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 15-30, 2024.
Adani indictment
This fortnight saw the big news of criminal charges being brought against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and other executives on November 20 by the US Attorney of Eastern New York, the US Justice Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They are indicted for concealing bribes and committing fraud to get funds from US investors and institutions. Below are media reports on the allegations and the immediate fallout for the Adani Group.
Reuters, UK, November 21
Dharamraj Dhutia reports that there was an “immediate fallout” for the Adani Group companies following their criminal indictment by US authorities. Their market value plunged by “billions of dollars” and the President of Kenya cancelled a huge airport project slated with them. The charges by US authorities allege that Adani, his nephew Sagar and six others agreed to pay $265 million to bribe Indian officials to secure power-supply deals. These deals were “expected to yield $2 billion of profit over 20 years, and to develop India’s largest solar power plant project”. Prosecutors claim that Adani Green Energy falsely stated that it had not paid any government officials to obtain improper advantage. Dhutia notes that “U.S. law bars foreign companies which raise money from U.S. investors from paying bribes overseas to win business. It is also against U.S. law to raise money from investors on the basis of false statements”.
Reuters, UK, November 25
French oil company TotalEnergies SE announced it will stop financial contributions to its Adani Group investments following the indictment, reports America Hernandez. The company holds a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy and a seat on Adani’s board of directors. TotalEnergies said that it was not informed about the investigation into Adani Green Energy. In a statement, it said it will not make any new contributions “until such time when the accusations against the Adani group individuals and their consequences have been clarified.”
International media reports
Today in Focus, Guardian podcast, UK, November 18
Host Michael Safi speaks with Hannah Ellis-Peterson, the Guardian’s South Asia correspondent, on the “rift between Canada and India” following the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Specifically, Safi described it as “what a murder on Canadian soil may tell us about a rising India”. For the most part Ellis-Peterson provides context and facts about the killing and the responses to it. Reflecting also on India’s attempted killing of Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the US, she remarks that these acts constitute a “significant departure” from how India has acted outside its borders in the past. Now, there is a feeling within India that “India is just doing what other super powers have done”. This points to “a shift in how India views itself in the world”, now as a “powerful player who can act aggressively to protect its own interests”. Ellis-Peterson observes that the absence of an outright condemnation of India by the US signifies “how geo-politically important it [India] has become” to the West as a “counterbalance to China”. This is to the extent that the West is turning a “blind eye” to the “repressive” policies by the Indian government at home too.
Middle East Eye, UK, November 20
Azad Essa reports that an Adani Group defence firm collaborated in the manufacturing of Arabel, a computerised weapons system being used in the attack on Gaza. Jointly made by Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI) and Adani Defence & Aerospace, Arabel uses algorithms “to boost soldiers’ chances of hitting targets more accurately and efficiently”. Essa writes that “Arbel appears to be the first weapons system to directly tie India to Israel’s rapidly expanding AI war in Gaza”. While Arbel was publicly launched at a defence expo in Gujarat in October 2022, Adani is not mentioned in IWI’s marketing material. Essa points out this may indicate Adani is “wary of a public backlash” after it was criticised for sending drones to Israel in the first months of the war on Gaza. He also notes that AI raises “ethical concerns about the increased lethality and potential for misuse in conflict situations”.
Reuters, UK, November 20
Manoj Kumar and Sethuraman N.R. describe the growing gap between India’s “ambitious” plans to expand clean energy operation and the skills and manpower required to implement those plans. Industry experts point out that the government needs to “significantly step up funding and training programmes in the renewables sector to meet its goal of expanding non-fossil fuel capacity by 50 GW annually to 500 GW by 2030.” They also note that “while India produces over a million engineering graduates annually, traditional colleges are not equipped to teach solar, wind and other renewable technologies.”
The Guardian, UK, November 22
Drawing on expert opinions, Hannah Ellis-Peterson challenges several aspects of the existing narrative around the air pollution crisis in New Delhi. While farmers are majorly blamed, she points to stubble burning contributing only about 30% to Delhi’s pollution. Another problem is reducing it to a “winter problem”. Avinash Chanchal, deputy programme director at Greenpeace South Asia, says there is “high pollution almost throughout the whole year” coming from “the transportation sector and from coal-burning power plants”. Rather than address root causes by penalizing heavy industry and improving public transport, the government opts for measures such as shutting down of schools, costly smog towers, and drones sprinkling water. The result is that Delhi is facing what Chanchal describes as “a public health emergency”. This level of air pollution is not limited to Delhi. Ellis-Peterson points to a finding by Greenpeace “that more than 80% of India’s cities had polluted air”. Despite this, she writes, “pollution is still not a major political issue in India and rarely features in election campaigns”.
Parliamentarians and public officials advocate
Representatives of the United States Attorney for Eastern New York, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced criminal charges against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and other Adani company executives on November 20. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller said “this indictment alleges schemes to pay over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials, to lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice”.
In his 2024 State of the Nation Address to the Kenyan Parliament on November 21, Kenyan President Ruto cancelled two projects (JKIA and KETRACO) with the Adani Group. President Ruto said “in the face of undisputed evidence or credible information on corruption” he will not “hesitate to take decisive action”. In keeping with the principles of “transparency and accountability” enshrined in Kenya’s Constitution, and “based on new information provided by investigative agencies and partner nations”, he directed the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum to “immediately cancel the ongoing procurement process” and look for alternative partners.
