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 this fortnightly roundup for April 1-15, 2024.
International media reports
South China Morning Post, Asia
Junaid Kathju reports on April 4 that the deportations of the first batch of Rohingya refugees from Manipur last month, coinciding with the Union government’s issue of rules to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), were seen by human rights advocates as “extremely dangerous moves”. As it excludes Muslims, the CAA does not give protection to the Rohingya.
Human Rights Watch said international law “requires that no one be returned to a place where their lives and liberty could be at stake”. India’s decision to deport the Rohingya “appears to be an integral part of the government’s sustained policy to make the non-Hindu communities vulnerable by all means”, said Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman, a consultant at Melbourne-based Capital Punishment Justice Project.
Bloomberg, India Edition
In the India Edition newsletter, Menaka Doshi writes on April 4 that foreign direct investment (FDI) in India slowed for a second year “amid hot competition”, punching holes in glowing narratives of the Indian economy. The fight is “less with China nowadays, and much more with the US” which is trying to bring manufacturing back home. The newsletter also identifies several domestic reasons such as bureaucratic hurdles and delays.
Financial Times, UK
In the lead-up to India’s national elections, the editorial board writes on April 4 about worrying implications of the “ill-health” of the “mother of democracy” and the widening “gap between pro-democratic rhetoric and reality” for the upcoming elections, particularly given the “intensifying clampdown on opposition parties”. It notes that the “BJP’s muscular Hindu nationalism has eroded India’s tradition of secular democracy.”
Himal SouthAsian, Colombo
In a podcast interview on April 8, chair of Amnesty International’s India Board, Aakar Patel, highlights how the pre-election scenario in India is qualitatively different from the past. For the first time the crackdown on the opposition in India can be compared to Pakistan in the Bhutto era and to present day Bangladesh, where opposition members have been arrested or not allowed to function. The “thuggish” abuse of state machinery surpasses Indira Gandhi’s actions during the Emergency. This time the State has “removed from the rules of game those bits that kept the game sacrosanct”.
The Guardian, Delhi
Hannah Ellis-Peterson’s April 9 report in the Guardian on the upcoming election drew upon several analysts and opponents who said that this election will be “BJP versus democracy” because of the “tax terrorism” via the Enforcement Directorate; the lack of independence in key institutions such that “the executive controls everything” so “there’s nothing the opposition can do.”
Foreign Policy, Washington DC
Foreign Policy editor in chief Ravi Aggarwal analyses the pre-election scenario on April 8 by pointing out that “Modi is probably the world’s most popular leader” approved of by 78% of Indians because “an illiberal, Hindi-dominated, and Hindu-first nation is emerging, and it is challenging—even eclipsing—other ideas of India, including Nehru.”
The Diplomat, USA
In a pre-elections interview in the Diplomat published on April 8 with Sudha Ramachandran, Christophe Jaffrelot analyses Modi and why he is “more popular than the BJP”. In Modi the “messenger is the message”. His “body language matters as much as his words”. “Low-caste voters” find in him someone “like them” but he also gets the support of “elite groups” because of his ideology, lifestyle and opposition to caste-based quotas. Like Indira Gandhi, he has “an authoritarian personality” marked by deep insecurity, but he is “more dangerous” because he “has a long-term plan: he wants to create the Hindu Rashtra.”
Boston Review, Cambridge, USA
Michelle Buckley and Paula Chakravartty write on April 11 about the “colonial” and “racial” nature of the export of Indian labour to Israel. Ads make explicit that only “Hindu workers” should apply. Israeli fears potential “pro-Palestine solidarity among Muslim Indian workers”. Although India would deny “a Hindus-only recruitment drive” it is moving “toward becoming an ethnostate much like Israel itself”. The “Bibi-Modi bromance” also means that India is ignoring “serious safety concerns for workers in Israel right now.”
Experts say
Amnesty International, together with 20 human rights organisations, launched a virtual museum on enforced disappearances of journalists, activists and dissenters in South Asia (many of whom have been missing for decades) this month. India has not yet ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Indian law does not include enforced disappearances as a specific offence.
