A decade into power, and on the cusp of securing five more years, the Modi government is reversing India’s decadeslong commitment to multiparty democracy and secularism.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has brought corruption charges against many officials from its main rival, the Congress Party, but few convictions. Dozens of politicians from other opposition parties are under investigation or in jail. And just last month, Modi’s government froze the Congress party’s bank accounts for what it said was non-payment of taxes.

The Modi administration says the country’s investigating agencies are independent and that its democratic institutions are robust, pointing to high voter turnout in recent elections that have delivered Modi’s party a clear mandate.

Yet civil liberties are under attack. Peaceful protests have been crushed with force. A once free and diverse press is threatened. Violence is on the rise against the Muslim minority. And the country’s judiciary increasingly aligns with the executive branch.

To better understand how Modi is reshaping India and what is at stake in an election that begins Friday and runs through June 1, The Associated Press spoke with a lawyer, a journalist, and an opposition politician.

DEFENDING MODI’S CRITICS

Mihir Desai has fought for the civil liberties and human rights of India’s most disadvantaged communities, such as the poor and Muslims, for nearly four decades.

The 65-year-old lawyer from India’s financial capital Mumbai is now working on one of his — and the country’s — most high-profile cases: defending a dozen political activists, journalists and lawyers jailed in 2018 on accusations of plotting to overthrow the Modi government. The accusations, he says, are baseless — just one of the government’s all-too-frequent and audacious efforts to silence critics.

One of the defendants in the case, a Jesuit priest and longtime civil rights activist, died at age 84 after about nine months in custody. The other defendants remain in jail, charged under anti-terror laws that rarely result in convictions.

“First authorities came up with a theory that they planned to kill Modi. Now they are being accused of being terrorist sympathizers,” he said.

The point of it all, Desai believes, is to send a message to any would-be critics.

According to digital forensics experts at U.S.-based Arsenal Consulting, the Indian government hacked into the computers of some of the accused and planted files that were later used as evidence against them.

To Desai, this is proof that the Modi government has “weaponized” the country’s once-independent investigative agencies.

He sees threats to Indian democracy all around him. Last year, the government removed the country’s chief justice as one of three people who appoint commissioners overseeing elections; Modi and the opposition leader in parliament are the others. Now, one of Modi’s cabinet ministers has a vote in the process, giving the ruling party a 2-1 majority.

“It’s a death knell to free and fair elections,” Desai said.

Waheed-Ur-Rehman Para, 35, was long seen as an ally in the Indian government’s interests in Kashmir. He worked with young people in the majority-Muslim, semi-autonomous region and preached to them about the benefits of embracing India and its democratic institutions — versus seeking independence, or a merger with Pakistan.

Beginning in 2018, though, Para was viewed with suspicion by the Modi government for alleged connections to anti-India separatists. Since then, he has been jailed twice: in 2019 on suspicion that he and other political opponents could stoke unrest; and in 2020 on charges of supporting militant groups — charges he denies.

The accusations stunned Para, whose People’s Democratic Party once ruled Kashmir in an alliance with Modi’s party.

But he believes the motivation was clear: “I was arrested to forcibly endorse the government’s 2019 decision,” he said, referring to a clampdown on the resistance in Kashmir after the elimination of the region’s semi-autonomous status.

Modi’s administration argues the move was necessary to fully integrate the disputed region with India and foster economic development there.

After his 2020 arrest, Para remained in jail for nearly two years, often in solitary confinement, and was subjected to “abusive interrogations,’’ according to U.N. experts.

“My crime was that I wanted the integration of Kashmir, not through the barrel of the gun,” said Para, who is seeking to represent Kashmir’s main city in the upcoming election.

Para sees his own plight within the larger context of the Modi government’s effort to silence perceived opponents, especially those with ties to Muslims, who make up 14% of India’s population.

“It is a huge ethical question … that the largest democracy in the world is not able to assimilate, or offer dignity to, the smallest pocket of its people,” he said.

The campaign to turn once-secular India into a Hindu republic may help Modi win elections in the short term, Para said, but something much bigger will be lost.

“It risks the whole idea of this country’s diversity,” he said.

A JOURNALIST FIGHTS CHARGES

In October 2020, independent journalist Sidhique Kappan was arrested while trying to report on a government clampdown in the northern Uttar Pradesh state ruled by Modi’s party.

For days, authorities had been struggling to contain protests and outcry over a gruesome rape case. Those accused of the crime were four upper-caste Hindu men, while the victim belonged to the Dalit community, the lowest rung of India’s caste hierarchy.

