Modi's Hindu Nationalist Agenda

Since his overwhelming victory in India’s May 2019 elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration has doubled down on Hindu nationalism and illiberalism. Meanwhile, the country faces foreign policy challenges, including its relationship with Pakistan and competition for regional influence with China. What will the rest of Modi's second term bring?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overwhelming victory in India’s elections in May 2019 solidified his grip on power and ensured that he will set the country’s agenda for the foreseeable future. While the vote was technically a victory for his right-wing, nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi turned it into a referendum on himself, becoming the face of nearly every BJP candidate’s local campaign. Modi played up his strongman persona on the campaign trail, particularly with regard to Pakistan, with which India had traded tit-for-tat airstrikes over Kashmir just months before the elections. After the landslide victory, critics wondered whether Modi would double down on the Hindu nationalism and illiberalism that characterized his first term in office, or rein it in. In the four years since then, the answer has clearly been the former. In August 2019, Modi revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status and imposed a media and internet blackout on the state. Later that month, the state of Assam published the results of a citizenship census, the National Register of Citizens, that critics claimed was a backhanded effort to strip Muslim migrants from neighboring Bangladesh—and their descendants—of Indian citizenship. And in December 2019, the government passed an immigration law that would confer fast-track citizenship on non-Muslim migrants from three neighboring Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh, sparking weeks of domestic protests.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses supporters at Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters, New Delhi, India, May 23, 2019 (AP photo by Manish Swarup).

Meanwhile, Modi’s administration faces foreign policy challenges besides Pakistan, including regional competition for influence with China. Three years ago, the two countries engaged in a series of unarmed skirmishes along their disputed border in the Himalayas that culminated in a deadly brawl in June 2020, marking the first casualties suffered there in 45 years. Though they subsequently reached a resolution to the standoff, the situation remains volatile, in part because of the pressure Modi faces from his nationalist domestic base to stand up to India’s powerful neighbor.

Upon taking office in January 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden made a priority of engaging early with New Delhi as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad, which observers see as an effort to counter China’s influence. But with Biden making the defense of liberal democratic values a central pillar of his foreign policy agenda, some observers wondered whether India’s illiberal slide under Modi might make it a less attractive partner in America’s strategic competition with China. Those fears were heightened by India’s refusal to vocally condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine or rally behind the U.S. position on the war at the United Nations. But as Modi’s recent triumphant state visit to Washington—and the big-ticket arms deals announced during it—underscored, geopolitical considerations seem to have trumped values in determining Washington’s priorities for the relationship.