Rights groups Global Witness and Access Now on April 2 shared findings revealing that YouTube failed to detect and restrict elections-related content designed to incite and misinform in India. India is YouTube’s largest market, with “462 million users” and has a “particular significance” as a platform for political parties in the upcoming elections. The two groups submitted 48 ads containing content prohibited by YT’s election misinformation policies, yet all 48 were approved. While the groups withdrew the ads before they were published, the report notes “the platform’s inability to detect and restrict content that is designed to undermine electoral integrity”. It also showed that ads containing election disinformation are rejected in the US but accepted in India.
According to a survey published on April 2 by the Association of Southeast Asian Countries (ASEAN) Studies Centre at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, India is among the bottom-three ASEAN partners with the “least strategic relevance”. In perceptions of which country has “the most political and strategic influence in Southeast Asia” India ranked the lowest at 0.4% in 2024. When asked if India will “do the right thing” to contribute to global peace, security, prosperity, and governance, “little confidence” scored highest. Perceptions included that “India’s growing ultra-nationalistic tendencies under the Bharatiya Janata Party government has led observers to wonder whether these tendencies may percolate into foreign policy.”
The Independent Panel for Monitoring Indian Elections, made up of experts from Europe, Bangladesh and India, lists major concerns of the integrity of India’s elections in its third weekly bulletin covering April 4-10. They point to violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), including by the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in election rally speeches, through references to the Ram Temple; the use of central agencies against Opposition parties; continued concerns on electoral bonds and electronic voting machines, and the ruling government’s “systematic targeting what is left of the independent media” which asked YouTube to block the media channels National Dastak and Article 19 which, between them, have over 10 million followers. Bolta Hindustan has already been suspended.
Journalist Edward Luce in a post on X on April 6 asked, “Will this be India’s last democratic election? The degree to which Modi has used pliable judges, tax authorities & other forms of coercion to silence critical journalists, imprison opposition leaders, close down pesky NGOs, and bring civil society to heel is massively under-appreciated outside of India. He’s Orban times 100.”
The editorial in The Lancet on April 13 states that “health care under Modi has fared badly” in India, drawing attention to serious problems related to availability and transparency of health data. It reveals that with the delay of the 2021 census, “for the first time in 150 years, a whole decade has gone by with no official comprehensive data on India or its people”. There is a lack of credibility of the government’s estimates of COVID-19 deaths. “Why is the Government so afraid of showing the real state of health? And more importantly, how does the Government intend to measure progress when there are no data?”, asks the editorial.
Indian diaspora groups protest and advocate
Members of Savera reflect on the importance of their multi-faith coalition in resisting Hindu nationalism in the US on April 5. The New York State Council of Churches are concerned about the “plight” of Christians in India and worried that people in the US “just don’t understand”. The Friends Committee on National Legislation seeks to amplify international networks; while the National Lawyer’s Guild stresses the need to defeat the CAA which they argue is a “form of genocide”. Reacting to Savera’s inaugural report on the Global Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHPA), a person affiliated to VHPA called Savera members “a bunch of Hamas sympathizers, BLM washouts, and peddlers of unchecked immigration into the U.S.”
Savera published a second report in April 2024 that provides a “plethora of evidence” demonstrating the extent to which India’s far-right Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the VHP of America (VHP-A) are deeply linked; to counter the VHP-A’s claims that it is distinct and independent from India’s VHP, a “far-right Hindu supremacist group with a well-documented history of violence against minorities in India”.
Protests against Adani’s sponsorship of the London’s Science museum’s new climate gallery continued with a sit-in on April 12. Protestors pointed out that “greenwashing” with “tiny amounts of vast fortunes” alongside extraction of “huge amounts of fossil fuel” was “grotesque”. They drew attention to an exhibition panel on Adani’s solar park in Rajasthan which is silent on destruction of livelihoods and wildlife. Protestors released a new video in which Adani’s speech at the opening of the gallery was juxtaposed with “the truth behind the misleading claims.”
Read the previous roundup here.
