In Cambridge and London, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi chose to speak about the challenge to Indian democracy; in Delhi, Parliament was halted as the ruling party framed it as an insult to Indian nationalism.
In Punjab, the police intensified the search for Amritpal Singh. In London, Ottawa, San Francisco, New York and Washington, Sikh separatist groups stepped up their agitation, often turning to violence and vandalism, to oppose the Indian State.
In India, the screening of the British Broadcasting Corporation
In Cambridge and London, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi chose to speak about the challenge to Indian democracy; in Delhi, Parliament was halted as the ruling party framed it as an insult to Indian nationalism.
In Punjab, the police intensified the search for Amritpal Singh. In London, Ottawa, San Francisco, New York and Washington, Sikh separatist groups stepped up their agitation, often turning to violence and vandalism, to oppose the Indian State.
In India, the screening of the British Broadcasting Corporation documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi was restricted. In Washington, the Indian-American Muslim Council screened a shortened version of the documentary at the elite National Press Club, using it to allege that India was both majoritarian and intolerant.
If, in India, the political mobilisation around issues of caste has given birth to new kinds of social coalitions, in the United States (US), political battles around caste assumed a new dimension. Seattle became the first city to ban discrimination on the basis of caste and a California legislator introduced a bill to add caste as a protected category in its anti-discrimination legislation — but the Hindu American Foundation wasn’t pleased, claiming these legislations opened the door for discrimination against Hindus in general.
In India’s political economy debates, the spectacular growth of Gautam Adani’s wealth and assets emerged as a key talking point. With one report, a New York-based investment research and short-selling firm, Hindenburg research, shook the foundations of the company, eroded its value, and forced one of India’s biggest firms to reset its calculations.
Put these seemingly disparate developments together and here is what you have.
All of India’s social cleavages — caste, region, religion — are manifesting themselves outside Indian territory. India’s big political arguments — particularly on the nature of the current government and the state of democracy — are playing out in foreign lands. And India’s political economy trajectory — including the role and future of big national capital — is inextricably tied to the sentiment in foreign markets.
A caveat is important here. This extension of India’s issues to outside lands is not new. From India’s freedom struggle to the Emergency, from the battles over Kashmir to Khalistan to Nagaland to political mobilisation around Hindu and Muslim identities, in different ways, different Indians have taken what are Indian political debates outside India. They have lobbied for their issues. They have raised funds. And they have sought to influence developments back home. They have succeeded at times, failed often.
But recent events point to a structural intensification of this trend. And this is because of five factors. The first is just the size of the diaspora and its growth. If you have over 30 million Indians and people of Indian origin living outside India, they will inevitably take their identities, causes, social divisions, political affiliations, battles, prejudices and passions outside India. Its framing will be contingent on the political strength of the diaspora. Its intensity will depend on the freedoms available in the new home country as well as the political orientation of those governments. And each political side in India will be tempted to cultivate these sources of support outside to buttress its domestic strength.
The second is the revolution in information technologies. The immediate transmission of news from home; the ease with which groups can be formed virtually to coordinate messages and protests and push a narrative, true or false; and the manner in which domestic and external constituencies can work together, communicate and supplement each other’s strengths means that national boundaries mean little.
The third is the ease in financial flows. Despite the recent turn towards economic insularity and rising protectionism, the world remains more financially interconnected than it has ever been. This shapes the economic fortunes of companies but also has inevitable downstream consequences on politics, culture, tech and media narratives.
The fourth is the specific juncture at which Indian politics finds itself. Within India, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is electorally dominant and popular but there is a weaker political constituency which sees the current moment as a threat to Indian democracy. Outside India, particularly in the West, the power dynamic is different. While governments and businesses are happy to engage with the regime in Delhi and laud its democratic credentials, there are other powerful constituencies — in academia, among civil society and human rights groups, in the media, and among non-Hindu religious groups — which, for different reasons, are more sympathetic to the Indian Opposition’s viewpoint. There is also a tendency to locate what’s happening in India within the broader debates playing out in other democracies between nativist, populist, Right-wing political formations and more liberal, inclusive, progressive formations. All of this makes what’s happening in India an important site of battle for multiple constituencies.
And finally, as India’s value in the international system grows, foreign actors, both State and non-State, will pay more attention to its domestic debates, analyse it, and seek to nudge it in preferred directions.
All of this has three consequences.
India’s battles will inevitably intensify outside India. Political constituencies will use this at home, to claim external validation when the narrative is favourable and to critique it on grounds of nationalism when it is unfavourable. And Indian diplomacy will have to walk a fine line in intervening when the interests of the Indian State are at stake (for instance when Khalistanis attack consulates) and staying out when the Indian diaspora is having debates that have nothing to do with the Indian State (for instance, on caste).
At a time of resurgent nationalism, rarely have national battles been fought as viscerally outside national boundaries as today. That is the paradox of today’s interconnected yet insular politics.
The views expressed are personal
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