India is changing. But in what?

transcription

According to the New York Times, it’s “The Ezra Klein Show. “

[PLAYING MUSIC]

Today I’m thrilled to have this verbal exchange with my Times Opinion colleague, Matter of Opinion co-host, our podcast cousin, Lydia Polgreen, about one of the other foreign policy stories we were looking for to cover more and that deserves a lot of attention: the rise of illiberalism in India.

15 years ago I moved to New Delhi as a correspondent for the New York Times. It was an exhilarating moment. After years of dubious growth, the country seemed poised for some kind of immediate economic expansion that could lift more than a billion people out of poverty, just as China had done. But unlike China, India is a noisy beacon of democracy, secularism and freedom. Today’s India has delivered on many of the promises I heard when I was there.

This year, it is the most populated country in the world. According to the World Bank, India’s economy is one of the fastest developing in the world. The country even hosted the G20 in September.

At the same time, there has been a marked erosion of democracy. The State has fueled violence against devout minorities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration have silenced their critics and independent institutions. And Indian government officials have been linked to two murder plots against Sikhs. militants in Canada and the United States, a stunning diplomatic scandal that once again puts India’s relations with the West in the spotlight. Looking ahead to 2023, it is clear that India has made progress, but not as much as we expected.

So I asked Pratap Bhanu Mehta what has happened to Indian democracy and what it means for the rest of the world. Mehta is a professor at Princeton University. He has written extensively on political theory and is the author of “The Burden of Democracy. ” He has a regular column in the Indian Express, where he explains Indian and global affairs.

We spoke at the beginning of October, but I think his concepts are even more relevant. As always, you can send an email to ezrakleinshow@nytimes. com.

This is Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, it’s glorious to be here with you.

Thank you so much and it’s glorious to see you too.

So it’s been a while. I lived in Delhi from 2009 to 2013. And at that time, you were an indispensable consultant for me to be able to perceive this ordinary position that is India. I’m just curious. What’s your life like in India those days?

Well, there’s never a dull moment in India, that’s for sure. You know, it’s a cliché about India feasting on India as a paradox. And I think the paradox of this moment is obviously that the political importance, the economic importance and the economic importance of India’s cultural creativity is more dynamic than ever. On the other hand, the symptoms of Indian democracy seem truly disturbing. I co-edited a giant Oxford textbook on the Indian Constitution. I have to say that now, when I go to class, I say I can’t tell you what the Constitution of India is.

I cannot tell you if you register a habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court, whether it will be heard. I can’t tell you that when opposition politicians are attacked by the government for fiscal reasons, they will get the same fair relief. of the Supreme Court. So there’s a sense of fear about where this democracy is headed, and I think we want to register any of those feelings at the same time.

We’re going to communicate a lot about democracy. It’s a word we all hear: India is the largest democracy in the world. It has been an almost uninterrupted democracy since its independence. That kind of exclusive, bold delight. . . I mean, you can’t live in India without being deeply moved by what’s going on. I mean, I’m wary of exceptionalism, but I don’t think that in the history of man a more ambitious experiment of coexistence through government through mutual agreement has ever been attempted.

So a smart position to start with would be to just dive into a bit of history. Tell me a little bit about India’s history as a democracy and what India has had to learn since it was the largest democracy in the world.

Look, I mean, Indian elections were probably more vital to us than religions. And I think they stay that way. I mean, there’s a certain kind of dynamism, a sense of diversity in the face of difference.

I think it was, in a sense, an instinctive understanding of what democracy is. So, one story that can be told about Indian democracy is that a gigantic number of constituent elements or teams of society do not want to be democratic. I mean, sometimes they can be illiberal internally. They can be conservative. And yet, the balance of social force between teams, between castes and regions, is such that no organization or identity can aspire to dominate without generating some kind of resistance and negative reaction.

And we always used to say that India’s politics was fated to a certain kind of centrism precisely for this reason, that there wasn’t going to ever be a single identity force that could command sufficient power to be able to govern India as a whole. In fact, the joke used to be that any party that governed India would have to look like the Congress Party, or maybe a better version of the Congress Party.

The Congress Party, the party founded by Mahatma Gandhi. And tell us a little bit about the history of the Congress Party.

Well, it was actually started by — officially, its founder is A.O. Hume. But it’s Mahatma Gandhi that actually gave the party its modern form. He converted that party into a mass movement, and really, of extraordinary proportions. What he managed to do, I think quite significantly, was not just forge a mass movement, but create an imagination of modern India where each of its constituent parts would find its fullest expression.

For example, he is a political genius. Each state had a linguistic unit which later became the basis for how India approached the question of language. We have created this brilliant compromise in which there would be an official liaison language, English. Hindi would be a kind of national language, but each state can use its own language, for example, Tamil, Bengali, etc. , you know, Malayalam.

And it has averted the fate of so many post-colonial countries that have experienced civil wars or been divided over language. And I think it was actually a run-of-the-mill political innovation. It was an anti-colonial movement, but it was an incredibly cosmopolitan movement in its aspirations, founded on a much more original conception of rights, freedom of expression, attention to individuality and dignity, and a pursuit of politics through nonviolent means, which is not a negligible contribution. of so many postcolonial motions.

I mean, India was one of the few nationalist movements that have moved away from the extremes of left-wing violence and the extremes of the right. And I think that’s Gandhi’s usual contrition. I think one of the remarkable things about the Indian nationalist movement, when I compare it to other nationalist movements, is a self-determination movement, but it has very little resentment against the concept of the West.

In fact, I have the impression that our post-colonial era is now much greener with envy than our anti-colonial nationalist movement.

It’s interesting, because for me, as a correspondent, I left West Africa to come to India. I grew up in East Africa and also spent my formative years in West Africa. So I had this deep sense of India as a kind of A beacon of how wonderful a polyglot, multi-religious, multi-ethnic country can be. And it is worth remembering for a moment the violence and difficulties of the birth of India. It was born from the partition of the British Raj. It was a British colony at the time.

Can you tell us a little bit about how those ideas came about from this experience of the horrors of partition?

I am glad that you raised the issue of partition, which is, I believe, one of the most defining moments in the modern history of South Asia. India has the idea that it might simply be an exception to the European experience. The formation of geographical regions everywhere, including Europe and North America, has been an extremely violent, exclusionary and majoritarian movement. I think there are at least no exceptions to that.

And the aspiration of the nationalist movement was that, look, can we forge a new kind of identity that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of Europe? Now, partition was the first shock to this aspiration, because in some senses partition was premised on something like the European idea of a nation state, there must be some single identity that actually binds the nation. In the case for the demand for Pakistan, it’s the idea of a kind of Muslim homeland in South Asia.

And so, in that sense, Pakistan was a profound surprise to this nationalist task. I mean, this symbol of Gandhi grieving for independence because he saw India’s independence as a failure. It was born out of violence. He saw this as a rebuke to the ordinary task that the nationalist movement had attempted to create. And it would have been very easy for the founders of India to say, “Look, India is already divided for religious reasons. Let’s complete the work of partition and reclaim India as a Hindu state.

And yes, Muslims can live here. But there is no doubt that the logic of partition is the creation of a Hindu state in India.

And Muslims are the largest minority, but they’re very important, right?I mean, what’s the percentage, the ratio of Hindus to Muslims in India?

It’s a very large minority. That’s about two hundred million people. And I think what’s remarkable is that, despite partition, they’ve continued this task of seeking to create an Indian exception. I’m thinking of Jawaharlal Nehru, he was the first prime minister of India and, in a sense, the founder of Indian democracy.

I think the two profound concepts that he had, if you read his books like “Discovery of India” and all that, one of them, this concept of India as the palimpsest of all the civilizations of the world. India is Hindu, Muslim and Christian. It’s an Asian powerhouse, but it’s also a country of the Enlightenment. And this expression that he repeats over and over again, India as a palimpsest in which each civilization has left a mark, but a palimpsest that has been left by the Indians.

I think it was kind of a deeply philosophical and deep orientation towards India. But secondly, I think on a more practical level, India has such cross-cutting diversity that if you prioritise an identity base as the basis of national identity, you threaten a giant dose of violence, expulsion and bloodshed. So I think, in a weird way, the score just reinforced the idea. Even what’s left of India can’t prosper unless you say we’re going to create some kind of geographical region that’s very different from anything that’s ever happened in the world.

Yeah. You invoked Nehru, and I think one of his most famous and historic phrases — speeches — is the “Tryst with Destiny” speech. What do you think was India’s tryst with destiny, and what is it today?

Right, so the first and most important one was actually overcoming poverty, and the extraordinary levels of human misery and oppression that this society had internally experienced, particularly through the institution of caste.

It is the underlying formula of other people born into a specific network that bureaucracy a social hierarchy.

Absolutely, a social hierarchy that you couldn’t escape, a social hierarchy that was, in a sense, deeply oppressive, and especially if you were at the back of that social hierarchy: the Dalits, the untouchables, as they were called at the time. , the poorest 20 percent. Actually, it would be at the same point as slavery. I mean, intellectually we can qualify those comparisons, but it’s highly unlikely that we’ll overlook how morally abhorrent it was.

