#Politics | South Asia

[xtruss]

“World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Hindu Fascist Modi’s Politics” Hinder Neighborhood Ties

Recent Events in Bangladesh Show How the Hindu Nationalist Project has Harmed India’s Regional Interests.

— By Sushant Singh August 22, 2024

Indian Prime Minister and World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Hindu Fascist Narendra Modi Takes his Oath of Office in the Presence of Indian President Droupadi Murmu and Other South Asian Leaders in New Delhi on June 9. Elke Scholiers/Getty Images

When Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister 10 years ago, those invited to his swearing-in included leaders of every South Asian country. This reflected his “Neighborhood First” foreign policy, which was intended to foster cordial relations and economic synergy with India’s smaller neighbors. The approach soon floundered due to border disputes and bilateral disagreements, India’s tardy execution of development projects, and rising Chinese influence in the region.

However, Bangladesh was seen as one of its shining successes. Bangladeshi then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who held power for 15 consecutive years before resigning under pressure this month, worked closely with Modi; their friendly relationship seemed to be a win-win situation. But in Bangladesh, Hasina transformed into an authoritarian ruler despite her democratic beginnings. Popular anger against her brewed; the final trigger came with student protests against an order for government job quotas. The demonstrations soon turned on Hasina herself, leading to nationwide unrest. She fled the country on Aug. 5 and is currently residing in India.

Despite her unpopularity, Hasina’s resignation came as a shock to the Indian political and security establishment. India fully backed Hasina during her tenure, often ignoring the concerns of other stakeholders and the people of Bangladesh. Under Modi, New Delhi has taken this approach with most of its smaller neighbors, with sometimes unfortunate consequences.

It is clear India’s policy failures in its neighborhood are not solely due to external events. They are also manifestations of India’s current domestic politics. From the securitization of diplomacy to Modi’s strongman image, New Delhi has undermined its liberal credentials among the people of South Asia. Preferential treatment for Modi’s favored corporate interests by governments such as Hasina’s—an international extension of Indian cronyism—has further raised suspicion about New Delhi’s intentions.

The adherence of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to Hindu Nationalist Ideology has played a major role in harming India’s regional interests, especially in Bangladesh. The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that fast-tracked Indian citizenship for persecuted minority groups in neighboring countries while excluding Muslims fueled criticism from the Bangladeshi public. The BJP regime’s ill treatment of Muslims within India has fueled criticism of Modi abroad; his 2021 visit to Bangladesh was met with violent riots.

Hasina’s resignation provided the opportunity for a moment of introspection for the Indian government, but it seems unable to engage in policy correction. India’s tarnished image in Bangladesh is not the Modi government’s first major failure in South Asia, and it won’t be the last. Its pursuit of a de facto Hindu Rashtra (“Hindu state”) is not only damaging to India but will also have disastrous results in South Asia.

India’s Ties To Hasina run deep. After her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—Bangladesh’s founding leader—was assassinated in a 1975 military coup, Hasina and her sister took refuge in India. She returned to Bangladesh to fight for democracy, first serving as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 before returning to office in 2009. Her rule took an authoritarian turn after 2014 as she went after political opponents, journalists, and activists.

Hasina’s party, the secular Awami League, targeted radical Islamist groups; unlike her opponents, she did not did not allow anti-India militant groups to establish bases in Bangladesh. India backed Hasina to the exclusion of everyone else, with officials arguing that if she lost power, Bangladesh would become a “breeding ground for Islamist groups posing a threat to India’s national security.” This year, after Hasina won a fourth term in a criticized election, India lobbied U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to stop applying pressure to Bangladesh over democratic backsliding.

Hasina presided over soaring economic growth and controlled all state institutions, including the military; as a result, India assumed that she would continue to rule despite protests. But in a striking Indian intelligence and diplomatic failure, New Delhi was stunned when the army asked Hasina to leave the country this month. No Western government has offered her asylum, leaving her holed up in New Delhi. Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval greeted Hasina when she landed.

India’s over-securitized approach to neighborhood diplomacy—reflected in its unconditional support of Hasina—goes against the grain of historical, cultural, ethnic, geographic, and economic ties that India has throughout South Asia. New Delhi has missed opportunities to gain the confidence of its neighbors, in effect breeding insecurity in these countries. It has become out of touch with larger public sentiment in the region, burning bridges with the political opposition, including in conditions of democratic backsliding.

In Myanmar, India has shunned pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar in favor of the military junta that seized power in a coup in 2021. In Afghanistan, it has established friendly ties with the Taliban rulers, neglecting longstanding relationships with nationalist Afghans. In Bangladesh, the security-centric approach has manifested in policing along the countries’ border; complaints about the heavy-handed behavior of India’s Border Security Force abound.

Modi’s strongman politics have also shaped India’s regional diplomacy. While Modi maintains a silence on China’s ingress on the disputed India-China border, India’s smaller neighbors bear the brunt of his image building. India launched a cross-border raid in Myanmar in 2015 against transit camps of Indian insurgents, the same year it unleashed a trade blockade on Nepal when the latter declared itself a secular republic. Last year, Modi’s supporters launched a campaign for Indian tourists to boycott the Maldives, after a diplomatic row when some Maldivian ministers allegedly criticized Modi.

