INDIAN ELECTION
Is re-engagement possible?
There are many obstacles to a thaw in the frosty India-Pakistan relationship.
Published June 10, 2024
THE BJP’s electoral victory has handed Narendra Modi a third consecutive term in office. In a closely fought election, the Congress party’s INDIA alliance made an unexpectedly strong showing. This left BJP short of a majority to form a government on its own and broke the myth of Modi’s invincibility.
Nevertheless, Modi cobbled together a majority with alliance partners to govern, but with a diminished mandate. He will head a coalition government and have to rely on wily and fickle political allies to survive in power. For a man unused to sharing power, dealing with coalition politics and regional kingmakers will be uncharted territory, as well as contending with a powerful opposition.
This challenging scenario will oblige Modi 3.0 to focus a great deal of attention on domestic political consolidation. That will likely see him double down on his Hindutva ideology to reinforce his Hindu base, especially as the BJP was mostly unable to make inroads beyond its strongholds. Modi and BJP’s vicious anti-Muslim rhetoric during the election campaign was more than just a tool of political strategy. It reflected party ideology and its deep-seated belief about the place of Muslims in ‘Hindu India’.
Its hard-line policy towards Muslims is therefore likely to continue. Coalition partners are unlikely to restrain the BJP in that regard. To consolidate its Hindu constituency, the Modi government might pursue with even greater vigour its Hindutva agenda, involving actions such as a uniform civil code, ending reservations for Muslims, and seizing mosques in Varanasi and Mathura to claim them as old temples. All these are part of its manifesto.
Related to this was the BJP’s resort to Pakistan-bashing in the election campaign. Modi compared his muscular response to cross-border terrorism with the infirm approach of his predecessors, saying he will continue to “hit terrorists in their homes” (“Hum ghar me ghus ke marenge“).His reference was to the air strikes he ordered on Balakot in February 2019 after a terrorist attack in Pulwama in occupied Kashmir. BJP leaders’ other pronouncements on Pakistan were equally belligerent and offensive. This too was part of the party’s strategy to appeal to its Hindu support base, having determined that the Pulwama episode had helped it reap rich electoral dividends in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Again, anti-Pakistan tirades were not just election politics but indicative of the combative approach the BJP government may adopt towards Islamabad. Moreover, domestic political problems will create the temptation to ramp up anti-Pakistan rhetoric and for Modi to further harden his Pakistan policy.
These factors do not create a propitious climate for India-Pakistan re-engagement and, in fact, limit the scope for a thaw in the frosty relationship. The path to normalisation of ties is in any case strewn with formidable difficulties. The diplomatic deadlock between the two neighbours has remained unbroken for the past five years.
Relations were ruptured when India illegally annexed Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, bifurcated it, and absorbed it into the Indian Union in brazen violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Formal dialogue was suspended by Delhi years earlier. And in February 2019, in the wake of the Pulwama crisis, India slapped 200 per cent customs duty on Pakistani imports in a bid to restrict trade with Pakistan. Islamabad’s response to Delhi’s Kashmir action was to halt trade altogether and downgrade diplomatic relations by recalling its high commissioner.
There are many obstacles to a thaw in the frosty India-Pakistan relationship.
However, backchannel communication between them led in February 2021 to recommitment by both sides to observe a ceasefire on the Line of Control in Kashmir in accordance with a 2003 understanding. This was a significant development following the dangerous confrontation between the two countries in February 2019, when Indian air strikes in Pakistani territory pushed the two countries to the brink of conflict. Agreement on an LoC truce marked a much-needed de-escalation of tensions. The ceasefire has since mostly held. But expectations that this temporary thaw would pave the way for the resumption of a peace process did not materialise.
The diplomatic impasse has since persisted, with verbal clashes punctuating tense relations. Islamabad made the resumption of dialogue contingent upon India rescinding its August 2019 action. Delhi showed no interest in resuming talks, saying that Kashmir was off the negotiating table.
