VIDEO | To Kill A Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism – conversation with Oxford University Press

To celebrate the publication of To Kill A Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane joined us to discuss their new book and offered a radical re-appraisal of Indian politics and society. India is heralded as the world’s largest democracy. Yet, in recent years there has been growing alarm about its democratic health. ‘To Kill a Democracy’ gets to the heart of the matter. With a unique narrative combining moving life stories and sharp scholarly insight, the authors reject the belief that India was once a beacon of democracy but is now being ruined by the destructive forces of Modi-style populism. They detail the much deeper historical roots of present-day assaults on civil liberties and democratic institutions. Roy Chowdhury and Keane argued that what is happening in the country is globally important, and not just because every third person living in a democracy is an Indian. They show that when democracies rack and ruin their social foundations, they don’t just kill off the spirit and substance of democracy. They lay the foundations for despotism.