In Bangladesh, the tough approach of India’s border police added to public grievances about New Delhi’s actions on water sharing, transit facilities, and other trade-related issues that were supposedly unfair to Dhaka. In a young country with fragile nationalism, the public seemed to transfer its rage against India for violating Bangladesh’s sovereignty to Hasina.

Political opponents in India have regularly criticized Modi for his support of crony firms, especially those owned by the billionaire Gautam Adani. These ties have attracted attention in India’s neighborhood, too. Last year, Adani posted a picture with Hasina after announcing that an Adani Group power plant would supply 100 percent of its electricity to Bangladesh. It drew criticism in Bangladesh for being too expensive, too late, and too risky while lining Adani’s pockets. Experts alleged that Hasina need Modi’s associated political favor to “secure political legitimacy.”

Populism, authoritarianism, and cronyism contributed to India’s troubles in Bangladesh, but the Modi government’s pursuit of Hindu nationalist ideology has been even more damaging.

The 2019 CAA ultimately serves the goal of creating a de facto Hindu state; among the persecuted communities that it fast-tracked for Indian citizenship were Hindus in Bangladesh. (Hasina’s media advisor Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury expressed distaste at being compared to Pakistan and Afghanistan, countries rife with terrorist activity.) This fed an anti-India narrative that gained ground in Bangladesh, as did other rhetoric about Bangladeshis from top BJP leaders. Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, Modi’s de facto no. 2, has called Bangladeshi immigrants termites, illegal infiltrators, and a threat to national security.

Before the CAA, the Indian judiciary ordered a draconian survey to document legal citizens and identify Bangladeshi immigrants in the border state of Assam—seen by critics as a way of targeting undocumented Indian Muslims. Shah vowed to implement this National Register of Citizens (NRC) nationwide, but that has not yet materialized. Although New Delhi characterized the register as a domestic issue, Bangladesh found itself at the center of India’s “illegal foreign nationals” problem. Many analysts feared the CAA and NRC could push millions of Indian Muslims into Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Hasina’s government continued to reinforce the perception that she was taking orders from New Delhi. When a BJP spokesperson made remarks insulting the prophet Muhammad in 2022, it earned the ire of many Muslim-majority countries; Hasina’s government declared the matter an “internal issue.” The grievances began adding up in Bangladesh, and the BJP government’s escalating discrimination toward Indian Muslims has not helped. On the campaign trail this year, Modi indulged in anti-Muslim dog-whistling. Last year, he inaugurated a new parliament building that features a mural of Akhand Bharat (“Unbroken India”)—including all of India’s smaller neighbors within its borders.

In His National Address on India’s Independence Day on Aug. 15, Modi spoke about India’s 1.4 billion citizens worrying about the safety of Hindus in Bangladesh. It was a thinly veiled way of framing India as only a Hindu homeland—not the multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual country it has been for hundreds of years. It is no surprise that the BJP government refuses to censure its right-wing supporters and media that spread disinformation about killings of Hindus in Bangladesh amid the recent unrest—even after retaliatory attacks in India on the Muslim community.

Modi’s government now seems to have little capacity for self-reflection. Instead of blaming Pakistan, China, or Islamists for the events that led to Hasina’s resignation in Bangladesh, India should acknowledge that its neighboring countries’ citizens can win back their agency and exercise it against authoritarian regimes. Although India is hailed as a rising power in distant lands, it is still seen as a relatively weak power by those in its neighborhood. Geography dictates that its smaller neighbors must work with India, but it is now up to New Delhi to negotiate fresh terms of engagement.

— Sushant Singh is a Lecturer at Yale University and a Consulting Editor with India’s Caravan Magazine. He was Previously the Deputy Editor of the Indian Express and Served in the Indian Army for Two Decades.

[mysharona1987]

I love how South Korea doesn’t really let people have guns outside of the military and other quite restricted circumstances, but they’re still kicking USA ass here.

[curtwilde]

TW: Rape, violent language, islamphobia.

On Slide 3 you can see the vile genocidal fantasies of hindutva ghouls towards grieving Palestinian mothers and children, and yet they'll whine about safety of Hindu women just to demonize Muslim men. Please remember every accusation from the Hindutva genocidal majority is a confession.

Source

This is what hindutvavadis - even the soft sanghis here on tumblr - support and align themselves with. This is what they believe and what they vote for.

[sneeplerbeepler]

westerners are so fucking annoying. "only adivasis (tribal people) are native to india" you heard the word tribal and immediately made false equivalences between India and the Americas/Oceania

[crimeronan]

hi friends, i am back for now! mainly because i am Sick As Hell with some respiratory thing that hopefully isn't COVID and therefore can't do much besides lay in bed + hang with people online. is anyone up on this fine saturday morning and if so, would you join me if i streamed the owl house??

[mxdae]

Can You Guys Do Me A Solid?