Instead, it continued its repressive policy and human rights violations in occupied Kashmir. Despite Pakistan’s protests, India proceeded in the next three years to undertake a slew of sweeping legal, demographic, and electoral changes in occupied Kashmir aimed at disempowering Kashmiri Muslims. This further vitiated the climate and left ties more fraught.
In May 2023, foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited India to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. But the opportunity for any re-engagement proved elusive as no bilateral meeting took place. Instead, the foreign ministers of the two countries traded stinging barbs, while India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, accused Bilawal of being the “spokesperson of a terrorism industry”.
Meanwhile, another irritant was added last year to the long list of disputes between the two countries when India threatened to unilaterally modify the Indus Waters Treaty’s dispute settlement provisions. It also boycotted a court of arbitration hearing at the Hague on Indian hydroelectric projects on the Chenab and Jhelum rivers disputed by water-stressed Pakistan. The 1960 treaty has for over six decades survived wars, confrontations and tensions between the two countries, but Delhi’s stance put at stake the fate of this vital treaty that governs the sharing and management of trans-border rivers.
Against this fraught backdrop, the prospects for any normalisation of relations appear slim. There is certainly the need for a working relationship and regular communication — even by a back channel — to manage tensions. Normalisation of ties, however, has to be on a reciprocal and mutually beneficial basis.
For now, Delhi’s well-known terms for re-engagement — minus settlement of disputes — Modi’s hostile stance on Pakistan, and BJP leaders’ threats to seize Azad Kashmir, hold out little hope for any forward movement in bilateral ties.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.
Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2024
The change is welcome, if cosmeticPublished June 11, 2024
DAWN
THE change is cosmetic for the Modi government, for at the end of the day, it’s still a Modi government. For the opposition, the elections have brought a new energy and clarity of purpose. Principally, it is the fight for the idea of India as enshrined in the constitution.
The poorest voters feared the 400 seats sought by Narendra Modi were to subvert Dr Ambedkar’s statute book of rights and duties, which has so far guarded their core interests. They are the ones who cut the BJP to size.
If we remember Nehru’s election symbol, it was a pair of bullocks, indicating the Congress party’s rural base. After Manmohan Singh surrendered it to the stock exchange, Rahul Gandhi is putting the focus back on villages, their caste challenges, and the quest for jobs for their unemployed youth swarming the cities. The two ideals stated in the preamble that irk the Hindu right greatly are the promise to defend ‘secularism’ and ‘socialism’. And both have surfaced promptly in the opposition’s campaign. It is not uncommon in Delhi’s drawing rooms to hear the Congress being cursed for egalitarian appeal but it appears to have been reinvented with Rahul Gandhi’s reinvention of himself.
On the other side, Prime Minister Modi has lost his swagger given the compulsions of yielding to powerful regional satraps pressing their own interests, which takes a toll. Listening to others for the first time would be a test of patience for him, for he has no experience whatsoever of working with a coalition — not in Gujarat, not in Delhi.
Equally importantly, meantime, is his giving up the habit of referring to himself in the third person. Modi’s guarantee. Modi’s promise. These have been replaced with NDA this, NDA that. He is lampooned more freely since the results downsized him on June 4. A caricature shows West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee measuring his hollowed chest with a tape, and exclaiming: “20 inch!” She, indeed, deflated the BJP in West Bengal by more than the 36 inches she expunged from Modi’s boast of having a 56-inch chest.
All this is greatly amusing if the trimming of his wings is what one should be rejoicing over. True also are the visuals about Muslims, where the brakes have been evidently applied on abusive trolling against them.
Has Modi given up his belief of being a divine avatar, different from fellow humans?
But has Modi given up his belief of being a divine avatar, different from fellow humans? None can say for sure, for Modi is Modi. How could he give up all his ingrained habits and beliefs in one go?
