The hurry the Lok Sabha secretariat displayed in disqualifying Congress leader Rahul Gandhi speaks volumes about the rising political intolerance in India. With Bharatiya Janata Party leaders taught to treat political rivals as mortal enemies, they perceive the disabling of Rahul from contesting any election for the next eight years as their triumph. They see not our democracy dying, week by week, as the nation slides towards the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in How Democracies Die, write, “Mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives” are necessary conditions for America’s democracy to survive. In America as in India, “mutual toleration” and “restraint” are no longer considered a sin qua non of democracy.