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Earlier this month, Rahul Gandhi, India’s main opposition leader, was convicted of defamation, for, several years ago, likening Narendra Modi, the country’s Prime Minister, to a thief. Days after the verdict, Gandhi was disqualified from serving in the lower house of Parliament, which is controlled by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The trial took place in Modi’s home state of Gujarat; the sentence—two years—is the exact length necessary to deem a member of Parliament unfit to serve. (Gandhi announced that he would appeal the sentence.) Meanwhile, opposition parties have joined forces to speak out against the increasing number of non-B.J.P. politicians who have been targeted by courts or state agencies. It remains unclear whether the various opposition parties will unite ahead of next year’s elections, where Modi is expected to lead his party to a third straight victory.
Over the course of Modi’s premiership, which began in 2014, he has turned India into an increasingly illiberal democracy. Vigilante attacks on religious minorities have increased markedly, the ruling party has taken steps to strip citizenship from Indian Muslims, and the historically repressed Muslim-majority state of Kashmir has faced even harsher crackdowns. Still, Modi remains remarkably popular, with approval ratings above seventy per cent. The moves against Gandhi—the scion of India’s Congress Party, which ruled the country for most of the post-independence era—were surprising in part because Gandhi doesn’t seem to pose a real threat to Modi politically.
To talk about Gandhi’s conviction and disqualification, I recently spoke by phone with Christophe Jaffrelot, a senior research fellow at Sciences Po, a professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s College, London, and the author of “Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy.” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Modi’s government has evolved in a more authoritarian direction, the central role that anti-Muslim politics has played in his success, and where opposition to the B.J.P. is likely to emerge.
Is the Gandhi conviction and disqualification just another step that the Modi government has taken to restrict political freedom in India? Or does it signal something new?
It is a restriction of a new kind. We have seen minor politicians affected by these kinds of moves at the state level, or at the provincial level. For instance, Manish Sisodia, the right-hand man of the chief minister of New Delhi, was arrested last month. That was clearly a big issue. But to attack Rahul Gandhi is a bigger issue, and you can say the difference is in kind, not in degree, because he is the leader of the opposition, and he is therefore the main contender for dislodging Modi from power. So if Modi attacks someone like him, it means that to replace Modi will be very difficult. It means that we are in an authoritarian regime where the man in charge is supposed to rule forever.
In a recent piece, you expressed some hope that the B.J.P. might have gone too far. Why is that?
Well, it’s one of the possibilities. It may be seen as an existential threat by state parties. And they may realize that they need to close ranks. If the rules of the game are changing so quickly, so radically, they may not be in a position to retain power at the state level, where they are so well entrenched. They may do what we’ve seen in Turkey, in Israel, in Poland, in Hungary, in all these countries, where finally the opposition leaders realize that if they do not unite they’re done.
Opposition parties still control many of India’s twenty-eight states, and you’re saying that Gandhi’s conviction could be a sign that the ruling party is going to go after them, too? And that the only way to hold on to what power they do have is to unite?
Exactly. Power in India lies largely at the state level. It’s a federal system.
Modi is probably the most popular leader in the world. His party has amassed incredible power to a degree not seen in India in many decades. Yet, at the state level, especially in the south, you see regional parties keeping the B.J.P. out of power. How has this been possible?
He’s not as popular as he claims. The B.J.P. never got more than thirty-seven per cent of the vote nationally. They control half a dozen big states, and most of them are in the Hindi Heartland. [These are states in the northern and central parts of the country.] If you look at the periphery, if you look at the states which are outside the Hindi Heartland—they do not control Tamil Nadu and they will never control Tamil Nadu. They do not control Kerala and they will never control Kerala. Look at West Bengal and Punjab, and even Maharashtra, which is not a finished story. There is a kind of exaggeration of the control they exert. And they exert control not because of the popularity of the B.J.P.; they exert control largely because Modi gets the B.J.P. elected every five years, which means that, after him, the B.J.P. may be in trouble. They have so much power because of their totalitarian modus vivendi, not because of their popularity.
I’m looking at Morning Consult’s global approval-rating tracker for world leaders. Modi is currently at seventy-six-per-cent approval. That is fifteen percentage points higher than any other world leader.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you go by the voting patterns of Indians, which is for me the real measure of popularity, Indians in more than half of the country’s states do not vote for the B.J.P. and for Modi when he is the candidate.
In that case, how do you understand this dynamic, where Modi himself is personally popular but he can’t yet lead the B.J.P. to take control of a majority of states?
There are very strong regional identities that are not represented by the B.J.P. The B.J.P. is seen as a North Indian, Hindi-speaking party. It’s also seen as an upper-caste party. So those who are not Hindus—in Kashmir, of course, and Sikh people in Punjab—do not vote for the B.J.P. And those who are not Hindi speakers in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Kerala cannot share this ideology of the B.J.P.’s.
You’re suggesting that Modi’s personal popularity is real, but it hasn’t completely transferred to support for the Party, which is why the Party could be in trouble after he’s gone?
Exactly.
In your book, you say that, in 2014, after Modi’s election, India was an “ethnic democracy,” and that it adopted something that you call “competitive authoritarianism.” Can you talk about what you think each of those two things are, and how India has changed during Modi’s nine years in power?
There are two sequences, or phases. “Ethnic democracy” is a formulation that comes from Israel. It was coined for understanding that kind of democracy. In India, we have a democracy in the sense that, after 2014, you still had elections, you still had a somewhat independent judiciary, at least till 2017 or 2018, and you still had a rather independent press. It has changed a lot. But it was an ethnic democracy, in the sense that the minorities—the non-Hindus, the Muslims, but also the Christians—were second-class citizens in their own country. And they were second-class citizens mostly because of the support of vigilante groups by the government. Vigilantism is a very important dimension of national-populist regimes. You have groups of activists making the lives of minorities very difficult.
For instance, in India, Muslims have been attacked because they were accused of taking cows to slaughterhouses. You had many, many cases of lynching. Muslims were also prevented from talking to Hindu girls. The vigilante groups called that “love jihad.” Muslims were also prevented from purchasing flats in Hindu-dominated neighborhoods. There was a real deterioration of life for Muslims. De facto, you saw them becoming second-class citizens.
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