On the first day in office — while curiously delaying the allocation of portfolios to 72 ministers amid rumours of a tussle — he signed off a routine money transfer to the farmers’ fund, only to claim to TV cameras that he was a lover of farmers. This gave the Congress a chance to interrupt his reverie. “The headline management and PR campaign of the one-third prime minister has once again started from the first day of his third term,” said Jairam Ramesh. Opposition MP Supriya Sule ad-libbed that the need was to wipe off the farmers’ debt — something Modi readily does for his corporate associates — not give them a dole.
Beyond the cosmetic veneer is the question: can he solve India’s problems of unemployment and biting inflation? Not within the confines of the neoliberal top-down economy he embraced, in fact, inherited from Manmohan Singh’s government. He gave five kilos of rice to the poor with his photo beaming from every bag or gas cylinder given in heavily advertised charity. During the campaign, he was seen asking the people to return the favour — and would they not. Indeed, many women voted for him.
Would that solve the problems of yawning disparity, sub-Saharan human development indices in BJP-ruled states? Very unlikely. When asked about the telling economic disparity, Mr Modi had famously snapped: “Shall I make everyone poor?” If that answer isn’t tweaked or edited soon, things would begin to look pretty much as they did.
On the wider landscape, there is the challenge of social harmony. In the early hours of Friday, shortly before Mr Modi was unanimously asked to head the NDA group as a prelude to his third swearing-in, two Muslim men were lynched in BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh.
According to The Hindu, the residents of Uttar Pradesh — Guddu Khan and Chand Miya Khan — were found dead while a third, Saddam Qureshi, sustained injuries in the Arang area of Raipur district. A common relative of Chand and Saddam said the three were lynched by a mob. He claimed they were waylaid, their vehicle was punctured, and they were thrashed and thrown off a bridge, causing the death of Chand and Guddu and injuries to Saddam. ‘Nine to ten persons’, some with previous history of cow vigilantism, have been questioned but a case was registered only for culpable homicide, not murder.
In Jammu, on Saturday, the day of the swearing-in, suspected Kashmiri gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims to the Vaishno Devi Temple. The bus fell into a gorge killing nine and injuring several.
How shall we read both the incidents? Is India headed for more of the same under Modi’s new term? Or will things change because the two centrist allies are expected to heal the mistrust sowed between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir and elsewhere? Are we to expect anything to improve the lot of Manipur where anti-Christian violence erupted again following the elections when the BJP retained power in the state assembly and the Congress won two MPs?
Meanwhile, an NDA ally from Maharashtra refused to take the oath of office, rejecting a junior minister’s portfolio. Praful Patel has been a ranking minister in earlier cabinets. There’s trouble brewing for Mr Modi ahead of crucial state polls in BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Haryana in October.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2024
NDA, not BJP
Umair JavedPublished June 10, 2024
DAWN
RESULTS of the Indian general election from this past week took most observers by surprise. A comfortable return to power for the BJP was the dominant analytical consensus prior to June 4. A return to power did take place, but Modi’s perch looks a lot more precarious.
Preliminary number-crunching and analysis in the handful of days since the results were announced reveal some key trends. As per Abishek Jha’s analysis for The Hindustan Times, a few primary statistics tell the story of this election. The first is that while the BJP’s vote-share remains roughly the same, its median vote share fell by around four per cent, the implication being that for the median seat it contested, BJP received a smaller share of the votes than in 2019.
Another key aspect was a return to electoral competitiveness for the Congress. Its median vote share went up by nearly 10pc to 38.8pc in the seats that it contested, while its rate of success in all contested seats also increased by nearly 2.5 times to 30pc.
A decline in the BJP’s median vote share and a concurrent rise in the Congress’s meant that the average victory margin per seat in this election fell by about 5pc compared to the last election. BJP alone lost 65 seats, while the INDIA alliance gained over 100. Overall, these figures reveal a decidedly more competitive election than the last two.
It is worth focusing on regional variations that can help explain the overall outcome of India’s recent polls.
So what explains these numbers, especially when the incumbent’s pre-results posturing was about crossing 400 seats, and most exit polls had them comfortably above 300?
