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 monthly roundup for May 1-31, 2024.
International media reports
BBC, UK
Geeta Pandey profiles Amit Shah, India’s current Home Minister, on May 3, regarded as Narendra Modi’s “closest confidant” and the “brains behind” the BJP’s electoral success. Described as a “hardline Hindu nationalist”, who friends call “the man who plays the long game”, others “the road roller who flattens the obstacles in his way”. Shah’s arrest for involvement in the killings and kidnapping of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi, his subsequent controversial acquittal, and allegations of nepotism, also feature.
The Globe and Mail, Canada
Doug Saunders’ May 3 report warns that Narendra Modi’s “taunts” in recent election speeches that the “new India” kills foreign “enemies” “in their homes” should not be ignored. In the context of India’s alleged assassination attempt of Canadian Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Saunders writes that Modi’s “threats” attack “Canada’s fundamental values of freedom of speech, pluralism and physical security” and that “no Canadian leader, of any party, should tolerate or dismiss” them.
Bloomberg, US
Andy Mukherjee’s May 7 column observes that after a drop in voter turnout in the first phases of the 2024 elections, Narendra Modi’s messaging shifted to make Hindus “fear and loathe Muslims”. Mukherjee also highlights the importance of the Congress Party’s call for expanding “affirmative action” following a caste census, and writes that there is a need for “more opportunities for Muslims in a rapidly modernizing economy”.
Reuters, UK
Fayaz Bukhari writes on May 10 that Kashmiri political leaders contesting elections feel Modi’s government is “sabotaging” their campaigns to help their party’s “proxies” by “denying or cancelling permissions” to hold rallies and events. Mehbooba Mufti of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) said, “this attitude of the police, in which they curtail our movement to support the proxy parties of the BJP, is against the guidelines of the Election Commission of India.”
The Guardian, UK
Atul Dev’s May 16 profile of Amit Shah describes him as India’s “second most powerful man” who is the “face and embodiment” of “menace and threat to critics of the government”.
Bloomberg, US
Ian Marlow and Upmanyu Trivedi report on May 20 on how the US-based ‘Overseas Friends of the BJP’ organized 20 “call-a-thons” in American cities for its volunteers to call voters in India in “tough constituencies” for the BJP and encourage them to vote for the party in the 2024 elections.
Vox, US
Zack Beauchamp’s investigation published on May 22 reveals “a sustained campaign” by the Modi government that “threatens American citizens and permanent residents who dare speak out” on India’s state of democracy. It quotes a Human Rights Watch representative as saying, “There are prominent Indian American intellectuals, writers, [and] celebrities who simply will not speak out against Modi because they are afraid that by doing so they will subject themselves to a torrent of online abuse and even death threats.”
Financial Times, UK
John Reed assesses on May 22 views of Opposition figures and independent commentators that Narendra Modi’s “wave” may be waning. While Modi has power “that few other world leaders can match,” he also underlines that “day to day issues such as soaring food prices and unemployment” are preoccupying voters.
The Guardian, UK
An editorial on May 30 calls out Narendra Modi’s “audacity of hate” referring to the Prime Minister’s resort to “overtly Islamophobic language” that casts Indian Muslims as an “existential threat to the Hindu majority” in his election campaign. The insults are “meant to distract” Indian voters struggling with high inflation and unemployment. India’s Election Commission has shown only a “feeble call for restraint”.
Himal SouthAsian, Sri Lanka
Himal SouthAsian is producing a special series called ‘Modi’s India from the Edges’, on course with India’s 2024 elections, that brings “critical wide-angle Southasian analysis of Modi’s reign and its ramifications”.
Experts say
The Independent Panel for Monitoring Indian Elections, made up of experts from Europe, Bangladesh and India, in its weekly bulletin of May 2-8, included concerns related to the continued violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) by senior BJP leaders, such as the Prime Minister ‘s remarks targeting the Muslim community; misinformation regarding the Congress Party manifesto and reports of election authorities not allowing domestic election monitoring groups of civil society members to meet the members of foreign election management bodies / political parties that were invited to observe the recently concluded phase 3 of the general election. As the last few phases of voting wound up, the panel noted that BJP’s star campaigners like Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath continued to dog whistle to their supporters with anti-Muslim rhetoric, with the former going so far as to say that he was chosen by god – a justification Adolf Hitler used too, the panel report pointed out.
