0:00

I'm Dan Kurtz-Fehlen, and this is

0:02

the Foreign Affairs interview. I

0:06

think it is becoming increasingly clear

0:08

that Mr. Modi is not the

0:10

miracle worker transformative figure on the

0:12

economy that people had hoped. In

0:16

June, Narendra Modi was sworn in for

0:18

a third consecutive term as India's prime

0:20

minister. But in a surprise

0:23

outcome, his party, the BJP, failed to win

0:25

a majority. Modi emerged seriously

0:27

weekend, and India's path forward looks far

0:29

less certain and far more interesting than

0:31

seemed plausible not long ago. Pratat

0:34

Manumita is one of India's wisest

0:36

political observers, a great political theorist

0:38

and writer, as well as

0:40

a fierce critic and occasional target of Modi

0:43

and his policies. My colleague

0:45

Kannesh Tharoor spoke with him this week about

0:47

what the election means for Indian democracy

0:50

and where the country goes from here. Pratap,

1:00

it's a pleasure to speak with you. It's great

1:02

to be here, thanks. You

1:05

spoke with us last time in

1:07

March, that was before the elections had

1:09

kicked off the national elections in India.

1:11

And at that time, it seemed that

1:13

their outcome was going to be a

1:16

sort of foregone conclusion, that

1:18

Modi would win a third

1:20

term, consolidate his rule, and

1:22

that some of the concerning

1:24

trends that many observers had

1:26

isolated about India would just

1:28

continue indefinitely. Then the

1:30

last piece you wrote for us was

1:32

in June, soon after the elections

1:35

delivered something of a surprising

1:37

verdict. Modi did win his third term,

1:39

but he lost his absolute majority. And

1:42

at that time you wrote, observers anticipated

1:44

a sweeping victory for Modi that

1:47

would have all but converted India

1:49

into a one-leader, one-ideology, and one-party

1:51

state. But that did not happen.

1:54

Indian democracy has triumphed against the

1:57

odds. Modi's humbling at the

1:59

ballot box. has saved Indian

2:01

democracy. Is that an

2:04

assessment you still stand by? Yeah,

2:06

I think broadly that's an assessment I still stand

2:09

by, which is it has given Indian democracy breathing

2:11

room. You know, obviously

2:13

there's still significant challenges. I

2:15

think Mr. Modi's authority has diminished.

2:18

There's absolutely no question about it. And

2:21

we can talk about the different ways in which it has

2:23

done so. The opposition is empowered.

2:26

The Supreme Court and independent institutions

2:28

are showing a little bit more

2:30

independence. They're not quite there

2:33

all the way yet, as we had

2:35

hoped, but certainly in matters like

2:37

giving opposition leaders bail

2:39

when they get arrested, they're showing

2:41

some spine. So yes, I think

2:44

the space for contestations certainly has

2:46

expanded. I think the critical

2:48

question is what moves does the government make

2:50

now and how does the opposition respond to

2:52

it? So there's, as it

2:54

were, one more round left before

2:56

we can be completely reassured that

2:59

Indian democracy is entirely safe. Well,

3:01

before we get into that, I just wanted to get

3:04

a sense from you of what do you think accounted

3:06

for the setbacks that BJP faced

3:08

in the elections? I'm sure

3:10

they were as surprised as the rest

3:12

of us by the results. So what

3:15

do you see as the reasons why the

3:17

elections delivered the kind of outcome they

3:19

did? So the

3:21

honest truth is we are actually still speculating.

3:23

I mean, you can pass the data lots

3:25

of different ways, but I

3:28

think the two or three things that are

3:30

emerging very clearly is one, a sense of

3:32

fatigue with Prime Minister Modi himself. It's

3:35

the first time that constituencies

3:37

in which he campaigned very

3:39

vigorously, the BJP did not do

3:41

as well. Maybe you can call

3:43

it a 10-year fatigue, overplaying

3:45

his hand, and particularly

3:48

constituencies in which he gave

3:50

communally charged speeches. Interestingly,

3:53

those are the constituencies where the

3:55

rejection of the BJP was

3:57

actually the strongest. So clearly there

3:59

is some... about his personal

4:01

authority diminishing, I think that

4:03

we had underestimated. The second,

4:05

I think particularly in Uttar Pradesh, which

4:08

is India's largest state where BJP lost

4:10

a large number of seats and that

4:12

was the biggest surprise. But

4:15

I think broadly speaking, I mean, I

4:17

think there's a kind of background story

4:19

here, which is India's economy has not

4:22

done catastrophically badly or at least as

4:24

badly as the opposition claims. But

4:27

I think it is becoming increasingly

4:29

clear that Mr. Modi is not

4:31

the miracle worker transformative figure on

4:33

the economy that people had hoped.