After much convincing from my cousin and friends, I have decided that I will try to leave the country, too. Can you help out by purchasing from my Redbubble shop? Redbubble is based in Australia, so there is potentially no need for non-Americans to worry about tariff jacking up the prices. And if you can't purchase, reblogs would be great, too!

The cheapest items on Redbubble are stickers, just FYI.

[troythecatfish]

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Is North Korea actually bad

It is not what you have been told it is. There are many bad things about the government of North Korea, there are many bad things about those running it, but it is not what you have been told it is.

[choberr]

[fandomfairyuniverse]

It’s kind of insane actually like the President of South Korea declared martial law because of “North Korean sympathizers” in the opposing party. This is bad. This is very very bad.

[jemmo]

i keep on seeing shit about ot6 vs ot7, who is there more of, why they support seunghan, why they don’t, and how that effects whether he returns to or leaves the group. and all i can think is WHY THE FUCK IS IT UP TO THE FANS. we do not own sm, we’re not on the board, we don’t work there. fans can think however they like. but why are we actually letting fans opinions not just influence but actually dictate what happens with these groups. no matter what anyone thinks, there are hard truths. seunghan did nothing wrong. that should be the only thing that dictates whether he’s allowed to continue his career or not, not what anyone online has to say. and reflecting on all of this makes me feel like a crazy person for not seeing it sooner. companies will lull you in with the intense connection they manufacture between idols and fans, they’ll make you think you’re important and that you matter, and when they respond to fan opinion in the way you want, it makes you feel great, like wow the powers that be actually listened to me. they want you to think that fan influence isn’t just good, it’s essential. like it just comes with being a fan now, you have power, it’s how they up engagement and make money. and usually them doing things, making decisions that are fan-driven is good bc it reinforces the feeling of power and closeness fans have and the company benefits so you don’t bat an eyelid. but something like this happens and you step back and just realise how insane it is. i am just a person. we are just people and our opinions can be fickle and baseless and emotional. they should not be the thing that drives decisions that change the lives of these idols. I do not want that power. sm might suck but they’re professionals paid to do a job, they’re kind of employed to have that power. when they do something you don’t like, you can complain about it, that’s fine. and if they do something bad or that is hurtful or objectively wrong, yes, kick up a fuss. but please please, i need people to realise that there’s a difference between complaining about a idol you don’t like and a company uplifting a person that has done something wrong, and sm should not look at us complaining about those as the same thing and meet it with the same response. public influence over companies should be reserved for when it is needed, for when that company is doing something that is actually bad, not for when its doing something you don’t like. at that point, no, you don’t get a say. there has to be a separation, we have to reintroduce that separation, between the what the company is doing and what the fans think. fan engagement is a nice sentiment but just look at where it has got us. we have people believing it’s right that they control an idols life, they think that’s what they’re entitled to, bc of how much they support them, how much they buy. and we have companies that will listen to harmful fans bc it’s better for them to go with what they think bc that’s where the money comes from. it’s the bad feeding off the bad. and while it’s not all of asian fans or all of korean fans, the fact is that whoever is making the most noise in the home market, no matter what it is they’re saying, they’ll get listened to, bc the company needs that fanbase most. they need the ones that will attend events day after day, buy all the merch and engage most and believe in this parasocial relationship for them to benefit. why do they support delulus? it’s how they make money. simple as. and as much as i hate being pessimistic and bitter, there’s simply nothing we can do. if it’s not what the local crazies want, it won’t happen. and as much as i wished for all these months that seunghan could just wait out the hiatus until all the drama died down and return quietly and it’d all be fine, I should��ve known that there’s nothing those ‘fans’ like better than sitting on their high horse over something petty and unimportant just to feel powerful.

so consider this a call out post, to fans that have made this space so incredibly harmful and toxic, and to the companies that encourage their behaviour. i hope you’re very happy together.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Droupadi Murmu

Droupadi Murmu was born in 1958 in Uparbeda, India. Murmu's political career started in local government in 1997 when she was elected a councillor in Rairangpur. There, she was frequently seen personally supervising sanitation work. Later, Murmu became a state lawmaker in Odisha. From 2015 to 2021, she served as Governor of Jharkhand state. As governor, Murmu was appreciated for keeping the governor's office open to those from all different backgrounds. In 2022, she was elected India's president, making her the first person from a tribal community to hold this role.

Image: President's Secretariat, 2022, https://www.presidentofindia.gov.in/ under a GODL-India license

[mysharona1987]

Kim Jong Un when he hears about President Yoon’s pathetically short-lived attempt to be a dictator:

[curtwilde]

Voting NOTA is as good as not voting. Vote wisely.

[sneeplerbeepler]

I want western progressives to stop projecting their guilt about the history of the west onto south asia. we are not the same.

[discoursets]

“Kasuri also gives us a rare insight into the minds of the Pakistan Army, the contribution of the Foreign Office and his warm but complex relationship with President Musharraf. Blending analysis with choice anecdote, Neither a Hawk nor a Dove gives us a comprehensive and revealing account of Pakistan’s politics and the political compulsions of those at the helm.” 🌱