Experts say
Author Amitav Ghosh, in an interview with Bloomberg Green on November 17, raises key questions about the lack of international will, particularly among the developed world, to genuinely resolve climate crises. Asked about his recent public remarks that the Global South now feel “it’s their turn to prosper off the planet”, Ghosh breaks down his thinking taking India and Indonesia as examples. He said, “what India and Indonesia are going through is a form of auto-colonization, where they’ve now taken on full-scale the extractivism ideologies of colonizers with the explicit intention of making [their] countries into Western-type countries. This is of course a disaster.”
Amal Chandra, an author, policy analyst and political commentator, writes on November 27 about how the Indian government under Narendra Modi, driven by Hindu nationalism, is engaging in what he terms “memoricide” – the process of “systematically erasing certain elements of India’s historical and cultural heritage.” While Chandra’s focus is on the key shifts taking place in India, he also makes references to trends in other countries. Regarding changes to school text books, Chandra offers a similarity with Turkey which is experiencing efforts to “reshape national history, downplaying the secular legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in favour of an Islamist narrative”. Both in Turkey and India, he writes, the aim is to “bolster majoritarian identities”. Regarding the renaming of cities by the Modi government, Chandra says “this act of cultural erasure finds echoes around the world, such as in Russia, where place names associated with Stalin’s regime are being restored in an attempt to glorify the country’s totalitarian past”. With respect to the government’s push for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), although some try to draw similarities with France, Chandra notes that an important different is that in France “secularism applies to all religions equally, not just to minority faiths”. Hindutva on the other hand, “despises both secularism and liberalism”.
In his new book titled “Fabricating Homeland Security – Police Entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel”, Rhys Machold, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, traces how Israel’s “homeland security industry” equipped India after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. The book delves into how India has become “not only the single largest buyer of Israeli conventional weapons, but also of a range of other surveillance technology, police training, and security expertise” since 2008. Combining “insights from science and technology studies with those from decolonial and postcolonial theory”, Machold’s work shows that “homeland security” is not just limited to the “homeland” as “it involves the circulation and multiplication of policing practices across borders”.
Christophe Jaffrelot, Research Director at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS and Professor of Politics and Sociology at King’s College London, reflects on findings on how Hindus perceive Indian Muslims and also how the Indian Muslim community is “assessing their own situation” emerging from a national survey conducted across 19 Indian states in early 2024.
Indian diaspora and civil society groups
The Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), a think tank based in Washington D.C., published a study titled “Streaming Violence: How Instagram Fuels Cow Vigilantism in India” on November 19. CSOH analysed 1,023 Instagram accounts of “individuals and groups involved in cow vigilantism in India”. Their extensive findings include the following. 95% of accounts with known locations were in states “in which the BJP is currently in power”. 121 reels showing vigilantes engaging in physical violence against people who were transporting cattle had a total of 8.3 million views, with 9 posts with “more than 100,000 plays each”. 100 of the 121 (82.6%) reels showing physical violence by vigilantes “had no graphic content filter placed on them by Instagram”. Reels showing vigilante violence “attracted approximately three times more views” than other reels posted by the same accounts that did not feature violence. Of the 150 most-followed accounts which showed violence, “53 accounts (35.3%), had the “send gift” option” through which Instagram was “providing their viewers an opportunity to send them money”. 167 Instagram posts “depicting explicit violence” were reported, but “Instagram failed to remove any”.
The Dalit Solidarity Forum, Hindus for Human Rights, Indian American Muslim Council, India Civil Rights Watch (ICWI) and Ekō released a report in the run-up to Maharashtra’s state elections in November. Entitled “Maharashtra’s Shadow Politics: How Meta Permits, Profits From, and Promotes Shadow Political Advertisements”, the report finds that “Meta is allowing political parties to violate electoral law and violating Meta’s own policies on political advertising”. While official BJP pages highlighted issues related to “government programs and electoral promises”, shadow accounts posted “communal attack ads” and ads invoking “Shivaji and Maratha pride”. Meta carried political ads paid for by government funds which is a “serious violation” of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct. The report found that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance had an advantage on social media almost five times over its opponents “with the power of shadow accounts and government ads”. The report also flagged evidence of Meta’s failed oversight, “despite repeated evidence brought to Meta on the presence of shadow political advertisers” these pages “are allowed to operate in plain sight”.
Over 100 writers, translators and publishers across India and the globe condemn the “deep-rooted hypocrisy of JCB Prize for Literature, on account of the company’s major role in the horrifying destruction of homes and livelihoods across India, Kashmir and Palestine” in an open letter. The signatories issued the letter before the prize’s India winner was to be announced on November 23. From JCB’s support to Modi’s Hindu supremacist BJP government’s systematic “bulldozer justice” campaign targeting Muslim households, to “enforcement of occupation in Kashmir”, to “home demolitions and settlement expansion in occupied Palestine”, a “company responsible for the destruction of human lives globally is not a meaningful celebration of a country’s literature.”
Read the previous roundup here.
