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 November 1-15, 2024.
International media reports
Bloomberg, USA, November 7
Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Dan Strumpf and Ruchi Bhatia write on the implications for India of Donald Trump’s win in the recent US presidential elections. They say Trump’s return gives Narendra Modi “a chance to bolster India’s image with the US and its allies”. With “increased scrutiny” of India for “its role in violence against Sikh activists”, India can “expect a new Trump administration to be less stringent in demanding accountability”.
Irfan Nooruddin, a professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University, says India holds “long-term value as a strategic partner” given Trump’s continued view of China “as the greatest geopolitical challenge”. However, Milan Vaishnav, Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, cautions that questions of “trade, tariffs and market access” remain. With the US currently India’s biggest trade partner, increased tariffs promised by Trump could hit India’s economy. Trump’s “protectionist tendencies” may adversely impact cooperation on defence and critical technologies. His push for tighter immigration policies “could make life difficult for the Indians”.
Bloomberg, USA, November 7
Andy Mukherjee comparatively analyses India and China’s separate paths to economic growth and globalisation beyond the conventional lens of population policies and political structures. Situating the central question why “China’s per capita income is now more than double India’s”, he finds the answer lies in “sharp” differences in how the two nations “embraced modern education”. Mukherjee draws from a paper by Nitin Kumar Bharti and Li Yang (scholars at the Paris School of Economics’ World Inequality Lab) entitled The Making of China and India in 21st Century. It relies on documentation “going back to 1900 to make a database of who studied what in the two countries, for how long, and what was taught to them”. While India led in the 20th century by enabling a student population “eight times bigger than China”, China has outpaced India in the present by sending “a far bigger share” of its “university-age cohort” to higher education than India. Mukherjee argues that the relative strengths of China’s education system which have influenced greater economic productivity include a “bottom up” strategy which reduces early years school drop-outs and leads to more graduates and better performance in higher education, and the Chinese focus on engineering and vocational graduates over “humanities”.
The Guardian, UK, November 11
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory, Richard Seymour analyses why “far-right leaders are winning across the globe”- from the US to Hungary, Italy, the Philippines, Argentina, the Netherlands, Israel and India. Seymour repeatedly cites Narendra Modi’s rise in India as a key example within his wider analysis. His main argument is that votes for the far-right cannot only be explained by people’s frustrations with economic issues. He recalls that “after average consumer expenditure fell, Modi was re-elected in 2019 with a 6% swing”. For Seymour the appeal of the right-wing lies elsewhere – in replacing “real disasters with imaginary disasters”. A telling example in his words is “instead of confronting systems, they give you enemies you can kill”. A key takeaway for Seymour is that “far from being discredited by outbursts of collective violence, the new far right is galvanised by it”. He points out that Modi’s “rise to power began with an anti-Muslim pogrom” in Gujarat; Delhi experienced a “pogrom” against Muslims in 2020, and Trump’s 2020 campaign was “electrified by vigilante violence”.
The Island, Sri Lanka, November 13
Sasanka Perera writes on the “intrigue and controversy surrounding the operations of India’s Adani Green Energy” in Sri Lanka, in the context of a power purchase deal currently under litigation in the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The Adani power project is being challenged for violating fundamental rights and for controversies around how the project was approved. Perera says the project needs to be reconsidered also “in light of the global evidence against the Adani Group in general”, citing a long list of malpractices by Adani Group companies.
Perera reminds of a recent lawsuit in Kenya in which the High Court suspended a US $ 736 million agreement between the state-owned Kenya Electrical Transmission Company and Adani Energy Solutions after hearing the petitioner’s arguments that the deal was a “constitutional scam” and “tainted with secrecy”. He warns the new government of Sri Lanka to have the “moral and political strength” to reconsider a project that came “through an entire field of corruption both locally and elsewhere”.
Perera underlines that the Indian government may have had “backdoor” involvement as the project was offered to Sri Lanka “based on a request from Indian PM Narendra Modi to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.”
CBC, Canada, November 13
Evan Dyer reports that Sunny Sidhu, a superintendent in the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has been cleared of allegations aired by Indian government and media sources of “terrorism” and involvement in “Sikh separatist militancy”. After a year-long investigation into Sidhu by the CBSA itself, Luke Reimer (CBSA spokesperson) told CBC News that they have “no evidence to support the allegations made in the articles against our employee Mr. Sidhu”. In the midst of this, Sidhu received an “avalanche of threats” on social media, causing him to relocate with his family. Richard Fadden, former Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) said “India has a long history of making allegations without providing evidence”. The first CSIS Director to go public with allegations of foreign interference in Canada, Fadden also noted that “the scope of activities that we would put under foreign interference continues to broaden”. He suggested that these could include false allegations intended to sow suspicion and discord.
Parliamentarians and public officials advocate
In a press conference in Canberra on November 5 with Indian external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar while he was on a visit, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong responded to questions about Canada’s allegations regarding India’s targeting of Sikh activists. Wong made clear that Australia “respects Canada’s judicial process”. She underlined that Australia takes a “principled position” on “rule of law” and the “sovereignty of all countries”. Wong assured Australia’s Sikh community that they have a “right to be safe and respected”.
