Narendra Modi and the Indian elections

News Mondays - Clément Guntern

On Sunday March 10, the Indian Election Commission announced the dates of the next election in this country of 1.3 billion inhabitants. It will take place from April 11 to May 9, a period of six weeks during which polling stations will move around the country, followed by troops providing security. Results are expected on May 23. Outgoing Prime Minister Modi is standing for re-election for a further five-year term at the helm of the world's largest democracy. In the meantime, campaigning is in full swing, mainly between Prime Minister Modi's Hindu nationalist party, BJP, and the Congress party, led by Rahul Gandhi. 

The campaign was shaken by the attack at the end of February on a convoy of Indian paramilitaries in the disputed region of Kashmir, in north-west India. More than forty Indians were killed, provoking intense emotion throughout the country. Such an attack could have seemed like a godsend for a nationalist Prime Minister in the middle of an election campaign: he could have put forward an image of a strong man, ready to do anything to uphold Indian sovereignty. But the situation is more complicated for him: the failure of a retaliatory military operation would have just as far-reaching consequences as inaction. For the time being, India is taking the diplomatic route, attempting, with increasing success, to isolate Pakistan at the UN or by diverting the waters of the Indus.

Other challenges

But tensions with neighbor and enemy Pakistan are not the only issues at stake in this election campaign. Quite simply because the last five years have changed India dramatically. For the first time, democracy has been represented by a majority religion. In other words, Narendra Modi's BJP party has made itself the representative of just one part of India: the 80% Hindus. In the nationalist vision, religion is rooted in a territory, and Hindus live on a land that belongs to them: a people, a country. The Muslim minority represents 15% of the population. A figure that may seem small, but on the scale of India it represents 200 million people. This makes India one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.

Since the BJP came to power, no new laws have been passed that could endanger Muslims. Nothing on paper, but in reality, this population is dominated and victimized by a multitude of prohibited practices. A sort of cultural police force. The trade in cows, a sacred animal in Hinduism, is disrupted, and numerous lynchings have taken place. After the minorities that have to be assimilated, there are still the peripheral regions like Kashmir to which the nationalists wish to withdraw autonomy.

The latest targets for nationalists, as for populists everywhere, are institutions. Once again, Modi has not destroyed the checks and balances head-on, but their influence has been eroded, as in the case of the Election Commission and the Supreme Court. If Narendra Modi and his BJP party win another five-year term, will Indian democracy survive this erosion in this form? For now, the country is moving from a liberal democracy to an ethnic democracy.

Write to the’author: clement.guntern@leregardlibre.com

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