India and the US are operating under a similar form of authoritarianism that has emerged from substantially similar reasons, while being distinctly different from that found in other countriesLast week the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, announced an investigation into Signal groups monitoring the activity of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel in Minnesota. It is no coincidence that this sounds very much like the rationale behind which the Indian government has gone after Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, and others protesting the National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act in the 2020 Delhi riots case. In both cases, the government seeks to criminalise group conversations about dissent that is central to democratic politics. The anti-democratic regimes in India and the United States have deep similarities, and those similarities deserve specific focus. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.For example, John Burn-Murdoch wrote recently in the Financial Times comparing Trump’s assault on democratic institutions, and how this compares with democratic backsliding in Hungary, Venezuela, Russia, and Turkey. Don Moynihan, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, reads the data differently, but does not quibble with Burn-Murdoch’s choice of comparative countries. But it is worthwhile to note that none of the countries being compared have a long or deep history of democracy. All the countries – unlike the US – have very centralised governance structures, with little in the way of federation. Burn-Murdoch’s 10 metrics – Electoral integrity, judicial independence, media freedom, central bank independence, civil service & bureaucratic autonomy, toleration/encouragement of political violence, use of state force against civilians, legislative constraints on executive, targeting political opponents, and civil liberties & human rights – are important, but wouldn’t it be wise to compare how they are faring in a country similar to the US?It is not just the long and deep history of democracy in the countries that is important, or just the (weak) federalism, but also deep structural similarities of the Modi/Trump anti-democratic project. Critical to both these regimes have been a long-fought ‘culture war’ – one that pits ‘True Americans/True Indians’ against perfidious minorities (and also women). In the US the cleavage has been over race and religion, in India, it has been over caste and religion. In both cases, important legal and constitutional provisions have been used to stoke tensions. In the US this was the end of racial segregation in schools, as well as the autonomy of women to decide over abortion in the 60s and 70s, and in India over separate legal provisions for Muslims (and Kashmiris) as well as reservations in public administration for suppressed caste groups. In both countries, the support for the most reactionary politics has come from states within the Union which have the lowest human development indicators. In both countries, the Supreme Court has played an extremely partisan role, refusing to confront the executive on issues of substance, often finding a way to green flag executive impropriety, so much so that the lawyer and legal commentator Gautam Bhatia has spoken of an “Executive Judiciary.” In both cases, the prime executive has surrounded himself with oligarchs, who have – often after ‘helpful’ state action – taken over media organisations that were mainstream and known for investigative journalism. And it is worth noting that in both cases, the current avatar of macho nationalism came to power after a visible minority became the chief executive of the country for the first time in its history.Nor do the list of similarities end there. There is the attack on verifiable statistics – particularly on the economy, the pressure on the independence of the central bank, the use of federal forces (the Enforcement Directorate and the Election Commission in India, and others) to pressurise Opposition states and politicians, the elimination of important public institutions – such as the Planning Commission, the elevation of sycophants to positions of authority, handpicking and extending the term of key bureaucrats, and the relentless projection of one man with his name plastered over everything, the relentless bragging about how they are perceived by the world, and the unending effort to disenfranchise and suppress visible minorities.There are differences, to be sure, and many of them are substantial, but at the core of the similarity of the Trump and Modi regimes is a politics of resentment by oligarchs and a ruling minority that fears the equal opportunity that democracy makes possible for heretofore suppressed groups. These are regimes that are making explicit who can and cannot be allowed to rule. This ‘bending of the moral arc of the universe towards justice’ is the core threat that mediocre men in positions of power seek to reverse. Having won political power through electoral means – facilitated by enormous amounts of oligarchic capital, fawning press coverage, and a compromised criminal justice system – these leaders are both dependent upon and threatened by the democratic apparatus that they lead. It is designed to reject them, and thus it must be moulded around their specific needs. At the same time, unlike authoritarian leaders in weak and shorter-term democracies, the existence of a democratic framework is critical to their legitimacy.One way that these authoritarians have tried to preserve the façade of staying within constitutional norms is by relying on “anti-terror” laws.Both the US and India have existing “anti-terror” laws and “anti-terror” infrastructure that have limited oversight and have historically allowed the punishment of innocents as process rather than judgment. Decades of state terror and malfeasance has happened before these leaders came to power, and there is nothing stopping them from using those powers. More useful for these anti-democratic regimes is that the long history of democracy of their nations, especially in relation to weak democracies near them, has left the countries unable to critically assess the quality of their own democratic health or decline. The absolute failure of civil society and academic disciplines in measuring the health of democracy within the US, or within India, has been stunning. The US Congress has had multiple hearings on various forms of freedom under threat overseas, producing numerous reports. No such hearings or reports exist of failures within the US under a comprehensive rubric. India has multiple rankings on business but still relies on external data when measuring its democratic health. This lack of objective assessment and measurement along with their respective claims as the oldest democracy – US and the mother of democracy – India (raising the awkward question of who the father was – British colonialism?) obscures the real damage being done to democracy within the countries both for citizens and outsiders.In the meanwhile, what these regimes practice is authoritarianism a la carte. It is not the whole course, because the governance model that they sit on does not allow it, compared to say the Chinese state system, or the Israeli operations in occupied Palestinian territories. Nor are the polities like those of Russia, Turkey, Venezuela or Hungary that have had a long history of undemocratic rule, so that there is a recognisable shape for anti-democratic regimes to fit themselves into. In both such cases – authoritarianism designed into a system, or a system returning to authoritarian practices of the past, there is a bottom-up structure that helps the authoritarian leader on top. In contrast, the authoritarianism a la carte being practiced in India and the United States is much more top-down, and must rely on focussed bouts of unfreedom directed at discrete groups, within discrete boundaries. The repression is just as brutal within these boundaries, but it is not wholesale.This form of unfreedom is understudied, and it is a shame that the world remains fundamentally uncaring about Indian democracy. Had it studied it a bit more – both its successes and failures – and taken it seriously as a model for other democracies, including those in rich countries, we may have been able to avoid a similar failure in the US, or at least been much clearer in understanding what was happening.Omair Ahmad has worked as a political analyst and journalist in India, the US and the UK.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.