but also and Hindu nationalism – reflected among many other things a deeply illiberal underside of Indian politics. Theirs was a language of deprivations and anger, and a politics of passion claiming to represent hitherto voiceless majorities.