Professor Ashutosh Varshney ( Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University ), delivered the 25th Democracy Dialogues Lecture on 15 October, 2023.
Summary
India celebrated 75 years of its independence last year with a lot of enthusiasm.
Celebrations did not hide the fact it is also one of the leading countries which is passing through what is popularly known as 'democratic backsliding'.
A country which, like many others, is using democratic processes to secure undemocratic outcomes, where freely contested elections are being deployed for the purpose of expressing, cultivating, or enhancing majoritarian prejudices—to target minorities and turn them into lesser citizens.
In this scenario, there is an urgent need to unpack this journey of democratic India further , there is a need to make a distinction between India as an electoral democracy and India as a liberal democracy.
Background Reading for the talk :
# India’s Democratic Longevity and its Hugely Troubled Trajectory ( Attached with this mail)
#. How India's Ruling Party Erodes Democracy
Ashutosh Varshney
Journal of Democracy, Volume 33, Number 4, October 2022, pp. 104-118 (Article)
Speaker
Prof Ashutosh Varshney is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University, where he also directs the Center for Contemporary South Asia. Previously, he taught at Harvard (1989-98) and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2001-2008).
His books include Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy (2013), Collective Violence in Indonesia (2009), Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale 2002), India in the Era of Economic Reforms (1999), and Democracy, Development and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India (Cambridge 1995)
0 comments:
Post a Comment