The Global Report on Internal Displacement 2024, released by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Committee on 14 May reveals that displacement related to “conflict and violence” rose in South Asia in 2023 “mostly due” to the violence in Manipur, which “triggered around 67,000 displacements” in 2023, the highest figure for displacement due to violence in India since 2018.
Adding to “over-invoicing” allegations against the Adani Group, an investigative report published on May 22 by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project brings forth new documentary evidence that around 24 shipments of coal that arrived on the Tamil Nadu coast between January and October 2014 were first priced as “low-quality coal” but finally sold at triple the cost to the state power company.
Check My Ads, a digital watchdog organisation, has found that in monetizing “the Hindu nationalist media site” OpIndia, Google is defying its own standards prohibiting hate speech. While several companies and ad agencies have pulled out from OpIndia, Google continues to runs ads next to Islamophobic content.
The Bridge Initiative, a Georgetown University research project on Islamophobia around the world, published two India related factsheets in May. One is on Sadhvi Rithambara, a senior Hindu nationalist leader, on the impact of her anti-Muslim speeches in the demolition of the Babri Masjid; the alleged involvement of her militant women’s organization in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom as well as the withdrawal of permissions for her events in the US and in the UK owing to her violent past and far-right affiliations. The second factsheet is on the Love-jihad conspiracy theory. While “widely debunked” as discrimination against Muslim men, the promotion of love-jihad by Hindutva groups in India has meant that “Muslim men have been imprisoned, faced violent attacks, and killed” on account of it.
One year since the violence in Manipur began, recommendations by the International Religious Freedom of Belief Alliance (IRFBA) are shared in an article by David Campanale, including calling for the disarming of extremist groups; humanitarian access; and independent investigations into human rights abuses. The article offers a reminder about other international responses to Manipur including reports by the UK Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion or Belief (internal), the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot, in an interview on 31 May with Sidharth Bhatia on the Wire, speaks about his latest book ‘Gujarat Under Modi: The Blueprint for Today’s India’. Although the book was written over 13 years ago and focused on Gujarat, the “four pillars” which upheld the state under Modi are the same which are upholding the country under Modi today. These are – communal polarisation, the capture of institutions, crony capitalism and a Nationalist, populist style of leadership. With respect to the present moment, Prof Jaffrelot says that the rallying together of the opposition after consecutive victories of one powerful man has happened, mostly without success, in other countries too, but what remains to be seen in India is whether they have come together only to save their skin or to work towards a positive agenda. Although Prof Jaffrelot said he has not felt able to return to an India which is very changed from the India he remembers, he also expressed hope in the possibility of the Constitution being “revalourized”.
The Freedom in the World 2024 report by Freedom House, a US-based non-profit company, classifies India as “partly free”. It observes that “harassment of journalists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other government critics has increased significantly under Modi”. The report points to the BJP’s “use” of public institutions to “target political opponents”. It also finds that “Muslims, scheduled castes (Dalits), and scheduled tribes (Adivasis) remain economically and socially marginalized.”
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s annual report 2024 states, “In 2023, religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate” including the reinforcing of “discriminatory nationalist policies”. USCIRF repeated its recommendation that the US government designate India as a “country of particular concern” and to impose targeted sanctions on individuals “by freezing those individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States, condition financial assistance and arms sales to India on improved religious freedom conditions”.
The International Committee of Jurists on May 5 expressed concerns about the Manipur state government’s “forced” deportation of Myanmar refugees and called on Indian authorities to “immediately halt all further forcible returns of Myanmar refugees” and to “offer protection and support” in line with “the non-refoulement principle and India’s other obligations under international human rights law.”
A new report, Modi Mirage, released on May 7 and co-authored by Professor Irfan Nooruddin from Georgetown University (USA) and Dr Ritumbra Manuvie from Groningen University (The Netherlands), provides an evidence-based counter to “Modi’s claim of having significantly enhanced India standing in the world”. It compiles research by several international institutions such as Pew, Carnegie, GlobeScan and YouGov. Some findings include, “Modi is neither well known nor popular overseas “Eighty nine percent of the people in the United States, the United Kingdom and France…said that they think it is important for India to protect human rights and democracy for better relations”; British Indians show “significant levels of disapproval and disillusionment in Modi’s leadership” for“religious tensions” and “democratic restrictions”.
