Pakistan, for one, is not surprised at all that India has topped the list of 21 countries that curbed citizens’ access to the internet in 2020, according to a report by Top10VPN, a London based Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. It is also no surprise that “India continued to restrict internet access more than any other country – over 75 times,” and that the majority of these blackouts were “highly targeted.” The report also mentions that this is not a one-off thing but rather a trend lasting a number of years, which reflects very poorly on the world’s largest democracy. An exercise as simple as putting two and two together will tell you that this trend strengthened in the years that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has held power with Narendra Modi as prime minister. The party’s policies like demonitisation, ending the special status of Kashmir, disenfranchising the Muslim community and its single-minded agenda of shoving the Hindutva doctrine down everybody throats and turning India into what is referred to as a Hindu Rashtra have, quite naturally, led to a lot of criticism. And the most straightforward way the Indian government could think of dealing with all the pushback was depriving people of the internet so they could not be heard by too many others. But in doing that the Indian government hasn’t won too many points for being too smart. For one thing, as already mentioned, it clearly dents any pride India takes in being the world largest democracy. For if the government of the day goes out of its way to deprive citizens of the right to expression and still celebrates its democratic credentials then it doesn’t come across as very smart. For another thing, this government has done lasting damage to India’s celebrated secular credentials. No matter how different governments have treated the country’s minorities, its constitution still gives everybody equal rights, right up to holding its most coveted positions. And the Modi team is clearly bent upon stripping the constitution of such niceties and replacing it with its own Hindutva dogma. But it forgets that in a democracy the very people they are trying to silence have the right to elevate whomever they like to the premiership when it’s time for the next election. *