Modi’s party using ‘authoritarian playbook’ to cripple opposition in India

Earlier this month, India was labelled one of the world’s “worst autocratisers”, an assessment by a Sweden-based watchdog that describes a rapid backslide on democractic ideals in the most populous country on Earth.

India is about to go to the polls in a marathon election lasting more than six weeks, and the V-Dem Institute’s report warned that a victory for Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – widely considered the most likely outcome – could further entrench the country’s status as an “electoral autocracy”.

It bases this assessment on “the already substantial democratic decline under [prime minister Narendra] Modi’s leadership and the enduring crackdown on minority rights and civil society”. In just the past few weeks, India’s authorities have arrested a key rival to Modi, frozen the bank accounts of the largest national opposition party, and been revealed to be by far the biggest beneficiary of a now outlawed system of secret political donations.

A few weeks ago, Rahul Gandhi, one of India’s best-known opposition leaders and a scion of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, told ​​British parliamentarians in London that India’s democratic institutions were under attack by Modi’s BJP, accusing the Indian government of stifling all dissenting voices. Critical documentaries shown by international public service broadcasters, such as the BBC and now Australia’s ABC, have been blocked in India, and local journalists have been raided by the financial authorities or even accused of sedition.

“The last 10 years have witnessed an organised assault on democracy in our country,” Pawan Khera, a senior figure in Gandhi’s Indian National Congress party, tells The Independent. He says recent developments only prove the Modi government’s “scant regard” for democratic norms.

A growing number of those seeking to challenge Modi’s party at the ballot box have been arrested as the election has drawn nearer, and the detention of Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has arguably been the most high-profile of these arrests. Kejriwal leads the AAP (Aam Aadmi Party), which stormed to power in the capital’s local elections back in 2015 on an anti-corruption message. The authorities accuse Kejriwal and other senior AAP figures of corrupt practices relating to liquor licensing, allegations they say are politically motivated.

Kejriwal’s dramatic arrest came just weeks after another well-known government critic, the former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, was arrested in connection with an alleged land scam. He has accused India’s financial crime agency, the Enforcement Directorate, of conducting a politically motivated inquiry, and challenged the authenticity of the evidence used for his arrest.

Congress, the grand old party of India that ruled the country for 55 of the 67 years between independence and Modi’s 2014 election, has been targeted in a number of ways. Gandhi himself was convicted of criminal defamation in March last year and handed the maximum jail term of two years – just long enough to exclude him from running in this year’s general election. The Supreme Court eventually intervened in the case, questioning why the trial judge had decided upon a maximum term without explanation.

“The systemic arrest of all those who do not fall in line has been done with a view to intimidate rivals,” says Khera.

Kejriwal is the first serving chief minister to be arrested in India. His case has drawn questioning remarks from global powers, including Germany and the US, who called on India to uphold individuals’ rights to a fair legal process. The Modi government responded with fury, effectively telling Washington and Berlin to mind their own business.

Arati Jerath, a senior political analyst, tells The Independent that arrests like these on the cusp of elections are concerning for the state of Indian democracy. She says that the government is undermining the opposition and crippling its ability to challenge the ruling party.

“It makes it a very unequal playing field,” she says. By bringing financial and criminal investigations against its rivals, she says, the state is hampering any opposition challenge “through the use of state levers”.

The result, she says, is that “in these elections the government obviously has a huge advantage as the opposition is very scattered, quite demoralised, dispirited, and without some of its leading campaigners”.

She continues: “The opposition is becoming a smaller and smaller presence on the political landscape. And so naturally, instead of looking like a democracy, we’re looking more like an autocracy, because there’s just one man and one thought that dominates.”

AAP spokesperson Akshay Marathe suggests that the reason these arrests have not provoked more domestic outrage in India is to do with the influence the Modi administration holds over the mainstream media. The government is the highest-spending advertiser in most national newspapers, and enjoys positive coverage from almost every TV news channel. One of the largest critical and progressive voices left – the news channel NDTV – was bought in 2022 by the billionaire Gautam Adani, who is seen as having close links to the prime minister.

“They have completely monopolised the media spaces, where opposition parties no longer have a space to campaign or put their point of view across,” Marathe tells The Independent.

He also points to an unfair playing field in regard to political donations, revealed earlier this month by the Supreme Court’s exposure of the opaque electoral bonds scheme, which the BJP introduced in 2018. The scheme allowed individuals and companies to buy bonds through the State Bank of India and donate them anonymously to the party of their choice. It has now been ruled unconstitutional.

It was revealed that the BJP was by far the largest beneficiary of this scheme, taking 54.77 per cent of the total donations made between 2018 and March 2022. By comparison, Congress only received around 10 per cent. It also emerged that some of the largest donations were made by businesses after they began being investigated by the federal authorities – critics say they were effectively being strong-armed into giving millions to the BJP, an allegation the government has denied.

“They have completely cornered all political funding,” Marathe says, claiming that “opposition parties have increasingly found it harder and harder to raise funds because the BJP goes after anybody who tries to help the opposition”.

“It’s clear that the BJP is not able to defeat him [Kejriwal] democratically. So the only option that they seem to have found themselves left with is to coerce their will against the will of the people. And that is classic [of] authoritarian dictatorships, where [if] you cannot win an election, you steal it.”

Congress already faced the prospect of competing in the general election against an opponent with significantly greater resources, but last month said its bank accounts had been frozen altogether by the income tax authorities, apparently over a compliance issue. It has now been levied with large fines that, if it is forced to pay, would severely dent its spending power.

Khera says: “The way our accounts were frozen is absolutely unprecedented and uncalled for.”

The V-Dem Institute’s report says the existential pressures being placed upon India’s opposition parties are part of the reason it now ranks 104th out of 179 countries on the organisation’s Liberal Democracy Index for 2023. Ms Jerath says: “For India to get back to its democratic traditions, it is important that the opposition stay alive; [that they] live to fight another election.”

Modi continues to enjoy an overwhelmingly positive personal approval rating, even if issues like rising unemployment rates and pressures on the cost of living have dented his party’s performance in some state elections. With the country’s GDP growth forecast for 2024 up, at around 6.8 per cent, many of Modi’s supporters see him as a positive force for the country’s development – even those who don’t subscribe to his party’s Hindu-first agenda.

Khera explains why he believes the ordinary Indian voter should worry about the state of democracy in the country. “Today, it is just political rivals and those who come out on the streets protesting. Tomorrow, a lot of our rights as citizens can come under threat,” he says.

The Independent reached out to Sudhanshu Trivedi, the national spokesperson for the BJP, for comment on this story, but was not granted an interview.

Adrian Shahbaz, vice president of research at Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog, says there’s broad consensus among scholars and analysts that “India is moving in a worrying direction”.

He tells The Independent: “We have documented a degradation in civil rights since the BJP took power. Journalists face increasing legal pressure and online harassment. Hundreds of NGOs have had their funding restricted over vague offences, like using donations for ‘undesirable purposes’. Investigators have gone after a host of high-profile government critics for alleged financial crimes.”

He says that “the timing of the prosecutions has raised concerns that the administrative state is being used selectively to punish BJP critics”.

“Across the board, there’s less tolerance for identities and opinions that do not align with the BJP’s favoured narrative,” he says. “Unfortunately, we are seeing this pattern around the world. A political leader wins an election and then dismantles institutional checks and balances to stay in power. It’s the authoritarian playbook.”