In his poignant autobiographical account of the Holocaust, Night, Elie Wiesel wrote: ‘To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.’
Democracy on Trial by Zoya Hasan is an exercise in remembering events in India’s recent turbulent history, from 2014 to 2024. This ten-year period has heralded three crucial shifts in Indian polity. These are the consolidation of a majoritarian brand in politics, which threatens to annihilate the opposition parties; a noticeable decline in the autonomy of national institutions like the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Enforcement Directorate, the judiciary, and even the mainstream media; and finally, curbs on dissenting workers, farmers, Dalits, students, sportspersons and Muslim women against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, to name just a few of the protesting groups in the polity.