India Is Transforming. But Into What?
About this episode
Guest host Lydia Polgreen interviews political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta on India's transformation under Narendra Modi. They trace how the world's largest democracy and most populous country paired extraordinary economic growth with clear democratic erosion: state-stoked violence against Muslim minorities, the silencing of critics and independent institutions, and the Supreme Court's near-abdication of its protective role. Mehta walks through the history — Partition, Nehru's pluralist nationalism, the RSS's Hindu-consciousness project, the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Babri Masjid movement — and explains Modi's populist appeal against English-speaking elites. They discuss the revocation of Kashmir's special status, Mehta's concept of the 'Kashmirization of India,' the spread of preventive-detention practices nationwide, and the irony of the West courting India as a democratic counterweight to China.