India once held remarkable advantage in South Asia. It acted as a gateway to the rest of the region for the Global North. It promoted its culture and language through the arts and cultural exchange. Bollywood travelled where diplomats could not. Indian television crossed borders. Culture did the quiet work of foreign policy. Things started to change after 2014, when the BJP assumed power and, with its ill-thought-out policies, weakened the goodwill the country had built over decades. Its politics of oppression and its obsession with building a Hindutva state have started giving India a bad name. And while India’s rivalries with its neighbours may be a matter of geopolitics, when those rivalries and their accompanying nationalism seep into domestic politics, the consequences become far more troubling. Muslims, in particular, increasingly find themselves viewed through the lens of a conflict with Pakistan. That is a dangerous road for a country whose strength has always rested on its diversity.
Now, a UN committee has expressed grave concern over alleged large-scale violations by Indian law enforcement officials against ethnic and ethno-religious groups, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, Scheduled Castes, Dalits and non-citizens. The allegations include excessive use of force, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence. The committee has also called on India to investigate such allegations and bring those responsible to justice. It has specifically highlighted the need to address hate crimes against Bengali-speaking Muslims. These are grave findings for any democracy. And it does not end here. In Mumbai, thousands of Christians are reportedly preparing for a new kind of Sunday ritual. They are signing forms to declare that they are attending church voluntarily and are not being forced to convert. Churches are installing CCTV cameras. Prayer meetings have been disrupted by Hindu right-wing groups and religious institutions are preparing for possible attacks. Ideally, no citizen should have to prove they entered a place of worship voluntarily. A congregation should not have to document its innocence before a religious service. A church should not have to operate as though worship itself were a potential criminal act. What all this really shows is that India’s problem is bigger than any single law, speech or incident. It is the gradual normalisation of suspicion.
The BJP-led government may believe that its muscular nationalism strengthens India. But nationalism that alienates minorities at home also unsettles audiences abroad. A new survey by the Pew Research Centre finds that across 36 countries, a median of only 45 per cent of those surveyed view India positively, compared with 41 per cent who view it negatively. Last month, a US panel on religious freedom expressed concern over a visit to the US by the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist group that is the ideological parent of the BJP, and urged sanctions on the group’s members. The BJP’s India is sacrificing its regional goodwill for short-term goals. The polarisation in India may help the ruling party hold on to power for perhaps another couple of terms, but the damage it causes to its global image is irreversible. India once was a beacon of pluralism. It has now slowly turned into a bully. By doing so, it may have earned some accolades at home but it has lost the respect and trust of its allies and, most importantly, its neighbours.
