Modi’s election setback follows campaign focused on India’s foreign relations

KIRAN SHARMA :

NEW DELHI — Addressing thousands of his supporters at a rally in the politically crucial state of northern Uttar Pradesh on May 22, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a version of a stump speech he has given over and over throughout his 75-day election campaign.

“When India speaks in the global forums now, the whole world pays rapt attention,” he told the huge crowd in Hindi. “When India takes decisions, the world tries to match its steps,” Modi shouted, to sustained applause.

His audience braved soaring summer temperatures to see and hear the prime minister, whose Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party ultimately returned to power on Tuesday, albeit with a lower margin than expected. The outcome was seen as a setback, even as Modi prepared to continue governing for a rare third term, unprecedented since the time of India’s first post-independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.

The official vote count showed Modi’s BJP winning 240 seats in the lower house of parliament, emerging as the single largest party, and securing a total of more than 290 along with its allies in the ruling National Democratic Alliance. With 272 seats needed to form a government, it was a victory for Modi, but the results fell shy of the 350-400 seats predicted for the BJP in exit polls, and the party won about 60 seats fewer than in 2019. In the last two elections, the BJP had achieved the simple majority on its own.

The narrow win came on the back of a campaign with a new rhetorical tack. In speech after speech across the country, Modi’s election rhetoric has spotlighted something voters are unaccustomed to hearing in Indian political campaigns: the country’s foreign affairs and diplomacy.

Modi awaits the leaders of other countries at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023. The prime minister has touted his hosting of the summit as a symbol of his diplomatic success during his second term. (Photo by Ken Kobayashi)

“The world is amazed” by India’s economic growth story, Modi said in several speeches over the past three months. To hear the prime minister tell it, the world has been “amazed” by everything from India’s COVID vaccination program to its hosting of the G20 summit in New Delhi last September.

Analysts say Modi’s focus India’s demographic, economic and political rise on the world stage is a new factor in Indian politics. In previous elections, the BJP’s talking points have veered toward domestic issues such as inflation, infrastructure, crime and domestic terrorism, not to mention Hindu nationalism, which has defined the party’s identity since it came to power in 2014.

“Traditionally and historically, it has been believed that foreign affairs do not have any impact on domestic issues, but this government has intertwined the two,” Ajay Kaul, editor-in-chief of the United News of India news agency, told Nikkei Asia, acknowledging that for the first time foreign policy played a central role in a national political campaign.

Events such as last September’s G20 summit in New Delhi and India’s landing a spacecraft near the unexplored south pole of the moon the previous month, along with the country’s robust economic growth, were prominent topics in Modi’s campaign.

BJP speechwriters also seized on the International Monetary Fund’s announcement last year that India was “a bright spot” in the global economy and the fastest growing major developing economy in the world in 2023. The United Nations used similar language in April to laud India, whose GDP grew 8.2% in the fiscal year through this past March.

India’s new global prominence has allowed Modi to brag: Last year the nation overtook China to become the world’s most populous, and in 2021 it edged past the U.K. to become the fifth largest global economy. In 2023 it not only hosted the G20 summit of industrialized and developing nations but also a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a Russia- and China-led club of which India is a member.

New Delhi has carefully cultivated its image as an independent voice in a world order that is increasingly polarized between the U.S. and China, pivoting toward the nonaligned countries of the “global south,” which it seeks to represent.

Under Modi, India’s foreign policy doctrine has become known as “strategic autonomy,” shorthand for not taking sides. The superpower-straddling approach hearkens to the nonaligned movement that India helped lead during the Cold War under former Prime Minister Nehru.

Today, while other Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea buttress their U.S. ties in the face of a rising China, India extols a policy of hedging its bets: New Delhi has so far refused to unequivocally condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has been buying heavily discounted Russian oil as a reward for its neutrality.

The BJP continues to insist that leaning toward Russia is a successful strategy. The party released a campaign video just before the elections in which Modi is praised for “halting” the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 to enable the evacuation of about 20,000 stranded Indian students from Ukraine.

In an interview with Nikkei Asia in March, Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, a diplomat-turned-politician credited as being Modi’s man behind the country’s assertive foreign policy, praised his country’s “exceptionally steady” relations with Moscow. India, he added, “will not hesitate to contribute to efforts toward dialogue and peace.”

