Is the West Unwittingly Helping Modi Realize His Akhand Bharat Hindutva Dream?

[Riaz Haq]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently opened a new parliament building in New Delhi. Prominently displayed in this new building is a provocative map of "Akhand Bharat" (Greater India) that includes neighboring nations of Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as part of India. After the inauguration, Modi's parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi  tweeted a picture of the mural and wrote: “The resolve is clear – Akhand Bharat.”  Akhand Bharat is part of the Fascist Hindutva ideology of Modi's party.  In the last two months since this chauvinistic display, the tight embrace and arming of Modi by the West is raising fears of destabilizing South Asia. Pakistani officials have recently talked about a revision of the country's "full-spectrum" nuclear doctrine with the addition of "zero-range" nuclear weapons as a deterrent against western-armed Hindutva-fueled Indian aggression.

Akhand Bharat Mural in Indian Parliament. Source: Pralhad Joshi

Akhand Bharat: 

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Modi's ideological leader chief Mohan Bhagwat,  the head of the right-wing Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said ‘Akhand Bharat’ was the undisputed truth and a divided Bharat was a nightmare. 

Now the Akhand Bharat mural and its justification by an Indian minister have drawn condemnation from Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. “The gratuitous assertion of ‘Akhand Bharat’ is a manifestation of a revisionist and expansionist mindset that seeks to subjugate the identity and culture of not only India’s neighboring countries but also its own religious minorities,” said Pakistani foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch.

Western Arms Deals:

Large arms deals have been recently announced during Prime Minister Modi's recent visits to Washington and Paris. New weapons acquisitions range from modern fighter jets to submarines. India is already the world's largest arms importer. India's defense budget ($81 billion) is the fourth largest in the world, according to Stockholm-based think tank SIPRI. Coming soon after the unveiling of  the Akhand Bharat mural,  these new modern lethal weapons' purchases by New Delhi are seen as a serious threat by India's neighbors. 

America's Bad Bet:

While the western nations are seeking an alliance with India to counter rising China, the Hindutva leadership of India has no intention of confronting China. In a piece titled “America’s Bad Bet on India”,  Indian-American analyst Ashley Tellis noted that the Biden administration had “overlooked India’s democratic erosion and its unhelpful foreign policy choices” in the hopes that the US can “solicit” New Delhi’s “contributions toward coalition defense”.

Earlier this year, India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar confirmed New Delhi's unwillingness to confront China in an interview: “Look they (China) are a bigger economy. What am I going to do? As a smaller economy, I am going to pick up a fight with bigger economy? It is not a question of being a reactionary; it is a question of common sense.”

Modi's India is driven much more by a desire to bring back what the right-wing Hindus see as the "glory days" of India through "Hindu Raj" of the entire South Asia region, including Pakistan. The arms and technology being given to Modi will more likely be used against India's smaller neighbors, not against China. 

Pakistan's Likely Response:

General Khalid Kidwai, Advisor to Pakistan’s National Command Authority and pioneer Director General of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, has warned about the  ‘toxic mix of poisonous ideology’ posing a serious threat to strategic stability in South Asia. “I have no hesitation in stating that minimum Pakistani counter measures would be put in place if a reckless imbalance is induced in South Asia, it is not a warning, it's a contingency foreseen,” General Kidwai added, according to Pakistani media reports. 

In May this year, retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai provided new details of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine. He has talked about "zero range" nuclear weapons. Prior to this, the officially acknowledged lowest range in Pakistan’s nuclear inventory was the Nasr, or Hatf-9 ballistic missile, with a range of 60 kilometers (about 37 miles).  Kidwai described two dimensions of Pakistan's Full Spectrum Deterrence: “horizontal,” which comprises of a robust land, air and sea inventory of a variety of nuclear weapons, and “vertical,” which encapsulates adequate range coverage of its vectors from “zero meters to 2,750 kilometers”with “destructive yields suited for strategic, operational, and tactical levels.” Such an elaborate arsenal, he argued, provides Pakistan with a “strategic shield”, blunting the extant conventional asymmetry with India. Most significant was his statement that “vertically the spectrum encapsulates adequate range coverage from 0 meters to 2,750 kilometers [about 1,700 miles] as well as nuclear weapons destructive yields at three tiers—strategic, operational, and tactical.”  Talking about "zero range" weapons, analyst Sitara Noor  explained it as follows in a recent article that appeared in Foreign Policy magazine: 