Kappan, a 44-year-old Muslim, was detained and jailed before he even reached the crime site, accused of intending to incite violence. After two years in jail, his case reached India’s top court in 2022. While he was quickly granted bail, the case against him is ongoing.

Kappan’s case is not unique, and he says it highlights how India is becoming increasingly unsafe for journalists. Under intense pressure from the state, many Indian news organizations have become more pliant and supportive of government policies,

“Those who have tried to be independent have come under relentless attack by the government,” he said.

Foreign journalists are banned from reporting in Kashmir, for example. Same goes for India’s northeast Manipur state, which has been embroiled in ethnic violence for almost a year.

Television news is increasingly dominated by stations touting the government’s Hindu nationalist agenda, such as a new citizenship law that excludes Muslim migrants. Independent TV stations have been temporarily shut down, and newspapers that run articles critical of Modi’s agenda find that any advertising from the government – an important source of revenue – quickly dries up.

Last year, the India offices of the BBC were raided on tax irregularities just days after it aired a documentary critical of Modi.

The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders ranks India 161st on a worldwide list of countries’ press freedoms.

Kappan said he has barely been able to report news since his arrest. The trial keeps him busy, requiring him to travel to a court hundreds of miles away every other week. The time and money required for his trial have made it difficult for him to support his wife and three children, Kappan said.

“It is affecting their education, their mental health,” he said.

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Yet few would have predicted the scale of the Congress victory, coming against the backdrop of the BJP’s dominance over Indian politics in recent years, and the governing party’s ability to form governments even in states where it fails to secure a majority — often using controversial means.

On Saturday, the Congress managed to win 135 of the 224 seats in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly despite those odds, securing 43 percent votes, 5 percent more than in the previous 2018 election, and 7 percent more than the BJP this time. Modi’s party, which had won 104 seats in 2018, had to settle for 66 this time. The Janata Dal (Secular), or JD-S, the third major party in the state, got 19 seats.

Central to that outcome were local political factors, said analysts. And while reverberations from the result will echo in the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, they do not necessarily portend a dramatic shift in the national mood against the incumbent prime minister.

“The Congress leadership in Karnataka stood united and the BJP crumbled under its own misgovernance and infighting,” KS Dakshina Murthy, a veteran political commentator and author from Bengaluru, Karnataka’s capital, told Al Jazeera. “The anti-incumbency wave against the saffron party was palpable on the ground,” he said, referring to the saffron flag of the BJP.

Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader of India’s main opposition Congress party, arrives to address the media after the initial poll results in Karnataka elections at the party headquarters, in New Delhi [Reuters]

The big message

David Bodapati, a senior journalist covering Karnataka politics for three decades, pointed out that the Congress had won by the biggest margin of any victor in the state since 1989 when it had won 178 seats securing 43.76 percent votes.

This clear majority allows Congress to form a government on its own, as it did in 2013. A fractured mandate in 2018 — when the BJP was the single-largest party but short of the majority mark of 113 — led to four chief ministers under two governments sworn in over five years. That means the state is likely to have a stable government over the next five years.

Conversely, with its exit from Karnataka, the BJP no longer holds power in any of India’s five southern states.

Finally, the result could serve as a morale boost for the otherwise beleaguered opposition in India as it tries to devise a strategy to unseat Modi nationally, ahead of the country’s elections likely in April and May 2024.

The victory of ‘secularism’?

Addressing journalists on the election outcome, the state Congress’s tallest leader and former chief minister, Siddaramaiah, who goes by one name, said: “It is a victory of a secular party. The people of Karnataka don’t tolerate communal politics.”

Unlike many opposition leaders in the state and nationally who often hesitate to take on the BJP’s anti-Muslim political campaigns too directly, Siddaramaiah has been consistent in standing against the divisive politics of Modi’s party.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who visited 20 constituencies in Karnataka during his Bharat Jodo Yatra (a foot march by the Congress to spread the message of peace and unity across 12 states and two union territories last year), echoed Siddaramaiah’s statement, saying: “Karnataka has closed the gate of hatred and opened the shop of love.”

The outgoing BJP government had introduced a series of laws and regulations that were widely seen as targeting the state’s Muslims, who constitute about 13 percent of Karnataka’s population of 60 million. These included a ban on wearing a hijab by Muslim students in educational institutions last year and the scrapping of a 4 percent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions that many subcommunities among Muslims were benefitting from. The BJP government also passed laws ostensibly against forced religious conversions (India’s Hindu right often accused Muslims and Christians of using allurements and coercion to make Hindus leave their faith) and a ban on cow slaughter, among others.