4:36

And I think one of the striking

4:38

things in conversations even just before the

4:40

election and certainly after the first round

4:43

is that even a lot of diehard

4:45

BJP supporters were actually

4:48

more candid about admitting some of

4:50

the weaknesses on the economic front.

4:52

India is not in a considerably

4:54

better place than it was five

4:56

years ago. And so I

4:58

think some of those basic bread

5:00

and butter issues have actually

5:03

resurfaced. And on the

5:05

Hindutva front, the BJP's

5:07

official ideology, the consolidation

5:10

of Hindu nationalism, also

5:12

there was a little bit of a sense of exhaustion,

5:14

not that people rejected the ideology,

5:17

but ironically, many of the principal

5:19

things that the BJP claimed it

5:21

wanted to do, it

5:23

had actually accomplished. So two of

5:25

the biggest items on the Hindu

5:27

nationalist government's agenda was one

5:30

was building a temple at the site

5:32

of a mosque that had been demolished

5:34

by Hindu militants in the

5:36

early 90s, the Babri Masjid. And

5:39

the creation of this temple was supposed

5:41

to be the crowning glory of Hindu nationalism.

5:44

It kind of gives Hindu nationalism a national

5:47

symbol. It's a symbol

5:49

of the fact that Hindus are

5:51

finally reclaiming their own country against

5:53

Muslim invaders. That's in a sense the

5:56

political symbolism of it. And

5:58

Prime Minister Modi himself. participated in

6:00

the consecration of the deity at the temple,

6:02

almost like a kind of monarch consecrating in

6:05

some senses new gods. So this was supposed

6:07

to be a crowning moment and

6:09

this happened in January 21st and

6:12

frankly the mood in January 21st was almost euphoric.

6:14

I mean there was almost this sense of kind

6:17

of ecstasy in some senses

6:19

amongst large numbers of Hindus and that's

6:21

the point at which most people thought

6:23

that game set and matched to Mr.

6:25

Modi. He's really tapped into Hindu nationalism

6:28

but I think that euphoria ebbed okay so you've

6:30

done this fine what next?

6:32

I think the second item

6:34

on the agenda was Kashmir had a

6:36

special status under the Indian constitution. There

6:39

was article 370 of the Indian

6:41

constitution that had facilitated Kashmir's accession

6:43

as a province to India and

6:46

it had been a long-standing Hindu nationalist demand

6:48

that article 370 be abrogated

6:51

Kashmir's special status. We

6:53

revoked and this government even went one

6:55

step further. It actually downgraded Kashmir's status

6:57

from being a state to being a

7:00

union territory. So you know many

7:02

of these agenda items in a sense BJP

7:04

had actually fulfilled but there was

7:06

also a sense of okay what's left for Hindu

7:08

nationalism to do? What's the next move here? So

7:11

I think a sense of exhaustion also

7:13

seems to have crept in. You

7:15

mentioned in your last interview with Foreign Affairs

7:18

that one of the things you were concerned about

7:20

was the deepening of

7:22

ethno-nationalism and its accompanying authoritarianism.

7:25

You've suggested that there's a fatigue with

7:27

it but is the kind of reverse

7:29

that Modi suffered in June sufficient

7:32

to begin pushing back against the

7:34

sort of tide of ethno-nationalism that

7:36

has been rising in the last

7:38

decade? No

7:41

it's actually not sufficient and in fact

7:43

I think Hindu nationalism will have sort

7:45

of another kind of incarnation in the

7:47

next few months. The reason

7:49

it's not sufficient is the following which is what

7:52

Hindu nationalism operates at two levels. There's

7:54

the level of electoral consolidation.