"Talk of zero-range weapons suggests that Pakistan is either going to develop artillery shells as the United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom did during the Cold War—raising questions of whether it is going to be an M28/M29 Davy Crockett-style recoilless rifle system, the smallest weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, developed during the 1950s as a front-line weapon with yields as low as a fraction of a kiloton—or it could be a hint that Pakistan could possibly lay nuclear land mines across the India-Pakistan border to deter Indian advances. Observers, especially in India, are left wondering whether this statement is based on some existing scientific research and design testing and necessary doctrinal thought process. Kidwai’s statement does not provide any such details, and in the spirit of ambiguity that Pakistan seems to have benefited from, there is unlikely to be a follow-up soon to clear the air". 

Summary:

The West is making a "bad bet" on Modi's India as a check against rising China. Modi and his fellow right-wing Hindus have no interest in confronting China. They are much more obsessed in realizing their Hindutva dream of Akhand Bharat (Greater India) by attempting to subjugate their smaller neighbors.  This obsession could lead to a destabilization of the South Asia region, including an  India-Pakistan nuclear war. 

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[Riaz Haq]

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...

Just weeks ago, Indian diplomats had to douse diplomatic fires across the subcontinent after Modi inaugurated a new parliament building that featured a mural map of India, commissioned by the Modi government, that showed the country’s borders stretching from Pakistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east, gobbling up Nepal and Bhutan. In case anyone had doubts, lawmakers from Modi’s BJP lauded the mural for its representation of Akhand Bharat, a Hindu right-wing conceptualization and ideological goal of an undivided India.

India’s neighbors were horrified at this casual trampling of their sovereignty. Pakistan protested. The Ministry of External Affairs said the mural was not depicting Akhand Bharat but “the spread of the Ashokan empire.” The first to contradict this was, among others, Modi’s own Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, who tweeted a photo of the map and said, “The resolve is clear—Akhand Bharat.”

Foreign minister S. Jaishankar, now a frequent presence on Indian Instagram and YouTube videos for his brusque responses to criticism, swat Islamabad off in trademark fashion, saying he does “not expect Pakistan to understand.”

The explanation was enough to set hyper-jingoistic social media feeds ablaze. But Kathmandu and Dhaka, traditional friends of New Delhi, were equally mortified. Both asked for explanations. Former Nepali Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai warned that the mural issue would “stoke [an] unnecessary and harmful diplomatic row,” with the potential for “further aggravating the trust deficit” between the two neighbors. In Kathmandu, Mayor Balen Shah, a young populist politician, cocked a snook at the mighty neighbor and published a map of “Greater Nepal” that included Indian territories. Under domestic pressure, Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, on the eve of his India visit, said he would raise the issue with Modi. On his return, Prachanda said that even though the Modi government had “clarified” that it was a cultural map, “further study” needed to be done in the issue.

This mural controversy came just weeks after the United States made public that Modi’s BJP and Hindu nationalist groups affiliated with it were propping up demands by Nepali Hindu groups to ditch Nepal’s secular constitution and turn it into a Hindu state. The disclosure, made in the U.S. State Religious Freedom report launched by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May, also recorded Nepali civil society actors saying that Modi’s BJP could even be funding some of the organizations driving this demand.

India’s domestic media, mostly submissive toward the Modi government, ignored the report, but foreign capitals have taken note. There is growing recognition that these instances are damaging India’s standing globally even if few might be willing to say it aloud.

“The rise of Hindu nationalism within India will have an impact on India’s global image, no doubt,” said Aparna Pande, the Washington, D.C.-based director of the India Initiative at the Hudson Institute. She added that some of India’s actions in the recent past have been “damaging” to its interests, especially in its immediate neighborhood.

“The ideology or the belief of the ruling party in Delhi has historically not been allowed to impact foreign policy. It did not matter if we had a socialist government or one that backed free-market policies, because foreign policy was insulated,” she said.

