Scholars both Indian and foreign have argued that the health of our democracy has deteriorated in recent years. However, one aspect of India’s democratic decline has perhaps not got the attention it deserves. This is the collapse of the party system. Indeed, in some ways, this is a more telling sign of how far Indian democracy has fallen than the attacks on press freedom, the suborning of independent institutions, the opacity of electoral funding and so on.
Consider, for instance, the recent induction by the Tamil Nadu chief minister of his son into his cabinet. Younger readers may see this as utterly normal, yet those with longer memories can only view it as antithetical to the founding ideals of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The DMK arose out of a popular movement that asserted Tamil identity in the face of the hegemonising impulses of the much more populous and, hence, more politically influential Hindi-speaking regions of India.
While the autonomy of Tamil culture and the desire to cultivate self-respect were the primary driving forces, the DMK also took a more progressive position on caste and gender than the then-northern dominated Congress Party did. Further, once in office from 1967 onwards, the DMK also sought…
