“Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai (Each time Modi runs scared, he cowers behind cops)”. Slogans used at protest sites and in agitations are usually full of hyperbole, and this popular slogan heard across India in recent months should have been no exception. However, the events of the past week show that prime minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah are answering a political crisis of electoral credibility solely with force.Opposition leaders led by leader of opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi have already been physically stopped, manhandled and forcibly detained by Delhi police while challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and demanding the Chief Election Commissioner’s (CEC’s) resignation. On successive days, police used force to prevent MPs from reaching the Election Commission of India (ECI) and Jantar Mantar.Delhi Police, which operates directly under the political control of Shah’s ministry, has now been bolstered with more than 23,000 soldiers from Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF). The CAPFs also come directly under Shah and numerous reports show that security forces in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states have detained – rather, kidnapped – student leaders, activists and politicians from their residences and from inside trains.Acting in a manner that more befits the agents of the BJP, Delhi Police is going around the city, intimidating people in student hostels, mosques and public spaces to keep them away from the protests announced by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and Left student groups on October 10. Tracking previous protesters and threatening pre-emptive detention, it has bullied citizens demanding electoral accountability.Opposition MPs are not a security threatThe Modi-Shah duo’s willingness to suppress opposition by use of force is evidence of their inability to govern and of their poor political acumen. Their tactics is evident. By portraying a political challenge as a security threat, they want to change the rules in the police’s favour. This is the usual practice in autocratic regimes where authorities frame an issue as an existential threat to justify harsh measures beyond ordinary political procedures and legal norms. But a security label by the regime is not evidence of a security threat from democratic protestors. Neither does winning elections entitle Modi to obstruct scrutiny of elections nor does controlling the security forces entitle Shah to treat opposition MPs as enemies of the state.Mirroring Turkey, Russia and HungaryModi and Shah are not the first to use the security machinery against legitimate political actors and deprive voters of their representation. Under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, the security apparatus repeatedly used heavy riot barriers, tear gas and police cordons to block opposition CHP leaders during the 2017 March for Justice and subsequent parliamentary protests in Ankara, preventing opposition figures from establishing visible physical presence near government buildings.Kurdish opposition leader Selahattin Demirtaş was detained on terrorism-related grounds. In 2020, the European Court of Human Rights found that his detention pursued the ulterior purpose of “stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate.”In Putin’s Russia, the Federal Protective Service and police cordoned off central Moscow and intercepted opposition deputies in 2019 before they could reach the Central Election Commission to challenge candidate disqualifications and voter roll manipulations. Similarly, when opposition parties challenged electoral law overhauls in Victor Orban’s Hungary in 2018, the state deployed security forces around administrative centres and used police complaints to portray opposition lawmakers as illegal disrupters of public order.The Delhi Police registering an FIR against LoP Gandhi and other opposition leaders over their entry into Akashvani Bhawan during Wednesday’s (October 7) protest follows this exact pattern of applying penal mechanisms to political demonstrations.Violence a sign of Modi’s declining authorityResorting to physical action rather than institutional dialogue signals a leader relying on state-backed force because his democratic authority to deal with political disputes has been lost. In her book On Violence, Hannah Arendt explains that legitimate political power and physical force exist in inverse proportion. True political power stems from institutional consensus and normative legitimacy, whereas reliance on physical force marks a crisis of democratic capacity. She explains that when a government loses genuine power, i.e., the consensual authority and voluntary compliance of the governed, it frequently resorts to violence as a substitute. However, because force cannot generate legitimacy, using violence erodes whatever political authority remains of the leader.Modi and Shah have perhaps never read Arendt to know that a state deploys riot barriers, police crackdowns or physical detentions precisely when its normative authority and political persuasion no longer suffice. While physical force can compel short-term compliance or clear a street, it destroys the voluntary agreement and trust required for long-term governance. Violence is thus the symptom of declining power and authority, not a sign of strength – that is obvious to anyone observing the Modi regime currently.Counterproductive move as global examples showCrude physical obstruction of prominent opposition leaders is often counterproductive. Instead of managing a political protest quietly, the regime has been providing the opposition with global optics of Modi’s panic and validating the opposition’s narrative. By physically blocking legislators from reaching the CEC, Modi further reinforced public perception that the electoral authority has something to hide. A panicky Modi-Shah duo has blundered by criminalising the protest through Delhi Police FIRs which has elevated Rahul Gandhi’s political stature into a focal point of democratic resistance, generating high-visibility global and domestic attention. Such a heavy-handed security oppression is also counterproductive for Modi because it serves as a powerful trigger that unifies disparate political parties against a common existential threat.There are numerous global examples that using state security to block opposition leaders from challenging electoral institutions routinely backfires by accelerating regime delegitimization. In Senegal (2023–2024), Macky Sall’s government deployed militarised police to block, detain, and criminalise opposition lawmakers challenging electoral procedures. Rather than pacifying the electorate, the heavy-handed intervention triggered widespread public mobilisation, unified the opposition, and led to a crushing electoral defeat for the ruling party in 2024.Across competitive authoritarian systems, from Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia to Viktor Yanukovych’s Ukraine, treating public protests against electoral machinery as security threats strips away the regime’s democratic facade, forcing uncommitted voters into active resistance and turning routine political challenges into systemic crises.Fear of looking weakModi’s political insecurity is not merely a conventional fear of losing an upcoming election in Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat. Autocratic regimes rely heavily on the perceived inevitability and supremacy of their leader. Unlike institutionalised systems that can absorb electoral setbacks, a regime built around Modi’s singular strongman image cannot afford to look vulnerable. His insecurity stems from the decay of this myth. When Gandhi successfully forces Modi onto the defensive by public protests, it shatters the perception of Modi being in complete control. Modi worries that once his aura ruptures, fear-based compliance across the civil service, judiciary and media will also begin to erode.In this logic of strongman politics, concession is seen to be fatal. A regime that projects itself as uncompromising cannot afford to engage in routine democratic give-and-take lest it signals weakness to its core base – and political adversaries. In its calculations, yielding even 50 meters of street for an opposition delegation to march creates a dangerous precedent of proving that public pressure works. To prevent any further subsequent demands, the regime then resorts to disproportionate escalation by police barricades and physical detentions to shut down political challenges.A moment of reckoningWhen Modi treats a political challenge over voter list integrity as a security issue rather than a political debate, it confirms that he lacks the moral and political authority to defend its actions through democratic means. By using physical force and police detentions against high-profile MPs, the regime has elevated Gandhi’s standing, validated opposition’s claim that the Election Commission is compromised and stripped away Modi’s preferred global branding as the “mother of democracy”. A single cause has become a rallying cry for democratic defence of India’s constitution. Rather than projecting strength, deploying thousands of yellow police barricades and loudspeakers blaring threats all over the national capital signals panic in the government. The fear is of a jittery regime unleashing more violence. However, as Arendt notes, “Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.”