Portrait of Narendra Modi - Prime Minister of India

He thus appeared as a novelty, an alternative to the Congress party’s "establishment", not only because he did not have any national post before, but also because he could claim he was clean, in contrast to the leaders of the Congress the 10 years of rule of which were tarnished by corruption scandals. Modi was however close to the business community, which funded a very expensive election campaign (the expense is estimated at $2 billion, in particular because of the frequent use of holograms that allowed millions of voters across India to "see" a 3D version of Modi).
 
Modi did not only win these elections because of his charisma, his image of probity, his "outsider" figure and his religious piety. He also promised to extend the economic successes he boasted in his own state to the whole of India. The "Gujarati model", to use the formula echoed during the 2014 campaign, was expected to create millions of jobs. This commitment significantly helped Modi to win the votes of those he presented as members of the "neo-middle class", a milieu of newly urbanized villagers who aspired to enter modernity through a job in the industry or services.

He in fact even abstained, for the most part, from participating in parliamentary sessions. An excellent speaker, he continued to campaign for the BJP in all the states of the Union of India that went to the polls for regional elections. From then on, the party stopped designating regional leaders to head these campaigns, thus breaking with one of its old habits. The centralization effect was even more dramatic in the New Delhi government, where only a handful of Ministers were allowed (and indeed able) to speak to the public.
 
Populists often have a propensity to promise a lot, without really acting upon economic and social structures. Although he came to power thanks to his anti-system narrative, Modi was very comfortable with hierarchies and power relations, as long as he was able to use them. In fact, he did not launch any major reforms. He did not liberalize the Indian economy - contrary to the hopes of many economists who supported him back in 2014. His only significant success was the introduction of a uniform tax on goods and services across India, which put an end to decades of fiscal inconsistency.
 
The fight against corruption in Congress, a key theme of the 2014 campaign, hardly bore fruit. Not only were politicians involved in some of the big scandals that made headlines in the early 2010s (such as the 2G telecoms licensing scandal) released, but the billions of rupees in foreign accounts, which Modi had promised to repatriate, have not budged. Finally, the demonetization of the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, decided by Modi in 2016, destabilized the economy without getting rid of black money, which had long been invested elsewhere (notably in real estate). Yet Modi managed to present demonetization as a national sacrifice agreed upon by the people to purify "the system" established by Congress since Nehru - his pet peeve.

In fact, what has really changed in India since 2014 is the place of minorities, which have been relegated to the back seat in the name of Hindu nationalism, from which Modi draws much of his popularity. Not only, for the first time in the history of independent India, did the ruling party not elect any Muslims to the lower house, but its Hindu nationalism translated into a couple of laws enforcing "majoritarianism". In Maharashtra and Haryana (two of the BJP’s recent conquests), a law criminalized the sale and possession of beef in 2015. This "beef ban", which refers to cows’ sacred status in Hinduism, especially penalized Muslims, many of whom are trading meat. Furthermore, Maharashtra passed a law making religious conversion very difficult, thus following the example of other states already under the BJP’s control, such as Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. In each of these states, these laws aim to counter the (very slow) demographic erosion of the Hindus who are still 80% - against 85% in 1951.
 
Yet assessing the Hindu national-populism in power since 2014 cannot only be achieved through the analysis of the law: the atmosphere created by rulers' discourse must also be evaluated. Among the xenophobic diatribes that scatter their speeches, the interventions of the Minister of Culture, Mahesh Sharma, deserve special mention. Indeed, as he was changing the name of a street in Delhi that bore that of Aurangzeb - the Mughal Emperor loathed by Hindu nationalists - he declared that the man whose patronym would henceforth honor this street would be the former President of the Republic, Abdul Kalam, who "despite being a Muslim, was a nationalist and a humanist".

This campaign was followed by another, promoting the defense of cows, and spearheaded by the Gau Raksha Dal (Indian Cow Protection Organization). The latter benefited from the support of the RSS leader and of the BJP heads of several Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, which is ruled since 2017 by a Hindu priest with a sulphurous background, Yogi Adityanath. These Gau Rakshaks patrol day and night and stop trucks likely to transport livestock. When a Muslim carries cattle, he is beaten, and, in some cases, lynched. According to the macabre work of journalists and whistleblowers, over 50 cases of lynching have led to death. To this day, very few suspects have been arrested and a handful only have been charged, which reflects the police’s - and even the judiciary’s - notorious anti-Muslim bias.
 
Narendra Modi's national populism has set India on the path towards what some political theorists have defined as an "ethnic democracy": a regime where rulers are elected, where the judiciary enjoys a certain independence and the press a certain freedom, but where ethnic minorities (religious and/or linguistic) are de facto, if not de jure, second-class citizens.

Illustration : David MARTIN for Institut Montaigne