So, in a sense, the Indian state was embarking for the first time on the task of saying, “Look, we want a style of progression that can triumph over the tyranny of this compulsory identity called caste. “which is embodied in the Indian Constitution, of the concept of liberty, equality, fraternity, in situations that were otherwise considered inhospitable, India was granted universal suffrage at a time when it was one of the most inhospitable countries. poorest countries in the world.

So, if we look at the degrees of economic progression at which countries achieve universal suffrage, India achieves it at the lowest point of economic progression. It was one of the least informed countries in the world. And yet, there is immense hope that, thanks to constitutional politics, we can triumph over the scourge of poverty and at least social inequalities.

I think the most remarkable thing about the “Meeting with Destiny” speech in the Indian constitution, in the preamble of the Indian constitution, is that God knows Nehru and the founding generation fully understood that God, history and identity are vital. for the Indians. I mean, you can’t believe in this country, in a sense, without a deep religious and religious commitment, without a deep response to history. And identities are proliferating. I mean, other people wear them on their sleeves. But for those identities to flourish, for this cultural heritage to come to life, it was very vital that the social and political contract not be overwhelmed by the weight of God, history. or identity, so that other people don’t feel that way. They want to be compared to a single identity or loyalty axis.

So yes, God will flourish, but the gods will flourish. I mean, you know, the concept of Indian secularism is not that faith would be marginalized. It would be founded on individual freedom, so that all communities and teams can enjoy it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Just take a look at the last few years and see how India is having this kind of rendezvous with destiny; That’s right, India is now, by its tallest accounts, the most populous country in the world. ahead of China. La economy, GDP. It grew 7. 8% last quarter. India hosted the G20, a major gathering of world leaders. And we see India taking its position on the global stage.

But I think it’s falling at a time when the kind of internal contradictions and tensions are starting to take effect. Maybe it’s a smart time for us to turn to Narendra Modi and spend some time talking about who he is, where he is. And I think a key moment for me, definitely, was the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

So I think the three most important things to bear in mind about Narendra Modi, who is an extraordinary political figure — I mean, just as an analytical proposition, you don’t have to endorse his politics to recognize what a transformative figure he has been. So the first, most important thing is that he is a member of, and had much of his political and cultural upbringing, in an organization called the R.S.S., the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which was founded in the 1920s.

And the R. S. S. had one main goal, which is the creation of a Hindu political consciousness, according to which India has been subjected to what they call an era of millennial slavery. They even consider Mughal India, for example, to be a time of slavery. Our commitment is to create a form of Hindu consciousness and identity such that Hindus will never again be subjugated and have a political state, a tool of their own.

This undeniable political goal has been, in a sense, Narendra Modi’s guiding star. In a way, everything you do stems from the achievement of this political, even economic, goal, right?Making India an economically evolved country is, in a sense, a component of a tool to achieve this goal. I think the most remarkable thing about him, which I think is remarkable in the Indian context, is that he is an absolutely self-taught politician and leader.

Biographically, he belongs to the less privileged castes of India and surely did not enjoy the economic, social or political privileges that usually characterize the political careers of so many Indians. And that allowed him to do two things that are critical to his success. The first is to produce a kind of instinctive identity with giant masses of people. The political party it represents: the Bharatiya Janata Party was once accused of being largely an upper-caste party made up of privileged merchants, privileged Brahmins.

He single-handedly transformed this party into a party with a much broader social base. He managed to argue, and continues to argue, that what held India back, specifically in the last 20 or 30 years, was the fact that India ruled through anything. That looked like an ancient dynastic regime. The Congress Party, in some respects, ruled through the Nehru-Gandhi family. So when he talks about corruption, he’s not just referring to the fact that there may have been financial corruption.

In fact, it only refers to the fact that Indian democracy has acquired the characteristic of being a kind of closed club and that, in a sense, it has opened the doors of this policy to the Indians, to the languages they speak. For example, he is a very talented speaker in Hindi. The B. J. P. It is much more comfortable in vernacular languages than the Congress Party. Therefore, he can constitute this old complex as a privileged elite with a narrow social base, which is opposed by his personality type.

And I think the third thing about him, which I think goes back to his days in Gujarat, is that in Gujarat he earned a reputation for being an effective administrator, on the one hand. And the second thing, of course, is that he was known for his conduct in the Gujarat riots in 2002.

What happened to those riots?

It’s hotly contested. And I think you have to go back to the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party, driven by Mr Modi, introduced an agitation in what they called the birthplace of Lord Ram, where a mosque had been built. in the sixteenth century. And the convocation of the B. J. P. It was that this deserved to be, in a sense, given back to the Hindus.

And they created a mass movement. Now, what that mass movement did was that it in a sense created pockets of Hindu-Muslim tension all across India, because in some senses, these rallies were quite aggressive. They really were signposting the fact that a Hindu movement was arriving to claim India for Hindus.

One of the effects of this mass movement was the destruction of the Babri mosque.

This mosque in Ayodhya.

This motion was to gather volunteers and gather – literally, form bricks from other parts of India to bring to Ayodhya as a kind of symbolic gesture of structure – you know, those would be used to build a temple. Now, as this movement continues and tensions rise, an exercise in Godhra has been set on fire. And about 50 of the volunteers heading to Ayodhya were killed. This immediately set in motion a number of things that the B. J. P. Calling retaliation violence.

The violence was directed against the Muslim citizens of Gujarat.

Absolutely, and about 2,000 more people died. And surely it is horrible violence. I mean, it’s really. . . is. . . It’s very hard to describe.

Yes, neighbors are on top of neighbors.

Neighbors attack each other. Now, his role. . . There are a whole range of positions on this. One, of course, considers him directly guilty of instigating violent reprisals. There was a commission of inquiry. And for what it’s worth, this commission of inquiry acquitted him of that charge. I mean, it is. . . again, for what it’s worth. But we know in India that if the state is committed to ending the violence, it can end quickly.

You can take the police out. The army can be mobilized. And I think the political question mark about Narendra Modi, whatever direct orders he has given or not, is that this is obviously a great abdication of duty by the prime minister of state. It is also possible to simply have stopped the violence, and there is no excuse; There is no excuse, no matter how deep the passions, no matter how widespread the preference for revenge.

Surely there is no excuse for the scale of the violence that has taken place in Gujarat. The fact that he was accused of fomenting this violence through the Congress Party and that he was denied a visa to the United States until he became prime minister, I think that convinced him that the global total is some kind of gigantic conspiracy to entrap Hindus.

I mean, and this conspiratorial mentality is very, very central to the B. J. P. And the R. S. S. , thinking about the rest of the world, there’s been this global conspiracy since, I don’t know, maybe 900 A. D. to maintain the Hindus as a political community. And the fact that other people accused him of fomenting this violence was just one more detail of this conspiracy, so he was completely turned upside down.

And I hate to say this, however, in a sense, I think a significant number of Hindus have begun to radically subscribe to this much more radical and competitive message, that the B. J. P. It was going to be much more competitive in terms of Hindu protectors, if necessary. to put it charitably, or competitively targeting minorities. I think that message came through loud and clear from this experience in Gujarat, the sense that violence can pay long-term dividends to Hindu nationalism as a movement.

It has become a central component of the BJP. Es that is, until 2002 there was a sense that you could not win a national election with Hindu votes alone, that you had to form a broad coalition. I think Narendra Modi has managed to convince his constituent, and this has been his electoral strategy, that he can only come by force with Hindu votes. And in fact, it’s possible that you can actually increase your percentage of the Hindu vote, consolidate a Hindu electorate, if you send a transparent signal that you’re going to marginalize Muslims politically.

But in 2009 there were other elections. That’s when I landed in India. And I think you’re right, that fireplace was lit around Hindu nationalism, but at the same time, there was a sense that India had an absolute economist as prime minister, that India’s encounter with destiny was about to be fulfilled. It seemed to me for a moment. And what I have is the feeling that those sectarian divisions seemed much less alive.

One of the first stories I told was that I went to the city of Ayodhya, where the Babri Masjid mosque was located. And I was struck by how the temperature in that position was essentially room temperature, and there was this kind of “too busy to hate” India moving forward. We are joining the global economy. Are. . . You know, and that was the vibe when they took me there. And there was a sense that Narendra Modi had no chance of becoming prime minister. This guy can’t even get into America.

And the B. J. P. It seemed like they were nowhere. And you know, Congress was on the rise. And boy, were we wrong. So for me, what happened? How did Modi go from being a foreign pariah to being prime minister of the world’s largest democracy?

I think, as I said at the beginning of the show, this sense that we had of a guy from India who is faithful to a certain kind of centrism made us all complacent with the concept that a force like Narendra Modi, or at least a very radical Hindu nationalist ideology can never be dominant. Or even if he were to come to power, he would have to be best friends with other types of teams to moderate his position. So I think what happened after 2009 was due to a lot of things. .

