From India, With Fear

How the right-wing leader of the world’s largest secular democracy is imitating and providing pointers to Trump.

by

On my recent arrival in India, I was greeted with displays at the New Delhi airport urging everyone to Chalo Kumbh Chalo (Go to the Kumbh Festival), a massive Hindu celebration planned in the city of Allahabad in January 2019. Both the national and the state governments are enthusiastically promoting the festival. At the same time, the state government of Uttar Pradesh has left out the Taj Mahal from an official tourism brochure, reportedly because it considers India’s most famous monument too Muslim, and hence not Indian enough.

Welcome to the new India, a nation that, like the United States, was established as a secular, multicultural, and democratic republic but is now losing its founding ideals. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, belongs to organizations that espouse political Hinduism (or Hindutva) sharply at variance with the nation’s multireligious ideals. And he is amassing power and subverting institutions in disturbing ways.

Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump have a lot in common. They are both rightwing populists who tapped into widespread anger among the electorate by vowing to take on corrupt and compromised establishments. They also harvested majoritarian resentments, successfully mobilizing Hindus and whites in their respective countries as voting blocs. And both leaders have strongman tendencies, impatient with democratic processes and norms.

India has prided itself on its democratic and broadminded traditions and, in that sense, has been a role model for other nations. The direction it is now headed may prove to be an example of a different kind. Trump has expressed his admiration for Modi, even making a campaign ad mimicking his winning slogan in Hindi. And, to the extent that Trump learns from others, Modi may be offering him the wrong roadmap—how to remake a diverse and democratic society into a majority-controlled polity emptied of its pluralistic, democratic content.

Ever since Modi assumed office in May 2014, there have been continual mob killings (including lynchings) of people, mostly Muslims, suspected of trafficking in beef, a taboo for many Hindus.

Modi has a longtime association with an organized political movement, having been a part of the most prominent Hindu right group, the National Volunteer Corps, since he was eight years old. (Yes, you read that right.) An ex-member of the organization, Nathuram Godse, caused global shock waves on January 30, 1948, when he assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, supposedly for being too indulgent toward Muslims. It is that sectarian vision that Modi offers his country, on a spectrum that ranges from the patently absurd to the deathly serious.

For instance, there is an official attempt to impose vegetarianism on the populace, in keeping with the beliefs of certain Hindus. So the state-run airline Air India has started offering only vegetarian food to economy-class passengers on its domestic flights, a non-choice that was foisted upon me when I used the carrier to travel within the country during my recent visit.

Officials have justified the move as a cost-saving measure but, as The New York Times reports, many are viewing this as a move discriminatory toward meat-eaters, a category that not coincidentally includes Muslims and Christians. There has been a similarly ridiculous campaign to replace Muslim-sounding place names with official Hindu monikers. The most disturbing phenomenon, however, has been the killing of Muslims and targeted assassinations of secular intellectuals by emboldened Hindu right-fringe outfits.

Ever since Modi assumed office in May 2014, there have been continual mob killings (including lynchings) of people, mostly Muslims, suspected of trafficking in beef, a taboo for many Hindus. These gangs have been empowered with the belief that they will be treated with deference. That feeling is not unfounded. Minorities in India are currently feeling under siege, just like their U.S. counterparts.

Recently, a member of Modi’s cabinet, Jayant Sinha, actually celebrated eight individuals convicted of killing a Muslim, supposedly transporting cattle for beef. Another cabinet member, Giriraj Singh, expressed public sympathy with Hindu activists accused of fomenting religious violence. And Modi himself has long faced accusations of presiding over an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 that killed hundreds when he was in charge of the state of Gujarat.

“Hindu nationalism has greatly eroded secularism in recent years in India,” Center for Study of Society and Secularism director Irfan Engineer tells me. “The Hindu faith has been placed above the law and the constitution.”

India’s constitution, like the United States’, is difficult to amend but easier to subvert, in a way that should be familiar to observers of the American evangelical push under Trump.

“They are wrecking the constitution from within,” Engineer charges. “Public functionaries in India take an oath to ensure the constitution’s secularism. But what is happening on the ground is completely contradicting this, with government officials ridiculing secularism as ‘sickularism.’ ”

“...what is happening on the ground is completely contradicting this, with government officials ridiculing secularism as ‘sickularism.’ ”

Minorities in India have experienced a severe decline in political representation. Barely 4 percent of Indian parliamentarians are currently Muslim, a dismal statistic for a community that comprises 14 percent of the Indian population. Not a single one of these lawmakers belongs to Modi’s party. The country’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh (where my parents are from), has an even worse representational disparity in the assembly. The ruling party didn’t deign to run even one Muslim candidate in the last state elections.

And Indian Muslims are not the only ones in the target zone. India’s tiny Christian population (barely 2 percent of the total) is also embattled.

“Priests have come under attack,” Engineer says. “In certain regions, the majority community is engaging in a social boycott of Christians. Freedom and practice of religion are under threat in India.”