Distilling these results to a single factor impacting a polity of 900 million voters would be amiss, given the scale of India’s political diversity. Instead, it’s worth focusing on regional variations that can help explain the overall outcome. A few astute observers, like Yogendra Yadav, correctly read the tea-leaves prior to the results by focusing on ground-level sentiment in Uttar Pradesh. It was, in fact, results in UP (along with Maharashtra) that help explain the BJP’s diminished position.
Grassroots accounts from UP point to several factors at play. One was a growing level of frustration with jobless growth; ie, stories about a rapidly rising GDP but without a concurrent rise in employment, especially at the lower tiers of income distribution. Colloquially referred to as India’s K-shaped post-pandemic recovery, recent successes in boosting GDP growth stand accompanied with widening inequality. Gains at the top are highly visible, with a new class of nouveau riche consuming conspicuously in the big cities, but are largely missing for poorer households in small towns, peri-urban localities, and villages (ie, mofussil areas).
This is also closely linked to India’s strange structural transformation, where agriculture’s share in value addition has fallen sharply, but its share in total employment remains persistently high. Unequal 8pc growth makes for good headlines, enriches upper-income households, and cultivates aspiration among upwardly mobile segments. But it also leaves large swathes of the population locked out of the benefits of growth with no clear pathway of getting in.
Observers were of the view that the post-Covid expansion in welfare programmes would be sufficient to offset the foundational flaw of jobless growth. It turns out that while welfare did shore up support for some key segments, it was not enough to keep lower/scheduled caste groups on their side. This is visible through the fact that the BJP lost more seats reserved for scheduled caste candidates than general category seats.
Crucially, these results also show the (current) limits of a politics that draws on divisive, communal mobilisation, especially in the face of economic uncertainty. The fact that BJP lost in the constituency of Faizabad, where Ram Mandir was recently inaugurated with much fanfare, and in the town of Banswara in Rajasthan, where Modi made references to mangalsutras being stolen by Muslims, is fairly revealing. A section of the electorate appears to be either exhausted with communal rhetoric or pays less attention to it in the face of a livelihood crisis. Either way, it shows that there is political space for alternative narratives that prioritise inequality and social justice.
All of these factors notwithstanding, the BJP and its allies crossed a simple majority threshold overall, and made gains in some southern states like Kerala. This salience, even if somewhat diminished, shows that any predictions of an impending downfall or change in government are terribly premature. The party remains the most popular in India and will continue to set the terms of politics.
Moving forward, a few things are worth keeping an eye out for to get a sense of the short and medium-term direction of Indian politics. The first is the type of constraints placed on the BJP by its coalition partners, Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu, who have a decidedly different type of politics than the leading party. This may be visible in relaxing the authoritarian crackdown against opposition leaders, toning down of an abrasively communal politics, and perhaps diverting greater attention to redistributive policymaking.
The second trend is Modi’s stature within the BJP. This was the first election since 2001 that he was directly involved in which did not result in a simple majority for his party. There is some opposition to Modi-Shah’s dominance within the party, colloquially dubbed the RSS faction, led by Nitin Gadkari. These results may give them a little more space to manoeuvre internally, recalibrating the internal balance of power that had shifted decisively in Modi’s direction.
Finally, some predicted that a heavy mandate for Modi may lead to normalisation of ties with Pakistan, given the latter’s apparent readiness. With that mandate out of the window, the immediate direction of India-Pakistan relations may be determined by India’s domestic political compulsions. Will talking to Pakistan leave the government more exposed to hawks even further to the right? This uncertainty could mean a continuation of the status quo for the near future.
The writer teaches sociology at Lums.
X: @umairjav
Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2024
Fears for India’s Muslims as Modi’s Hindu nationalists win third term
AFP Published June 4, 2024
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures, at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters in New Delhi, India, June 4. — Reuters
For India’s 200-million-plus Muslim minority, a third term for the Hindu-nationalist ruling party brings renewed fears for their future in the constitutionally secular country.
