NEW DELHI — A fair and independent electoral process, an independent judiciary, a Parliament with a noisy opposition, a relatively free press and an army that has stayed away from politics have defined India since it adopted its Constitution in 1950.

India stood apart in the developing world as a country where the Constitution served as the basis for the operations of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. But it has taken just four years of the Bharatiya Janata Party government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the country to realize how fragile that achievement was, how close it has come to being subverted.

India has a fairly decentralized system of governance. States are governed by chief ministers, who are the elected leaders of a political party or a coalition of parties that has a majority of the seats in a state assembly. An Indian state also has a governor, a federal appointee holding a ceremonial, nonpartisan, constitutional position. After an election, the governor invites the party or the coalition that won the most seats to form the government.

While every government has attempted to use this office to its own ends, the corrosion of the governor’s office became evident this month after state elections in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. An alliance of parties opposed to Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. won a majority of the seats. Karnataka’s governor, Vajubhai Vala, who used to be an aide to Mr. Modi, was constitutionally bound to invite the non-B.J.P. alliance to form the government.