The Modi government’s obsession with religion has spilled over into the international realm, just as with the Trump Administration. It has proven unwelcoming to the mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. And it has recently created an uproar by instituting a national registry of citizens in the border state of Assam to ostensibly catch noncitizens from neighboring Bangladesh (no prizes for guessing their faith), a step that may end up disenfranchising millions.

All of these moves are quite certainly part of Modi’s plan to get re-elected next year—a strategy that may offer guidance to Trump.

“People in this country are not happy with the government’s economic performance because there has been a complete failure on delivery of promises,” Engineer says. “Fear is the alternative for Modi, fear of minorities among the majority. The message will be that only a Hindu nationalist government can keep Hindus safe. The Indian ethos is that of secularism. But when fear is created, then it becomes different.”

Trump’s recent tweet alleging a genocide of South African white farmers may be an indicator that he is going down the same road.

Unlike the U.S. media, which has largely taken an oppositional stance to Trump, the Indian mainstream media has been mostly on Modi’s side, especially broadcast media.

Modi’s cabinet minister, V.K. Singh, has termed members of the media “presstitutes.”

The situation is so bad that a pair of prominent television journalists resigned in early August after being told they couldn’t say negative things about Modi. One veteran journalist and commentator, Arun Shourie, has wryly likened the Indian channels to their North Korean counterparts. Media outlets that don’t toe the line draw invective from the prime minister’s minions.

“Modi doesn’t use foul language like Trump,” O.P. Jindal Global University professor Sukumar Muralidharan, a seasoned journalist and observer of the Indian political scene, tells me. “His understudies do it.”

Modi’s cabinet minister, V.K. Singh, has termed members of the media “presstitutes.” Naresh Fernandes, editor of the online news site Scroll, tells me the administration’s aim “is to discredit the media and create a vacuum for propaganda.” Sound familiar?

In its attacks on the press and other perceived opponents, India’s ruling party has deployed an army of trolls. Tech-savvy members of Modi’s party track and attack critics, Fernandes explains. And on social media, Modi follows some of the worst of these individuals.

“He is empowering those in the media who are the most vicious and misogynistic,” Fernandes says. “They proudly proclaim ‘Blessed to be followed by the Prime Minister.’ His spokespeople cite freedom of the press when asked about these links.”

Not surprisingly, the rightwing social media legions in the United States and India have formed a “symbiotic relationship,” according to Fernandes. “The tactics are spread around globally. There are Modi supporters in the United States who monitor what’s happening in the U.S. closely. In the world of the Internet, these troll armies can copy each other.”

Fernandes’s Scroll has been subject to such trolling—and sometimes much worse. One correspondent for the website, Malini Subramaniam, was driven out of a Maoist insurgency-hit region in 2016 by a mob that had official backing.

Modi, like Trump, has also set out to subvert institutions apart from the media.

Among these has been the Indian Supreme Court. Chief Justice Dipak Misra has been regarded as so compliant with the government that in an unparalleled act of public protest in January, four justices held a press conference to speak out. According to The Guardian, “They delivered an unprecedented message to the journalists gathered in Delhi: that the conduct of India’s highest court was ‘not in order’ and that ‘unless this institution is preserved, democracy can’t be protected in this country.’ ”

Similarly, the Reserve Bank of India, India’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve, was transformed into a handmaiden for Modi’s most consequential and disastrous economic decision: the removal of high-denomination currency notes from circulation, ostensibly to tackle undeclared wealth. Trump has yet to attempt bending the Fed to his liking in the same way.

Even the Election Commission of India, long respected across the Indian political spectrum for its integrity, has lately come into question. Its scheduling of recent state elections (including in Modi’s home state of Gujarat) seems to have been timed according to the convenience of the ruling party. And it has been dismissive of concerns that have arisen, just as in the United States, about the integrity of election voting machines.

Unlike the large-scale protests in the United States against Trump, the resistance in India has been limited.

Unlike the large-scale protests in the United States against Trump, the resistance in India has been limited. The holdouts include such progressive campuses as New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, which Muralidharan calls “a beacon of hope.”

Some other sections of Indian society have also been defiant, though their numbers are small. “We have limited resources but we are working hard,” Engineer says. “We are protesting on the streets and resisting. There is a new generation—which includes students, women, and farmers—for whom liberty and freedom are very important.”

As I was leaving India, the government created a firestorm by arresting activists across several states, accusing them of Maoist links and of fomenting violence at a rally early this year. The government’s actions were so over the top that even the Indian Supreme Court chastised the authorities’ hostility toward dissent.

Just as with the United States and Trump, the direction India heads in now depends on whether Modi will be able to get voter approval when he runs for re-election in 2019.

“The prognosis is not very cheerful if Modi wins again,” Muralidharan says. “He will be able to enforce his will and broaden and deepen his tactics. Acquiescence will be the only option.”

Modi has invited Trump to be the chief guest at the country’s Republic Day ceremony this coming January. The White House has not yet indicated whether the President will accept. If he does decide to do the honors, let us hope he doesn’t pick up any pointers from his Indian counterpart while he is there.