Opinion | Indian Democracy Isn’t Dead After All

For more than three decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has cultivated a political mystique sustained by fear, awe and reverence, giving rise to one of the most formidable cults of personality in the democratic world.

That image has disintegrated.

What began as a scattered outcry by students over the leaking of questions on medical school entrance exams morphed over several weeks into the most politically consequential mutiny against the prime minister of his 12 years in power.

A broad coalition of students, recent graduates, unemployed workers, farmers and a handful of celebrities rallied behind the movement. In an unmatched display of public ridicule, they mocked the most powerful Indian leader in two generations on the streets and across social media before marching on Parliament in New Delhi. Police officers, armed with batons and tear gas, descended on protesters. But last weekend Mr. Modi, forced into a corner, ultimately acquiesced to the resignation of his education minister — the unlikeliest of concessions from a man whose defining political trait has been his unwillingness to yield.

This summer’s uprising was about far more than leaked examinations. It was a test of Indian democracy’s capacity to correct itself.

The movement was an eruption of the accumulated frustrations of a generation of younger Indians who could no longer reconcile their wretched reality with the fable of a prosperous “New India” purveyed by the prime minister. The country’s seemingly invincible leader was forced into a rare retreat, suggesting that despite a decade of Mr. Modi’s efforts to hollow out democratic institutions and concentrate power around himself, the ultimate guardians of Indian democracy may still be its citizens.

Mr. Modi rose to power on the promise of a corruption-free land of progress and opportunity where millions of jobs would be created and poor Indian citizens could receive 1.5 million rupees (about $15,700 at current exchange rates) if money allegedly stashed in foreign banks by corrupt citizens was repatriated.

Instead, he has delivered a self-venerating, incompetent and malevolent Hindu-first regime, in which the superrich have become an entrenched oligarchy that controls vast resources and is, in effect, in command of the economy. Joblessness is rife, especially among the young. The government uses savagery against Muslims and other religious minorities to distract a self-pitying Hindu majority from the prime minister’s failure to upgrade their standard of living, and institutions indispensable to the health of Indian democracy, such as Parliament, the judiciary and the press, sing from Mr. Modi’s hymn sheet.

The glorification of the prime minister has become a pre-eminent priority of the state machinery. The largest stadium in India is named after him, rations to the poorest have been doled out in bags bearing his picture, officials compel students to celebrate his birthday and mass gatherings are organized for citizens to listen to his radio broadcasts. A sense of resignation overtook the general public who, disregarded by Mr. Modi’s overweening regime and failed by an ineffective political opposition, had convinced themselves that he could not be beaten in the polls.

Mr. Modi, now 75 years old, may eventually accept that he is too out of touch to lead the world’s largest youth population and fade away. But, wounded and weak, he may also be more dangerous and unpredictable than before and may seek to restore his bruised authority. Reports are emerging of the police, in violation of assurances given by the government to protesters, detaining or arresting students after the protests wound down last weekend.

Either way, the man who once claimed to be an “instrument for God,” endowed with divine energy, has been spectacularly humbled.

“I grew up being taught to venerate him,” a young student told me last Friday at a Delhi protest site, where volunteers handed out food and water, fanned strangers with pieces of cardboard and crowds broke into chants like, “Whenever Modi’s filled with fear, ‘Hindu-Muslim’ is what you’ll hear.”

“But why should we be led by a man who has so far not produced his diploma?” he added, referring to a long-running controversy over university diplomas that Mr. Modi’s party has released but whose authenticity is far from settled.

The irony of Mr. Modi’s disputed academic credentials was not lost on the student protesters.

For millions of young Indians, acing the fiercely competitive entrance exams for professional degree programs is a pathway to a life of dignity. Families incur debts, pawn jewelry or mortgage their homes to pay for the tutoring needed to prepare their children.

But test questions for a range of examinations are regularly leaked and sold, upending the lives of students who had spent grueling months preparing. The breaking point came in May, when the national medical school entrance examination taken by more than two million students was canceled and rescheduled because of a breach. Some students took their own lives upon learning they would have to retake the exam.

The outrage intensified when India’s chief justice, in an unrelated comment, likened unemployed young people to “cockroaches,” giving the protesters their symbol. The Cockroach Janta Party — a riff on Mr. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party — was born. What began as a joke became a vehicle for the rage of a generation. Millions rallied around the movement across the country, demanding the resignation of India’s education minister and compensation for families of the students who died by suicide. A Gandhian hunger strike by a prominent activist and several students supercharged the movement.

At first, the government ignored the protesters; its myrmidons in the media painted them as tools of foreign forces seeking to destabilize India. But videos of the police beating young Indians during the largely peaceful demonstrations in Delhi on July 20 exposed the lie. Mr. Modi slipped out of Parliament that day under heavy guard, his aura of indomitability trampled in the melee.

Digitally connected, youth-led movements across South Asia have deposed increasingly autocratic regimes in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal in recent years. Mr. Modi, despite the worsening prospects for India’s young, had largely dodged those currents. Now, his record is catching up with him.

The extraordinary events in India this summer have revealed how deeply the democratic habits promoted by the nation’s founders have percolated. Young Indians have handed the world’s largest democracy another chance at survival.

Kapil Komireddi is an Indian journalist and the author of “Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India.” He is working on a global history of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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