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These growing murmurs about the backsliding of democracy — polite rebukes from Western governments and strident editorials by Western media — are having the exact opposite from the intended effect. The more that voices from outside India charge Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government with rolling back freedoms, the stronger he becomes and the less possible it is for us in India to have a sane debate on the matter.
To be sure, there are some worries about the way the country’s democracy is evolving.
India performs very well on electoral freedoms. And the transfer of power has always been peaceful — unlike the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in the United States, for instance.
But there are other causes for concern. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, arguably the most powerful political party since the 1970s, doesn’t have a single Muslim representative in parliament. Investigative agencies have registered a fourfold increase in cases of economic crimes and financial irregularities under the BJP-led government, and while that might seem like a cleanup, the vast majority are against the BJP’s political opposition. Inflammatory hate speeches are routine. And public appetite for mob-led vigilante justice has been normalized — just this week, in a made-for-camera murder, dreaded gangster Atiq Ahmed was shot dead at point-blank range while handcuffed and surrounded by armed police. With the exception of a few condemnatory editorials, it was largely applauded as a good riddance moment.
However, the moment the democracy debate becomes externalized, many Indians become irritated and end up closing ranks against “outsiders.”
There are many reasons for this. The brutality of the British Empire birthed a reflexive anti-imperial instinct. Indians do not like being reprimanded by the West. Hypocrisy is another trigger. On the very day the State Department spokesman commented on Gandhi’s expulsion, the United States was grappling with a school shooting in Nashville in which seven people, three of them 9-year old children, were killed — including the perpetrator. A viral photo of a congressman from the area and his family posing with rifles in front of their Christmas tree made it even harder for Indians to see the United States as the global arbiter of democratic and civic values.
Since then, there has been a shooting in Louisville and the attack on Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager. Yet 146 mass shootings this year (as of April 10) have not generated gratuitous opprobrium from the Indian government. Indian editorials on the United States are not all about gun violence, entrenched racism and the denial of reproductive autonomy to millions of American women. And if they were, they would hardly create a stir in Washington.
So Indians wonder why we are expected to accept preaching or judgment in reverse.
The stereotypes and absence of granularity in Western media coverage of our country in fact help reinforce the nationalist positioning of the Modi government and play straight into the hands of its supporters.
Take the conversation around the killing of Ahmed. Nearly every Western media outlet described him as a “former lawmaker” instead of a much-feared and despicable mob don — first charged with murder at the age of 18 — who faced more than 100 charges. This actually weakened the domestic debate over how such a macabre extrajudicial killing took place at all.
There was a similar lack of understanding in the recent Western coverage of Amritpal Singh, a secessionist Sikh trying to raise a private militia in support of “Khalistan” — a 1980s demand for a separate nation for Sikhs. Khalistan has few takers outside of an extremist fringe, but it remains a national security issue. Indians remember the years when the movement led to serious bloodshed — including the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the bombing of an Air India plane in 1985. Yet even as India’s embassies in San Francisco and London were being vandalized by Khalistani supporters, the emphasis in the West was on the internet shutdown in Punjab while authorities searched for Singh.
The reaction to that here? More eye-rolling.
Yes, India’s democracy has to be strengthened and repaired. But this must be done by Indians — and Indians alone.
Let us have the argument. Let us make the noise.
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