Rhetoric about democracy papered over policies advanced by Narendra Modi and his party that discriminate against India's Muslims and limit freedom of speech and the press.
Indian prime minister Modi will visit the White House this week. His government has cracked down on free speech and opponents. Democratic leaders can’t afford to let this continue.
Before traveling to New Delhi, I was summoned to the Indian Embassy in Washington, where I sat down for chai with an official from the BJP, Modi’s party, who quizzed me on my family’s background and my plans in India. “This government has employed a range of tactics to chill free expression,” said Nadine Farid Johnson of PEN America, a nonprofit organization that advocates for free expression.
At Modi’s welcoming ceremony Thursday, Biden made oblique references to human rights, hailing freedom of expression and religious pluralism as “core principles” for both countries. At a news conference that day, the president said universal human rights faced challenges “in each of our countries” but remained vital to both nations’ success.
“Even if the scale of the democratic backsliding in India is significantly higher than in the United States, I think the objective for the administration would be not to make it seem like it’s lecturing India,” Kugelman said. “That’s a point of sensitivity in New Delhi and among Indians on the whole — that the U.S. is a hypocrite.”
Though Biden had vowed the U.S. would be a leading voice in the battle between autocracy and democracy, his foreign policy promises have crashed into the realities of the presidency. The White House has worked to maintain close relations with other heavy-handed foreign leaders with questionable records on democracy and human rights: Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
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