G20 Kashmir Meeting: Modi's PR Ploy Backfires!

[Riaz Haq]

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign to show normalcy in the Indian occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir has backfired.  Three member countries of the G20 boycotted the tourism event in Srinagar. The rest of them sent local embassy staff to attend. The event also drew negative worldwide media coverage of the brutality of India's "settler colonialism" in the disputed territory. It elicited strong condemnation from the United Nations. Prior to the event, India’s tourism secretary, Arvind Singh had promised that the meeting will not only “showcase (Kashmir’s) potential for tourism” but also “signal globally the restoration of stability and normalcy in the region.” The Modi government failed to achieve both of these objectives.

G20 Meeting in Indian Military Occupied Kashmir

Meeting Boycott:

China, Saudi Arabia and Turkey did not attend the G20 event in Srinagar. Rest of the G20 members sent diplomats posted in New Delhi to attend it.  It's not unusual for foreign diplomats to visit disputed territories such as Jammu and Kashmir. Last year, Donald Blome, US Ambassador to Pakistan, visited what he called "Azad Jammu and Kashmir".  The G20 Tourism Working Group meeting in Kashmir drew condemnation from China and the United Nations. 

“China firmly opposes holding any form of G20 meetings on disputed territory. We will not attend such meetings,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson  Wang Wenbin at a press briefing on May 19 in Beijing.  

Fernand de Varennes, U.N. special rapporteur on minority issues, criticized the meeting, saying that by hosting the session in Kashmir, “India is seeking to normalize what some have described as a military occupation by instrumentalizing a G20 meeting and portray an international 'seal of approval’.” 

The UN representative warned the G20 of “unwittingly providing a veneer of support to a facade of normalcy at a time when massive human rights violations, illegal and arbitrary arrests, political persecutions, restrictions and even suppression of free media and human rights defenders continue to escalate.”

Heavy Indian Security Presence at Dal Lake For G20 in Kashmir. Sour...

International Media Coverage:

The global media coverage of the G20 meeting in Kashmir has largely been negative. It has highlighted the brutal occupation of the region by the Indian military. 

A piece in The Conversation accused India of "using the G20 summit to further its settler-colonial ambitions in Kashmir".  It pointed out that the "route to Gulmarg (G20 event location)  is lined with barbed wire. Armed soldiers keep watch from fortified bunkers".   The Conversation piece offers the following advice to anyone visiting Indian Occupied Kashmir:

"Those visiting  (Indian Occupied) Kashmir must first learn about the decolonial history of the region, one that honors Kashmiri calls for self-determination and sovereignty. They must follow the principle of do no harm by not visiting tourist sites or using tour operators run by Indian authorities. They should support local Kashmiri-run businesses as much as possible. There is no simple resolution for tourism on occupied lands. Tourism amid settler-colonialism manifests in exploitation, dispossession, commodification and other injustices and inequities. The goal of ethical travel is not immediate perfection or self-exoneration. It is an invitation to think about our own actions and complicity". 

A story in "The Guardian" noted that the G20 Kashmir meeting "required a large show of security at Srinagar international airport". It added: "India’s presidency of the G20 group of leading nations has become mired in controversy after China and Saudi Arabia boycotted a meeting staged in Kashmir, the first such gathering since India unilaterally brought Kashmir under direct control in August 2019". 

Voice of America reported that the "security moved into the background to give a sense of normalcy amid reports of mass detentions" as the event drew closer. 

Modi's Blunders:

Prime Minister Modi's PR campaign has clearly backfired. His government's actions have failed to project any sense of normalcy in the disputed region. In fact, Mr. Modi's blunders have helped internationalize the issue of Kashmir on the world stage. They have drawn China further into the Kashmir dispute, particularly in the Ladakh region where the Chinese troops have taken large chunks of what India claims as its territory. 

In an Op Ed for the Deccan Herald, Indian Journalist Bharat Bhushan has accused Modi government of "overplaying its hand in organizing a G20 event in Srinagar". He has summed up the fallout from the G20 Kashmir Meeting failure as follows:

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming State visit to the United States makes this rebuff on J&K by the international community, especially significant. What might have been ignored by India and perhaps down-played, at least publicly by the US, in the build-up to the Modi-Biden summit, will now become an additional irritant in the bilateral relationship. Did the Modi government bait fate by overplaying its hand in organizing a G20 event in Srinagar?"

