By attending the inauguration of a new JCB factory in Gujarat on Thursday, Boris Johnson might have thought he was leaving his troubles behind in Westminster. What harm was there in going in to bat for a successful British business owned by a big Tory donor? Plenty, it transpires. Mr Johnson walked into a major human rights controversy over the use of JCB’s bulldozers in flattening Muslim homes and businesses in Delhi and in states run by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party.
Mr Johnson should not have mugged for the cameras with the machinery used to intimidate religious minorities by a regime seemingly bent on creating a theocratic Hindu state. Perhaps he is unaware of the growing sense of vulnerability felt by India’s 200 million Muslims. But no one who is paying attention could miss what Mr Modi is about. He is the only person ever denied a US visa for “severe violations of religious freedom”. This was in 2005, after he failed, as Gujarat’s chief minister, to stop a series of deadly anti-Muslim riots.
Earlier this month the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Washington was monitoring a rise in human rights abuses in India by “some government, police and prison officials”. The US often takes an instrumental approach in determining whether human rights violations are raised or overlooked. India’s democratic backsliding, coupled with Delhi’s refusal to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, probably tilted the scales in the White House. But Mr Blinken’s warning should have been heeded by Mr Johnson.
Instead of keeping his distance, Mr Johnson hugged Mr Modi close. India is set to be the world’s fastest-growing major economy over the next two years. London joins the list of capitals courting Mr Modi, despite his refusal to choose sides over Moscow’s invasion. India’s bargaining power rests on appearing as a key element in western-led efforts to counterbalance China in the Indo-Pacific.
One assumption is that India is so indispensable in geopolitics that its partners will not be offended if it also deals with some of their opponents. Another is that the country is competently governed and has the social and economic means to accomplish its policy goals. The latter is a live question. Mr Modi failed to grasp the scale of the Covid pandemic early on, and his mistakes meant that Delhi failed to fulfil its obligation to supply Covid vaccines to the EU. Last year, Germany’s then leader Angela Merkel wondered if Europe had erred in allowing India to become a large pharmaceutical producer. Britain’s prime minister pointedly described India as the world’s pharmacy.
Mr Johnson, who faces political oblivion thanks to his own pandemic mistakes, might envy the ends – if not the means – of Mr Modi’s rule. The Indian prime minister has been in power since 2014. His success is built on an aggressive assault against minorities, with economic policies that favour the rich. Mr Modi’s populist repertoire sees him claiming that the poor are his priority, while doing little to combat inequalities. His appeal endures despite rising unemployment and Covid deaths. Judges rarely confront the government. Civil society opponents are jailed. But Britain is not India. The Indian jurist BR Ambedkar sensed a fatal political flaw in his fellow citizens: the tendency towards hero worship, which he said was “a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship”. In Mr Modi, that prophecy might be fulfilled.