[Riaz Haq]

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...


This, though, is changing.

In 2019, the Modi government amended the country’s citizenship laws to fast-track citizenship applications of non-Muslim refugees from the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Leaders from the BJP made statements, without any pushback from the party or Modi, that threatened to “send back” the “illegal Bangladeshi Muslims,” referring disparagingly to the economic immigration, often undocumented, by Bangladeshis into India. In a rare show of its anger with New Delhi, Dhaka canceled scheduled visits by its ministers to India.

Local conflicts can play into the Indian government’s fierce nationalism. Last year, violent clashes between newly arrived Hindu immigrants and Muslim residents rocked the English city of Leicester. Police investigations found, according to the Daily Mail, that Hindu nationalist “elements close to Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party” were suspected to have played a key role in inciting them. The Modi government issued an unusually partisan response, condemning the violence and singling out “symbols of Hindu religion” as the target of the attack.

Five months later, in February this year, the Modi government unleashed a series of tax raids on offices of the BBC across multiple cities. The sudden raids came just weeks after the BBC released a documentary that investigated the role of Modi during the 2002 riots in his home state of Gujarat, which killed 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.

Ian Hall, a professor of international relations at Griffith University and the author of the book Modi and the Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy, said the Modi government had been trying to tread a fine line by “sometimes using anti-Muslim language at home to mobilize voters while trying to maintain positive relations with Muslim states,” he said. “There is no doubt that outbursts of anti-Muslim rhetoric and attacks on Muslims in India cause problems for New Delhi, both in the Muslim world and in the West.”

These problems come in different forms.

In London, a foreign-policy expert who asked not to be named said there were many within the U.K. Foreign Office who were “petrified” and “worried” about doing business with Modi’s government, but also acknowledged the “overriding strategic concerns” that brought them closer.

India’s geopolitical significance as a counterweight to China in the region might ensure that criticism for its actions may not be too vocal, but that still won’t give India a free pass, said Kira Huju, a fellow in international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“Western capitals are compelled by geostrategic imperatives in the Indo-Pacific to seek India’s cooperation, but they may well have gone further in these pursuits, had they not harbored deep reservations about domestic developments in India,” Huju said.

Some of this pushback was on display during Modi’s recent U.S. visit.

Media reports said that despite Modi’s insistence on not holding a press conference, the Biden administration pushed on after a marathon negotiation, ensuring that their guest did not leave without fielding questions from the press. Pande, from the Hudson Initiative, said the U.S. insistence on the press conference was a not-so-subtle message from the Biden administration.

[Riaz Haq]

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...


When a U.S. journalist posed a question to Modi, infamous for not having addressed a single press conference in his nine years as PM, pro-Modi trolls, including Modi’s own leaders, viciously attacked her online and highlighted her Muslim roots. The attacks were so vicious that the White House stepped in, called it “unacceptable” and saying that administration officials “absolutely condemn” the attacks, which the spokesperson said were “antithetical to the principles of democracy … on display during the state visit last week.”

Huju said that even former U.S. President Barack Obama’s CNN interview during Modi’s trip, in which he implicitly criticized Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics, was possibly “coordinated” by the Democratic administration in the White House to send a message across to the Modi government.

Closer to home, India’s brand of politics is rankling friendly regimes, too.

Shahab Enam Khan, a Dhaka-based academic and a Fulbright professor at the U.S. University of Delaware, said that many within the Sheikh Hasina regime, traditionally close to New Delhi, were “uncomfortable” with the Modi government’s actions.

This anger against Modi and his government spilled over onto the streets in 2021, when the Indian prime minister visited Bangladesh. Angry protesters clashed with security forces, leading to the death of at least 10 people, and dozens injured.

“In Bangladesh, Hindutva is also perceived to be one form of extremism. Hence, many here are questioning India’s right to criticize other forms of extremism,” Khan said. “In fact, many here are now comparing the centrality of religion in India’s politics to the centrality of religion in Pakistan’s politics,” he said.

