The proverbial State and Church should, under ideal circumstances, be separated by miles. Yet one of Indian democracy’s peculiarities — perversions — has been the stealthy bridging of this important gap. The result has been the rise of the phenomenon of the party-State, an arrangement where an albeit democratically-elected party goes on to gradually take over and, ultimately, eclipse the State. What is significant is that this transgression takes place under the very nose of democracy’s minders and — this is even more interesting — brutal electoral mandates are, indeed, the principal causal factor in the party infiltrating the State. Bengal has been a witness to such intrusions. During the long reign of the Left Front, the State became synonymous with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), leading to a dangerous constriction of democratic rights and even personal liberties: the infamous, local nagarik committees served as the party’s eyes and ears in every neighbourhood. Having dislodged the Left, Mamata Banerjee had a golden opportunity to snip the wings of the behemoth ogre that was the party and liberate the State from its tentacles: but she chose to replicate the Left’s template while curating it in her own style. One of the reasons for Bengal’s rejection of Ms Banerjee is certainly the hegemony and the consequent arrogance of the Trinamool Congress. Would the Bharatiya Janata Party, a traditionally regimented outfit now armed with a massive mandate, choose to buck the trend set earlier by the Left and the TMC? A dispassionate assessment of its record in this respect in the rest of the country would not elicit much hope.
In fact, this is an era of a worrying global phenomenon: the hollowing out of democratic institutions by democratically elected regimes. But there is hope — yet. And it lies with the judiciary. India’s courts have had a luminous record when it comes to challenging and halting the excesses perpetrated by an aggressive executive. This has cemented the judiciary’s legacy as a necessary check on the powers of a roguish executive. That august mantle would now befall the courts in Bengal, including the Calcutta High Court. Autonomy and the rejection of political partisanship have served the judiciary well when it comes to meeting this challenge. These values must continue to inform Bengal’s judicial apparatus.