ON Feb 4, 2000, Europe was rudely shaken by the entry into Austria’s new coalition government of Jorg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party. It was described as “a party with Nazi echoes”. The mainstream Austrian People’s Party had entered into a Faustian pact with it in order to form a government and get a slice of power. However, as part of the deal, Haider stayed out of the government at the national level. Yet, Austria’s 14 partners in the European Union imposed sanctions on it to register their censure. Had Haider’s game succeeded, Austria would have been split all the way down the middle.

On May 29, this year, to everyone’s relief, it was Austria’s Green party which won the presidential election; but with wafer-thin margin. Its left-leaning septuagenarian leader Alexander Van der Bellen defeated the 45-year-old right-winger Norbert Hofer; but just about. It was the postal ballots which helped. The cleavage in the country is worrisome. Hofer carries a pistol to scare away refugees. Parliamentary elections will be held in two years.

This time Austria is in good company. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front has moved beyond the margins to the centre stage for presidential elections due next year. The incumbent President François Hollande is unpopular. The Conservative former president Nicolas Sarkozy is an unattractive figure.

In Germany the Alternative für Deut­schland has caused ripples. In the Netherlands, Greece, Denmark and Scandinavia, the rightists are resurgent. Their slogans might differ and even change with time. At one time Austria’s Freedom Party was anti-Semitic. It now revels in Islamophobia.

In Britain, the divide between Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party is now­here near as deep. It is, however, significant and does little good to the parliamentary system.

Deep ideological cleavages wipe out the middle ground.

Deep cleavages wipe out the middle ground. That poses a danger to the parliamentary system and an even greater danger to the presidential system. In a parliamentary system, the government commands a majority in parliament. In a presidential system, it may not and invite a deadlock.

Ever since Richard Nixon was ejected from the White House, the Republicans were sworn to exact revenge. Ronald Reagan brought to the presidency partisanship of a sharp degree which has persisted. The spea­ker of the House of Representatives wields great power. Newt Gingrich abused it to obstr­uct President Bill Clinton even to the point of forcing a government shutdown briefly.

The advantage which the parliamentary system enjoys can prove illusory. For, the fundamentals that govern all democracies are the same — the ruling party and opposition can oppose each other but must share common ground on which to wage party warfare.

Democratic government rests on the consent of the governed. But a democratic state rests on an agreed national consensus.

When a political party challenges its opponent to wrest from it popular support, it simply works the democratic system. But when a political party questions the very consensus on which the state itself is based, it strikes at the very foundations of the polity.

This is the menace which the extreme rightists pose to the democratic system. This is the very menace which the BJP, with its ideology of Hindutva, poses to Indian democracy and, indeed, to the state itself.

Since 1969 India has been a split polity. In that year, Indira Gandhi split the Congress party to acquire total power. India has been a split polity all these years. The opposition parties had perforce to unite to defeat her. The vice of dynastic rule was aggravated by the vice of authoritarianism. This continued under Rajiv Gandhi (1984-1989).

However, a far more dangerous element was added when L.K. Advani posed an ideological challenge in 1990 — Hindutva. This is opposed to the very basis of India’s secular state. He engineered the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992. The BJP was in power from 1996-2003 but as head of a coalition.

In 2014 it was swept into power with a massive majority under the leadership of one even more of a Hindutva man than Advani — Narendra Modi. The deadlock in parliament now is a reflection of basic ideological divisions in the country.

Elsewhere, in Bangladesh it is not ideology so much as history which divides the leaders of the two main political parties the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Yet the rift is so deep as to make cooperation, even in the national interest, almost impossible.

The truth was well stated by statesman A.J. Balfour nearly a century ago. A democracy cannot work if the divisions among the people are “either too numerous or too profound”. In such a case, “a change in administration would in fact be a revolution disguised under a constitutional procedure” — and democracy will suffer.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2016