In Kathmandu, an anti-India brand of politics has been brewing afresh in the recent years, and the recent mural controversy only added to it. When Prachanda—the Nepali PM, an avowed lifelong atheist and leader of the country’s Maoist movement—visited India in June this year and performed a six-hour long ceremony at the Mahakaleshwar Temple in the city of Ujjain, many in Kathmandu were left aghast.

“Many here felt that this temple visit could not have been Prachanda’s choice; it was possibly hoisted on him by the Indian government,” said a Kathmandu-based geopolitical analyst and chief of a think tank, who did not wish to be named.

Analysts warn that allowing the Hindutva agenda to fray New Delhi’s traditional neighborhood ties could be dangerous for India.

“India’s neighbors are its first layer of security. India and its neighbors are in a dependence relationship—you can push it a bit, but you can’t break it,” Pande said.

According to Pande, the “entire ecosystem created” by actors belonging to and aligned with Modi’s BJP has “ensured that domestic politics now has greater impact on foreign relations with our neighbors than our foreign policy does.”

This was evident even in Modi’s visit to Johannesburg to participate in the BRICS summit between Aug. 22 and 24. The Daily Maverick, a local newspaper, reported that Modi “refused to get off his aircraft” on arrival, to protest the South African government deputing a cabinet minister to receive him.

[Riaz Haq]

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...


The story went viral in India, shared widely by Modi’s critics. Hours after it was published, the Daily Maverick tweeted that it had faced a “massive” cyberattack by Indian servers, ostensibly “to deny the people of India access to this story,” and hence was blocking access to its website for Indian users. The government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa rubbished the news report but did not react to the cyberattack. While the attackers did not reveal their identity, Modi’s party has been known for its proficient use of information technology.

This brand of muscular nationalism will have damaging effects for India’s foreign interests, analysts said.

Bangladesh’s Khan agreed, pointing to a comment by then-BJP chief and now India’s Home Minister Amit Shah referring to undocumented migrants from Bangladesh as “termites,” which remains widely remembered in Dhaka.

“The rise of nonsecular narratives [and] the rise of religious nationalism will destabilize the region because you are fueling toxic nationalism across the region,” Khan said. “It is inevitable that the more hyper-religious nationalism emerges in India, the greater political instability there will be in the region.”

Huju, the London School of Economics fellow, said that even the nature of Indian diplomacy, through the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), was at stake as a result of the Modi government’s assertive Hindu nationalism.

“Should there be a third BJP term, we are looking at lasting institutional changes to the way that the IFS is governed and culturally imagined,” she said.

[Riaz Haq]

If India ordered a murder in Canada, there must be consequences
Western countries have for too long acquiesced to the Indian government’s abuses

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/09/20/if-india-ordered-a-mur...

For years, India objected to Western strategists lumping it together with its violent and chaotic neighbour in the phrase “Indo-Pakistan”. Now recognised as a fast-growing giant and potential bulwark against China, India claims to have been “de-hyphenated”. Yet the explosive charge aired this week by Justin Trudeau suggests that diplomatic recalibration may have gone too far. Canada’s prime minister alleges that Indian agents were involved in the murder in Vancouver of a Canadian citizen sympathetic to India’s Sikh separatist movement. India has long been accused of assassinating militants and dissidents in its own messy region; never previously in the friendly and orderly West. And while India calls the victim, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a terrorist, he had rebuffed Indian allegations that he was linked to separatist violence.

India denies everything. But Canada is reported to have shared intelligence about the murder with its allies in the “Five Eyes” intelligence pact. None appears to have questioned it. Shortly after Mr Trudeau levelled the charge in Canada’s parliament, America and Britain released cautiously supportive statements, urging India to co-operate with a Canadian probe. The assassination, by two unknown gunmen outside a Sikh temple in June, follows a recent spike in both Sikh separatist activity and at times heavy-handed Indian suppression of it.

The squabble, which has involved tit-for-tat expulsions of Indian and Canadian diplomats, could escalate. Mr Trudeau faces domestic pressure to reveal evidence of Indian involvement in the killing. A criminal investigation is under way. The Canada-India relationship, already blighted by Indian suspicions of separatist support in the 770,000-strong Sikh diaspora in Canada, has grown worse. America and its allies will hope the rot stops there. Yet even if it does, they should consider this a warning-shot against the government of Narendra Modi—and their own eagerness to overlook its too-frequent abuses.