Reporters Without Borders’ 2024 World Press Freedom index ranks India 159 out of 180 countries. India’s press freedom is in “crisis” marked by “violence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and political alignment”. It observes that the introduction of several new laws relating to data and media regulation by the Modi government give “the government extraordinary power to control the media, censor news and silence critics”.
Amnesty International put out a technical explainer on how a digitised welfare delivery technology, called Entity Resolution, used by the Telangana government, raises larger human rights concerns about such technology. These include threats to privacy, and the acceleration of digital surveillance by governments in the guise of welfare delivery, targeted on those living in poverty with few safeguards against misuse.
InSAF India released a campaign video on the incarcerated scholar and activist Mahesh Raut, the youngest among the ‘Bhima-Koregaon 16’ who was among the first arrested in 2018. Raut remains in jail despite being granted bail by the Bombay High Court in 2023. He recently passed the law school entrance exam from jail with high marks.
Ekō, a global corporate accountability group in collaboration with India Civil Watch International released findings that Meta approved “highly inflammatory” AI-generated ads targeting voters during the elections, including those calling for “killing of Muslims” and the “execution of a key opposition party leader”. 14 out of 22 of the created ads were approved by Meta despite their violating Meta’s policies on hate speech and misinformation. (The ads were removed by the researchers before publication). Building on an earlier investigation, the study concludes that despite Meta’s “public boasting” and its promise before the elections that it would prioritize the detection and removal of violative AI generated content, “the platform is ill-equipped to deal with AI-generated disinformation”.
Parliamentarians and public officials advocate
US President Joe Biden condemned “xenophobia” in India and other countries as a major factor for “hobbled” economic growth. In his speech, reported by Reuters (May 2) and others, Biden asked, “why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong”.
A recent episode of the podcast Rest in Politics features Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. Khan was asked about Narendra Modi’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and the overall silence on the “damage and harm that Modi is doing to Indian democracy”. While India has been a “secular democracy that protects minorities”, Khan added “I am afraid we are seeing too frequently examples of minorities being treated so appallingly in India. I am really hoping the Congress party sorts itself out and there is a contest that is fair and even.”
Indian diaspora groups protest and advocate
16 UK-based diaspora groups organized a Vigil for Democracy in India in London on May 5. This comes at a time when diaspora Indians are fearful of taking a public stand against the Modi government for fear of reprisal. Satpal Muman, Chair, Caste Watch UK (the UK’s largest oppressed caste organization) bared the BJP’s attempt to pit Dalits and OBCs against Muslims, saying the BJP wants “a Hindu state in which India’s secular Constitution drafted by Dr Ambedkar will be replaced by the barbaric, anti-women, and casteist 2nd century laws of Manu.” Speakers from the Christian Kuki-Zo community shared the suffering their families faced in the Manipur violence and continue to, a year later. Andrew Feinstein, a former African National Congress MP who served under Nelson Mandela said, “Prime Minister Modi is one of the world’s most extreme ethno-nationalists. Apartheid Israel’s embrace of Modi is particularly repugnant as his Hindu nationalist philosophy has its roots in the RSS, an avowedly Nazi, anti-Semitic movement.”
The North American Manipur Tribal Association (NAMTA) organised a congressional briefing Break The Sound of Silence: “Not to Speak is to Speak. Not to Act is to Act” on May 6 on the situation in Manipur. David Curry, Commissioner, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) described the violence against Kukis as “egregious” and “alarming”. Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch, said we are witnessing “an expression of Hindutva in Manipur” in which “Meitei are the Hindu Nationalists and Christian Kukis are the victims…We have a very dangerous situation developing in Manipur and we have to stop the genocide.”
Over 40 organisations and individuals from around the world condemned Prime Minister Modi and other BJP leaders for their hate speech during India’s elections in a joint statement on May 30. The signatories included diaspora groups as well as international groups working on human rights, genocide, faith, race, fascism and the rights of people in Palestine, Tunisia and Libya. Together they stated that “We, the global civil society, maintain that the leader of the world’s largest democracy – whose parliamentary elections have a significance and bearing for the rest of the world – should not stoop to spreading hate speech and must be held accountable for doing so.”
Read the previous roundup here.