The Narendra Modi government frequently posits India as a ‘Vishwaguru’ or world leader. How the world sees India is often lost in this branding exercise. Outside India, global voices are monitoring and critiquing human rights violations in India and the rise of Hindutva. We present here fortnightly highlights of what a range of actors – from UN experts and civil society groups to international media and parliamentarians of many countries – are saying about the state of India’s democracy.
Read the fortnightly roundup for June 16-30, 2024.
International Media reports
ABC News, Australia, June 17
Four Corners’ new episode “Infiltrating Australia” by Avani Dias, the ABC reporter who left India virtually overnight after the Indian government deemed her work too critical and denied her visa renewal, investigates how the Indian state and its “local nest of spies” has targeted members of the Indian diaspora and sought to influence Australian politicians. The episode also covers the growth of Hindu nationalist organisations within Australia – the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) and the Overseas Friends of the BJP – including the “toxicity” of HSS paramilitary-style camps for children.
Bloomberg, US, June 17
Andy Mukherjee analyses a recent survey of small firms which shows a near-8% growth in employment figures but also that the vast majority are in “low-productivity hovels where their incomes are insufficient to cope with prices”. Mukherjee also notes that “surplus Indian labour is stranded in villages, somehow trying to cope with the double whammy of high cost of living and lack of better-paying formal jobs.”
Despite “the equity market’s cheery story of rapid GDP growth” he concludes that the economy is “ultimately powered by mass spending” which requires “jobs and incomes at the bottom of the pyramid, not just the top.”
The Guardian, UK, June 21
Salil Tripathi writes in an opinion piece that despite the threat of arrest of Arundhati Roy, although voices have been raised globally, within India “Roy is not getting an outpouring of public sympathy” because “the powerful in India want to hear only praise; Roy keeps reminding the world of the rot within”. “Pursuing someone as high-profile as Roy is the government’s way of warning critics” that they are not “chastened” after their electoral defeat. Tripathi concludes, “the sword hangs over the critics.”
Democracy Now, USA, June 17
In his interview with Amy Goodman, the author Siddhartha Deb, who teaches at The New School in New York, reflects on the Indian government’s decision to charge Arundhati Roy under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), one of India’s terrorism laws. She is being prosecuted for comments she made in 2010 about Kashmir. The symbolic import of the threat includes Prime Minister Modi trying to show that “everything is normal” despite the electoral setback and to placate “his rabid attack dogs of Hindu nationalism.” According to Deb, the motive is clear, “they want to shut down thought. And that’s what this is about.”
Financial Times, UK, June 23
In his first interview since the elections, Rahul Gandhi said that “a tectonic shift has taken place in Indian politics”. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will “struggle” to survive because what worked for them in 2014 and 2019 is no longer working. “The space in the Indian political system has been blown open,” said Gandhi. He believes that under “fairer conditions” the Opposition INDIA alliance would have undoubtedly “won a majority”.
Middle East Eye, June 24
In his article on the significance of the threat to arrest Arundhati Roy, Azad Essa writes that the “attack” on Roy is much more than an issue of “free speech” as it bares the “effort” of the Indian state to “hide its own history”. Since Modi was elected in 2014, India moved to a “Hindu state in the mould of an ethnocracy like Israel”. Like Israel, India subdued democratic institutions like civil society, the judiciary, and the press to operate “to the dictums of Hindu majoritarianism”. He also notes that “in the midst of the genocide against the Palestinians, a right-wing Indian commentator called for an “Israel-like solution in Kashmir”.
Al Jazeera, Qatar, June 26
Federica Marsi writes that according to documents seen by Al Jazeera, explosives on a cargo ship (Borkum) were found to be “loaded in India en route to Israel’s port of Ashdod” only 30 km from Gaza.
The explosives included tonnes of heavy rocket engines and explosive substances. This adds to “mounting evidence” that India is “quietly” sending weapons to Israel while the war in Gaza is raging, though analysts say it is difficult to confirm due to a lack of “verifiable information”. The director of an Indian company that manufactures parts of rocket motors that go into missiles confirmed in March receiving a payment for an “Israel export order”.
PBS, USA, June 27
PBS News Hour features a video on how India’s Muslims continue to face discrimination after the elections. “Within weeks of Modi’s re-election, three Muslim men have been killed, allegedly in a hate crime. And over a dozen Muslim homes have been demolished in states ruled by his party,” reports producer Zeba Warsi. She speaks to Milan Vaishnav, Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who says that the state is “giving or granting a broad permission structure under which these groups are allowed to act with impunity”.
