Al Jazeera English
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally for his political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP.
As we celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of India’s independence from the British on August 15, 1947, its founding ideals as a secular and progressive democracy seem more jeopardized than ever.
Last winter, I visited India shortly before elections took place in my family’s home state of Uttar Pradesh. Since it is the most populous state in the country, its estimated 230 million inhabitants essentially decide who gets to govern India. Uttar Pradesh even in normal times is not exactly a model of development—its child mortality rate is on par with Afghanistan’s—but last summer wasn’t normal: Untold numbers died in a wave of the pandemic exacerbated by colossal mismanagement.
All of this, however, didn’t seem to matter enough to the residents of Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led in the state by a hardline Hindu monk, cruised back to power after I returned to the United States. While other factors undoubtedly played a part, Hindu nationalism, an ideology Modi has been imbibing since he was eight years old, performed a major role.
Modi embodies rightwing populism, a modus operandi he shares with former President Donald Trump, outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. Each of these like-minded politicians share a propensity for anti-establishment and anti-elitist rhetoric, claiming everyman personas to appeal to the masses. But Hindu nationalism provides Modi with a specific ecosystem of support that differs from rightwing populist movements in other nations.
“Modi and the BJP are part of a Hindu nationalist movement that has burrowed its way through Indian society since the 1920s, building an organizational infrastructure, a collective identity and an ideological common sense that make up the bedrock of its political power in India today,” says University of Pretoria professor Alf Gunvald Nilsen, who has written books on India and social movements. “This puts the current dispensation in India in a much stronger and much more durable position of power than what we have seen in the cases of Trump in the U.S.A. and Johnson in the U.K., and, most likely, with Bolsonaro in Brazil.”
Hindu nationalism provides Modi with a specific ecosystem of support that differs from rightwing populist movements in other nations.
Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot, author of Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, further explains the difference between India, the United States, and the United Kingdom: “The U.S. under Trump and the U.K. under Johnson belong to a category of populist regimes where pillars of democracy—including the judiciary and the media—have continued to play an important role,” he tells The Progressive. “In India, the old system of checks and balances has declined dramatically.”
The impact of Modi’s eight years of rule has been enormous, especially after his reelection in 2019 with an even bigger parliamentary majority. “Since 2019, we have seen several pieces of legislation that effectively inscribe a majoritarian ideology into the legal edifice of the state,” says Nilsen. “This is coupled with a distinctive proclivity for authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. The combined effect of these tendencies is to erode significant parts of the foundations of India’s constitutional order.”
And like Trump and Johnson, Modi has taken advantage of social fissures.
“The key to Modi’s longevity is perhaps the more complex political milieu of India, with its many cleavages,” says Sukumar Muralidharan, professor of journalism at O.P. Jindal Global University. “For the politics of rightwing populism, which flourishes by wedging itself into the deepest fault lines in society, this offers multiple possibilities of creating winning coalitions. The only constant in the Modi brand of politics is its Islamophobia.”
Modi also plays the political game much better than anyone else in India. “One advantage that Modi and his BJP have had is that they’re able to shift attention very well,” says Hari Prasad, a research associate at Critica Research and Analysis. “When the economy fails, they can focus attention toward Islamophobia or other issues. It is worth noting that they are also adept at making coalitions on the ground and breaking their opposition. They have the networks and money, which is something the opposition is missing at the moment.”
Just like other rightwing populists, Modi has set out to subvert a whole range of democratic institutions—and has been more successful than some of his better-known counterparts. Not surprisingly, a number of international rankings of democracies have significantly downgraded India’s categorization.
“The concentration of power in the hands of a few men has resulted in the decline of many institutions, including the Election Commission, the Reserve Bank of India, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the National Investigation Agency, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Central Information Commission,” says Jaffrelot. “But the most dramatic change pertains to the judiciary.”
The subversion of institutions was easier for Modi, since they never were as free of interference in India as they’ve traditionally been in the United States and the United Kingdom, Prasad points out. And now, the Indian prime minister has taken it to a new level.
“He has created an atmosphere of fear in which dissent is suppressed,” says Muralidharan. “And institutions that should function to check the drift towards the politics of coercion are actively conniving in the process.”
The end result is detrimental for Indian society on several levels.
“Modi, like most other rightwing populists, is at the helm of a political project that attempts to govern the contradictions of a society in which neoliberal economic policies have polarized income, wealth and life chances in favor of small elites,” says Nilsen. “And like most rightwing populists, Modi and the BJP attempt to do this by fostering popular allegiance to an idea of ‘the people’ defined in majoritarian terms and to a leader and a state that claims to represent the interests of this people, in opposition to its enemies, typically defined as ethnic or religious others.”
“He has created an atmosphere of fear in which dissent is suppressed. And institutions that should function to check the drift towards the politics of coercion are actively conniving in the process.”
Trump and Modi formed a fairly close bond during the previous U.S. president’s time in office, even if there were policy differences on issues such as tariffs. What is concerning to some observers is that the Biden Administration continues to engage in a partnership with Modi’s government in the hopes that India can act as a bulwark against China’s expanding international influence. India is a member of the “Quad,” an alliance between India, the United States, Australia and Japan that was explicitly designed to counter China.
“The United States is prepared to accept every manner of abusive regime if its strategic objectives are met,” says Muralidharan. He adds that the Indian-American community plays a “vital role” in encouraging the Biden Administration to maintain good ties with Modi's government.
Jaffrelot offers two further explanations for the friendly relationship: the U.S. notion that India potentially offers a huge market for American goods and the lingering goodwill India has from its past reputation as a stable, tolerant, secular democracy.
“What sets Modi apart from other rightwing populist leaders is the extent to which he has been successful, in no small part by constructing a pan-Hindu vote base that transcends the caste and class cleavages that have otherwise tended to fracture the Indian electorate,” Nilsen remarks.
So, here we are as the nation enters its seventy-fifth year: Modi is charging ahead with a transformation of Indian society with tacit support from the United States. It’s the sort of dramatic change that Trump, Johnson, and Bolsonaro can only envy.