‘If your imagination of India is one of Hindutva, it is unconstitutional’

Jaipur: “If your imagination of India is one of Hindutva, it is unconstitutional in a way that it is undemocratic because it is not necessarily the will of the people but of those power," author Mukulika Banerjee said at the JLF on Thursday.
Addressing the 'Democracy: The Warp and the Weft' session here, she alleged that “several institutional distortions have developed in the last nine years at a broader level of self-avowed commitment to an ideology of Hindutva which is not a secret”.
“It's not being brought by the back door. This is the official ideology of the ruling party, it is the official ideology of the RSS. That is precisely an idea of India which according to the current Indian Constitution would be unconstitutional,” she said.
“Saying you are a democracy is not enough. You got to be a democracy. A Hindu nation is not what is written in the Indian constitution. So, if your imagination of India is one of Hindutva, it is unconstitutional in a way that it is undemocratic because it is not necessarily the will of the people but of those power,” Banerjee said.
She alleged that the Indian electoral system has developed “three major distortions” under the Narendra Modi-led BJP government.
“First, the Election Commission of India, a non-partisan impeachable body that has failed to remain impartial. Another is campaign expenditure, which always has been a problem in India. There's a lot of cash flow through the system between elections that are unaccountable and has been legitimately made opaque through electoral bonds.”
“The third thing is that you can now count the results, by polling booth. You can tell from every polling booth who is voting for which party and therefore there are sticks and carrots. As a result, secret ballot is history. Secrecy has been severely compromised and we really should be very worried about that because it has a direct impact on the quality of democracy in India,” Banerjee added. PTI