With each passing day, it is becoming clear that as President, Donald Trump is not only disfiguring American democracy but is also giving “democracy” a bad name. He has managed, within ten weeks, to dislodge the United States from its pedestal as a vibrant democracy that once set the bench-mark as an arrangement for orderly government. US Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, FDR, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama inspired generations of freedom-loving people across the world. In their eyes, American democracy was the ideal, worthy of emulation and replication. All that is now gone. Trump and his band of buccaneers have conspired to devalue and demean the US model.Like all classic demagogues, Trump has converted his narrow margin in the last presidential election into a sweeping mandate, claiming for himself maximalist authority in violation of the established tenets of division of power, checks and balances and democratic accountability. He has read into his moderate mandate a legitimacy to do away with institutions of restraint and constraint designed to ensure that presidential authority would not be exercised arbitrarily and excessively. He is setting a very unfortunate example to leaders across the world. Turkey’s Erdogan is already busy arresting potential rivals.Trump’s most brazen and most dangerous endeavour so far has been a consistent and wilful thrashing of American judiciary. All presidents have, admittedly, chafed at the courts whenever they struck down an executive move as unlawful. Yet no president could bring himself to call an unhelpful judge names. Now, President Trump and his spokespersons routinely flail judges as “activist judge” or as “Obama judge”. The other day when a federal Judge halted the dismantling of the Social Security Administration, an unfazed White House spokesperson retorted: “Another activist judge abusing the judicial system to try and sabotage the president’s attempt to rid the government of waste, fraud and abuse.”Over the years, particularly since Barrack Obama’s election as president, political partisanship has slowly and steady corroded the American republic’s admirable constitutional certitude. It has been a normal occurrence for Supreme Court judges to face demonstrations and pickets outside their residence. But now, a sitting president seems to be leading the mob, and senior Republican operatives are calling for the impeachment of judges who have ruled against the White House firmans. Chief Justice Roberts had to caution the president and others against this organised name-calling. But it is no longer beyond the realm of possibility that the Trump White House – goaded and provoked by the oligarchs in the president’s inner circle – may decide to ignore or defy the Supreme Court. The chief justice of the United States has no tank divisions of his own to enforce the court’s writ.India’s stake in the unfolding Trump versus American democracy dramaPresident Trump has now tasted blood. He has corralled, if not exactly, tamed the once fiercely defiant and independent media; unthinkably, he has denied the trusted and reliable Associated Press access to the White House. He has succeeded in making Columbia University bend at the knee. American campuses have traditionally been the most vibrant site of questioning dogmas and orthodoxy; Trump wants to de-fang and degrade this source of resistance and defiance.There is nothing high-minded about this assertion of presidential authority. His playbook has, in fact, been finessed by assorted autocrats and authoritarians across the globe. And, essentially, it is a fight between the American people and their new rulers.We in India are not directly in this fight but we do have a stake in the unfolding Trump versus American democracy drama: We must guard against our rulers using Trump’s base and unhealthy habits as an example to further curtail our already shrunken democratic space.The Modi crowd is rather good in selectively using foreign events and personalities to rationalise and justify the government’s stupidities and follies, as also to tar and bracket the opposition with the “outsiders’” acts of omission and commission.Also Read: Trump’s Washington Will Severely Test Modi’s IndiaFor example, there is absolutely no cause for any celebration when President Trump cites Indian elections as a model of perfection. He is deep up to his neck in this corrupt American game of electoral malpractices; he has no commitment to the ideal of unscathed integrity of the election process; he simply wants to control and centralise the process so that only his Republican Party would retain its dominance.A word of praise from a dictatorial figure should be not be allowed to be flaunted as a certificate of good conduct for the vastly imperfect working of the Election Commission of India. Our democratic fight for restoration of the autonomy, independence, and impartiality of the ECI must continue if we are to survive as a constitutional republic. Now that high officials with Indian names like Krish Patel and Tulsi Gabbard are among the majordomos in the American empire of coercion and control, our rulers may be tempted to imitate Washington’s new habits of surveillance and spy-craft. We, of course, have our own rusty and crude Police State protocols and processes, all of which are unhesitatingly used against anyone who manages to defy or just annoy a senior darbari in the Modi Court. We need to be watchful because the inner core lording over Raisina Hill is hopelessly enamoured of the American ways. It needs to be noted that since Trump came back to power, a subtle front has been opened against the Supreme Court of India and the higher judiciary.And, then, there is the unprecedented voice that has been accorded to the oligarchs in the Trump administration. The ubiquitous presence of Elon Musk and other oligarchs would be serenaded in the Modi ecosystem as government and society benefitting from the entrepreneur’s’ imagination and ingenuity. The American tableau will, of course, be one more argument to firewall the handful of crony capitalists who are having the run of the place in New Delhi.Since the heady advent of globalisation, we have benefitted from the support and encouragement from the global community in deepening the working of our democratic arrangements. The US – now under Trump – can longer be a source of comfort and inspiration to those who want to roll back the creeping authoritarianism. That is just as well. We will need to learn to fight our own battles, with our own “made in India” methods of resistance and struggle in defence of the democracy and the constitution.Harish Khare was editor of The Tribune.