7:56

Does Hindu nationalism translate into

7:58

electoral votes? from

10:00

the last few months of this new Modi.

10:04

So there are a couple of things that are very

10:06

striking. One actually for the

10:08

first time in his political career,

10:11

he seems to be quite out

10:13

of touch and out of sorts.

10:15

I mean, he's a very upfront,

10:17

aggressive, I take charge, I'm everywhere

10:19

kind of leader. It's

10:22

almost as if they haven't

10:24

quite diagnosed or even yet

10:26

internalized the consequences of

10:29

their diminished mandate. And

10:32

I think they're at a loss to explain it.

10:34

I mean, I think one of the things that's

10:36

actually quite striking about Prime Minister Modi since the

10:38

election is the lack of kind of those bombastic

10:40

speeches. There's not even a kind of a whiff

10:43

of self understanding or explanation of

10:45

what went wrong here. It's almost as if we

10:47

were cheated out of something. And

10:49

I think they're at a genuine intellectual loss

10:51

in terms of how to actually understand this

10:53

loss. We did everything right. How

10:56

come we'd lost? So

10:58

in that sense, he's actually seeming quite out of

11:00

sorts. I mean, I watch his speeches very closely,

11:02

very often. It's really the first

11:04

time in his long political career, whether you

11:07

agree or disagree with him, that he actually

11:09

just feel he's out of touch. He's maybe

11:11

thinking his way through something, but hasn't quite

11:13

yet come to terms with what this defeat

11:15

is. But in the

11:17

last month or so, practically

11:19

every measure that they've announced,

11:22

they've either had to do a U-turn or a

11:24

shelf. Sometimes

11:26

because of pressure of allies, for example,

11:28

there's a piece of legislation that seeks

11:31

to regulate WACF

11:34

boards, which are basically Muslim charitable

11:36

boards, which control vast amount of

11:38

resources. And this is

11:41

again, a politically charged and commonly charged

11:43

issue. BJP 1 and

11:45

2 simply would have introduced it and

11:47

would have passed in parliament within like

11:49

30 seconds without much discussion or maybe

11:51

at least an hour without much discussion.

11:54

It has gone to a parliamentary select committee.

11:58

The opposition has been demanding not

24:00

let Mr. Modi walk away with this

24:03

kind of, you know, veneer of

24:05

kind of progressivism for his own

24:07

opportunistic political ends, not

24:10

revert to a politics that simply

24:12

says, look, we are just going

24:14

to stick to the status quo, but

24:16

actually argue on first principles that

24:18

India needs to do both things

24:20

simultaneously. It needs a civil code

24:23

that in some senses embodies

24:26

some uniform principles across the

24:28

different civil codes, particularly around

24:31

gender equality, the rights of the LGBT community

24:33

and so on and so forth. You

24:36

can't escape those principles in a modern society.

24:38

And those are the right principles. And

24:41

we will permit such diversity as is

24:43

compatible with those principles, but

24:45

it's the kind of issue that the opposition

24:48

still has a little bit difficulty kind of

24:51

articulating or taking a very clear stand

24:53

on. So I think it'll

24:55

have to actually rather than

24:57

just use secularism as a slogan, get

25:00

into the weeds of all these

25:02

kinds of thorny issues that

25:05

the BJP raises under the guard of

25:07

Hindu nationalism and develop

25:09

intelligible, convincing, and

25:12

principled responses to. We'll

25:15

be back after a short break. Charles

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40:00

most obsesses about its borders. It's

40:03

not going to accept creative solutions

40:05

to our sovereignty conundrums of Pakistan

40:07

or China. It's a much more

40:09

sovereign dispower. But these are

40:11

elements that have been around for a long time, I

40:14

think, in Indian foreign policy. And

40:16

I think even though they're using the

40:18

term civilization state, it represents

40:21

more continuity and discontinuity, particularly

40:23

on the kind of militarism

40:25

and projection of external power.

40:29

Let's end by just taking a step back. In

40:31

the last decade, there has been chatter

40:33

both within India and outside of India

40:36

that Modi's supremacy has

40:40

revealed something essential about

40:42

the country that was obscured before.