Muslims have frequently faced harassment in Karnataka under the BJP’s rule. These laws gave legal cover for attacks on Muslims. Many Muslim men have been assaulted for instance, accused of love jihad, an unproven Hindu right-wing conspiracy theory that claims they woo Hindu women to convert them to Islam.

Muslims have been killed over allegations that they consumed beef – the latest being the brutal murder of a Muslim trader in Mandya on March 31. There were also calls by Hindu groups in Karnataka to ban halal meat, prohibit the use of loudspeakers for the Islamic call for prayers, and stop Muslim traders from running businesses near Hindu temples.

But the election results suggest that the BJP’s efforts to stir Islamophobia — a recipe that has worked well for it in northern states — has delivered limited results in Karnataka.

“The intelligent and peace-loving people of Karnataka have rejected the bigotry and violence unleashed on minorities by the BJP,” Ashok Maridas, a Congress leader from Karnataka, told Al Jazeera. “People want good governance, better roads, hospitals and schools to cater to the downtrodden.”

Local issues: Price rise, corruption

Political commentators say local issues like price rise and corruption played a big role in the BJP’s defeat. Murthy says the corruption allegations against the outgoing government have seeped into the minds of the voters. “It proved detrimental for the BJP.”

The Congress weaponised one jibe in particular, repeatedly referring to the BJP’s government as the “40 percent sarkar [government]“ – a reference to allegations by Karnataka contractors who claim that 40 percent of the tender amount for state-funded infrastructural projects is taken as a bribe by BJP leaders and officials.

Modi attended nearly two dozen election rallies in Karnataka but that could not salvage the party’s fortunes. “There was an absence of local leadership in the BJP. The Modi magic did not work for the Kannadigas [as the people of Karnataka are known],” Bodapati said. In Bengaluru, at the state BJP office, party workers and leaders have refused to comment on the setback.

A portent of the future?

At an event hosted by Eddelu Karnataka (Wake up, Karnataka) – a people’s movement – on April 25 in Bengaluru, psephologist-turned-politician Yogendra Yadav told Al Jazeera the Karnataka election results would set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

“The BJP wants to make the southern state the hub of lynchings and love jihad,” he said, describing the state as a “battlefield to save Indian democracy”.

But Murthy disagrees.

“The state elections are about local issues. Every election is different,” he said. “I don’t see the results having much bearing on the Lok Sabha polls. Probably, the BJP has realized the limitations of aggressive Hindutva politics after its latest defeat.” Hindutva or political Hinduism is the BJP’s ideology.

Yet the result will have an effect beyond Karnataka, Murthy conceded. “It will definitely bolster the confidence of the opposition.”

The post How did Modi lose Karnataka — and could he lose India? appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

Speaking at the opening of the Group of 20 (G20) foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on Thursday, Modi said that countries should acknowledge that multilateralism is currently “in crisis”.

“The experience of the last few years – financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, terrorism and wars – clearly shows that global governance has failed,” Modi said in a recorded statement.

“We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can,” Modi added.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, attends G20 meet in New Delhi [Olivier Douliery/Pool Photo via AP]

India holds the G20 presidency this year. But New Delhi’s longstanding security ties with Moscow have put the host of Thursday’s meeting in an awkward position.

India, being a major buyer of Russian armaments and energy, has not directly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said Russia’s war in Ukraine is expected to be an important point of discussion at the meeting.

New Delhi is also keen to steer the talks towards issues affecting the Global South, such as poverty eradication and climate change.

Delegates from Europe and the United States, however, have reiterated that they hold Russia responsible for the conflict, with Germany saying it would use the meeting to counter Russian “propaganda”.

Lavrov, right, with Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira [Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP]

Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra told reporters Russia was solely responsible for the war and must continue to be sanctioned.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna also said the G20 must hold Russia accountable for the “negative consequences for almost every country on the planet”.

“We need to deliver solutions that protect the most vulnerable, instead of leaving them to suffer from Russia’s war,” she said.

The New Delhi meeting is being attended by 40 delegations, including those headed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.

On Wednesday, Blinken said he had no plans to meet either minister. Ties between Washington and Beijing are strained over Ukraine as well as the US shooting down last month of what it said was a Chinese spy balloon that had drifted over North America.

The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting comes after a gathering of finance ministers in Bengaluru last month failed to agree to a joint statement on the war.

At that meeting, Modi called on leading economies to help the world’s most vulnerable people and “bring back stability, confidence and growth to the global economy”.

The lack of consensus at the gathering of finance officials mirrored the outcome of last November’s G20 summit in Bali when host Indonesia released a declaration acknowledging differences between countries.

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