Josy Joseph's ‘The Silent Coup: A History of India’s Deep State’ review: When the security establishment serves the executive G. Sampath https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-silent-coup-a-history-of-indias-deep-state-review-when-the-security-establishment-serves-the-executive/article36513879.ece SEPTEMBER 18, 2021
A journalist argues that India’s ‘war on terror’ has made its security institutions more nationalistic and chauvinistc and more corrupt
you don’t need the military to subvert a democracy. It can also be done through the non-military arm of the security establishment. These include the police, intelligence agencies, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the National Investigation Agency, the Anti-Terrorist Squad, and a multitude of other organisations that, although not an integral part of the ‘security establishment’, do share its capacity to inflict pain, such as the Enforcement Directorate, the Income Tax department, and so on.
The Silent Coup, dwells on the degeneration of the security establishment, which, in his telling, has been completely captured by the political executive
“How did our police and intelligence agencies come to display such utter disrespect for the law, citizens and the state?” Joseph argues that the increasing sophistication of militancy and terrorism challenges so overwhelmed our security agencies that they took the easy way out by turning into law-breakers themselves. Emboldened by the certainty that their sins would be forgiven so long as they served the executive rather than the Constitution they had sworn to defend, their depredations ranged from encounter killings and custodial torture to manufacturing fake narratives, framing innocents, planting evidence, and “even creating terrorist organisations”.
How India's Democracy already has been Subverted | SNL with Akash Banerjee & Josy Joseph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt06qK61u1o Josy Joseph is not making a prediction that our Democracy WILL be subverted; he shows in a cold / calculated way how it has ALREADY being throttled - using the non military security apparatus.