Here's India's JNU Professor speaking about illegal Indian occupation of Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland:

https://youtu.be/KWp1E8xrY5E

http://www.youtube.com/embed/KWp1E8xrY5E"; title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>" height="315" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="560" style="cursor: move; background-color: #b2b2b2;" /> 

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[Riaz Haq]

India's Modi is not the world's guru

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/India-s-Modi-is-not-the-world-s-guru

Publicity campaign ahead of G20 summit strikes the wrong note


Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar


In the run-up to the Group of 20 summit this weekend in New Delhi, billboards and bus stops in every Indian city are plastered with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will preside over the gathering of leaders from around the globe.

The posters hail India, via Modi, as a Vishwaguru -- a Sanskrit term for world guru or teacher to the world. Similar advertisements have covered the front pages of major newspapers.

India has never seen an advertising blitz of this magnitude. A former finance secretary estimated the cost at 10 billion rupees ($121 million) and rising. He sees the push as the start of Modi's 2024 reelection campaign.

It is of course convenient to have the government, rather than the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), pay for this ad campaign. Indian politicians of all stripes have done similar things in the past, but the scale of the current campaign beggars description.

By law, the most that can be spent on a campaign for a parliamentary seat is 9.5 million rupees. The legal cost to contest all 543 seats in the Lok Sabha would thus be no more than 5 billion rupees.

Critics who think Modi is trying to impress foreign visitors are clearly mistaken. This advertising blitz is aimed at financing the promotion of the prime minister in the election run-up, portraying him as a great leader of not just India but the world.

This message plays well with the Hindu nationalist BJP, whose members believe India was the greatest and richest civilization in the world in ancient times but then enslaved and impoverished by Muslim and British invaders. Modi himself says he has rescued India following centuries of "enslavement."

In the face of both threats and inducements, the Indian media is not talking much about Modi's use of government money to advance a personality cult or boost his election prospects. Dissenters of all sorts, whether in business, media or the nonprofit sector, have faced raids for supposed tax or foreign exchange violations that are likely to keep them tied up in court for years.

Indian media companies, meanwhile, are making millions of dollars from running Modi's advertisements, which they would lose if they played their intended democratic role of speaking truth to power. Very few are willing to pay this price.

Modi's notion of being the world's guru is just as ridiculous as his twisted history of "centuries of enslavement," which has been used to attack India's religious minorities.

A guru is nothing without disciples. If India or Modi himself is the world's guru, who are the disciples? The least likely candidates are Western powers which believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are the true global gurus.

It might seem that India's disciples would be most likely to come from its geographic neighborhood rather than distant lands. But even a cursory examination shows otherwise.

Does Pakistan regard India as a guru? No, it is India's greatest foe. It has allied with China, India's other major foe, to try and put India in its place. No disciples there.

What about Bangladesh, which India helped to achieve independence from Pakistan in 1971? There is now little gratitude for India's help, which is accurately viewed as a ploy to split and disempower Pakistan rather than an altruistic move to aid Bangladeshis.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is about the only Bangladeshi politician to express somewhat pro-Indian views, and even she has to step carefully. The Hindu share of Bangladesh's population has shrunk from 30% at the time of Pakistan's independence in 1947 to 7.5% today, as many have migrated to India to escape discrimination and persecution. No sign of Indian disciples in Bangladesh.

[Riaz Haq]

India's Modi is not the world's guru

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/India-s-Modi-is-not-the-world-s-guru

Publicity campaign ahead of G20 summit strikes the wrong note


Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar


A guru is nothing without disciples. If India or Modi himself is the world's guru, who are the disciples? The least likely candidates are Western powers which believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are the true global gurus.

It might seem that India's disciples would be most likely to come from its geographic neighborhood rather than distant lands. But even a cursory examination shows otherwise.

Does Pakistan regard India as a guru? No, it is India's greatest foe. It has allied with China, India's other major foe, to try and put India in its place. No disciples there.