The first, of course, is the global currency crisis of 2009, which was a pivotal moment for democracies around the world, as India was developing at 8%. And it was a great place, the expansion was 8%, the state had enough resources. to start building a more ambitious welfare state, which Narendra Modi then tried to accelerate. And yet, the currency crisis of 2009 had two effects, at least in the Indian context.

First, it has well exposed the corruption at the heart of this regime of expansion. Many projects suddenly seem unfeasible in people’s eyes. And there’s an anti-corruption motion that kind of paved the way for the concept of this old regime, this old regime led through Congress, this coalition government. It might have done us good, but now it is a corrupt and unstable regime. India has a moment, an opportunity here, but it is squandering it because of the weakness of its government.

In fact, the slogan used during Narendra Modi’s political paralysis. So, in 2014, he ran largely on this board. I will triumph over this paralysis. I am a strong and decisive leader. Look at my record in Gujarat. Se opposed plutocracy, but plutocracy in that pervasive sense. It’s kind of a corrupt old regime. And I think, as with politics elsewhere, it’s the implosion of the alternative, the internal implosion of the Congress Party that has created a lot more space and that, in a way, has lost that will to fight, that will to govern. There is very little communication, very little mass mobilization. I had just lost the total ABCs of political mobilization.

What I think has happened so far, and this would possibly require some explanation, but I really think it’s important, is that the main base of the BJP is in North India. It has now expanded and is therefore a true pan-Indian organization. But their main political party comes from northern India and, specifically, from the largest state in northern India, which is Uttar Pradesh, which is the length of Brazil, I think, in terms of population, or something like that.

In North India, English is still a language. Therefore, Hindi and vernacular languages are important, but they are languages of culture. These are the languages of the past. They can be, in a way, the sign of emotions. We may just curse ourselves in Hindi. [LAUGHTER] But the long-term language is English.

If you need to access social privileges and if you need to access knowledge production, i. e. long-term knowledge, science, technology, medicine, law, you will have to know English or at least speak it fluently. And our school formula has produced gigantic masses of students, of young people, who are in a certain way linguistically blocked.

They’re linguistically locked in the sense that they’re fluent in the vernaculars, but they’re really going to have a hard time competing with cutting-edge English, and we have a level of language proficiency that doesn’t make us full participants in this privileged field. social structure. What it did was simplify the mobilization of this kind of resentment against a well-established elite.

When you were in Delhi, you went to Khan Market a lot, I’m sure. I mean, it’s a great place to hang out with bookshops, coffee shops —

Restaurants. Yes.

Modi uses the phrase: “I oppose the Khan Market gang. ” It is a brilliant piece of political communication because everyone instinctively recognizes that it refers to the narrow social privileges of an elite. And so I think what you’ve been able to tap into, but still your kind of caste identification, is that I’m really advocating for something much more original and connected. Our heritage, our languages, will not have to be just about the past.

Now, what you are doing with your school policy is another matter. But I think that feeling of resentment, of India being governed through a small and exclusive elite, I think he controlled to give that voice and expression with a lot of power. And because of the uniqueness of him as a politician, his own biography, his ordinary communication skills, I think he was able to exploit all of that.

And I think more than the specifics of Hindu nationalism, it’s this specific trope that I think still resonates very strongly: I’m saving India from a small, disconnected elite.

Yeah, and I think it’s not just an elite that’s out of touch, it’s an elite that is looking outward. And there’s something about the sort of return to the vernacular that’s saying, no, no, no, the real strength of India lies within. And we will engage with the rest of the world on our own terms.

So Modi gets elected in 2014. His first term, to my mind, as I followed it, seemed mostly to be focused on these economic issues. There were some cultural issues focusing on hygiene and toilets. I mean, what a lot of people maybe don’t know about India is that the lack of clean water and access to toilets is a huge public health issue, holding people back in a lot of ways. There were a lot of just sort of fundamental development issues that he focused on.

But it seems to me that it wasn’t until he was re-elected, that his government was re-elected in 2019, that you really started to see the claws come out. And you’ve written, I think, quite powerfully on the government’s policy in Kashmir, because there was a very sharp change. And I’ll quote you: “The B.J.P. thinks it’s going to Indianize Kashmir, but instead what we will see is potentially the Kashmirization of India.”

So tell me about what happened in Kashmir, and what you meant by that idea, that Kashmirization of India?

So, you know that Kashmir has been one of the most internal disasters of Indian democracy. Therefore, when India became independent, many princely states had to make the resolution to join India, join Pakistan, or even remain potentially independent. I mean, most of them weren’t viable, but at least in theory, it was an option. Today, Kashmir was one of the last strongholds.

There was a Hindu Raja, but its population was predominantly Muslim; yet, curiously, one of the most secularized and led by a radical leftist, Sheikh Abdullah. And Pakistan to force the hand of Kashmir by invading Kashmir. Pakistan has never identified the legitimacy of this membership, and Pakistan has a long history of fermenting active terrorist and militant violence in Kashmir for much of the 20th century.

And this, just to set the record straight, I mean, this Himalayan province, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I’ve been there several times and it’s amazing. But you’re talking about a hot spot between two nuclear-armed countries, Pakistan and India. And it’s a very explosive situation. I mean, I just wanted to emphasize how tender and fragile the prestige of Kashmir is.

It is. And unfortunately, I think it has also been a failure for Indian democracy. Kashmir also enjoys special prestige in the Indian Constitution. Under the terms of accession, the Indian state would lead Kashmir’s foreign policy. laws, but Kashmir claimed to have great autonomy to manage its own affairs.

It interferes in elections. This puts Kashmir, internally, under siege.

Pakistan, in a sense, actively encourages violence and terrorist groups, even when it is open to tourism.

Yeah, and it’s this place, there’s this beautiful lake. And that’s for a stranger. For my many Kashmiri friends and especially for journalists, this feeling of being watched and having rights limited was very powerful.

Thus, one of the principles of the RSS, the organization to which Modi belongs, was that if Kashmir was really to be integrated into India, it was necessary to get rid of Article 370. It would be a constitutional declaration that Kashmir is part of India. India like any other component. I mean, that. And this has always been a part of the B. J. P. manifest.

I mean, on some level, there were no surprises. I mean, I guess we never take them literally, in a way, right? So what they did is essentially repeal Section 370 and arguing that Kashmir would be a state like any other state in the Indian Union, with no special privileges. And the government’s view was: we are going to repair the administrative order, so we are going to crack down on activists, we are going to attract investment by creating laws. and order.

And to be honest, the effects are mixed. I mean, the government can say that at least the outbreak of violence has not been as severe as many feared; In fact, many of us feared. But the fact is that there is still a portfolio of activism. And civil liberties, reporting on Kashmir and the free movement of journalists in Kashmir continue to be heavily repressed. If you are a journalist in Kashmir, you do indeed have a very unlikely task ahead of you.

Even outside of Kashmir, most Indian mainstream papers will not carry stories critical of what’s happening in Kashmir. Now, what I meant by the Kashmirization of India — I mean, partly of course — it’s a column that was a sort of cri de coeur kind of provocation. But unfortunately, I think the grain of truth in this was that what the government was trying to demonstrate in Kashmir was that a strong, repressive surveillance state was going to be the more effective means of integrating Indian citizens into the state, rather than a faith in democracy, pluralism, and open society.

And many of the practices that we have experienced in Kashmir — close surveillance, pre-trial detention, the concept of broadening the scope of suspects — those state practices would be much more widespread and replicated in other parts of India. We can see that in a state like UP, where the chief minister is very popular, one of his characteristic modes of government is a form of vigilant justice.

If you are suspected (and the key word here is expected) and, in particular, if you are a member of a minority community, of (let’s say even participating in a protest), your space can be demolished without due process. arsenal of repression and seeing citizens as objects of presumed distrust, that is what the Indian state did in the end in Kashmir. I think it fits with a much more widespread governance practice across India.

It’s interesting, because I’m trying to test my own assumptions, because the other people I communicate with, my friends, are journalists. These are other people who belong to activist communities or adjacent political circles. And the report that I’m hearing The general mood across India is very much in line with what you describe, this kind of Kashmir. Muslims were the first to be affected. But anyone looking to live a different kind of life or give a fair account of what’s going on in the country in the end feels like they’re at the end.

But the thing that you sort of balance that up, again, is that, I think, really striking popularity of Narendra Modi. And my friend, the journalist Mihir Sharma wrote in 2019, after Modi’s party was re-elected — he said, “We do not live in Modi’s India. We live in Indians’ India, and the reason so many Indians adore Modi is because he represents their preferred conception of the Indian state and the Indian nation.”

And that reminded me of everything you wrote, namely, that tyranny can be a descendant of democracy, which is a paraphrase of Plato: this theory that we can build a majority allocation solely with the votes of others. Hindus. Obviously it works.

No, obviously it works. So listen, if you need a hopeful story, the opposition will keep reminding you. They will go on to say that about 60% of Indians still don’t vote for the B. J. P. In a parliamentary system, between 38 and 40% of the vote can give a fairly dominant majority. Parliament.