Also interviewed was Muzammil Salmani, the teacher at a school running in a 13th century mosque in Delhi which was demolished “without notice”. When asked why the mosque was “targeted”, Salmani answered, “A 700-year-old mosque cannot be an illegal encroachment. They are demolishing the Constitution of India. They are demolishing an idea of India.”
Experts say
The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Indian authorities to “immediately renew” the journalism permit of French reporter Sébastien Farcis and “cease using legal technicalities to prevent journalists from carrying out their duties”. Reporting from India for 13 years, Farcis is married to an Indian citizen and holds an OCI visa. He said he was “forced to leave” India in June 2024 after the Indian government refused to renew his journalism permit. He is the second French journalist in four months to leave India under similar circumstances. CPJ is aware that at least five OCI-holder foreign correspondents have been banned from working as journalists in India over the past two years.
The UN High Commissioner for Human rights Volker Turk in his global update to the Human Right Council mentioned a “worrying trend” of “so-called “transparency” or “foreign influence” laws in over 50 countries, including India, in 2023. “These laws risk having serious chilling effects on the work of civil society, freedom of expression and of association”. In 2023, the Indian government placed further procedural demands on NGOs through amendments to the Rules on foreign donations. Since 2015, the Indian government have cancelled the licences to receive foreign funding of more than 16,000 NGOs.
Chirantan Chatterjee, professor of development economics, innovation and global health at the University of Sussex analyses the election results in India with verdicts in Mexico and South Africa, the other two global South countries which also voted this year. He interprets the results as “loud and clear: justice and equality are their people’s top priorities circa 2024.” In a context of the growing Right in Europe and the United States, Chatterjee writes that these results are “a wake-up call for the world to acknowledge the Global South not just for its rising influence but also for the commitment of its people to justice.”
PEN International, an organisation that promotes literature and speaks out for writers silenced in their own countries, called for an “immediate halt” to all legal proceedings against Arundhati Roy and Sheikh Showkat Hussain, and to amend the UAPA to conform to international standards, including the right to freedom of expression. Executive Director, Romana Cacchioli, said, “counter terrorism legislation must never be used as a tool to criminalise peaceful dissent.”
English Pen, the founding centre of PEN International has awarded the PEN Pinter Prize 2024 to Arundhati Roy . She will receive the award in a ceremony co-hosted by the British Library on 10 October 2024. The award is given in memory of the playwright Harold Pinter to those who cast “an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’.”
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released its 2024 Annual Report, and its major findings on India is that “religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate” in 2023, with the central and many state governments allowing hate and violence against religious minorities. The USCIRF recommends to the US State Department to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern, among 16 other countries, based on the Indian government “engaging in or tolerating particularly severe violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief”. At the report’s release on June 26, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said “in India we see a concerning increase in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, demolitions of homes and places of worship for members of minority faith communities”.
The Polis Project, a New York-based research and journalism organisation, published a short report of the mistreatment meted out to political prisoners, particularly those accused under the UAPA, by prison authorities in India, ranging from denial of medical aid and treatment, terrible conditions in high-security cells, and blocking communication with relatives in their native language. Jail authorities denied differential treatment.
Indian diaspora and civil society groups
A joint report by several diaspora and international groups – Dalit Solidarity Forum, Indian American Muslim Council, India Civil Watch International, Hindus for Human Rights, and Tech Justice Law Project – exposes YouTube’s shielding of Sudarshan News (a Hindi news channel in India) propagating hate speech and misinformation. The groups’ researchers reported 26 videos that appeared on the Sudarshan’s YouTube channel in the run-up to India’s 2024 elections to YouTube, for violations of its policies on hate speech and misinformation. The report states that at the time of publication, “YouTube had not taken any of them down”. Only after an affiliate of Boom Live, a fact-checking platform, covered the report, YouTube reportedly took down one video, and blocked ads from several videos. This was also covered by Disinformantebr an organisation working against disinformation in Brazil.
In a press statement issued after India’s 2024 elections, the Indian American Muslim Council expressed hope that opposition parties will “promote inclusivity and tolerance and to engage in efforts to deradicalise a public that has become deeply insensitive to the suffering of Muslims and other minority groups”. It pointed out that the few weeks since the election result have witnessed lynchings, Muslim homes being bulldozed, the removal of mentions of the Babri Masjid from school textbooks and the threat that Arundhati Roy and Sheikh Shaukat Hussain will be charged under UAPA. “We celebrate hope, but there is no denying that there is still much work to be done”, said IAMC Executive Director Rasheed Ahmed.
Read the previous roundup here.