What about Bangladesh, which India helped to achieve independence from Pakistan in 1971? There is now little gratitude for India's help, which is accurately viewed as a ploy to split and disempower Pakistan rather than an altruistic move to aid Bangladeshis.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is about the only Bangladeshi politician to express somewhat pro-Indian views, and even she has to step carefully. The Hindu share of Bangladesh's population has shrunk from 30% at the time of Pakistan's independence in 1947 to 7.5% today, as many have migrated to India to escape discrimination and persecution. No sign of Indian disciples in Bangladesh.

Sri Lanka? Many there harbor ill will toward New Delhi in the belief that it supported the development of the Tamil Tiger insurgency when Indira Gandhi was India's prime minister in the early 1980s. The insurgency became a civil war in which up to 100,000 were killed. Hard to find disciples there.

What about Nepal, a predominantly Hindu nation? Ever since then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru intervened in a royal power struggle in 1951, Nepalese have viewed New Delhi as an imperial power to be feared. India has on more than one occasion blocked essential supplies to Nepal to try to exert political influence. Nepalese may be Hindus, but they are anything but Modi's disciples.

What about the West? It sees India as a rising economic power to be wooed. Western investment is pouring into India and the West lauds India's success in digital payments, financial inclusion and social programs.

But some in the West also castigate the Indian government for eroding democratic values and human rights and suppressing civic groups. Freedom House, an American rights group, downgraded India from "free" to "partly free" in its 2021 index of political and civil liberties around the world. Sweden's V-Dem Institute classifies India as an "electoral autocracy."

In its annual World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked India a dismal 161st. In the global Human Freedom Index compiled by the Cato Institute, India fell from 75th place in 2015 to 112th in 2022.

Indian government officials criticize these indexes as flawed. Maybe so, but the notion of India as a Vishwaguru sounds like a bad joke in the West.

India has certainly provided the world with yoga, transcendental meditation and the Bhagavad Gita. Indian mathematicians invented the concept of zero and sundry equations in ancient times. Bollywood has global fans today for its films and music.

This adds up to a reasonable amount of soft power. Alas, it is not the stuff of which world gurus are made.

[Riaz Haq]

#India’s Preparations for #G20 Must Also Account for Monkeys. For #NewDelhi, monkeys are a minor problem compared with #poverty and #pollution, but the government doesn’t want them stealing the spotlight when world leaders arrive. #Modi #BJP #Hindutva https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/world/asia/g20-summit-monkeys-in...


By Sameer Yasir and Mike Ives

If you’re ever in New Delhi and think you hear a monkey, don’t assume it’s a monkey. It could be a professional monkey noise impersonator.

That’s because humans have been trained to imitate the guttural grunts and shrieks of gray langurs, a type of large monkey that can scare away the smaller kinds that tend to invade city officials’ residences or disrupt state visits.

This weekend, the impersonators will take on a fresh challenge: keeping monkeys, which often evade guards by swinging through tree canopies, from barging into venues for the Group of 20 summit of world leaders, the first to take place in India.

The event is an important one for India on the global stage, and the government does not want monkeys to steal the spotlight.

“We are trying everything to keep the monkeys away,” Satish Upadhyay, vice chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council, said in an interview. The campaign includes training 40 people to imitate langur noises and placing life-size cutouts of the animals, which can weigh more than 30 pounds, around the venues.

Every place has its unique challenges in hosting a large and prestigious event. Gatherings like the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto and the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle were disrupted by protests. Before their turns hosting the Olympics, Beijing, Paris and Salt Lake City tried to hide poor and homeless residents.

New Delhi, too, faces problems including air pollution and its reputation as a city that is unsafe for women. Amid India’s G20 promotional blitz, advocates say the city’s poor have been hidden away.

And then there are the wild monkeys, mainly rhesus macaques.

They are not shy. They steal food and chase pedestrians. They sometimes ride buses and subway trains. They have attacked patients inside hospitals, invaded the Defense Ministry and the prime minister’s office and romped in the Indian Parliament building.

Such antics occasionally have deadly consequences. In an extreme case, a deputy mayor died in 2007 after falling from his balcony while trying to scare away monkeys by using a stick.

“The monkeys are naughty and they can arrive at your dinner table, in any house in Delhi,” said Abdul Khan, a freelance monkey noise imitator in New Delhi, whose uncle once used live monkeys to shoo smaller ones. “It doesn’t matter how many security guards you have outside the gate.”