But there is a lesson to be learned from this, and the lesson is that, as in the world where majority ethnic forces have come to power, it is largely because the forces deployed against them have failed to credibly unite in a coherent framework. Therefore, the center and the left in India are divided in 20 other ways. But I think deeper: I think, and I really think, that the cultural transformation I see in India is literally astonishing.

In particular, I think that large sections of the Indian elites – admittedly, those who are in the most difficult position to resist this – I think their ideological conversion in favor of this task is quite significant. What needs to be said is that the media does not criticize the government. They may be afraid of retaliation. Media owners often fear retaliation. But what you see in the Indian media is going to be much more than just adapting to the demands of the state. In fact, it is about creating and spreading structures of hate, entirely financed through the highest levels of Indian capital.

I mean, this is going way beyond we fear the state and we will not criticize it. There is almost like a positive investment in that information order, day in and day out. I mean, it’s actually unbearable to read many of the regional papers these days. English media, you see somewhat a little less of it, but it’s still there — or on television media, for example.

The Supreme Court of India, a common conundrum. We used to say in 2009, when you were here, that the Supreme Court of India had become one of the toughest courts in the world. In fact, the complaint directed at the Supreme Court of India was that it did more or less what it sought, interfering in matters it sought far beyond its jurisdiction or competence.

One of the most disappointing things has been the Supreme Court’s near-abdication of protecting fundamental civil liberties. The magnitude of the challenge is so staggering that one has to think that, deep down, some kind of loyalty to this task is emerging. It’s not just concerns about retaliation that persist.

So, for those of us who grew up in India, I haven’t noticed an elite discourse that engages so openly, that delights in spreading hatred as I see it now in India, or even at the height of the temple movement, in Ayodhya, in the 1990s.

The ultimate vital function of the leader is to at least be able to articulate a standard. It’s true, it’s false, that’s what we accept, that’s what we don’t accept. The fact that leaders are not only unwilling to articulate this standard, but also reluctant to target minorities, is a measure of how far India has come.

We have this ordinary scene in Parliament, where a senior official of the B. J. P. in Parliament he said something about one of the few Muslim MPs in Parliament that may not even be able to be said in a censored speech. I mean, it’s literally. . . I mean, that’s the kind of thing one would expect from a text called “Mein Kampf. “

Wow.

In the Indian parliament, senior B.J.P. leader. He has been rewarded. You are now empowering a set of people, an ideology, and sending out a signal that if you want to move up in this political system, you have to engage in acts of hate or violence or commit yourself publicly to this project. I mean, this is completely unprecedented. This is — it’s a shattering of the norms.

[PLAYING MUSIC]

I find it surprising that we have reached this point where India is emerging globally as a key player, because there are large and difficult countries – like the United States, but also others – that are looking to India to take over their position globally as a counterweight to China. What commends it for this role is precisely the fact that it is considered, described and perceived by others as a secular and pluralistic democracy.

So there’s this super irony that at the very moment you’re looking for a democratic counterweight to China, the apparent candidate for that role is democracy, which, from what we’ve discussed, turns out to be in grave danger.

It’s not. And if we take a look at India’s projection abroad, in those days of Mr. Modi, India is the mother of all democracies. I mean, that’s the kind of slogan and the kind of global guru. But it’s a performance. The diagnosis of this administration – and Trump’s election possibly has something to do with the way the world was replaced after Trump – is that there will be no sanctions for India’s actions domestically.

And to be fair to them, their interpretation of the foreign formula is correct: they believe that, in the end, America’s strategic imperatives, rather than its imperatives related to democracy and pluralism, will prevail over its engagement with India. , this is the case: this is also declining at a time when the exemplarity and authority of almost all democratic countries in the world are also at an all-time low.

I can’t imagine a time when the prestige and authority of American democracy were so weak. It’s almost. . . even in this state, many Indians are willing to say, “Oh, now we can answer the United States. “

Yes.

So I don’t think there is any example or authority left for this concept in the foreign system. And this relates to one of the central tenets of Hindu nationalism as an ideology. His diagnosis of India’s good luck and failure is very different from mine. yours, and at most other countries in the world. The two characters in the history of India whom they hate to the fullest, whom they insult to the most, are Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi.

I mean, it’s a holiday that blatantly celebrates the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.

Yes.

And they almost feel this sense of shame at the idea that, somehow, all this communication about nonviolence has weakened us. It has made us less respectable in the world. The U. S. took Pakistan more seriously because it was creating turmoil in the foreign system. We’ve never been taken seriously, which, again, turns out to be a fair reading of history, but it’s a kind of political taste whose core is explained through a certain fascination with violence and aggression.

The other has to be created in order for this Hindu existential crisis to actually reap political dividends. So it can be Muslims, it can be secular intellectuals. It can be liberals. It can be George Soros — God knows why George Soros in the Indian context, but —

Again, huh?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s — in fact, today the B.J.P. has just put out a big political ad which basically describes the Congress Party as a film being produced by George Soros. So in that sense, the core of the sensibility rests on the idea of a kind of perpetual Hindu victimhood.

One facet where we see this happening, and it has clearly made headlines, is Canada’s claim that India murdered a Sikh activist who was a Canadian citizen in Canada. There are many questions about what exactly happened here. If India is guilty of this murder, it is a massive violation of foreign norms.

But even if they weren’t involved in it, it almost turns out to play the game that India needs to play on the global stage, creating the belief that India has this capability and will act as it wishes on the global stage, with no deference to the “rules-based order” kind of thing.

Yes, I think that’s surely true. But what is striking, when one is in India and looks there, is the extent to which the political apparatus of the B. J. P. Try to take advantage of this opportunity. It’s almost as if we haven’t done it yet; It’s true, we can do it. And that would have been a smart thing to do.

But if we did —

It’s surprising, I mean, how much of that is built into part of this narrative of bravery, in a way.

You know, it’s interesting. There’s another narrative that I hear bubbling behind all of this, which is this: I think there’s a sense in America that we possibly would have gone through it because of the way we’ve treated our appointments with China. you’re taking China under your wing, you’re integrating it into the global economic system, you’re seeing increased prosperity, you’re creating bonds that make it harder for a country to overcome it on its own.

I think there’s a sense that, well, was it a mistake?Have we created the necessary situations for China to confront this incredibly difficult country?And now, of course, it’s our main geopolitical rival. And some are asking: are we doing the same thing?And I wonder what you think of that.

And I have to be candid. I think sitting in Asia, this idea that somehow you could structure a global development process that shuts out countries like China or India just sounds so remarkably full of hubris and presumption. And I mean, the fact that China’s integration into the global economy actually lifted millions and millions of people out of poverty, I don’t think it’s a human achievement to be sneered at.

But the idea that India and China can, in some sense, be excluded from their prestige as competitors or from participating in the global culmination of science, generation and development, frankly, I don’t even think it’s a practical matter. Such statements play into the hands of nationalists around the world. I mean, even those who don’t help authoritarian governments, when they hear something like, “Oh, actually, what the U. S. is going to do is design the global economy. “in such a way that it maintains primacy forever?

[LAUGHS] It doesn’t matter if you’re authoritarian or democratic, right, you’re not going to do that, so I think, for the smart people in the United States, I think this way of asking the question is: I think it’s a little counterproductive. I mean, the simplest way to reinforce the conspiratorial mentality of Hindu nationalism is to really show what they’ve said, which is that the world wants to take over India and wants to put it under siege.

And also, I think, at a time in global history when it is very difficult for the United States or any other country to implement this policy as if it were a matter of precept and conviction. I mean, how many authoritarian regimes are you going to exclude and not do business with, right?So I really believe that if you make popular progress and democracy a tool of geostrategic politics, you end up causing a lot of damage to geostrategic politics and to the cause of democracy and progress. I mean, a lot of Indians talk a lot about this. Should Biden’s leadership do more?They don’t want to roll out the red carpet. They can seldom tell the truth. I mean, it can be a perfectly fair relationship. But I don’t think there is any other option but to interact with India. And I think, in a sense, either of us will be better off. I also firmly believe that, so as not to take anything away from American power, but I really believe that the role of the United States in advancing Indian democracy will be minimal at best.

This is a struggle that Indians will have to adopt internally. I mean, maybe most of us are still complacent. The way violence is carried out in Indian democracy still turns out to be trickle by trickle. I mean, most of us can still go about our daily lives thinking it’s not happening to us. But most of us still hope and believe – I mean, otherwise we wouldn’t even have this verbal exchange – that yes, the symptoms seem to bode ill for Indian democracy, but that at some point there will come a threshold where ordinary Indians will start saying that, look, it’s not us.

Now, what that threshold is is an open question. But I actually do believe that threshold will be reached and you will find Indian society reacting appropriately.

I think it’s a very good and hopeful note on which perhaps we can end our conversation. And as someone who loves and admires India very much, I really need to do that in this prediction. And next year will be an election year. It will be attractive to see what happens. I think most people think that the B. J. P. It will come back, but a lot can happen. The global is changing.

So, at the end of the episode of “The Ezra Klein Show,” we ask our visitors to refinish some books. Could you refinish three books that our listeners can benefit from to better understand India, democracy, and the world?

