THE idea of India was not forged in the fiction woven by Savarkar’s Hindutva ideology. It was shaped by the blood and sweat spilled in the national freedom struggle to dislodge British colonial rule. Obviously, the idea set out a different playbook which contributed to the foundational pillars of the Constitution solemnised on January 26, 1950.

What were the basics? Economic and political sovereignty and the journey towards decolonisation was a logical continuation of the freedom struggle. It had to be secular to recognise people’s freedom and equality to pursue their chosen faith, not to pander or appease. It had to be democratic without which the great chasm between the vulnerable and the empowered, and the huge gap in wealth and opportunity could not be bridged. It had to be federal to preserve the great diversity of the multiple nationalities, cultures, languages, cuisines, and appearance which could not be addressed and resolved through a unipolar one-dimensional straitjacket which Hindutva espouses.

Obviously, the idea of India as the Constitution went on to establish, could not have a neo-fascist playbook to pursue. The idea of India underpinned the principle of diverse people with a common and equal citizenship.

It follows that such an idea had to rest on the principle of universal adult franchise to ensure that equal belonging was shared. The idea of a national language or a national religion was beyond what the Constitution had envisaged.

It goes without saying that unlike the conceptualisation in Western democracies, universal adult franchise and electoral democracy had to be pursued. But for such a course, India’s unity in a common and shared collective existence could be under threat. The centrepiece of this working premise was a strongly and constitutionally empowered Election Commission of India (ECI) to ensure and oversee this representative democracy. It is also eminently clear that for the ECI to include every legitimate citizen as part of the Voters List, was an obligation and not benevolence. Therefore, drawing up the Electoral Roll was incumbent on the ECI, rather than the individual citizen.

The pursuit of the idea of India was the principal task assigned to the ECI by the Constitution. Premised on this, evolution of the ECI was recognised not only within the country, but also across the world.

Unfortunately, it is here that the current threat to the idea of India is emanating from. There can be no debate about the fountainhead of this threat. It is the idea of Hindutva which differentiates between citizens based on their diverse religious identities. With the contemporary ultra-rightwing ideologies that have emerged globally, spawned by globalisation and nation specific variants of neo-liberal paradigms, ‘othering’ is a major ingredient of this new playbook. In India, the RSS, as much as Donald Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, try to infuse a sense of fear and insecurity. Practically speaking, Amit Shah, the self-acclaimed custodian of India’s wellbeing, charged with the responsibility of the country’s internal security, has not lifted his little finger to identify the so-called infiltrators who like ‘termites’ are eating into the vitals of the nation!

Therefore, weaponisation of ‘infiltrators’ without any semblance of evidence, has found its way into the playbook of the ECI. The war cry of ‘detect, delete and deport’ has become the unwritten signature tune of ECI’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) aiming to disenfranchise citizens who are demonised as ‘termites’. 

However, the final results of such an exercise in Bihar to start with, and the ongoing process in the rest of the twelve states, have not been able to bring out any iota of substantive evidence to back the existence of such people. Instead, what has happened, it is poor and the vulnerable who have come at the receiving end of such an obnoxious approach.

It is now very clear that the compressed timeline for conducting the SIR is absolutely untenable. The damage is there for all to see, particularly in West Bengal.

West Bengal, a border state, with a substantially large Muslim population, which are overwhelmingly constituted of people who have been living in the state for ages. It is these who are being sought to be disenfranchised.

Before the SIR exercise was initiated, the total voter count was 7.66 crores. After the draft rolls were published, this figure plummeted to 7.08 crores on the presumption that the rest could not be mapped to link them with voters in the 2002-03 Rolls. Those unmapped voters were not necessarily undocumented or non-citizens. However, the SIR exercise has precisely presumed that. And therefore, they stand disenfranchised.

But even this was not enough because contrary to the campaign carried on for the last two decades, the Hindutva camp has not been able to establish this narrative. On the contrary, faced with this threat, this very section which are demonised, do have documentary proof in their possession. Therefore, the draft roll was a major dampener.

Under tremendous pressure, the ECI acted as Amit Shah’s informal adherent devising a strategy which finds no place in either the election laws or the rules written under them and manufactured a concept of ‘logical discrepancy’. This is nothing but simply some variations in the ways names are spelled, and the age difference between parents and children, and so on and so forth. This is clearly evidence of trying to smuggle the notion of citizenship through the backdoor. As a result, about 60 lakh names are held back as being under ‘adjudication’. They are mostly under-privileged, minorities, Dalits, tribals and women. It also clearly proves that unlike the assurance at the outset that physical verification would be undertaken, the ECI had to resort to digital means to identify such discrepancies.

The publication of the final Electoral Roll remains postponed. Even the Supreme Court had to opine that to additionally replenish the number of officials to verify these so-called discrepancies, judicial officers would have to be deployed, raising questions about the constitutionality of such a move. But even then, the ECI had to, through an affidavit, admit before the Apex Court that it will take another one month to complete the exercise.

This is posing a constitutional crisis. Unless the final voter list is announced, the election cannot be notified to complete the entire exercise before May 6, as the new Assembly has to come into existence by May 7, 2026.

The CPI(M) has justifiably asserted that the voters list cannot be finalised with 60 lakh voters under adjudication, not to speak of the massive harassment that the clearly ideology-driven attempt by the ECI has imposed.

Therefore, the question today is whether electoral democracy as an essential element of the idea of India, and as enshrined in the Indian Constitution can survive. In its obnoxious attempt to pursue Amit Shah’s idea, the ECI has managed to endanger the constitutional arrangement. All people who cherish democracy, particularly the Left forces in the country have to remain steadfast in protecting the basic premise of universal adult franchise and electoral democracy and ensure that no legitimate voter is left out.

(March 11, 2026)