A number of Indian and overseas news outlets kicked off their coverage of the G20 last week with reports on the government’s plans for scaring off the macaques. Manisha Pande, the managing editor at Newslaundry, an Indian media watchdog, said such coverage was “as clichéd as it gets” and that many Indians were “quite bored of the foreign press regurgitating the same monkey story.”

She said she could not recall any event or summit in the country ever being disrupted by monkeys.

“That said, monkeys are known to be a bit of an urban menace when it comes to Delhi and many other cities of South Asia and Southeast Asia, just like sea gulls are a menace in any coastal European city,” she said.

Deploying monkey noise impersonators during state visits and other important functions is a relatively new tactic in Delhi, and it is a far less aggressive one than those city authorities used in the past: human monkey chasers and actual gray langurs, not to mention slingshots, stones and tranquilizer guns.

[Riaz Haq]

#India’s Preparations for #G20 Must Also Account for Monkeys. For #NewDelhi, monkeys are a minor problem compared with #poverty and #pollution, but the government doesn’t want them stealing the spotlight when world leaders arrive. #Modi #BJP #Hindutva https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/world/asia/g20-summit-monkeys-in...

In 2012, the national government banned the use of actual langurs, after activists said the practice amounted to animal cruelty. Most of those langurs were captured from the wild in violation of Indian laws, said Valentina Sclafani, a psychologist at the University of Lincoln in Britain who has studied primate behavior.

Another challenge is that in Hinduism, India’s dominant religion, monkeys are viewed as representations of a deity, and some people like to feed them as a traditional offering.

So Delhi officials began looking for other options. Langur voice mimickers, for instance, were part of a larger effort to tidy up Delhi’s rough edges ahead of President Obama’s 2015 state visit.

Does such mimicry actually work, though?

Emily Bethell, an expert on primate behavior and social cognition at Liverpool John Moores University in Britain, said that she had found no peer-reviewed studies on langur voice mimicry being an effective strategy for containing a macaque population.

Still, she said, the practice appears to be based on a sound understanding of macaque behavior.

“Whether they can mimic those calls so closely that a macaque would interpret them as coming from a langur we cannot know without rigorous scientific testing,” Dr. Bethell said in an email. “However, the macaques may be familiar with humans making these calls and associate them with threat, which could be enough.”

Dr. Sclafani also expressed cautious optimism about the practice, saying there is some evidence that macaques can recognize and respond to langurs’ alarm and territorial calls under certain conditions.

A hypothetical monkey disruption at the G20 could threaten the government’s “meticulously built” reputation for event management and give the political opposition fodder to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing party ahead of upcoming state-level elections, said Sanjeev M.A., a professor of marketing at the Jaipuria Institute of Management in Lucknow, India, who has studied crisis communication by Indian officials during the coronavirus pandemic.

If any monkeys were to be killed, he added, that would upset members of India’s Hindu majority and allow the opposition to question the government’s religious sensitivities.

Mr. Upadhyay, the municipal official, declined a reporter’s request to interview some of the impersonators. He said their work was part of continuing research by forestry officials to find new ways of scaring off monkeys.

He expressed confidence in the impersonators’ chances of success at the G20.

“Will it be 100 percent effective?" he said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

[Riaz Haq]

Many young Indians say they haven't benefited from the economic growth Modi boasts of

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/07/1198301831/many-young-indians-say-th...

Ahead of the G20, India's Prime Minister Nerendra Modi boasted about his country's economic growth. But many young Indians say they have not benefited from it.

[Riaz Haq]

Markets shuttered, schools closed as Delhi locks down for G20
By Krishn Kaushik and Joseph Campbell
September 8, 20231:40 AM PDTUpdated 19 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/deserted-delhi-markets-shuttere...

The central business and government district of New Delhi came to a standstill on Friday with markets shuttered, schools closed and traffic restricted as tens of thousands of security personnel fanned out for the weekend summit of G20 countries.

The official closure came into effect at midnight on Thursday with leaders of the group scheduled to begin arriving from Friday morning for the most high-powered global meeting hosted by India.

Those attending include U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Bin Salman and Japan's Fumio Kishida, among others.

On Friday, the centre of the normally bustling and choked city of 20 million was deserted, with just a trickle of vehicles and scores of armed security personnel seen along the main streets, Reuters witnesses said.

