Abstract:

"DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS surveys the recent events which led to the religious strife tearing India apart. Moving from countryside to cities, universities to dusty villages, and from interviews with India's backwards castes to campaign trips with Prime Ministerial candidates, this film covers the 20 months following Rajiv Gandhi's ouster in 1989, through his assasination, and the violent and chaotic election which followed it. Assessing the short tenured and ineffective governments which followed Gandhi's removal, DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS examines the strains in India's social fabric caused by the political emergence of the lower castes, who are 52% of the population; the revival of Hindu fundamentalism, nurtured by the Indian right wing as an answer to this new threat; and perceived interference by outside organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. India has also been under tremendous pressure from separatist states within, including Punjab, Assam, Kashmir, and Bengal, all of which are demanding greater autonomy, if not absolute independence. As successive governments fail to unify a nation torn by communal violence, caste battles, and civil strife, the religious zeal of the fundamentalists -- now beyond the control of any political party -- threatens to end India's existence as a democratic secular state. While the December 1992 razing of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, focused the world's attention on India's tumult, DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS provides the recent history needed to fully understand its potential impact on this nation of over 900 million people."