India downgraded from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ in democracy report

You may see from the press that China has largely turned a blind eye to western criticism but in reality in all aspects of societal building we are adopting / importing more and more strategies from the west on a daily basis. I'm surprised when I talked to my childhood friends (some of whom are deep in administrative roles or important civil servants) their management is rapidly learning from the west (probably without them realising), may it be government bodies or private companies. The policies (at least on the paper) are getting closer and closer to what I can observe here in Europe. When I grew up in the 90s it was simply chaotic.

Secondly, what I consider a major difference is that India has the ability to converse well with west whereas chinese diplomats / communication points are extremely poor and belong in an era with standards so lagging behind of modern times. Small proportion of people do read english but not to a point (especially the elites) to comprehend and incorporate western opinions well into a meaningful dialogue. All other asian countries are light years ahead of us.

I'm not saying however who is better and not, all the symptoms maybe similar but there could be more nuances for a better understanding of the complex and yet inflaming situations.

The process has been in progress for decades since Independence. The process was accelerated since the 1980s. It's more like the cultural shift is now complete.

A roll back is now impossible.

An ongoing controversy concerns the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who offered an alleged rapist freedom in exchange for marrying his victim. The victim, who was underage at the time of the attacks, was "stalked, tied up, gagged, repeatedly raped and was threatened with being doused in petrol, set alight and have her brother killed". [1]

Other judgements from 2020 that the Freedom House report refers to include the acquittal of allies of the ruling party for demolishing a 15th century mosque (despite overwhelming evidence) and granting the site of that mosque to allies of the ruling party to build a Hindu temple, a court case which bizarrely considered a Hindu deity one of the winning litigants.

Previous judgements acquitted the current home minister and president of the ruling party of ordering extra-judicial killings and freed other members of the ruling party who were previously convicted of murders during religious riots.

This is not to say all judgements fall into this pattern. There are undoubtedly a few highlights such as Shreya Singhal (online freedom of expression), 377 (decriminalization of homosexuality) and the Right to Privacy (is a thing).

However these are few and far between.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/04/indias-top-jud...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#T...

[2]: https://www.dw.com/en/indias-internet-shutdowns-function-lik... (arrived at from [1])

The President Elect took office on the specified inauguration day?

I went from lax Covid policies to a locked down city, and I feel freer.

That's not at all my takeaway. Note that you list The Heritage Foundation as a source, a well known opinion piece factory, far from impartial if you ever take a look at their funding structure.

And I swear India was trumpeting these same flawed reports when it worked in its favor.

Can you honestly not say this is not true. That India is not sliding into a much worse version of Democracy? Have you even looked at the new IT rules?

Here’s how you know India is less free. Irrespective of whether tou agree with the rules or not, they are not law. But India’s current situation is so messed up that no one will even consider not treating it as a law.

As a half-Croat, this reminds me also of a more recent example: the Balkans. Let's just hope and pray to whatever gods we adhere to that, should the situation come to the worst, it won't end in Balkan-level bloodshed.

This definition works for countries like in Europe who have very little of their pagan roots left. Further more Europe is divided mostly on linguistic and on catholic/protestant divide (with exceptions and then there is Switzerland or Belgium).

India is a civilisational state, it has long established cultural interoperability. Indian epics, temples and traditions are 1000s of years old and still maintain deep roots.

For Indians, the recent notions of a nation state is irrelevant.

If that is the case then perhaps like China you may find more than 60% of its territory held together by force, with Hanification and reeducation camps.

Sure, there were different kingdoms and turfs, but the philosophical core of the cpuntry, was based on Sanatana Dharma, common to the sub continent. That is why it was easy to keep it as a coherent unit even after hundreds of ywars of muslim and british rule.

But I somehow find a link to a fringe website and a "my friend in India told me" anecdote, which is pretty unbecoming of HN but more and more common these days. I’m surprised (and disappointed) dang is allowing this kind of blatant propaganda.