Nearly 130,000 police and paramilitary security personnel have been deployed across the city, mostly in the New Delhi district, with the air force providing cover from aerial threats.

City authorities have also demolished slums near the summit venue, tried to scare away monkeys and removed stray dogs from the area.

Stores and restaurants were closed in the capital's premier Connaught Place colonial-era shopping district, as well as in the popular Khan Market. Shopkeepers have told local newspapers they would lose about 4 billion rupees ($48 million) because of the three-day closure.


"It's quite normal for visiting dignitaries to visit a city landmark like Khan Market," said Sanjeev Mehra, president of the Khan Market Traders Association.

"For G20 delegates, we were preparing mementos, but the government has asked us to shut down our shops. We have decided to concede to the government's request, but for a growing economy, it would have been nice to let business operations run normally."

'SEEK FORGIVENESS'
The leaders and their teams are staying in luxury hotels in and around the heart of the city and the meeting is being held at a newly-built venue across the road from the country's Supreme Court.

Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had appealed to Delhi's residents to bear with the possible inconvenience due to the summit restrictions.

"While the entire country is a host, Delhi will bear maximum responsibility" for the G20 summit, Modi said.

"When so many guests come from around the world, it does lead to some inconvenience ... I seek forgiveness from Delhi citizens for the problem they are going to face."

Authorities have been announcing that much of the city is open with Delhi Police repeatedly messaging on social media platforms that "just a small part of NDMC area will have restrictions”, referring to the New Delhi Municipal Corporation.

Offices and schools here have been asked to close, as also shops and small businesses. Taxis and buses aren’t allowed in this part of the city.

Even app-based taxi and food delivery services are barred. Those who need to reach the railway station or the airport through these areas would need to produce tickets to be allowed to pass through.

In the bazaars of the old city, it was not clear if the restrictions would be extended there. Many shops were closed on Friday.

Yashowarthan Aggarwal, a 37-year-old store owner in Dariba Kalan, a street renowned for its jewellery shops, said authorities should allow the area to remain open.

“The tourists coming to Delhi for G20 should look at our shops, buy something. If they just come and see everything is closed, there’s nothing good about it,” he said.

[Riaz Haq]

China think tank says India is 'sabotaging' G20 for its own agenda

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-think-tank-says-in...


India has been trying to take advantage of its role as the host of the G20 Summit to promote its own agenda and harm China's interests, a Chinese think tank affiliated with the country's top spy agency said on Saturday.

The harsh criticism by the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, which is under the Ministry of State Security, comes as G20 leaders began their annual two-day summit, in India's capital New Delhi, with Chinese President Xi Jinping not attending.

The think tank accused India of bringing geopolitical "private goods" onto the global stage, which it said would not only help the country to fulfill its responsibility as the host of G20 but also create further problems.

India held two earlier G20 meetings in disputed territories -- one in Arunachal Pradesh that China also claims, and another in Kashmir, contested by Pakistan.

"In addition to causing diplomatic turmoil and public opinion turmoil, India's actions in hosting meetings in disputed territories have also 'stole the spotlight', sabotaging the cooperative atmosphere of the G20 meeting and hindering the achievement of substantive results." the think tank said in a commentary published on its Wechat account.

The remarks may shed some light on Xi's absence from the summit hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Chinese officials have declined to explain the absence. Premier Li Qiang is representing China instead.

The two Asian neighbours have been searching for ways to ease simmering military tensions along their vast border, but New Delhi has described the situation as fragile and dangerous. Since 2020, New Delhi has also ramped up scrutiny of Chinese businesses and investments.


Last Sunday, reacting to news that Xi would not attend the G20 summit, U.S. President Biden said he was "disappointed" but would "get to see him".

The think tank also said India has been trying to use the issue of debt restructuring to attack China, and has frequently cooperated with the United States and the West in hyping the "debt trap" theory, when Beijing has offered loans to poorer countries to build needed infrastructure likes ports or roads.

India's move could "further create differences and rifts, hinder the international community from reaching consensus and substantive results, and will ultimately cause damage to its own international image and global development interests", the think tank added.

Xi, during a tour to the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, has promised to take more steps to revive the flagging northeast, state media said on Saturday.

