A question of order

Basharat Peer

"What happens when a democratically elected leader evolves into an authoritarian ruler, limiting press freedom, civil liberties, and religious and ethnic tolerance? India and Turkey are two of the world's biggest democracies--multi-ethnic nations that rose from their imperial past to be founded on the values of modernity. They have fair elections, open markets, and freedom of religion. Yet this is an account of how the charismatic strongmen Narendra Modi, in India, and Recep Tyyip Erdoğan, in Turkey, used the power they had won as elected heads of state to push their countries toward authoritarian ways. Journalist Basharat Peer knows only too well how the tyranny of the majority can exact a terrible human toll; it's a story he told in Curfewed Night, his memoir of growing up in war-torn Kashmir. For this book, Peer spent a year and a half traveling across India and Turkey to chronicle...