Us vs. them

Touting foreign achievements represented a departure from Modi’s traditional strategy of focusing on the domestic Hindu nationalist agenda, which he nevertheless continues to focus on. In April he referred in a speech to “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” which was seen by critics as targeting Muslims. India has over 1.4 billion people, about 80% of whom are Hindus, from whom Modi’s party mainly draws support. Muslims make up 14% of the population and have faced communal violence in the past.

Analysts say Modi’s foreign affairs talking points are strikingly similar in one respect to his domestic ones: They emphasize an us-vs.-them narrative. “Them” is frequently Pakistan, China or other countries Modi perceives as threats to India, which occasionally includes Western liberals.

Modi has attacked India’s opposition bloc, including the Indian National Congress, for being too soft on Pakistan. He asserted in a speech on May 13 that a renewed BJP mandate would ensure that India be tough on nuclear-armed Pakistan and make India’s neighbor “wear bangles” — a metaphor for submission.

Modi’s government launched airstrikes against terror camps in Pakistan in 2019 in retaliation against a suicide bombing in the northern Kashmir region. A Pakistan-based terrorist group claimed credit for the bombing, which killed 40 Indian security personnel.

BJP members celebrate an Indian air strike on Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack in the northern Kashmir region, on Feb. 26, 2019, in Pune, India.   © Getty Images

On tackling terrorism, Modi repeatedly said during the election rallies that “today, India kills [the terrorists] by entering their homes.” While his statements appeared mainly directed at Pakistan, some also saw his comments in the context of the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Canada last year, whose murder was linked to the Indian government by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. U.S. law enforcement agencies have said they foiled a plot by Indian assassins to kill another Sikh activist in the United States. Both men had been designated as terrorists by New Delhi, though the Indian government has denied any link to either plot.

And then there is China. In 2020, India and its giant neighbor fought a brief skirmish high in a Himalayan pass that left 20 Indian troops and four Chinese soldiers dead, forcing Modi to defend himself against accusations that India lost the engagement. “The Chinese intrusions in Ladakh and the Galwan clash in 2020 represented the biggest setbacks to Indian national security in decades,” reads the manifesto of the opposition Congress party, released in April. Manish Tewari, a Congress spokesperson, said the BJP-led government has “continuously shown a weak-kneed approach towards China ever since 2020, when the Chinese Army intruded into and occupied Indian territory at multiple places on the border.” The Congress party ruled the country for many decades after India’s independence from British rule in 1947 and is part of an alliance of over two dozen parties formed last July to take on the BJP.

In response to these statements, Vijay Kumar Singh, the minister of state for civil aviation and a former Army chief, said, “Neither has China occupied anything nor has it been allowed to occupy anything. The situation that was there in 2012 is the same even today. There has been no change.”

An Indian army convoy drives along a highway bordering China in June 2020 in Gagangir, India. That month, Indian and Chinese soldiers clashed in the Himalayan mountains, resulting in 24 fatalities.    © Getty Images

Opponents also accuse the BJP of using foreign affairs to avoid talking about an increasingly difficult domestic situation, to divert focus from the party’s ties to some of India’s billionaires, to distract from soaring food inflation and steer away from criticism of an electoral process that has strayed far from global norms. Key opposition politicians, including the chief ministers of two states, were arrested in the run-up to the campaign, while the Congress party said its bank accounts have been frozen.

“While they are busy spinning yarns about global glory, the reality of unemployment, inflation and social strife is hitting hard back home!” Gaurav Pandhi, All India Congress Committee coordinator at the office of the party’s president, told Nikkei. Modi and the BJP, he said, have been “tooting their own horns about India’s rising global stature and foreign policy ‘masterstrokes.'”

“They are under this … illusion that if they repeat it enough times, it might just become true,” he said.

In its election manifesto, the Congress pledged to “restore India’s global reputation as a voice of peace and moderation in world affairs,” and “work to repair India’s international image that has been damaged by the present government’s intolerance of dissent and suppression of human rights.”

A “more confident era”

Nevertheless, Modi’s nationalist chest thumping has been well-received by much of the electorate.

In a survey asking what Modi would be most remembered for, published by media group India Today in February, 19% of over 35,000 respondents countrywide credited the prime minister for raising India’s global stature.