[Riaz Haq]

Modi will count G20 consensus as a win - but it shows how low the bar for success is

https://news.sky.com/story/modi-will-count-g20-consensus-as-a-win-b...


The Indian prime minister has secured a consensus on wording around the Ukraine war in the leaders' declaration - but it is a watered-down version of what was agreed last year in Bali.


By



Cordelia Lynch



https://news.sky.com/story/modi-will-count-g20-consensus-as-a-win-b...



Narendra Modi wanted to show he could bridge global divides at this G20 in Delhi.

The fact he's reached a consensus on the first day of this G20 is proof he can.





A PR supremo, he will no doubt cast it as a huge and early success. Ukraine was always going to be the sticking point.

What he's avoided is what would have been an unprecedented failure - coming out of this summit with no agreement.

But be in no doubt, the paragraph on the Ukraine war is a watered-down version of what was agreed in Bali last year.



It calls for "a comprehensive, just, and durable peace in Ukraine" and says "today's era must not be of war".

Critically, it doesn't mention Russia by name, and leaves out any direct mention of Russian aggression.



Intriguingly, it also urges member states not to "act against the territorial integrity of any state".

Those words could be seen as an attempt to appease Russia, which has complained about attacks on its territory.



We know that Mr Modi worked hard to encourage other G20 members to listen to Moscow and Beijing's viewpoint.

What is perhaps most revealing in the language of this declaration though is the assertion that "G20 is not the place to resolve geopolitical issues".

That is an overt acknowledgement of the limitations of this group. There is a new world order emerging.

Mr Modi is positioning himself at the heart of it. He's managed to walk a delicate political tightrope and position cast himself as a bridge builder in a divided world.





The United States, desperate to find a counterweight to Moscow, is courting him, willing to put aside concerns about his nationalism to find a strategic ally.

At the same time as embracing Joe Biden, Mr Modi has managed to keep good relations with Vladimir Putin. Russia is a Cold War ally Delhi isn't ready to shake yet and India continues to benefit from cheap Russian oil and gas.

As for China, its absence from the G20 gives Mr Modi the space to present India as a global superpower on the ascent, while Beijing struggles financially.

The addition of the African Union as a member will also help Mr Modi's portrayal of this as an inclusive summit that connects the developed and developing world.

This G20 is a golden chance for India's leader to kickstart his election campaign ahead of next year's vote. Today's declaration gives him something to sell to voters.

What this summit has also perhaps shown, however, is how low the bar for success now is in a deeply politically splintered planet.

[Riaz Haq]

#Modi’s #India no Friend of the West . Biggest aspect of #Hindutva is “xenophobia. It may be muted “when and where the military and political strength of the foreigner” is overwhelming but thrives on an “incessant campaign of slander and denigration" #G20

by Pankaj Mishra

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/11/modi-s-new-india...

India is, suddenly, Bharat, and it could be asked, as Shakespeare wrote, what’s in a name? But Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who embraced the Sanskrit name for his country in the same week that he played lavish host to the G-20 summit in New Delhi, is trying hard to project India as a “vishwaguru” (guru to the world). It is time to examine his claims more closely, and also to see the present and the future of his “New India” without comforting illusions.

Take, for instance, the booklet, “Bharat, the Mother of Democracy,” presented by Modi’s government to visiting dignitaries at the G-20. According to it, ancient Hindu sages and kings were partisans of equality, inclusivity, and harmony. Even modern feminism was anticipated by the 5,000-year-old bronze statue of an “independent and liberated” dancing girl.

Such claims are part of an elaborate narrative that is decisively shaping the outlook of many Indians today — one in which a once-dynamic Hindu civilization was ravaged by vicious Muslims and exploitative Westerners.


In Modi’s own account, Hindus were enslaved by Muslim invaders for 750 years and then for an additional 250 years by white British colonialists — a version of history used in India today to justify the degradation of Muslim and Christian minorities, the destruction of mosques and British-built buildings, the purging of textbooks, and now the unofficial renaming of India.

Modi’s own popularity, unconnected to his party’s variable fortunes, stems from what is a potent promise in a country full of humiliated peoples: to destroy the corrupt old political order and, as he put it in his Independence Day speech last month, to ensure a fully modernized New India enjoys a “golden” period “for the next 1,000 years.”

