Bottom-up Autocratization: Political Violence and Autocratization in India

How does violent mobilization drive autocratization in India? Autocratization literature primarily attributes the erosion of democratic norms to top-down mechanisms, where aggrandizing executives systematically enervate democratic institutions and norms. However, adopting a contentious politics approach, which recognizes the role non-state actors play in politics acting inside and outside formal political mechanisms, this paper contends that a significant dimension of democratic decline emerges from the bottom-up — through the proliferation of violent vigilante groups. This paper explores a critical yet unexplored aspect of democratic decline: the role of grassroots violent mobilization. The erosion of democratic norms has been predominantly attributed to top-down mechanisms, wherein power-centric executives systematically weaken democratic institutions. Contrary to this prevailing view, we propose that a significant threat to democracy also emerges from the grassroots level, particularly through the rise of violent vigilante groups. We contribute to the literature by examining how violent social movements can drive autocratization from the bottom up by dovetailing with nationalist populist actors who have been identified as iconoclasts of democratic institutions, civil liberties and the rule of law. Emphasizing the pivotal role of violent actors in the interplay between top-down and bottom-up dynamics, it brings together the literature on contentious politics, political violence, and democratic backsliding. Political violence acts as a conduit between populist politics and social movements, hardening political cleavages, deepening polarization, and rallying support for illiberal policies because of its effectiveness in evoking fear and anger. We argue that mobilization and legitimization of a change project is closely related to political violence, as non-violent and violent strategies often work in tandem to reinforce and legitimize one another. Legitimization of and by violence is key to successful implementation of such a change project. On the one hand, elite discourses legitimizing violence can contribute to radicalization within the population, incentivizing the mushrooming of violent repertoires. On the other hand, political elites can benefit from condoning or inciting violence by taking on the mantle of "community defenders", thereby institutionalizing violent actors who had previously been seen as fringe, extremist outsiders. Hence, by focusing on social movements’ political violence, we can explore how local level dynamics can lead to polarization and how, once entrenched, polarization can act as a springboard for further autocratization. This paper analyzes the case of violent vigilante groups mobilized in response to the Islamophobic conspiracy theory of ‘love-jihad’ in India. This movement’s success has in turn led to Hindu nationalist political leaders co-opting these movements and passing and strengthening anti-conversion laws that seek to regulate religious conversions due to inter-faith marriages. This paper explores this dynamic by applying the qualitative method process tracing, which we contend is the most effective approach to studying contentious politics. The analysis draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources like newspaper articles, social media data in the form of photo, video, and text, political speeches, (international) reports, and academic literature. Available secondary sources are supplemented with semi-structured elite interviews conducted in different parts of India.