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 July 1-15, 2024.
International media reports
Global Governance News, Asia, July 1
The article reports that a police case was filed in Manipur against Uday Reddy, an Indian-origin professor of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, UK, on the grounds that he had insulted the religious beliefs of the Meitei community and promoted enmity on religious grounds through his messages and social media interactions.
The article also reports that his social media account has been withheld in India.
In support of Uday Reddy, the Kuki Students’ Organisation (KSO) Delhi “highlighted similar actions against other academics critical of Indian policies, citing the case of Swedish-based professor Ashok Swain.”
The Jacobin, US, July 3
Safa Ahmed writes that Narendra Modi has “decimated Indian democracy” by “punishing” “journalists, activists, students, and lawyers” for criticising him or his government. This “crackdown” has been enforced through weaponising the anti-terror UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act). She argues that with the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral setback, “India’s more secular opposition” is now “better positioned to hold it to account”. This presents “a crucial opportunity” to free “prisoners of conscience” and keep a “check” on Modi’s “vendetta against critics”.
The Economist, UK, July 4
Asia columnist Banyan notes how the BJP’s tactic of “personalisation” of welfare schemes, depicting the “prime minister and his party as benefactors to the poor”, failed to translate into votes in the 2024 election, indicating the tactic “may have run its course”. Unlike in the recent past, surveys found a “large gap” between people crediting the central government for welfare schemes and also choosing to vote for the BJP.
Middle East Eye, UK, July 8
Azad Essa writes about the recent growth in partnerships between Indian and Israeli universities and weapons firms “in the fields of defence, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI)”. The partnerships have emerged in the months since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Israel may be committing genocide in Gaza.
An expert commented that Israeli universities are in “panic mode” about the prospect of “academic boycotts” by the US and Europe. Seeking Indian partnerships can enable Israel to “diversify” and “feed its growing appetite for military hardware and technological development”.
For instance, in March 2024, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) – one of Israel’s major military and commercial aerospace and defence systems manufacturers, and “an active player in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza” – signed a deal with IIT-Delhi. By 2013, India was already the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, under Modi, “ties between India and Israel have reached unprecedented heights, with Indian and Israeli companies co-producing weapons in factories across India”.
NIKKEI Asia, Japan, July 9
Priyanka Shankar and Valeria Mongelli write that despite pledges at international forums by Prime Minister Modi regarding the use of renewable energy, “India’s dependence on coal has continued to grow”.
The repercussions are damaging and manifold, with the government displacing indigenous communities from their lands, climate change and environmental degradation, and reduced use of hydroelectric power – “India’s biggest source of non-fossil fuel-based power”. A move away from coal requires jobs in other sectors or else the illegal coal industry will continue to grow.
The Guardian, UK, July 10
Sergey Radchenko analyses Narendra Modi’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, which is driven not only by cheap oil and the need for “benign neutrality regarding China” but also by Modi’s desire to “raise India’s profile – and his own – in the hope of becoming an indispensable power, one equally courted by democrats and dictators.” Although Modi reportedly told Putin that “when innocent children are killed, the heart bleeds and that pain is very terrifying, judging by the outcome of the summit, the Indian prime minister survived this pain, and found comfort in Putin’s friendly embrace.”
The Interpreter, Australia, July 10
Ian Hall notes that along with the criticism of Modi’s bear-hugging Putin at their recent joint Summit, and receiving Russia’s highest award on the same day that Russia bombed a Ukrainian children’s hospital, “India gained little of substance” from the Summit talks. Hall views Modi’s visit to Moscow as a “miscalculation”. Particularly in revealing “how little New Delhi might accept in exchange for a controversial meeting”, it may have “undermined” India’s “standing in the world”.
Reuters, UK, July 10
Shivangi Acharya and Swati Bhat report that in response to claims by the government about the increase in employment, economists note that this growth “stems largely from self-employed individuals, unpaid workers and temporary farm hires, whose jobs are not equivalent to formal positions with regular wages.”
Growing farm employment was “extremely regressive” since “it went against the nation’s goal of moving more Indians away from agricultural work” and reflected a “lack of adequate demand for workers from businesses.” The nature of employment also meant that despite the 8.2% “world-beating” increase in GDP, consumption level is a “weak” 4%.
