This talk assesses the present condition and near-term prospects of India’s democracy. It
combines three views: a short-range view (since 2014), a medium-range view (since the
end-1980s, when Congress dominance of the nation’s polity definitively ended and the first
ascendancy of Hindu nationalism began), and a long-range view, of political evolution since
independence and the subsequent proclamation of the republic. The talk suggests that while India is in transition to a de facto ‘second republic’ based on the political creed of Hindutva, the emerging Hindu nationalist republic has a long back-story since independence and represents both continuity with and divergence from the republic founded in 1950. The talk focuses on the Indian case but makes comparative references to global political trends.

Sumantra Bose is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at Krea University. He
previously taught for more than two decades at the London School of Economics and
Political Science, where he held a chair in international and comparative politics for fifteen
years. Bose is the author of nine books, which include Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist
Partition and International Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2002), Contested Lands:
Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka (Harvard University Press, 2007),
Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey, and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge
University Press, 2018), Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21 st -Century Conflict (Yale
University Press, 2021), and The Modi Era: India and the Story of a Democracy in Eclipse
(Yale University Press, forthcoming 2026). He regularly contributes opinion and commentary
on contemporary issues to major international media. Bose was born and grew up in
Calcutta, where he studied for twelve years at St Xavier’s Collegiate School. He graduated in
1992 from Amherst College, Massachusetts (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and
received the PhD in political science from Columbia University in 1998.

All are welcome!