Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign speech over the weekend calling the country’s Muslims “infiltrators” has sparked an outcry ahead of the second phase of the multiphase vote. But while Irfan Nooruddin from Georgetown University concedes it was incendiary, he notes that it comes as no surprise.
The mammoth, multiphase Indian general election is underway with the Phase One of voting over and six more to go. This means more than a month of voting until the June 4 results in constituencies across the country – and campaigning.
On the campaign trail this weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sparked an outcry over his speech at a rally in the western state of Rajasthan. This was in a constituency that goes to the polls in the second phase of voting on April 26.
Modi, who is seeking a third consecutive term, referred to Muslims as “infiltrators”. He also said that the opposition Congress party would confiscate the gold and jewellery of Hindu women and that its election manifesto calls for the distribution of the confiscated wealth to Muslims.
The Congress party manifesto does not make a reference to Muslims or any religious group.
Following the speech, more than 17,000 people signed a petition to India’s election commission demanding action against Modi for hate speech against Muslims and for violating the commission’s moral code of conduct.
The Congress party has also petitioned the election commission.
Irfan Nooruddin, a professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, spoke to FRANCE 24 about hate speech on the campaign trail and the policing of the world’s biggest election.
F24: Let’s start with your reaction Modi’s speech on Sunday. Is there a difference between the Indian prime minister’s rhetoric for domestic and international audiences?
For anyone following India’s elections over the last decade, Mr. Modi’s comments don’t come as a complete surprise. He has often and very successfully used anti-Muslim hate speech as a way of stoking his base. The party that he represents, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP, very proudly proclaims itself as a party of Hindu nationalism. They are outspoken in their demand and their desire, in their ambition to recreate India as a Hindu state, [to] abandon its traditional secular credentials that were part of the Indian constitution at independence in 1947.
The speech on Sunday follows a couple of different kinds of speeches that he’s been making recently, in which he’s been using the pejorative associations with Muslims to demean the Congress party.
When the Congress party released its manifesto ahead of the elections, Mr. Modi said it reeked of the Muslim League, the pre-independence party that led to the creation of Pakistan.
The speech on Sunday was particularly shocking for the claims made that what the Congress party seeks to do, should it be elected, is to come into people’s homes, take their property. He invoked their mothers’ and their sisters’ gold and the jewellery that the women hand down over generations, {saying] that the Congress party would come into their homes, take it and redistribute it forcibly to give it to Muslims.
He also talks about people who have more children. This, again, is a trope trying to raise fears of demographic change in India, a stereotype that Muslims have more children than Hindus, and that this is part of a way of eroding Hindu majority in the country.
So it’s an ugly speech, but it’s one that’s quite consistent with the way he has campaigned over the last ten years at the centre, and arguably for the last 20 years that he’s been in the [western] state of Gujarat (where Modi was chief minister from 2001 to 2014).
And yes, it is a completely different image than the one projected on the world stage. On the world stage, Mr. Modi likes to talk about India’s democratic credentials, about its value as a partner to countries like France and the United States in particular, as each of them now seeks alternatives to China. But I would argue that… while he’s made that argument, it has been with the acquiescence of people in those Western countries who have chosen to look the other way from this kind of rhetoric and what has happened in India over the last decade, because for right now, India is more convenient to them as a partner, even if its democratic record is eroding. And so the blame is clearly his, but also ours to share.
Let’s talk about the institutions, these petitions to the election commission. In cricket-mad India, the commission is often referred to as the “neutral umpire”. As a professor, how would you grade the umpire?
In this present election, the umpire right now going to be getting a bit of a failing grade. But it’s early days yet and they’re in a difficult situation. So the Election Commission of India is the main arbiter of India’s elections. It is in theory an independent body, a bureaucratic body that enforces what is called the model code of conduct. It’s a set of rules that all parties are expected to abide by during the campaign season. Much of this is really making sure that elected politicians don’t abuse their authority. So you can’t campaign while you’re on official government business. You can’t buy alcohol and give out money as a way of buying votes. But you also can’t use religious imagery and religious iconography in campaigning.
Mr. Modi and his party is clearly in violation of this letter of the law and definitely the spirit of the law. Many of them have been using the images of Lord Ram in the campaign, which just flies in the face of the Election Commission’s own rules.
Now, the Commission has quite a bit of power to sanction politicians for breaking these rules. They can demand apologies. They can force candidates to actually step aside and not be eligible to run if they are found in gross violation, but no one expects them to be able to do any of that vis-à-vis Prime Minister Modi.
This, unfortunately, you know, feeds a growing perception that the Election Commission of India, like many of India’s other state institutions, has been compromised.
Mr. Modi changed the way election commissioners are appointed. So instead of being appointed by the bureaucracy, they are now appointed by a high level commission that he chairs. So in fact, the referees, to use your analogy, are being picked by one of the teams.
I do not mean to impugn the professionalism or the impartiality of the election commissioners. One hopes that they continue to do their job, but to the extent that the legitimacy of the election depends on everyday citizens, Modi’s supporters but also the opposition supporters, feeling like they have a fair stake and that the election was free and fair. All of this does not bode well for the overall legitimacy of India’s elections going forward.
In terms of policing and umpiring this election that stretches over seven weeks – in a country like France, where elections happen in a day, there are very strict rules of campaigning, even media coverage. Does the length of the vote pose a challenge?
Much more so in the world of social media and the internet. The rules were really set up in a pre-internet world, and the purpose for this long election is quite beautiful. The Indian state requires that every citizen have access to a polling booth no more than two kilometers from where they live.
So instead of citizens having to make long journeys to a polling booth, especially those in rural and remote areas of the country, the Indian election goes to them. This is in a country with a billion eligible voters. This is an incredible logistical feat and requires a lot of time. And so this election has seven phases over the better part of six weeks before it’s all concluded.
But what that means is that the government’s ability, the Election Commission’s ability to police what is being said and more importantly, the disinformation and misinformation spread by social media, is a completely different from the world of, “Can you control what’s on the radio or on the television?” WhatsApp forwards, Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts – all of that now has made that job much more difficult.
I think in the long run, India, like many other countries, is going to have to grapple with [the question of] how do you protect the integrity of the election while countering the different ways in which every politician wants to get their word out, including often by telling untruths.
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