OK, so I’ll go with a couple of unusual choices. One, which is not recent, is — I actually still think reading V.S. Naipaul’s “India Trilogy,” which is now one book, I think he — and partly because he himself was such a complicated, in many ways, awful character. I think he actually saw the moral psychology of what’s happening in various Indian social movements, I think, much more clearly than I think many of us liberals and constitutionalists have recognized — this theme of India thinking of itself as a wounded civilization, and now trying to kind of claim something of that itself through this path of violence and Hindu nationalism. Besides, I mean, he’s a wonderful writer to read.

I think the moment I decided on eeebook is a recent eeebook by Shivshankar Menon. The name is “India in Asian Geopolitics,” but it’s about India’s position in the world, it’s incredibly well written, but also about someone who is a deep historian and has had the merit of having a front-row seat. I think it is the most productive e-book on India’s position in the world.

The third one that I would present, I mean, it’s a slightly more original proposal, is an e-book by Snigdha Poonam called “Dreamers. “It’s an e-book that captures the madness and contradictory textures of this kind. from young, knowledgeable India, I mean, some of those other linguistically blocked people that we’re talking about, the hackers, would be Indian Idols; I mean, it’s the Indian edition of “American Idol,” the music show.

It has enough original life biographies to make it an attractive arrival in India beneath the surface of those primary political and economic issues.

These are all glorious, glorious recommendations. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, thank you so much for being with us.

Many thanks and good luck to any of our democracies.

[LAUGHTER] Amen.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

transcription

According to the New York Times, it’s “The Ezra Klein Show. “

[PLAYING MUSIC]

It became the world’s most populous country this year. According to the World Bank, India’s economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. The country even hosted the G20 in September.

At the same time, there’s been a clear erosion of democracy. The state has stoked violence against religious minorities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration have silenced both critics and independent institutions. And Indian government officials have been linked to two assassination plots against Sikh activists in Canada and the United States, a pretty stunning diplomatic scandal that puts new stress on India’s relationship with the West. So looking back in 2023, it’s clear that India has risen, but not quite in the way we necessarily expected.

So I asked Pratap Bhanu Mehta what has happened to Indian democracy and what it means for the rest of the world. Mehta is a professor at Princeton University, has written extensively on political theory and is the author of “The Burden of Democracy. “He has a regular column in the Indian Express, where he explains Indian and global affairs.

We talked back in early October, but I think his insights have only become more relevant. As always, you can email the [email protected].

Here’s Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, wonderful to be here with you.

Thank you so much and it’s glorious to see you too.

I cannot tell you if you go with a habeas corpus case to the Supreme Court whether it will be heard. I cannot tell you when opposition politicians are being targeted by the government for tax reasons, they will actually get the same fair relief from the Supreme Court. So there is a sense of dread about where this democracy is heading, and I think we have to register both of those kind of emotions at the same time.

We’re going to talk a lot about democracy. It’s a sort of line that we all hear, India is the world’s largest democracy. It’s been a democracy almost without interruption since its independence. That sort of uniqueness and boldness of the experiment — I mean, you cannot visit India and not be profoundly moved by what is being attempted. I mean, I’m wary of exceptionalism, but I think never in human history has a more ambitious experiment in coexistence through government by common consent been attempted.

Look, I mean, Indian elections were probably more vital to us than religions, and I think they still are. I mean, there’s a certain kind of dynamism, a sense of diversity, in the face of difference. And I think the greatness of the Indian nationalist movement lies in the fact that it identified that the only way to keep India together is to be the result of a widespread consensus across religions, communities, castes and classes.

I think that was, in a sense, I think it’s instinctive grasp of what democracy is. So one story you can tell about Indian democracy is that a lot of the constituent parts or groups in society don’t actually have to be democratic. I mean, they can be internally sometimes quite intolerant. They can be quite conservative. And yet, the balance of social power amongst groups, amongst castes, regions, is such that no single group or no single identity can hope to dominate without generating some kind of resistance and backlash.

And we used to say that Indian politics was doomed to a certain kind of centrism for exactly that reason, that there would never be a single identity force capable of being strong enough to govern India as a whole. In fact, I used to joke about it that any party that ruled India resembles the Congress Party, or perhaps a larger edition of the Congress Party.

The Congress Party, the party founded by Mahatma Gandhi. And tell us a little bit about the history of the Congress Party.

Well, actually, it started, officially, its founder is A. O. But it was Mahatma Gandhi who gave the party its fashionable form. He transformed this party into a mass movement and, in fact, of ordinary magnitude. What he has controlled for What to do, particularly in my opinion, is not only to forge a mass movement, but also to create an imaginary of fashionable India where each of its parts finds its full expression.

So for example, he was a political genius. Each state had a linguistic unit which then became the basis for how India dealt with the language question later on. We created this brilliant compromise that there would be an official link language, English. Aspirationally, Hindi as a kind of national language, but each state would be able to use their own language, so Tamil, Bengali, so on and so forth, you know, Malayalam.

And it has avoided the fate of so many postcolonial countries that have experienced civil wars or been divided along the lines of language. And I think it was actually a run-of-the-mill political innovation. It was an anti-colonial movement, but it was an incredibly cosmopolitan movement in its aspirations, founded on a much more original conception of rights, freedom of expression, attention to individuality and dignity, and a pursuit of politics through non-colonial means. violent, which is not a negligible contribution. of so many postcolonial movements.

In fact, I sometimes feel that our post-colonial moment now carries much more of a sense of resentment than our anticolonial nationalist movement did.

It’s interesting, because for me, as a correspondent, I left West Africa to come to India. I grew up in East Africa and also spent my formative years in West Africa. So I had this deep sense of India as a kind of beacon of how wonderful a polyglot, multi-religious, multi-ethnic country can be. And it is worth remembering for a moment the violence and hardships of India’s birth. It was born out of the partition of the British Raj. It was a British colony at the time.

Can you just talk a little bit about how these ideas came out of that experience of the horrors of partition?

I am glad that you raised the issue of partition, which is, I think, one of the most pivotal moments in modern South Asian history. India has believed that it might simply be an exception to the European experience. The process of forming geographical regions everywhere, adding Europe and North America, has been an extremely violent, exclusionary and majoritarian movement. I think there are at most no exceptions to this.

And the aspiration of the nationalist movement was: can we forge a new kind of identity that does not repeat the mistakes of Europe?Now, partition was the first surprise of this aspiration, because in a sense, partition was based on something like the In the European concept of the nation-state, there will have to be a single identity that unites the nation. In the case of Pakistan, it’s the concept of a kind of Muslim homeland in South Asia.

But there is no doubt that the logic of partition is the creation of a Hindu state in India.

And Muslims are the largest minority, but they’re very important, right?I mean, what’s the percentage, the ratio of Hindus to Muslims in India?

This is a very significant minority. That’s about two hundred million people. And I think what’s remarkable is that, despite partition, they continued this task of seeking to create Indian exceptionalism. I think of Jawaharlal Nehru: he was the first Prime Minister of India and, in a sense, the founder of Indian democracy.

You invoked Nehru, and I think one of his most famous and oldest words – his speeches – is the “Meeting Destiny” speech. What do you think is India’s encounter with destiny and what is the current scenario?

That’s right, then the first and highest vital was to triumph over poverty and the ordinary degrees of human distress and oppression that this society had experienced internally, especially through caste establishment.

This is the undergirding system of people being born into a particular community, and that forming a social hierarchy.

Therefore, if we look at the degrees of economic progression at which countries discharge universal suffrage, India discharges it at the lowest point of economic progression. It was one of the least knowledgeable countries in the world. And yet, there is this enormous hope that, through constitutional politics, we can really triumph over the scourge of poverty and at least social inequality.

I think the most remarkable thing about the “Encounter with Destiny” speech in the Indian constitution, in the preamble of the Indian constitution, is that God knows Nehru and the founding generation fully understood that God, history, and identity are vital to Indians. I mean, you can’t believe in this country, in a certain sense, without a deep religious and religious commitment, without a deep response to history. And identities are proliferating. I mean, other people wear them on their sleeves. But in order for those identities to flourish, for this cultural heritage to come to life, it was very vital that the social and political contract not be weighed down by the weight of God. history or identity, so that other people don’t feel that way. They want to be compared to a single identity or an axis of loyalty.

[PLAYING MUSIC]

Just looking at the past few years, and you see the way in which India is sort of meeting this kind of Tryst with Destiny — right, India is by most accounts now the most populous country in the world, outstripping China. The economy, the G.D.P. expanded by 7.8 percent last quarter. India hosted the G20, a very important gathering of global leaders. And you’re seeing India kind of step up to its place on the global stage.

So I think the three most important things to note about Narendra Modi, who is an ordinary political figure; I mean, just analytically, you don’t have to agree with his policies to recognize what a transformative figure he was. First and foremost, he is a member of and drew much of his political and cultural training from an organization called R. S. S. , Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, founded in the 1990s. 1920.