Experts say
The Congressional Research Service, a research institute of the United States Congress which assists congressional committees and Members of Congress, published a report entitled “India: Religious Freedom Issues”, dated November 13. Authored by K. Alan Kronstadt, a specialist in South Asian affairs, the report covers a wide range of “areas of religiously motivated repression and violence” in India, including “anti-conversion laws, cow protection vigilantism, regional communal violence” and others. Notably, the Washington DC-based Hindu American Foundation (HAF) is described as part of a “Hindu nationalist ecosystem in the US” seeking to exert influence on US government officials, scholars and thinktanks. Kronstadt references sources saying that while HAF presents itself “as a nonpartisan, non-ideological group”, its critics see it as “a key node in the global Hindu supremacist (or Hindutva) movement”. The report concludes with some concrete actions for Congress to consider, including increased oversight of US foreign assistance to India “particularly in light of Indian restrictions” on NGOs, more funding to support marginalised communities, and to engage with the Indian government to reduce the use of terrorism and other laws “against human rights activists, journalists and religious minorities”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed grave concern over the “relentless targeting” of journalist Rana Ayyub in a statement issued on November 8. CPJ describes that Ayyub, a global opinion writer at the Washington Post, was “followed and repeatedly questioned” by local security personnel while she was on a reporting trip in Manipur in early October. The officers wanted to know who she was meeting and what she was reporting. They said they followed her for “her safety” ordered by a “higher office”. Ayyub told CPJ a “right-wing account” shared her number on X on November 8, after which she received “at least 200 phone and video calls and explicit WhatsApp messages throughout the night”. CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih noted that “using surveillance and intimidation to deter journalists from reporting effectively has no place in a country that prides itself on being the mother of democracy.”
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) in its Asia-Pacific Climate Report 2024 predicts that “by 2070, climate change under a high end emissions scenario could cause a total loss of 16.9% of GDP across the Asia and Pacific region”. For India, the predicted decline is 24.7%, lower only than Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia. Likely factors that may cause loss of GDP include declined labour productivity, greater flooding, and increased expenditure on cooling. On each count, the predictions for India are comparatively worse. While “the GDP loss in 2070 from reduced labour productivity” because of the heat waves is “4.9% for the region”, the figure for India – one of the “most impacted locations” – is 11.6%. On “increased river-based flooding”, the average predicted loss is 2.2% of GDP while for India, its “about 4% of GDP”. Cooling related demands “may reduce regional GDP by 3.3 per cent, but for India, this figure could reach 5.1 per cent”. The report also notes that alongside such vulnerabilities, “the region includes three of the top 10 GHG-emitting economies globally” – China, Indonesia, and India.
Hafsa Kanjwal, an associate professor of South Asian history in the US, situates India’s ongoing “subjugation” of Kashmir in the context of “Third World Imperialism” in a recent essay. She argues that forms of colonialism in the Global South remain unacknowledged. She further points to how “porous” the “boundary between colonialism and postcolonialism” is in the way post-colonial states like India continue to advance their own “settler-colonial ambitions”. Kanjwal argues that “Kashmir is India’s colony” and like a colonial force, India has “sought to rule over Kashmir through subjugating its people and trampling their rights”. Made sharper by the revocation of Kashmir’s semi-autonomy in August 2019, key features of India’s contemporary colonisation in Kashmir include internet shutdowns (among the highest in the world), surveillance technology, displacement of indigenous communities, and the criminalisation of “all forms of dissent”. Kanjwal warns that “climate disaster” may accelerate in Kashmir “exacerbated by decades of military occupation” and companies that “do not adhere to environmental regulations” getting contracts to mine for minerals.
Indian diaspora and civil society groups
Over 20 US-based organisations have urged the US government to “impose immediate and comprehensive travel and financial sanctions on India’s Home Minister, Amit Shah and National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval” for their role in “assassination operations” in Canada and the US respectively. In a press release dated November 1, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), Sikh Coalition, New York State Council of Churches, Hindus for Human Rights, and others stated they made this demand in a letter to the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the US Secretary of Commerce Janet Yellen. Deepali Gill, Federal Policy Manager at Sikh Coalition noted that such sanctions would ensure “not just accountability” but “deterrence” against violations of “Sikhs’ civil rights and U.S. sovereignty.” IAMC Executive Director Rasheed Ahmed said that “Amit Shah and Ajit Doval’s orchestration of violence” constitutes clear grounds for sanction under the Global Magnitsky Act.” Under the Global Magnitsky Act, the US can impose sanctions against any foreign person for human rights violations including “extrajudicial killings” targeting those who seek “to defend” internationally recognized “human rights and freedoms”.
Tech Justice Law Project, an international initiative which advocates for “better, safer, and accountable online spaces” along with the Indian American Muslim Council, India Civil Watch International, Hindus for Human Rights and Dalit Solidarity Forum released a report in the run-up to Jharkhand’s state elections in November. Entitled “Jharkhand’s Shadow Politics: How Meta Permits, Profits From, and Promotes Shadow Political Advertisements”, the report finds that a “huge” shadow network, boosted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is pushing out political ads on Meta. The report points out that while the official BJP pages highlighted issues related to “government programs and electoral promises”, shadow accounts posted “communally divisive content and attack ads”, including “dehumanizing images of the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Hemant Soren, depicted with horns”. Such ads are “in violation of India’s electoral laws and Meta’s own community guidelines”. The research “identified at least 87 such pages” which together have spent “almost the same as the BJP Jharkhand account” but received “almost quadruple the amount of impressions”. Meta claims to have a strict verification process, but the report finds that the information for these shadow pages “appears to be junk”.
Read the previous roundup here.