Many Indian Muslims worry Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will relegate them to “second-class citizens” in a Hindu nation.
“During the last 10 years, Muslims were publicly targeted, abused, and humiliated,” said housewife Shabnam Haque, 43, in Jharkhand’s state capital Ranchi.
“Hate against the community is increasing day by day and Muslims are being dehumanised. We fear this trend will increase.”
Demonstrators gather along a road scattered with stones following clashes between supporters and opponents of a new citizenship law at Bhajanpura area of New Delhi on February 24. — AFP/File
But while Modi celebrated victory, the opposition was stronger than pundits had predicted, and the BJP is dependent on allies without an overall majority of its own for the first time in a decade.
‘Very scared’
For some, the reduction of BJP seats offered a glimmer of hope.
“Diverse political representation is crucial for a healthy democracy, and a strong opposition is vital,” said Salman Ahmad Siddiqui.
The 42-year-old banker comes from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous state and the heartland of the Hindu faith — where the BJP lost its majority.
“The election results are unsurprising, reflecting a growing sense of unease among young people and the middle class,” Siddiqui added.
People react during a clash with police at a protest that turned violent in Mumbai. — Reuters
But Rahman Saifi, 27, a social activist from Uttar Pradesh, said the BJP still had a fresh mandate to drive forward its right-wing policies for its faithful Hindu followers.
“Even with a reduced majority, they may continue to push their agenda of establishing a Hindu Rashtra (country) in India,” Saifi said.
“It’s concerning.”
Hindu activists will likely be emboldened to call for more religious sites to be taken from Muslims.
Those demands have grown louder since Modi inaugurated a grand temple to the deity Ram in January, built on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya razed by Hindu zealots in 1992.
“Muslims are very scared that […] they will implement anti-Muslim laws and policies in a dictatorial manner and promote hatred in society,” shopkeeper Anwar Siddiqui said in the northern state of Uttarakhand — a BJP heartland.
Far to the south, Muhammad Samshuddeen, 25, a shopkeeper in the tech hub of Bengaluru said that “India is a secular country for all religions,” adding, “We are here to live peacefully too.”
In Indian-occupied Kashmir, the Modi government’s 2019 decision to bring the region under New Delhi’s direct rule — and the subsequent clampdown — has been deeply resented.
The BJP’s third term will mean “further hardship”, 53-year-old Riyaz Ahmed from Srinagar said.
“We have been suffocated,” he said.
“If anyone tries to speak the truth you are uncertain you will remain free.”
‘Divisive agenda’
Modi was accused during campaigning of ramping up rhetoric targeting India’s key religious divide in a bid to rally the Hindu majority to vote.
At his rallies, he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and claimed the main opposition Congress party would redistribute the nation’s wealth to Muslims if it won.
“The BJP contested this election on a communal and divisive agenda,” said Anwar Siddiqui, the shopkeeper.
The BJP has promised to introduce in its third term a new common civil code for the country, which minorities fear could encroach on their religious laws.
India’s 1.4 billion people are subject to a common criminal law, but rules on personal matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance vary based on the customary traditions of different communities and faiths.
A policeman walks past a burning vehicle during a protest in Mumbai. — Reuters
Sayeed Alam, 32, a construction worker in Gaya in eastern Bihar state, feared that “Muslims will be treated as second-class citizens”.
“We are already facing a lot of problems,” Alam said.
“Who knows what will happen next?”
While Modi had hoped to win more seats to push through policies without relying on coalition allies, the BJP still wields enormous power.
“What the community really fears is whether the new government will adopt a more hardline approach towards Muslims,” said Soroor Ahmad, 63, a newspaper columnist based in Bihar’s capital Patna.
But for 27-year-old Mohammad Rehan in Delhi, the BJP’s dented parliamentary strength represented hope for change in the future.
“The BJP cannot stay in power forever,” he said.
