Bharat Bhushan: PM's global image: Cultivated over six years, gone in three days
Greatness it seems
will continue to elude Prime Minister Narendra
Modi. Everything that could go wrong for him has done so, both
internationally and at home. His “achhe din” (good days) may well be
behind him.
None of the measures
he introduced in his second coming, has played out as he may have hoped;
whether it was the lockdown in Kashmir, the results of the National Register of
Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam, the public response to the Citizenship
Amendment Act (CAA) or a nationwide NRC which
threatens to turn undocumented citizens into illegal immigrants. The intense & targeted violence in the largely Muslim areas of North-East Delhi during
the Trump visit shattered in just three days an image that Modi built
assiduously over six years. Nor could the prime minister’s Man Friday, Union
Home Minister Amit Shah, rise to the occasion and save his boss from
international embarrassment.
However, ‘black swan
events’ like the Delhi riots alone are not responsible for the diminishing of
Prime Minister Modi’s image. Nothing seems to be working under his stewardship.
Elections have increasingly been converted by his cabinet colleagues into civil
war between communities.
Parliament no longer functions smoothly because the
government routinely sabotages debates on burning national issues. Everyday
those heading the institutional watchdogs of Indian democracy reveal themselves
as third-rate toadies. And then there is the economy.
In 2014 the world saw
Modi as an economic reformer and leader of a strong and united India. Today the
international press describes him as authoritarian with a divisive and
majoritarian agenda. External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar has had to put on
a brave face with criticism of Modi’s domestic politics mounting internally,
saying, that India was in the process of “knowing who our friends really are”.
India’s forked tongue
in dealing with with Dhaka – telling them that CAA will not affect Bangladesh
in any way while domestic audiences are told that every last Bangladeshi
“infiltrator” will be repatriated – has been called out. Massive protests are
planned in Bangladesh on the eve of Prime Minister Modi’s visit on March 17.
Afghanistan has objected to the assumption underlying the CAA that the nation
discriminates against its minorities. Anti-India demonstrations against
targeted violence on Muslims in the Delhi riots have also been held in Herat.
Iran’s Supreme Leader,
Ayatollah Khamenei, has advised India to “stop the massacre of Muslims” or face
“isolation from the world of Islam” and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif
spoke strong words asking Indian authorities to “not let senseless thuggery
prevail”. Relations with Malaysia are already strained after it spoke out
against the government’s actions in J&K and India responded with a boycott
of palm oil imports from that country. Indonesia, an important partner for
India in its Act East policy and central to its Indo-Pacific strategy, has also
expressed serious concern about the violence in Delhi. A day after the Delhi
violence the hashtag #ShameOnYouIndia was trending on Twitter in Indonesia.
In Britain MPs from
across the political spectrum –the Labour party, Scottish National Party,
Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, have criticised the Indian government for
the CAA. British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, despite the support given him
by Hindutva votaries in his recent election, told Parliament that his
government believes that the CAA is divisive and that his government had raised
its concerns with Indian authorities.
Although US President
Trump may have avoided embarrassment to both sides in Delhi by mumbling that
the change in citizenship laws was an internal matter of India, it has not
prevented other US institutions and think-tanks from upbraiding India.
Democratic Party leader and nomination hopeful, Bernie Sanders, was unequivocal
in his criticism of President Trump for not speaking up on the violence against
Muslims which took place under his nose in Delhi describing it as “failure of
leadership on human rights”. That the criticism obviously singed the right
quarters at least in India was apparent from the tweet (later deleted) of BJP
general secretary B L Santosh which threatened Sanders of consequences saying:
“How much ever neutral we wish to be, you compel us to play a role in
presidential elections...sorry to say so but you are compelling us."
Democracy watchdog,
Freedom House has targeted India for changing its citizenship law, for
the NRC in Assam which rendered millions stateless, the
suppression of protests and the harassment of journalists and academics. It
accused the Modi government of “threatening the democratic future of a country
long seen as a potential bulwark of freedom in Asia.”
In December last year,
Jaishankar missed a meeting with a US House Foreign Affairs Committee after
Democrat Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal, introduced a resolution in the US
Congress criticising Indian actions in Kashmir (House Resolution 745). As a
signal of India’s displeasure to the US Congress, it does not seem to have
worked – the number of Congressmen co-sponsoring it has gone up to 66 from just
10 in December. The Modi government has achieved what successive Pakistani
regimes had failed to do upto now – internationalising the Kashmir issue. It
has had to sponsor three conducted tours of foreign opinion makers
– a group of right-wing Islamophobic members of European parliament and two
groups of ambassadors based in Delhi.
The US Commission on
International Religious Freedom condemned the CAA and the violence against
Muslims in Delhi and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which only
last year had invited the Indian External Affairs Minister as its guest of
honour in a rare gesture to Delhi, has now dubbed the violence in Delhi
“anti-Muslim”. In fact, in a direct targeting of the Modi regime, the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights has moved an intervention application in the
Supreme Court as an amicus curiae in the anti-CAA petititons before it by
virtue of its mandate to protect and promote human rights.
The Indian government
may keep counting its “real friends” and repeat ad nauseum that no foreign
party has any locus standi on issues pertaining to India’s sovereignty but
international criticism of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi continues to grow and image continues to diminish.
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