Trump, Modi, and the illiberal consensus

ABSTRACT

President Trump and Prime Minister Modi often invoked their two nation’s claims as “oldest and largest” democracies to trumpet the naturalness of the US-India alliance. Shared democratic values was the glue that supposedly bound the two countries together. This contribution argues that the cynical and opportunistic invocation of democratic values by both governments damaged the cause of democracy globally. Both have attacked the independence of the press, civil society, and judiciary; and democratic backsliding and religious intolerance has worsened in both countries. The legitimacy of America’s democratic credentials, already battered by Trump, is irreparably tainted by its embrace of Modi’s India. The victim of this illiberal consensus is democracy internationally.

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Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ See Rao and Verma, this issue, and, Mukherjee, this issue, for more detailed analyses.

² Aparna Pande, Making India Great: The Promise of a Reluctant Global Power (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2020).

³ David J. Singer, “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,” World Politics 14, no. 1 (1961): 77–92.

⁴ Pande 2020; Matthew Pennington, 2016, “Modi says India, U.S. have Overcome the ‘Hesitations of History’.” PBS Newshour, June 8 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-indian-pm-burnishes-his-standing-with-address-to-congress-at-11-a-m-et (accessed October 11, 2021).

⁵ Vivek Mishra, “India–US Defence Cooperation: Assessing Strategic Imperatives,” Strategic Analysis 42, no. 1 (2018): 1–14.

⁶ Harsh V. Pant and Yogesh Joshi, “Indo-US Relations Under Modi: The Strategic Logic Underlying the Embrace.” International Affairs 93, no. 1 (2017): 133–146.

⁷ Praful Bidwai, “End the Butchery, Sack Modi,” Frontline 19, no. 6 (2002): 115–16; Man of Mitta, The Fiction of Fact-finding: Modi and Godhra (Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2014).

⁸ Bidisha Biswas, “Negotiating the Nation: Diaspora Contestations in the USA about Hindu Nationalism in India,” Nations and Nationalism 16, no. 4 (2010): 696–714.

⁹ Jonah Blank, 2021. “A milder Modi.” The RAND Blog, May 19. https://www.rand.org/blog/2014/05/a-milder-modi.html (accessed October 11, 2021).

¹⁰ Barack Obama, 2015. “Narendra Modi.” Time, April 16. https://time.com/collection-post/3823155/narendra-modi-2015-time-100/ (accessed October 11, 2021).

¹¹ See Alexander Sammon, 2020, “Barack Obama’s Legacy is Narendra Modi,” The American Prospect, January 23. https://prospect.org/world/barack-obamas-legacy-is-narendra-modi/ (accessed October 24, 2022).

¹² Sumit Ganguly, “Obama, Trump and Indian Foreign Policy under Modi,” International Politics 59, no. 1(2022): 9–23.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Anwar Iqbal, 2016, “US-India Defence Pact to Impact Pakistan, China,” Dawn. http://www.dawn.com/news/1280873 (accessed July 14, 2022).

¹⁵ President Obama did raise concerns about India’s religious pluralism in a speech he made in New Delhi, resulting in a defensive response from the Indian authorities. See Julie McCarthy, 2015, “In India, Obama Speeches Spark Debate on Religious Tolerance.” NPR, February 6. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/02/06/384345012/in-india-obama-speeches-spark-debate-on-religious-tolerance (accessed October 24, 2022).

¹⁶ Madiha Afzal, 2020, “Evaluating the Trump Administration’s Pakistan Reset,” Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/10/26/evaluating-the-trump-administrations-pakistan-reset (accessed July 6, 2022).

¹⁷ See Richard Javad Heydarian, 2020, “Quad Alliance Forms ‘Arc Of Democracy’ Around China.” Asia Times, July 27, https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/quad-alliance-forms-arc-of-democracy-around-china/. This rhetoric has continued into the Biden administration. Consider this February 2022 statement: https://share.america.gov/quad-supports-democratic-values-in-indo-pacific/ which opens with the statement that “The Quad partnership among the United States, India, Australia and Japan is committed to defending democracy and advancing prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region” (emphasis added).

¹⁸ Suhasini Haidar, 2021, “India is the mother of all democracies, says Modi at U.N. General Assembly.” The Hindu, September 25. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/prime-minister-narendra-modi-addresses-the-76th-session-of-united-nations-general-assembly-in-new-york/article36668955.ece (accessed October 11, 2021).

¹⁹ Quoted in “Trump administration doesn’t want India to degrade its defence capabilities: U.S. official on CAATSA.” The Hindu, January 9, 2020. https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/trump-admin-doesnt-want-india-to-degrade-its-defense-capabilities-us-official-on-caatsa/article30521731.ece (accessed October 24, 2022).

²⁰ Ashutosh Varshney, “How India’s Ruling Party Erodes Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 33, no. 4 (2022): 104–118.

²¹ Soutik Biswas, 2021, “ ‘Electoral Autocracy’: The Downgrading of India’s Democracy.” BBC News, March 16. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56393944 (accessed October 11, 2021).

²² Ravinder Kaur, 2021, “India Reveres Its Democracy, but the Room for Dissent Is Shrinking.” New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2021/12/india-reveres-its-democracy-but-the-room-for-dissent-is-shrinking (accessed July 14, 2022).

²³ See US Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Anti-Conversion Laws and Growing Intolerance in India.” https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/uscirf-spotlight/anti-conversion-laws-and-growing-intolerance-india (accessed October 16, 2022).

²⁴ See “After a 101-Day Sit-in, Shaheen Bagh Protest Cleared Due to Coronavirus Lockdown.” The Wire, March 24, 2020. https://thewire.in/rights/shaheen-bagh-cleared-coronavirus-lockdown (accessed October 16, 2022).

²⁵ Michael D. Shear, 2019, “At Rally for India’s Modi, Trump Plays Second Fiddle but a Familiar Tune.” New York Times, September 22. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/us/politics/trump-modi-houston-rally.html (accessed October 11, 2021).

²⁶ Morgan Chalfant, 2020, “Trump defends Modi on Religious Freedom amid Protests in India.” The Hill, February 25. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/484477-trump-defends-modi-on-religious-freedom-amid-protests-in-india (accessed October 11, 2021).

²⁷ P. Iyer, “Analyzing Global Response to the Controversial Citizenship Amendment Act [ORF],” Expert Speak, December 26, 2019. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/analyzing-global-response-to-the-controversial-citizenship-amendment-act-59529/.

²⁸ D. Ghosal and M. Kumar, “More than a Dozen Killed, Hundreds Injured as New Delhi Riots Overshadow Trump Visit,” Reuters, February 25, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-citizenship-protests-idUSKBN20J296.

²⁹ A. R. Zargar, “New Delhi Riots Leave 38 Dead as India Balks at U.S. Reaction to the Religious Violence,” CBS News, February 27, 2020. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-delhi-riots-leave-35-dead-as-india-balks-at-us-reaction-to-the-religious-violence/.

³⁰ Eric L. McDaniel, Irfan Nooruddin, and Allyson F. Shortle, The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

³¹ White House, 2021, “President Biden to Convene Leaders’ Summit for Democracy.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/11/president-biden-to-convene-leaders-summit-for-democracy/ (accessed October 11, 2021).

³² See McDaniel et al., 2022.

³³ Thomas Edward Flores and Irfan Nooruddin, Elections in Hard Times (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016).