Biographically, he belongs to the less privileged castes of India and surely did not enjoy any privileges, whether economic, social or political, that regularly characterize the political careers of so many Indians. And that allowed him to do two things that are critical to his success. The first is to produce a kind of instinctive identity with gigantic masses of people. The political party it represents: the Bharatiya Janata Party was once accused of being largely an upper-caste party of privileged merchants, privileged Brahmins.

He single-handedly transformed that party into a party that has a much wider social base now. He managed to run, and still runs on this plank, that what kept India back, particularly over the last 20, 30 years, was the fact that India was being ruled by something like a dynastic ancien regime. The Congress Party was dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family in some ways. And so when he speaks of corruption, he’s not just referring to the fact that there might have been monetary corruption.

It simply refers to the fact that Indian democracy has acquired the characteristic of being a kind of closed club and that, in a sense, it has opened the doors of this policy to the Indians, to the languages they speak. He is a very talented speaker in Hindi. The B. J. P. It is much more comfortable in vernacular languages than the Congress Party. Therefore, he can constitute this old complex as a privileged elite with a narrow social base, which is opposed by his personality type.

What happened to those riots?

And they created a mass movement. What this mass movement did was create a kind of hotbed of tension between Hindus and Muslims all over India, because in a sense those meetings were quite aggressive. They signaled the arrival of a Hindu movement to reclaim India at the call of the Hindus.

One of the results of that mass movement was the tearing down of the Babri Masjid.

This mosque in Ayodhya.

This violence was directed at Muslim residents in Gujarat.

Absolutely, and about 2,000 more people died. And surely it is horrible violence. I mean, it’s really. . . is. . . It’s very hard to describe.

Yes, neighbors are upon neighbors.

Neighbors attack each other. Now, his role. . . There are a whole range of positions on this. One, of course, considers him directly guilty of instigating violent reprisals. There was a commission of inquiry. And for what it’s worth, this commission of inquiry acquitted him of this charge. I mean, it is. . . Again, for what it’s worth. But in India, we know that if the state is committed to ending violence, it can end it quickly.

You can bring the law enforcement agencies out. The army can be called out. And I think the political question mark over Narendra Modi, whatever you think may be the direct instructions he may or may not have given, is that this was clearly a massive abdication of responsibility on part of the chief minister of the state. This violence could have been stopped, and there is no excuse — no excuse, no matter how deep the passions run, no matter how widespread the desire for revenge is.

Surely there is no excuse for the scale of the violence that took place in Gujarat. The fact that he has been accused of instigating this violence through the Congress Party and has been denied a visa to the United States until he has become Prime Minister, I think that makes him convince the whole world that this is some kind of gigantic conspiracy to catch Hindus.

It has become a central detail of the BJP. I mean, until 2002, there was a sense that you couldn’t win a national election with Hindu votes alone, that you had to form a broad coalition. I think Narendra Modi managed to convince his party, and this was his election strategy, that he could only come by force with Hindu votes. And, in fact, it is possible that the percentage of Hindu votes will actually increase and a Hindu electorate will be consolidated, if it sends a transparent signal that Muslims are going to be politically marginalized.

And the B. J. P. seemed to be nowhere. And you know, Congress was on the rise. And boy, were we wrong. So for me, what happened? How did Modi go from being a foreign pariah to being prime minister of the world’s largest democracy?

The first, of course, is the global currency crisis of 2009, which was a pivotal moment for democracies around the world, as India was developing at a rate of 8%. And it was a great place, the expansion was 8%, the state had enough resources. to start building a more ambitious welfare state, which Narendra Modi then tried to accelerate. And yet, the currency crisis of 2009 had two effects, at least in the Indian context.

One, it actually did expose the corruption at the heart of that growth regime. Lots of projects suddenly seem unviable to people. And there is an anti-corruption movement which kind of paved the way for saying, look, this old regime, this ancien regime headed by the Congress, this coalition government. It may have done us some good, but now it is a corrupt, tottering regime. India has a moment, an opportunity here, but it is actually frittering it away because of a weak government.

In fact, the slogan used through Narendra Modi was political paralysis. So, in 2014, he ran largely on this council. I will triumph over this paralysis. I am a strong and decisive leader. Look at my record in Gujarat. Se opposed plutocracy, but plutocracy in that pervasive sense. It’s kind of a corrupt old regime. And, as I think happens with politics elsewhere, it’s the implosion of the alternative, the internal implosion of the Congress Party that has created so much more space, that has lost that will to fight, that will to govern. communication, very little mass mobilization. I had just lost the total ABCs of political mobilization.

The second thing that I think happened, and this may take some explaining, but I actually do think it is important — so the B.J.P.‘s primary base is in north India. It has now expanded, so it is a genuinely pan-Indian party. But its core political support is drawn from north India, and particularly the largest state in North India, which is Uttar Pradesh, which is the size of Brazil, I think, in terms of population, or something.

In North India, English is still a language. That’s why Hindi and vernacular languages are important, but they are languages of culture. These are the languages of the past. They can be, in a way, the sign of emotions. We may simply curse ourselves in Hindi. [LAUGHS] But the language of the long run is English.

If you want to get access to social privilege and if you want to get access to the production of knowledge, and particularly future knowledge, science, technology, medicine, law, you have to have English or at least be fluent in it. And our education system actually produced large masses of students, young people, who are kind of linguistically stranded.

They are linguistically locked in the sense that they are fluent in the vernaculars, but they will really struggle to compete with cutting-edge English, and we have a level of language proficiency that does not make us full participants in this privileged field. social structure. What he did was simplify the mobilization of this kind of resentment against a well-established elite.

When you were in Delhi, you must have gone to Khan Market. I mean, it’s a wonderful place to hang out with bookstores, coffee shops. . .

Restaurants. Yes.

Modi uses the phrase: “I oppose the Khan Market gang. “It’s a brilliant piece of political communication because everyone instinctively recognizes that it refers to the narrow social privileges of an elite. And so I think what he’s been able to tap into, but still his kind of caste identification, is that I’m really advocating for something much more original and connected. Our heritage, our languages, won’t have to be just about the past.

And I think more than the specifics of Hindu nationalism, it’s this specific trope that – I’m saving India from a small, disconnected elite – that I think still resonates very strongly.

And anything about this kind of return to the vernacular that says, no, no, no, the genuine strength of India is within. And we will collaborate with the rest of the world on our own terms.

So Modi was elected in 2014. Su first term, in my opinion, as I followed him, he seemed to focus basically on those economic problems. There were some cultural issues centered around hygiene and bathrooms. I mean, what a lot of other people possibly don’t know about India is that the lack of clean water and access to toilets is a huge public health problem, holding other people back in so many ways. It focused on many basic progression issues.

But it seems to me that it wasn’t until after his re-election, when his government was re-elected in 2019, that we began to see the claws come out. And I think you’ve written quite strongly about the government’s decision. There has been a very abrupt change in Kashmir. And I quote: “The B. J. P. thinks it’s going to Indianize Kashmir, but what we’re going to see instead is potentially the Kashmirization of India.

So, tell me what happened in Kashmir and what do you mean by this idea, this Kashmirization of India?

It’s true, my God. As you know, Kashmir has been one of the most profound disasters of Indian democracy. So when India became independent, many princely states had to make the decision to join India, join Pakistan, or even remain potentially independent. I mean, most of them weren’t viable, but at least in theory it was an option. Today, Kashmir was one of the last strongholds.

There was a Hindu Raja, but its population was predominantly Muslim, but, curiously, one of the most secularized and led by a radical leftist, Sheikh Abdullah. And Pakistan will force its grip on Kashmir by invading Kashmir. And India said it could only help if the Maharaja signed an instrument of accession to join India and Kashmir joined India. Pakistan has never identified the legitimacy of this accession, and Pakistan has a long history of active terrorist and militant violence in Kashmir for much of the 20th century.

But unfortunately, I think the Indian state’s relationship with Kashmir got securitized very early on. I mean, every political protest, every kind of political dissension was being looked at through this prism of, are they really kind of covert secessionists in place, right? Kashmir is the only state in India where there was a sense that the elections were not entirely free and fair. It’s constantly interfering in elections. It is putting Kashmir, internally, under a state of siege.

Pakistan is actively, in some senses, fomenting violence and terrorist groups, even when it was open for tourism. It became an immensely militarized place, about half a million troops guarding kind of Kashmir security checkpoints. There was a great sense of siege about Kashmir.

Yes, and it’s this place, there’s a beautiful lake. And other people stay on houseboats, and you have the amazing skyline of the Himalayas. But it felt like you were being stopped and constantly being asked to identify yourself. As you entered and exited the airport, you felt a sense of vigilance. And that’s for an outsider. For my many Kashmiri friends and especially for journalists, this feeling of being watched and having limited rights was very powerful. So what did Modi do in 2019?

Thus, one of the principles of the RSS, the organization to which Modi belongs, was that if Kashmir was really to be integrated into India, it was necessary to get rid of Article 370. It would be a constitutional declaration that Kashmir is part of India. India, like any other region. And it would also mean for Pakistan that we don’t even think of it as a disputed territory. I mean, that. And this has always been a part of the B. J. P. manifest.

