Just months ago, there was little doubt that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would emerge triumphant from the Indian general election that began on 19 April 2024 and ended on the first day of June with the conclusion of its seventh and final stage. For months leading up to the 2024 poll, pundits vigorously debated the magnitude of the BJP's victory, but rarely its likelihood.
While the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has captured a majority of seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha (Parliament's lower house), the NDA has vastly underperformed both its ambitious expectations as well as the predictions of most pundits and opinion surveys. Be that as it may, Modi has led his party and its allies to a third consecutive victory, an achievement last secured by the Indian National Congress (hereafter, the Congress party or Congress) under the country's inaugural prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
The BJP's maiden victory under Modi came in 2014 and signified the renaissance of a political force that many observers—including some within the party itself—believed had peaked in the early 2000s when the BJP first tasted national power. Yet the party's ability to notch a second electoral victory in 2019, after five years of incumbency and amid an economic rough patch, signaled that India was witnessing not simply a new dominant party in New Delhi, but the dawn of a new political system altogether.1
India is no stranger to dominant-party rule. From the first general election in 1952 until 1989, Congress formed the political system's beating heart. After decades of Congress preeminence came a quarter-century of coalition rule during which no single party was strong enough to form a government on its own.
That changed in 2014, when the resurgent BJP inaugurated a new [End Page 38] dominant-party system complete with several hallmarks familiar from Congress's earlier hegemony: a charismatic leader with a cultlike following, a party organization that subordinates intraparty democracy to the high command's wishes, and a desire to nationalize even the most local elections. On its face, the BJP's narrow 2024 victory suggests a return to the earlier coalition era. But while the ruling party may be weakened, the nature of the political order has fundamentally shifted in ways that will have a lasting impact on Indian democracy. We are witnessing the dawn of India's "Second Republic," an inflection point that is equal in magnitude to India's constitutional moment of 1950, when the "First Republic" was established.
Several elements of the Second Republic were visible prior to 2014, and the BJP's narrow 2024 election victory has not dislodged them. Their significance comes into sharper relief when they are contrasted with the foundational principles of India's inaugural constitutional order.
India's First Republic guaranteed universal suffrage and equal political participation, but social rigidities and socioeconomic backwardness undermined the full realization of these promises. Today, despite the BJP's political success, electoral politics remains deeply ingrained while democratic participation is more widespread than ever before.
After 1947, India codified a liberal constitutional order in law and practice. This framework, however imperfect, turned on a belief that governmental power should be subjected to a web of institutional constraints to protect citizens from state coercion. In the emerging new republic, majoritarian will is regularly invoked to attribute democratic legitimacy to all governmental actions, even when they are illiberal.
India's original constitutional settlement rejected the idea that India was an archetypal nation-state organized around a single ethnic or religious identity, instead embracing the idea that India was a federal republic that was home to multiple nations. In the Second Republic, India is envisioned as a "civilizational state" defined by the country's ancient Hindu heritage.
The First Republic embraced a distinctively Indian variant of secularism, which sought to prevent the state from privileging any one faith above others. India's current leaders embrace the notion of Hindutva (literally, "Hindu-ness"), in which loyalty to the Hindu nation is the defining virtue of citizenship.
Finally, while India's First Republic was characterized by a central government capable of asserting extraordinary powers in exceptional circumstances, federalism was a deeply embedded feature of the political order. India's current leadership, by contrast, views federalism as an impediment to national policymaking and economic efficiency.
The Second Republic paints a stark contrast to India's founding political settlement, but its emergence has also been made possible by the [End Page 39] latter's infirmities. However, the Second Republic's contradictions also point to the difficulty of developing undemanding formulations of India's political order. India today is simultaneously more participatory, in electoral terms, and less democratic, in liberal terms. It possesses a more capable state that can more efficiently deliver benefits to its citizens, but also a more coercive one that can more effectively stifle democratic rights. It is a more stable state characterized by greater political certainty, albeit one in which the whims of a powerful executive increase the degree of policy uncertainty. Finally, it is a state that international partners find more valuable yet also more difficult to relate to.
The Third Democratic Upsurge
The 1950 Constitution guaranteed all adult Indians the right to vote, irrespective of their station in life. The founders believed that electoral democracy would initiate a political revolution, but knew that any such transformation would be incomplete without a corresponding social revolution. Indeed, rigid social hierarchies constrained postindependence India's democratic promise.
Congress was a case in point. Having emerged from the British Raj as both the most important party and most crucial political institution in India, Congress was a catchall organization that aspired to represent all Indians from all walks of life. Reality fell short of aspiration and the early Congress leadership—dominated by an upper-crust, Brahmin elite—did not fully keep its promises. A privileged few ruled the corridors of power, women were politically invisible, and local notables regularly dictated how ordinary citizens would vote.
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