Last Sunday, members of the far-right Hindu-nationalist organization Bajrang Dal confronted four Muslim men at a social event in the central Indian city of Indore. Clashes broke out, and the Bajrang Dal members turned the Muslim men over to the police, who arrested them to “restore peace.” (They were later released on bail.) The Hindu nationalists had accused the men of so-called love jihad, a conspiracy theory that alleges Muslim men seek to marry Hindu women and forcibly convert them to Islam.
Such bigotry is an unfortunately frequent occurrence in today’s India—and it plays out against a backdrop of democratic backsliding. Religious intolerance risks further undermining the pluralistic and secular traditions that underpin Indian democracy. Despite its ethnic and religious diversity, India has long grappled with communal tensions. But what appears different now is the increased frequency of acts of bigotry—and the state’s role in fomenting it, particularly as some leaders within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) resort to hate speech and dog whistles.
Events in just the last few weeks underscore this trend. On Oct. 3, vandals attacked a Christian church in Uttarakhand state. On Oct. 5, mobs armed with iron rods assaulted a Muslim neighborhood in Chhattisgarh state. And earlier, on Sept. 24, police evicted Muslim migrants from their homes in Assam state. Meanwhile, a BJP minister warned farmers protesting against agriculture laws that he would “discipline” them if they didn’t stop, and days later, his son was accused of plowing his car into a crowd of demonstrators in Uttar Pradesh state.
India’s democracy is under strain. The state has detained nearly 9,000 people under a colonial-era anti-terrorism law in the last five years, many of them government critics. New Delhi also seeks to increase its access to private information and its control over social media, prompting disputes with WhatsApp and Twitter. Since taking power, the BJP has implemented a Hindu-nationalist agenda accompanied by demonizing rhetoric.
By 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reelected by a large margin, the rhetoric had grown worse. BJP leader Amit Shah described immigrants from Muslim-majority Bangladesh as “termites.” Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said Muslims did India “no favors” by remaining after the 1947 Partition. Meanwhile, a new law fast-tracked Indian citizenship for members of religious minorities—but not Muslims—fleeing persecution in neighboring countries.
Democracy promotion was not a major concern for former U.S. President Donald Trump, although administration officials at the time privately expressed concern about India’s trajectory. By contrast, the Biden administration has made democracy promotion a pillar of its foreign policy, but it has not decried rights violations in India, aside from gentle calls for both countries to defend democratic principles.
If the Biden administration makes an issue out of India’s democratic backsliding, it could increase tensions at a significant moment for the U.S.-India partnership. Competition with Beijing has taken center stage, and Washington sees New Delhi as an essential actor to counter China’s power. President Joe Biden can’t risk angering an Indian government that is deeply sensitive to outside criticism about domestic matters.
The approach may not sit well with all administration officials. “We are repeating the Obama and Trump mistake of cozying up to India and Modi without demanding Modi end his tilt toward authoritarianism,” an unnamed official told Politico on the eve of Modi’s White House visit last month.
Given the imperative of the U.S.-India partnership, such a demand seems neither realistic nor desirable. But the Biden administration’s selective approach to democracy promotion—dial it up with rivals, dial it down with partners—could strengthen a long-standing criticism that U.S. foreign policy is inconsistent and hypocritical.
Michael Kugelman is the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly South Asia Brief. He is the Asia Program deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center in Washington. Twitter: @michaelkugelman
The article was published in the Foreign Policy Magazine on 14 October 2021