Raymond Aron on Totalitarianism and the Contemporary Indian Regime

The present-day Indian regime has repeatedly been accused of being totalitarian in its functioning. Such stamping has been done by various politicians belonging to different political parties, and sometimes intellectuals have also raised their voices against the fierce means used by the ruling party and its allied organizations for the certification of its ideology. In the discipline of political science, there is no such measuring rod available to know the scale of authoritarianism, but fortunately, Raymond Aron’s five main elements on totalitarianism could assuredly see if any such tendencies are present, if not measuring its extent. These elements though put forward by analysing twentieth century regimes, still hold firm for the twenty-first century regimes and could definitely be used for examination. An analysis brings to the light that the regime does hold some proportions of all the five elements, though these might be considered insignificant by some.

Keywords:
Raymond Aron, Totalitarianism, Democracy, BJP