40:44

And that is that even though India's

40:47

founders imagined the country as a liberal,

40:49

secular, pluralistic country,

40:51

that indeed there's a sort of

40:53

illiberal core to it, and

40:56

Modi has successfully tapped that, what

40:58

do you make of that kind of assessment? I

41:02

find these arguments too ahistorical

41:04

into essentialist. This is

41:06

not just true of India. I mean, I think

41:09

this is true of the way we think of

41:11

the history of democracy everywhere in the United States.

41:13

I mean, did Trump reveal a kind of irrevocable

41:15

American core? Let's put it this way. All

41:18

democracies have a

41:20

strand of ethno-nationalist supremacism with him, and

41:23

India has had it for a long

41:25

time. There's no question about it. And

41:28

arguably would have been actually stronger

41:30

in the 1950s if Gandhi had

41:32

not been assassinated because Gandhi's assassination

41:34

delegitimized Hindu nationalism and I think

41:36

gave the Congress and Nehru, I

41:38

think, breathing room. So

41:40

that strand has always been, I think,

41:42

a strand in Indian politics. And it's

41:44

a strand that derives not

41:47

from some essential core about Indian

41:49

civilization. It's a strand

41:51

that's an inevitable consequence of modern

41:53

nationalism. It's a problem that arises

41:55

in the context of creating

41:58

a modern nation state. Because

42:00

every single modern nation state that has been created

42:02

has been created under conditions of I think, authoritarianism

42:04

of one form or the other. So

42:06

there's nothing particularly exceptional about India. I mean, I

42:09

think, you know, as if India were sui generis.

42:12

The question to ask is, and

42:14

I don't for a moment believe this

42:16

narrative that there was a

42:18

kind of thin veneer of liberal elitism

42:20

on top and this kind of core

42:23

bubbling from the bottom. I don't believe

42:25

it for two reasons. One, even

42:27

today, it's actually more likely that if

42:30

Hindu nationalism is resisted, it is actually

42:32

resisted by the poor and

42:34

rural India rather than by India's

42:36

anglicized elite. So sociologically that actually

42:39

doesn't kind of map. But

42:41

second, I think it's a little bit unkind

42:44

to India's history in the 1950s and 60s.

42:48

Jawaharlal Nehru, like Mr.

42:50

Modi, won three successive

42:52

elections. It was a

42:54

moment of national trauma when he died. And

42:58

to say that that was just a

43:00

moment of liberal veneer, you

43:03

have to then ask this question how

43:05

this person we dismiss as the last

43:07

bourgeois, the last Englishman was

43:09

able to mobilize tens of millions of

43:11

people behind him. They were

43:13

willing to put their trust in him no

43:15

matter what his kind of own cultural predilections

43:17

might be. Right.

43:19

The longest party in the 1980s wins 400 seats. It

43:23

wins three fourths of India's parliament

43:26

and then loses it within a span of five

43:28

years. So I

43:30

actually think that rather than say that it's

43:32

revealed a kind of essential core, I think

43:35

the question to ask is what

43:37

is it about the failures of

43:39

liberal centrist leftist governance that

43:42

has actually allowed Hindu nationalism

43:45

this veneer of plausibility? Perhaps

43:48

I think the much more productive

43:50

question than saying there is this

43:52

deep core that resides in the

43:54

masses and now that the old

43:56

elites have been fronted out, it's

43:58

the genuine masses rising. It

44:00

was the genuine masters that were also behind Gandhi

44:02

and Nehru. Let's not actually,

44:04

I think, rewrite that history. Well,

44:08

Pratap, thank you so much for taking the time to

44:10

talk to us. I think we'll conclude on that note.

44:13

And as ever, it's a pleasure to hear from you. Thank

44:15

you so much, as always, for this opportunity

44:18

and your wonderful questions. Thank

44:26

you for listening. You can find the

44:28

articles that we discussed on today's show

44:30

at foreignaffairs.com. The Foreign Affairs

44:32

Interview is produced by Kate Brannon,

44:34

Julia Fleming-Dresser, and Marcus Zacharia. Special

44:38

thanks also to Grace Finlayson, Kaitlin

44:40

Joseph, Nora Revenaugh, Asher Ross, and

44:42

Gabrielle Sierra. Our theme

44:44

music was written and performed by Robin Hilton. Make

44:47

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44:49

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44:51

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44:56

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