On its own turf it has muzzled the press, cowed the courts and persecuted minorities, even though none is a threat to it. The alleged assassination in Canada, too, appears gratuitous as well as wrong. The movement to create an independent Sikh nation (known as Khalistan) led to the killing of tens of thousands of people in India in the 1980s and 1990s, but has since been not much more than a talking-point in the Sikh diaspora, even as India’s ability to police it by conventional means at home has improved (see Asia section).

[Riaz Haq]

If India ordered a murder in Canada, there must be consequences
Western countries have for too long acquiesced to the Indian government’s abuses

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/09/20/if-india-ordered-a-mur...

For years, India objected to Western strategists lumping it together with its violent and chaotic neighbour in the phrase “Indo-Pakistan”. Now recognised as a fast-growing giant and potential bulwark against China, India claims to have been “de-hyphenated”. Yet the explosive charge aired this week by Justin Trudeau suggests that diplomatic recalibration may have gone too far. Canada’s prime minister alleges that Indian agents were involved in the murder in Vancouver of a Canadian citizen sympathetic to India’s Sikh separatist movement. India has long been accused of assassinating militants and dissidents in its own messy region; never previously in the friendly and orderly West. And while India calls the victim, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a terrorist, he had rebuffed Indian allegations that he was linked to separatist violence.

India denies everything. But Canada is reported to have shared intelligence about the murder with its allies in the “Five Eyes” intelligence pact. None appears to have questioned it. Shortly after Mr Trudeau levelled the charge in Canada’s parliament, America and Britain released cautiously supportive statements, urging India to co-operate with a Canadian probe. The assassination, by two unknown gunmen outside a Sikh temple in June, follows a recent spike in both Sikh separatist activity and at times heavy-handed Indian suppression of it.

The squabble, which has involved tit-for-tat expulsions of Indian and Canadian diplomats, could escalate. Mr Trudeau faces domestic pressure to reveal evidence of Indian involvement in the killing. A criminal investigation is under way. The Canada-India relationship, already blighted by Indian suspicions of separatist support in the 770,000-strong Sikh diaspora in Canada, has grown worse. America and its allies will hope the rot stops there. Yet even if it does, they should consider this a warning-shot against the government of Narendra Modi—and their own eagerness to overlook its too-frequent abuses.

On its own turf it has muzzled the press, cowed the courts and persecuted minorities, even though none is a threat to it. The alleged assassination in Canada, too, appears gratuitous as well as wrong. The movement to create an independent Sikh nation (known as Khalistan) led to the killing of tens of thousands of people in India in the 1980s and 1990s, but has since been not much more than a talking-point in the Sikh diaspora, even as India’s ability to police it by conventional means at home has improved (see Asia section).

[Riaz Haq]

If India ordered a murder in Canada, there must be consequences
Western countries have for too long acquiesced to the Indian government’s abuses

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/09/20/if-india-ordered-a-mur...

Making martyrs of separatist leaders is a gift to their beleaguered cause. This might be considered typical of an Indian government that, for all its recent swagger on the world stage, remains dogged by feelings of insecurity. It is a feature of India’s rapid rise. The country is almost invariably weaker than its leaders publicly proclaim, yet stronger than they privately fear—and that mismatch is a recipe for miscalculations of this kind. Mr Modi, a probable shoo-in for re-election next year, should know that confident countries entrust their security to the rule of law.

India’s Western friends cannot count on that, however. Hitherto reluctant to condemn Mr Modi’s excesses, they have maintained a fiction that their partnership with India is based on shared democratic values, not interests. This has laid them open to charges of hypocrisy. It also seems likely, in the light of Mr Nijjar’s demise, to have emboldened Mr Modi. If the investigation confirms Indian involvement in this crime, it is time for a tougher line. Strategic partners do not air all their dirty linen in public, but nor do they murder each other’s citizens. Canada’s allies must join it in making that clear to Mr Modi.