INDIA the biggest democracy in the world has gone to polls. The months long election process has begun with the results announcement on the 4th of June. The incumbent maverick Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now gunning for a third term in office to create a new record of being the longest ruling Prime Minister of India after Jawarhar Lal Nehru the first Prime Minister who ruled from 1947 to 1964. The lower House of the Indian Parliament has 543 seats and Modi’s party the BJP had won 303 seats in the elections of 2019 but this time they are hoping for a bigger mandate with far more seats in the Lok Sabah. Another victory in the elections will give the Modi led BJP party 15 years as the ruling party of India and the media is rife with rumors about Modi’s rule during the next five years. 960 million Indians are very likely to vote for the BJP led by Narendra Modi during the election exercise between April 19th to June 4th.
Judging by the criteria of economic performance the Modi Govt. performance has been clearly impressive. When the BJP govt. took control in 2014 economic growth was slow and sluggish and investor confidence was in the doldrums because of some high profile corruption cases. Between 2014 and 2022 India’s gross domestic product GDP (Per Capita) rose from USD 5000 to over USD 7000 that is an impressive increase of about 40% in eight years which was noted and praised by economists the world over. According to the IMF Indian economy is projected to grow at a rate of 6.5% in 2024. This is higher than China’s projected growth rate of 4.6% while Pakistan economy will grow by 2%. India’s growth rate exceeds that of any other large economy in the world for example the UK economy is expected to grow by 0.6% in 2024.
However, recent estimates also suggest that inequality in India is at an all-time high. Growth, when it has occurred, has seemingly been unequal. A key challenge facing the Modi government in its next term will be to convert higher growth into productive jobs while also curbing the excess wealth of India’s economic and political elites.In its second term, the Modi government placed greater emphasis on delivering public goods and social welfare programs in a less corrupt manner. This saw the launch of a massive rural program and the enrolment of roughly 99% of Indian adults in Aadhaar, a digital ID system linked to fingerprints and iris scans.
Modi’s third term in office is of vital importance not only to the billion plus voters in India but also to all the regional countries specially the countries bordering India particularly Pakistan. Modi’s track record of hostility towards Pakistan is no secret and of vital importance is how Modi and his Govt. will treat the Indian Muslims who happen to be the largest religious minority in that country. During the last two terms of the BJP political analysts and scholars in India and abroad have expressed grave fears that the Modi led BJP is engaged in turning India into a Hindu state and the idea of a secular India of the founding fathers is now in danger of being destroyed. Siddhartha Deb author of the bestselling book “Twilight prisoners: The rise of Hindu Right and the fall of India” wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times “The sleepy pilgrimage city of Ayodhia in Northern India was once home to a grand 16th century mosque, until it was illegally demolished by a howling mob of Hindu militants in 1991” and he continued “The site has been reinvented as the centerpiece of the Hindu-chauvinist ‘new India’ promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In 2020, Modi went to Ayodhya to inaugurate the construction of a three-story sandstone temple to the Hindu god Ram on the site of the former mosque. He offered prayers to the Ram idol and inserted an 88-pound silver brick as the foundation stone.” No definite evidence has ever been provided by the Hindu fundamentalists that RAM was an actual historical figure or that a Hindu Temple ever existed at the site of the mosque but the Ram Mandir or the Temple was built at the Site of the demolished mosque and was inaugurated with grand fanfare by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 22nd January 2023. In his article in the New York Times Deb continued to express his horror and shock about the death of secular India and the rise of a Hindu militant India He continued “After a decade of rule by Mr. Modi and his Bhartiya Janata Party, Hindu majority India maintains the façade of a democracy and so far has avoided the overt features of a theocracy. Yet as Ayodhya revealed, it has for all practical purposes become a Hindu state. Adherence to this idea is demanded from everyone, whether Hindu or not.” Debb concluded his article with a warning: “Mr. Modi and his party are giving India the Hindu utopia they have promised, and in the clear light of the day, it amounts to little more than a shiny, garish temple that is a monument to majoritarian violence, surrounded by water-logged streets, emaciated cattle and a people impoverished in every way.” Many western countries specially the USA are projecting and promoting India as the new rising world power to counter the rising influence of China as a global economic and military power. Pakistan should take comfort from the fact that no matter what the Western Leaders try to project China will be always head and shoulders above India economically and militarily.
That many among the Western leadership has bought Prime Mister Narendra Modi’s idea of new India is reflected in the space they are giving his country in the world they are constructing that would keep China at a comfortable distance. Pakistan should draw some comfort from the fact that the rising China is one of its four neighbours. No matter how hard the US and its Western allies try, China cannot be contained by what they believe is a rising India. Some among the western leadership may have bought Prime Minister Modi’s idea that under his rule, India is on the way to becoming a dominant world player. However, there are many in India who believe that is not the case. Deb is not the only Indian writing about his country with considerable skepticism.
If India is on the way to becoming a great world power, most Indians would want to stay in their country and not move on. There are many from India who are taking the risk of entering the US illegally. There is a significant number of Indians who cross into America through the porous border with Mexico in search of better lives. There are other sober analysts who are raising serious doubts about the survival of the Indian political system that the first generation of the country’s leadership constructed in the days immediately following the founding of the county on August 15, 1947. Among those who have expressed caution about the way India’s future is assessed is the British newsmagazine, The Economist, that carried in its issue of April 2024 several articles on the way it saw India on the eve of its months-long national elections. It displayed considerable nervousness about India’s future. While the leadership in the West may have begun to look at Modi and the country he leads as a way of containing the growing influence in Asia of rising China, that confidence is not shared by many Indians both living inside the country as well as those who are members of the large Indian diaspora. Many Indians are now increasingly concerned about what the British when they governed the large Indian colony called their “Mussalman problem”. Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to pursue his divisive approach towards representative politics in India.
—The writer is Professor of History, based in Islamabad.
Email: tariq.aqil@headstart.edu.pk