Such millenarian bombast — also echoed in the speeches of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping — belongs to a longer tradition of anti-Western demagogues proclaiming themselves heirs to distinguished ancient civilizations, including the Germans and Italians who sought to build the Thousand-Year Reich and the Third Rome, respectively.

It is a common mistake to suppose that German and Italians Fascists rejected modernity in favor of an idealized past. On the contrary, they pursued, often with help of Western nations they derided as “decadent,” ultra-modern technologies, modernist architectural plans, advanced transport systems and awesome public works. Like Hindu nationalists today, they used mass media, sporting events, and scientific breakthroughs to raise the pitch of collective emotion and project the image of a united and resurgent people.

Of course, since technological and military power still clearly lay with Britain, France and the US, the peoples failing to catch up with the West tried to feel superior to it in the realm of culture and philosophy. Invoking their great ethnic or racial past even as they sought grandiosely to supervise the future of the modern world, they became exemplars of what the American historian Jeffrey Herf has called “reactionary modernism.”

Presenting ancient Indians as pioneering democrats and feminists (also, the world’s earliest plastic surgeons), Modi belongs to this extended family of catch-up nationalists. His nation, too, seeks to blend neo-traditionalism with modernization while measuring itself, with volatile feelings of insecurity and resentment, against a weakened but still superior West.

[Riaz Haq]

The eruption of war in Israel and Gaza is a dark reminder that buried conflicts – like India’s disputes with Pakistan and China – can erupt at any time.
By Chietigj Bajpaee


https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/the-israel-palestine-conflagration-...


the most recent developments in the Middle East show how unresolved disputes have a tendency to flare up. In this context, tensions with Pakistan (and to a lesser extent China) remain a constant thorn in India’s global ambitions.

--------------

Claims of a “new Middle East” have been quashed as the “old Middle East” has returned with a vengeance: The devastating October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel have been followed by unprecedented Israeli attacks on Gaza and the resumption of prolonged Israel-Palestine hostilities. This has also called into question the future of diplomatic initiatives such as the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states, the Saudi-Iran resumption of diplomatic relations earlier this year, and efforts to facilitate a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

What does this mean for India? Beyond the Modi government’s unequivocal support for Israel (which is arguably more equivocal at the level of public opinion, given India’s longstanding support for the Palestinian cause) the latest hostilities in the Middle East hold lessons for India’s global ambitions.

Recent years have seen India raise its voice on the world stage. India’s G-20 presidency strengthened the country’s credentials as the voice of the Global South. New Delhi is offering Indian solutions to global problems, ranging from climate change and sustainability to digital public infrastructure and global health. India has spearheaded new connectivity initiatives, from its rebranded “Act East” Policy in the East to the India-Middle East-Economic Corridor and I2U2 (India-Israel-UAE-U.S.) grouping in the West.

Despite the growing polarization of the international system following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, India has been courted by all major poles of influence. It is a member of both Western-led initiatives such as the Quad and non-Western initiatives such as the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization.



Undergirding these developments are India’s impressive achievements, ranging from its space program marking a global first to surpassing the United Kingdom in GDP and surpassing China in population. Projections China in population. Projections hold that India will be the world’s fastest growing major economy in 2023; it is on course to surpass Germany and Japan to emerge as the world’s third-largest economy by the end of this decade. Meanwhile, the Indian government has just announced that it will submit a bid to host the 2036 Olympic games.



But the most recent developments in the Middle East show how unresolved disputes have a tendency to flare up. In this context, tensions with Pakistan (and to a lesser extent China) remain a constant thorn in India’s global ambitions.

All it would take is another high-profile terrorist attack on India, followed by the mobilization of both countries’ militaries, to erode investor confidence. This would undermine India’s ambitions to emerge as an engine of global growth, a global manufacturing hub and a beneficiary of the push to de-risk or decouple supply chains away from China. It would also challenge the government’s credentials as the “chowkidar” or watchman/protector of India’s interests, just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Mr. Security” reputation has been tarnished by the recent Hamas attacks. As such, despite India’s success in de-hyphenating its relationship with Pakistan, the unresolved Kashmir dispute and relations with Pakistan remain a key challenge to India’s global ambitions.