BJP supporters celebrate at its party headquarters in New Delhi on June 4. (Photo by Suzu Takahashi)

This was second to the 42% saying that the inauguration on Jan. 22 of Lord Ram temple in northern Ayodhya was the major highlight of Modi’s government. The site of the temple has long been a Hindu-Muslim flashpoint. In 1992 a mosque on the spot was razed following riots which killed 2,000 people, mainly Muslims. The mosque itself was built in the early 16th century by the Mughal emperor Babur on a site traditionally identified as Rama’s birthplace and as the location of an ancient Hindu temple, the Ram Janmabhoomi.

According to Harsh V. Pant, vice president of studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank, foreign policy played a bigger role in these elections than in previous ones because “one of the most important aspects of Modi’s attraction which the BJP brought to the table was how he projected India’s power and influence,” especially to young voters.

Even after the election schedule was announced on March 16, Pant said, New Delhi’s international engagements continued as Modi visited Bhutan while External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar traveled to Southeast Asia. In May, India signed a 10-year contract to develop and operate the strategic Iranian port of Chabahar, which could emerge as a counter to a Chinese-controlled project in Pakistan.

“Many things happened during these elections,” Pant told Nikkei, “and it reflected certain confidence on the part of the ruling dispensation that they would return to power and also showed that foreign policy debates are increasingly capturing a wide audience for the ruling party.

Narendra Modi and Bhutanese King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck speak at the Tashichho Dzong Palace in the capital Thimpu on March 22.    © Indian Press Information Bureau/AFP/Jiji

Delivering a foreign policy talk in April in the southern city of Hyderabad, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar said India’s focus had previously been on nonalignment but that the country has now moved to “more confident era” where it is a “Vishwa Bandhu,” or a friend to the world, with the ability to engage with as many nations as possible.

“Today our country is very clear … [that] the welfare of our people, the interest of our society come first, the security of our country comes first and foremost,” Jaishankar elaborated. His speech was titled, “Foreign Policy the India Way: From Diffidence to Confidence.”

Hard truths

Ullekh NP, author of the book “War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology Behind Narendra Modi’s 2014 Win,” noted that under Modi the BJP has started talking more about India’s “so-called stature in the comity of nations.”

“The perception [especially in Indian] villages is … that Modi hobnobs with top [world] leaders. So, that image has been created and it plays to the benefit of the current government,” Sanjay Kumar Pandey, a professor at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told Nikkei. “I’m afraid no other ruling party would bank so much on the foreign policy as this government has.”

“Partly this is true,” Pandey said when asked whether the BJP was somehow lacking in showcasing domestic achievements. “Because on the domestic front in terms of inflation and unemployment, there are questions being raised.”

Another aspect of the BJP’s campaign that has made global headlines is what can be characterized as intensified religious polarization. “Imagine, it is coming from the spearhead of the whole campaign, the prime minister himself,” Ullekh, the author, said, referring to some Modi statements heard as targeting Muslims.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi on June 4 as election results roll in. (Photo by Suzu Takahashi)

Muslim leader Navaid Hamid, a former president of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, an umbrella group of Muslim organizations, said that “it is in the genesis of Narendra Modi and his colleagues in [the BJP’s ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu nationalist organization] to encash the anti-Muslim sentiments in the country.”

“Unfortunately,” Hamid said, “this is a hard truth that all institutions have been subjugated by Modi in the last 10 years, whether it is National Human Rights Commission, whether it is the Election Commission, whether it is Central Vigilance Commission or other constitutional bodies.”

Experts say the toxic legacy of this year’s elections might well taint India’s efforts to remain on good terms with the West. Just as the BJP has tried to use its foreign affairs record to influence the election, the conduct of the election may influence foreign affairs.

Washington, for example, has begun to minimize its exposure to India. U.S. President Joe Biden declined India’s invitation to be chief guest at the Republic Day parade earlier this year, a sign that the U.S. is not interested in helping bolster Modi’s domestic image.

“An erosion of India’s democratic credentials would have implications for how the country is perceived globally,” wrote researcher Chietigj Bajpaee, senior research fellow for South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme at London think tank Chatham House in an April research paper. This “may prompt the West to review the nature and limits of its cooperation with India.”

source : asia.nikkei