I mean, on one level, there were no surprises. I mean, I don’t think we ever take them literally, in a way, do we?So what they did is essentially repeal Section 370 and on the grounds that Kashmir would be a state like any other state in the Indian Union, with no special privileges. And the government’s view was: we’re going to repair the administrative order, so we’re going to crack down on activists, we’re going to attract investment by creating laws. and order.

And, to be honest, the effects are mixed. I mean, the government can say that at least the outbreak of violence wasn’t as bad as many feared; In fact, many of us feared it. But the fact is that there is still a portfolio of militancy. And civil liberties, reporting on Kashmir and the relaxed movement of news hunters in Kashmir continue to be harshly repressed. If you are a journalist in Kashmir, you have a very unlikely task ahead of you.

And many of the practices that we have experienced in Kashmir – close surveillance, preventive detention, the concept of widening the scope of suspects – those state practices would be much more widespread and replicated in other parts of India. We can see that in a state like UP, where the chief minister is very popular, one of his characteristic modes of governance is a form of vigilante justice.

If you are suspected (and the key word here is expected) and, in particular, if you are a member of a minority community, of (let’s say even participating in a protest), your space can be demolished without due process. arsenal of repression and seeing citizens as elements of presumed distrust, that is what the Indian state in Kashmir did in the end. I think it fits with a much more widespread governance practice across India.

It’s interesting, because I’m always trying to check my own assumptions here, because the people that I talk to, my friends, they’re journalists. They’re people who are in kind of activist communities or politics adjacent. And the report that I hear from them about the general mood across India is very much what you’re describing, this kind of Kashmirization. Muslims have felt the first brunt of it. But anybody seeking to live a different kind of life or to report honestly on what’s happening in the country is ultimately feeling the sharp end of that stick.

But I think what needs to be balanced, once again, is the surprising popularity of Narendra Modi. And my friend, journalist Mihir Sharma, wrote in 2019, after Modi’s party was re-elected, “We don’t live in Modi’s India. “We live in the India of the Indians, and the explanation why so many Indians worship Modi is because he represents their preferred conception of the Indian state and the Indian nation.

And it reminded me of everything you wrote, which is that tyranny can be a descendant of democracy, which is a wonderful paraphrase of Plato: this theory that you can build a majority allocation solely with the votes of the Hindus. Obviously it works.

No, obviously it works. So listen, if you need to tell a hopeful story, the opposition will keep reminding you. They will go on to say that about 60% of Indians still do not vote for the B. J. P. In an absolute majority system, a parliamentary system, between 38 and 40% of the votes can give a fairly dominant majority. Parent Parliament.

But there is a lesson to be learned from this, and the lesson is that, as in the world where the majority ethnic forces have come to power, it is largely because the forces deployed against them have failed to credibly come together in a coherent framework. Thus, the center and left in India are divided in 20 other ways. But I think deeper: I think, and I really think, that the cultural transformation I see in India is literally amazing.

In particular, I think the ideological conversion of large sections of the Indian elites in favor of this task is quite significant. If we take a look at the Indian media landscape, it is one thing to say that the media does not criticize the government. They may be afraid of retaliation. Media owners fear reprisals. But what you see in the Indian media is really much more than just complying with state requirements. In fact, it is about creating and spreading structures of hate, entirely financed through the harshest levels of Indian capital.

I mean, it goes far beyond our concern for the state and we probably wouldn’t criticize it. There is an almost positive investment in this type of information, day after day. I mean, it’s unbearable to read a lot of information. regional newspapers in those days. In the English media it is seen a little less, but it is still there, or in television media, for example.

One of the most disappointing things has been the near abdication of the Supreme Court in protecting basic civil liberties. The extent of it is so mind boggling that you’ve got to think that deep down, there is some kind of allegiance to this project that is actually surfacing. It’s not simply held together by fear of reprisal.

So, for those of us who grew up in India, I have not noticed an elite discourse that engages so openly, that delights in spreading hate as I see it now in India, not even at the height of the temple movement, in Ayodhya, in the 1990s.

Wow.

[PLAYING MUSIC]

No, it is. And if you look at India’s projection abroad, one of Mr. Modi’s favorite tropes these days, India is the mother of all democracies. I mean, that’s the kind of tagline — and a kind of guru to the world. But it is a performance. This government’s diagnosis — and Trump’s election may have something to do with it, the way in which the world changed post-Trump, is that there is not going to be any penalty for India’s actions, domestically.

And to be fair to them, their interpretation of the foreign formula is correct: they believe that, in the end, America’s strategic imperatives, rather than its imperatives of democracy and pluralism, will outweigh its commitment to India. It is, and it is also falling at a time when the exemplarity and authority of almost each and every democratic country in the world is also at its lowest ebb.

I can’t remember a time where the prestige and authority of American democracy was so low. It’s almost — even in this state, many Indians are willing to say, oh, now we can talk back to the United States.

Yes.

I believe that there is no longer any exemplarity or authority for this concept in the foreign system. And this goes towards one of the basic tenets of Hindu nationalism as an ideology. His diagnosis of India’s good luck and failure is very different from mine, perhaps from his, and from that of most other countries in the world. The two characters in the history of India whom they hate to the fullest, whom they insult to the most are Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi.

I mean, this is a party that openly celebrates Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin.

Yeah.

And they almost feel that sense of shame, that all this talk about nonviolence has weakened us. This has made us less respectable in the world. The U. S. took Pakistan more seriously because it was creating turmoil in the foreign system. We were never taken seriously, which, again, strikes me as a rather odd read of history, actually, but it’s a kind of political taste whose core is explained through a sure kind of fascination with violence and aggression.

Again, huh?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it is; in fact, today the B. J. P. just released a primary political ad that necessarily portrays the Congress Party as a movie produced through George Soros. So, in this sense, the core of sensitivity rests on the concept of a type of perpetual Hindu victimhood.

One place where you sort of see this playing out, and obviously, this has been very, very big in the news, is Canada’s assertion that India assassinated a Sikh activist who was a Canadian citizen in Canada. There’s a lot of questions about what exactly happened here. If India is actually responsible for this assassination, it’s a huge violation of international norms.

Yes, I think that’s surely true. But what’s striking, when you’re in India and you look around, is the extent to which the B. J. P. Take a look to seize this opportunity. It’s almost as if we haven’t done it yet; It’s true, we can do it. And that would have been a smart thing to do.

But if we did. . .

It’s surprising, I mean, how much of that is built into part of this narrative of bravery, in a way.

I think there’s a feeling, well, was that a mistake? Did we create the conditions for China to become this incredibly powerful country? And now it’s of course our main geopolitical rival. And you hear in some quarters a question of, are we doing the same thing again with India? And I wonder what you make of that question.

And I have to be frank. I think that in Asia, the idea that we can design a procedure of global progression that excludes countries like China or India is remarkably full of arrogance and presumption. And I mean, the fact that China’s integration into the global economy has really lifted millions and millions of people out of poverty, I don’t think that’s a human achievement that we deserve to be complacent about. imitate.

But the idea that India and China could be shut out in some senses from being competitors or participating in the global fruits of science, technology, development, frankly, I don’t think it’s even practical terms on. In fact, that kind of assertion plays exactly into the hands of nationalists everywhere. I mean, even those who don’t support authoritarian governments, when they hear a statement like, oh, actually, what the United States is going to do is structure the world economy in a way in which it retains primacy forever?

And also, I think, particularly at a moment in world history where it’s very hard for the United States or any other country to pull this policy off as if this were a matter of principle and conviction. I mean, how many authoritarian regimes are you going to exclude, not do business with, right? So I actually think if you make people’s development and democracy a tool of geostrategic politics, you end up doing both geostrategic politics and the cause of democracy and development great harm. I mean, many Indians often talk about this. Should the Biden administration be doing more? They don’t have to roll out the red carpet. They can say the truth sometimes. I mean, it can be a perfectly candid relationship. But I don’t think there is an option but to engage with India. And I think both, in some senses, will be better off. I also strongly believe that — not to take away anything from American power, but I actually think the United States’ role in how Indian democracy develops will be minuscule at most.

Now, what that threshold is is an open question. But I do hope that that threshold is reached and that Indian society responds appropriately.

I think that is a very good and hopeful note to perhaps wrap up our conversation on. And as a person who loves and admires India very much, I very much want to believe in that prognosis. And next year is an election year. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I think most people think that the B.J.P. will come back, but lots of things can happen. The world spins on.

It has enough original life biographies to make it an attractive arrival in India beneath the surface of those wonderful political and economic issues.

These are all glorious, glorious recommendations. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you so much, and good luck to both our democracies.

[LAUGHTER] Amen.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking through Michelle Harris. Mixing via Efim Shapiro. Our lead engineer is Jeff Geld. Our editor-in-chief is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa. Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Kristina Samulewski and Shannon’s Audience Strategy Busta. La executive producer of The New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Produced through “The Ezra Klein Show”

India is known to be a country of paradoxes, and a new country has recently emerged. Even as the country is poised to become a primary global player (with a booming economy and a population that has recently surpassed China’s), its democracy is showing symptoms. of decadence.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration have silenced critics and independent institutions. India’s discourse on social media is increasingly right-wing and hostile towards Muslims. And Canada and the United States have accused Indian government officials of being involved in assassination plots opposed to Sikh militants.