Indian diaspora groups and civil society groups
On a Freedom Now podcast episode, Indian American Muslim Council’s Associate Media Director Safa Ahmed talks about Hindutva, its parallels with Zionism, Modi’s history with the RSS, and the violence against Muslims in India. Given the interconnected nature of “all threads of fascism”, there is a need to understand the links between Hindutva, the genocide in Gaza as well as other struggles in the US such as the struggle for academic freedom and affirmative action as well as the struggle against far-right white supremacy, including Islamophobia.
Hindus for Human Rights, UK, posted on X rejecting the “so-called Hindu Manifesto” which was endorsed by 25 election candidates in the UK. The manifesto, presented by 66 community organisations, including Hindu Nationalist organisations such as Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, calls for recognising “anti-Hindu hate as a religious hate crime” among other demands. Rajiv Sinha, Director of Hindus for Human Rights UK, said that the label of Hinduphobia “is a way to stifle dissent and specially to stifle criticism” of Narendra Modi, the BJP and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), it is a ‘propaganda project”.
Rasheed Ahmed, Executive Director of the Indian American Muslim Council, writing for CADAL (Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de América Latina), a non-profit foundation in Argentina which promotes international democratic solidarity, particularly in authoritarian contexts, says that despite the BJP’s reduced majority, “Modi remains a danger to Indian democracy”. Ahmed writes that Modi has spent the last ten years in power “crushing freedom of speech and dissent, stripping away the basic human rights of the nation’s 200 million Muslims and 30 million Christians, and seeks to turn the world’s largest democracy into a religious supremacist state”. He urges the “superpowers of the Global North and the historic anti-imperial comrades of the Global South” to “take a strong stance against India’s democratic backsliding.”
Experts say
In a statement issued on July 2, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) calls on India to end the “forcible deportation and returns of Rohingya to Myanmar” where they are “at risk of being subjected to serious human rights violations”, and also to stop “the arbitrary mass detention of the Rohingya”.
It urged the Indian state to “combat the spread of racist hate speech” and “distance itself from racist hate speech expressed by politicians and public figures”. It further called on the State to “ensure access to employment, health and education”, and the issuance of long-term visas and other identity documents.
The UN Human Rights Committee concluded its review of India’s fourth periodic report on how it implements the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on July 16, in Geneva. India was represented by a high-level government delegation. India’s last meeting with the Committee was in 1997. Committee experts asked the delegation questions including the total number of complaints of human rights violations (including by armed forces) and actions taken; status of investigations into killings of Right to Information activists; women’s access to education and employment in the formal sector; and on discrimination and violence (including lynching, mob violence and displacement) against Dalits, tribal communities, and religious minorities, among others. A joint submission to the Committee by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), Frontline Defenders (FLD), and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) is available here.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), along with Indian civil society organisations, ask the new government to adopt 10 urgent measures to restore press freedom in India, including the overhauling of, anti-terror laws (such as UAPA) and media regulatory laws that are misused against journalists; a variety of measures for the physical and digital protection of journalists; and a halt of “arbitrary internet shutdowns”.
Commenting on the recent elections in the UK, France and India, Sir Simon Schama, a British historian says that the results show although “democracy is certainly on the back foot”, it “is not down and out”. About India in particular, he says, “those who cherish democracy should be celebrating the fact that Narendra Modi did not get a triumphant majority in the general election.”
Noting the dramatic deterioration in press freedom under the first two terms of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the International Press Institute global network calls on the new Modi administration to be true to the Constitution by “prioritizing freedom of the press and the safety of journalists”. Despite the steps outlined by IPI in 2023, violations continue. These include “lawfare” against the press, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir as well as against foreign journalists and the “chilling effect” of cybercrime laws used for censorship, used even more against religious minorities. IPI also notes that India was ranked as the 12th worst country in the CPJ’s 2023 impunity index, which ranks unsolved journalist murders per capita.
Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan, anti-authoritarianism group based in the US, in partnership with independent experts at Authoritarian Warning Survey, evaluated current “levels of threat to American democracy”. In doing this, their indexing allows threats to American democracy to be compared to threats affecting other countries. They find democracy in India to be under “severe threat” which they classify as “violations that signal significant erosion of democracy” with “high potential” for future “breakdown”. Some the threats in India include “treatment of media”, “civil violence” and severe threats to “civil liberties”.
Read the previous roundup here.
