While the American President’s intimidation evokes outrage, we seem surprisingly accepting of the dystopian vision that our own leaders’ both subtle and overt form of hegemony predicates
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with US President Donald Trump before a meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on February 25, 2020. PIC/AFP
There’s unanimity in India that New Delhi must not bow to the bullying by President Donald Trump, who threatens to trigger a 50 per cent tariff on us unless we concede to his demands. The United States’s insurmountable might, indeed, inspires Trump to redesign the world order, to perpetuate his country’s hegemony at the expense of weaker nations. As we reel under Trump’s shocks, it’s just the moment to mull how the Centre, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeks to grow its power by pushing and shoving states and social groups, presaging a future as bleak and frightening as Trump’s plan does.
Several American presidents had contemplated purchasing Greenland from Denmark, but none ever spoke, as Trump has, of forcibly annexing it. The Bharatiya Janata Party had always believed the annulling of Article 370 would better integrate Jammu and Kashmir with India. But Modi’s Centre not only torpedoed Article 370, it also carved out Ladakh from J&K, demoted its status from a state to a union territory, and turned the Lieutenant Governor there into a veritable viceroy.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has failed to persuade the Centre to restore statehood to J&K despite playing the “good boy” — in much the same way Modi’s currying favour with Trump didn’t get tariff concessions for India. And now, 25 books have been banned in J&K on grounds that these promote secessionism, echoing, in a way, Trump’s justification that the annexation of Greenland is vital for America’s security. Bad faith’s favourite whitewash is always national security.
New Delhi’s persistent denial of Trump’s role in crafting the India-Pakistan ceasefire is said to have goaded him into imposing the high tariff on India. There’s a parallel in India — Arvind Kejriwal threw barbs at Modi and found his chief ministerial powers in Delhi snatched. For one, the Centre transferred the chief minister’s control over bureaucrats to the L-G; for the other, the Centre amended a law to declare the L-G as the “government of Delhi,” making it mandatory for the Cabinet to seek his opinion before taking any action. Since no time limit was prescribed for the L-G to furnish his opinion, he could abort governance through inaction.
Early intimations of a new domestic order, did you say?
A host of American officials articulate and execute Trump’s right-wing ideology. This role the governors of states play for Modi. When Jagdeep Dhankhar was the West Bengal governor, he said the state was the “gas chamber of democracy”. Governor CV Ananda Bose accused the Mamata Banerjee government of “arguably and allegedly” supplying identity documents to illegal immigrants. The Centre hasn’t been funding, since 2022, the rural employment guarantee programme in Bengal.
In Tamil Nadu, Governor RN Ravi twice refused to read the “Governor’s speech” because the Assembly’s opening session began with the state, not the national anthem, as is the tradition there. Ravi once skipped a paragraph from his speech that said the state government was pursuing the model of development advocated by Ambedkar, Periyar, Karunanidhi, etc. Banwarilal Purohit, Punjab’s governor, refused to convene a Budget session until the Supreme Court ordered he must. Kerala Governor Rajendra Arlekar showcased the Hindu Right’s image of Bharat Mata at Raj Bhawan functions, clearly a taunt to the Left Front government, whose members walked out in protest.
Trump seeks to establish the sway of the right-wing ideology by squeezing the federal funding of America’s premier liberal universities. In India, governors as ex-officio chancellors of state universities have sought to impose their choice of vice chancellors on them, presumably hoping to create an academic ambience favourable to weaning students on Hindutva. This has enraged some chief ministers into passing bills to abolish or diminish the governor’s role as chancellors.
In West Bengal, the chief minister is to replace the governor as the ex-officio chancellor. In Kerala and Punjab, the government will now appoint chancellors. These decisions have been judicially challenged. Only in Tamil Nadu, because of the Supreme Court’s interventions, the chancellor can no longer appoint vice chancellors of several state universities.
Trump has slapped high tariffs on those countries where right-wing leaders are under duress — for instance, Brazil incurred a 50 per cent tariff because it is prosecuting former President Jair Bolsonaro. Modi’s Centre, too, targets his rivals: between 2015 and 2025, the Enforcement Directorate, a Central government agency, booked 193 politicians. Most of them are Opposition leaders, with some of them also jailed. None would object to such actions if the BJP had been squeaky clean. It isn’t: the party pocketed 50.1 per cent of the electoral bonds worth R16,461.1 crore, by coercing wealthy donors, as some media stories established.
Trump granted clemency to all people who participated in the January 2021 Capitol Hill attack. In India, vigilantes operate with impunity, drawing confidence from the BJP ruling at the Centre and in several states. The Sangh’s opposition to interfaith marriages and conversions mirrors Trump’s hostility to abortion and affirmative action. India hunts illegal immigrants with Trump’s appalling vigour. And so, as we shudder over the dystopian vision that Trump’s bullying evokes, we should also think hard about the future awaiting India, as the Centre often unconstitutionally, and immorally, pushes around the weak.
The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste
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