[You can pay attention to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google, or anywhere you get your podcasts. ]

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi; professor at Princeton University; and editor of “The Oxford Handbook to the Indian Constitution”. In this conversation, she guides our host Lydia Polgreen on developing illiberalism in India. “The symptoms of Indian democracy seem very worrying,” he said.

They talk about the paradox between India’s thriving economy and culture and the symptoms of weakening democracy, especially at a time when many Western countries are hailing India’s rise as a democratic counterweight to China. They also talk about what makes Modi such a remarkable and effective political leader. and what the U. S. and other countries might do or simply react to a more assertive India that is breaking domestic norms.

You can pay attention to all of our verbal exchange by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Google, or anywhere you get your podcasts. See here for a list of eBook recommendations from our visitors.

The following excerpt has been edited for brevity and clarity. You can pay attention to all the verbal exchange in the player on this page or anywhere you get your podcasts. A transcript of the full verbal exchange can be found here.

Lydia Polgreen: I lived in Delhi from 2009 to 2013 and at that time you were an indispensable advisor to me. What is your life like in India those days?

Pratap Bhanu Mehta: It’s a cliché to say that India is seen as a paradox. And I think the paradox of this moment is obviously that the political significance, the economic significance and the cultural creativity of India are more dynamic than ever. On the other hand, the symptoms of the Indian vision of democracy seem very worrying. I co-edited a gigantic “Oxford Handbook on the Indian Constitution. “Now, when I go to class, I say, “I can’t tell you what the Constitution of India is. I can’t tell you, if you file a petition for habeas corpus with the Supreme Court, whether it will be heard. Therefore, there is a sense of dread about where this democracy is headed.

Polgreen: So Narendra Modi was elected in 2014, and his first term seemed basically focused on those economic issues, on hygiene and sanitation, on a lot of basic issues of progression. But it turns out that it was only when his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, was re-elected in 2019 that we began to see the claws come out. And you wrote about the government’s policy in Kashmir: “The B. J. P. he thinks this will Indianize Kashmir, but what we’ll see instead is potentially the Kashmirization of India. Then tell me what you meant by this idea, the Kashmirization of India.

Mehta: What I meant by Kashmirization of India; I mean, partly, of course, it’s a chronicle; It was a kind of sincere provocation. But unfortunately, I think the fact component in this mess was that what the government was trying to demonstrate in Kashmir was that a strong, repressive surveillance state would be the most effective way to integrate Indian citizens. in the state than in a religion. In democracy, pluralism and open society.

And many of the practices that we have experienced in Kashmir – detailed surveillance, preventive detention, the concept of widening the scope of suspects – those state practices would be much more widespread and replicated in other parts of India.

And unfortunately this procedure continues. So the irony is that even though Kashmir turns out to be quiet, if you look at a state like Manipur, which has literally been under curfew for almost five months, you can see the scenario of Kashmir.

Polgreen: I’m trying to test my own assumptions here, because according to the other people I communicate with, the report I hear about the general environment throughout India is very much in line with what you’re describing, this kind of Kashmirization. We have already suffered the first effects, but anyone who wants to live a different kind of life or give a fair account of what is happening in the country, nevertheless feels the tip of the stick.

But then there’s the really striking popularity of Narendra Modi. And my friend the journalist Mihir Sharma wrote in 2019, after Modi’s party was re-elected, “We do not live in Modi’s India. We live in Indians’ India. And the reason so many Indians adore Modi is because he represents their preferred conception of the Indian state and the Indian nation.”

Mehta: I actually do think the cultural transformation that I see of India is truly astonishing. Large sections of India’s elites — in particular, those who are most powerfully placed to resist this — I think their ideological conversion to this project is actually quite significant. If you look at the Indian media landscape, it’s one thing to say that the media does not criticize the government. Maybe they fear reprisals. But what you are seeing in the Indian media is actually something much more than simply complying with the state. It is actually creating and disseminating structures of hate, fully funded by the most powerful echelons of Indian capital. I mean, it’s actually unbearable to read many of the regional papers these days.

One of the most disappointing things has been the Supreme Court’s near-abdication of protecting fundamental civil liberties. The scale of the challenge is so staggering that one has to think that, deep down, a kind of loyalty to this task is emerging. .

We had this ordinary scene in Parliament just a few weeks ago, where a senior official of the B. J. P. The leader, in Parliament, said something about one of the few Muslim MPs in Parliament that could not even be said with a censored speech. I mean, that’s the kind of thing one would expect from a text called “Mein Kampf. “

Polgreen: Wow.

Mehta: In the Indian Parliament, a senior B. J. P. chief. He did not rebuke him through his party. He rewarded him with more respect. So now you’re empowering a set of people, an ideology, and you’re sending a signal that if you need to make progress in this political system, you have to engage in acts of hate or violence or publicly engage in this project. I mean, this is absolutely unprecedented. It is an alteration of the norms.

Polgreen: I’m surprised by the fact that we’ve reached this point where India is emerging globally as a very important player, because there are big, tough countries, like the U. S. and also others, that are looking for India to take over its position globally as a counterweight to China. And what praises it for this role is exactly the fact that it is considered a secular and pluralistic democracy. So there’s a super irony in the fact that at the very moment when a democratic counterweight to China, the apparent candidate for that role, is being sought, its democracy turns out to be in grave danger.

Mehta: No, it is. And if we take a look at India’s projection abroad, one of those days Modi said: “India is the mother of all democracies. “I mean, it’s the motto of the global. But it’s a performance. The diagnosis of this administration – and the election of Donald Trump possibly has something to do with it, the way the world has replaced after Trump – is that there will be no sanctions for India’s movements domestically. And to be fair to them, their interpretation of the foreign formula is correct: they believe that, in the end, America’s strategic imperatives, rather than its imperatives of democracy and pluralism, will outweigh its commitment to India.

It’s also happening in a moment where the exemplarity and authority of almost all democratic countries around the world is also at its lowest. I can’t remember a time where the prestige and authority of American democracy was so low. Many Indians are willing to say, “Oh, now we can talk back to the United States.”

And this relates to one of the central tenets of Hindu nationalism as an ideology. I mean, it’s a holiday that blatantly celebrates the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, is that rarely the case?And there’s almost this sense of shame that, somehow, this total communication of nonviolence has weakened us and made us less respectable in the world. The U. S. took Pakistan more seriously because it was creating turmoil in the foreign system. We’ve never been taken seriously, which I think is a rather odd reading of history, but it’s still a kind of political taste whose core is explained through a certain fascination with violence and aggression. The other will have to be created for this Hindu existential crisis to actually reap political dividends. So they can be Muslims, secular intellectuals, liberals, George Soros. God knows why George Soros in the Indian context, still. . .

Polgreen: There, too, huh?

Mehta: Oh, absolutely. The B.J.P. put out a big political ad which basically describes the Congress party as a film being produced by George Soros. So in that sense, the core of the sensibility rests on the idea of a perpetual Hindu victimhood.

Polgreen: There’s a sense in the United States that perhaps we were mistaken in how we managed our relationship with China, the idea that you bring China under your wing, you integrate them into the global economic system, you see prosperity rise, you create the linkages that make it harder for a country to go off on its own. And now, of course, it’s our main geopolitical rival. And you hear in some quarters a question of “Are we doing the same thing again with India?” I wonder what you make of that question.

Mehta: I have to be honest. I think that in Asia, the concept that you can design a procedure of global progression that excludes countries like China or India is remarkably full of pride and presumption. And the fact that China’s integration into the global economy has really lifted millions and millions out of poverty; I don’t think it’s a human achievement that we should scoff at.

In fact, such statements play into the hands of nationalists around the world. “Oh, really, what the U. S. is going to do is design the global economy in such a way that it retains primacy. I mean, the simplest way to reinforce the conspiratorial mentality of Hindu nationalism is to really prove what they’ve always said, which is that the world wants to take over India and wants to put it under siege.

And also, how many authoritarian regimes are you going to exclude that you wouldn’t possibly do business with?So I think if you make popular progress and democracy a tool of geostrategic politics, you’re going to end up doing a lot of damage to any of the geostrategic policies. and the cause of democracy and progress.

So I don’t think there’s any other option but to interact with India. I also firmly affirm this – without intending to take anything away from American strength – but I truly believe that the role of the United States in advancing Indian democracy will be minimal at best. It is a struggle that the Indians will have to adopt internally.

Maybe most of us are still complacent. The way in which violence is being enacted in Indian democracy still feels like it’s in drips and dribbles. Most of us can still go around our daily business thinking, “This is not going to affect us.” Most of us still hope and still believe — I mean, otherwise we wouldn’t even be having this conversation — that, yes, the signs look ominous for Indian democracy but at some point will come a threshold where ordinary Indians begin to say, “Look, this is not us.” Now, what that threshold is is an open question. But I actually do believe that threshold will be reached and you will find Indian society reacting appropriately.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply