Photo credit © Chiara Ambrosio Alpa Shah is the award-winning author of Nightmarch. She has written and presented for BBC Radio 4. She was raised in Nairobi and studied at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, where she is now Professor of Anthropology. She will be the next Professor of Social Anthropology at All Souls College, Oxford from October 2024.

‘India is indeed the mother of democracy,’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in March 2023 at ‘The Summit for Democracy’. It was an event hosted by the US State Department to bring together the world’s democratic powers to push for a ‘democratic renewal’ to combat authoritarian trends and safeguard, amongst other things, human rights. India was now being positioned by its leader as not only the world’s largest democracy but also its oldest.

Prime Minister Modi said at the Summit, ‘The idea of elected leaders was a common feature in ancient India, long before the rest of the world. In our ancient epic, Mahabharata, the first duty of citizens is described as choosing their own leader.’ Since his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 2021 in New York, Prime Minister Modi had been on an international mission to displace the claims of the Greek Athenian city-state as the foundation of democracy. Using Hindu sacred texts about kings and princes, he was trying to promote instead the idea of India as not the ‘father’ but the ‘mother’ of democracy.

But there are at least two versions of the events unfolding over the last two decades in the world’s largest democracy. One is promoted; the other is suppressed.

The first version is the one that most people talk about, celebrated by Indians in WhatsApp messages that go viral across the world, and by the many Western politicians, bankers and journalists who talk of this, the twenty-first century, being India’s century. It is the story of the glory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India under his regime, visible in the magnificent welcome he received in the UK in 2015 and in the US four years later. He was the son of a man who served passers-by sweet milky tea from his railway cart, a chai-wallah, as they are known in India. But, by his own proclamations, it is the strength of Indian democracy that enabled him to rise from serving tea to serving his government at its head for more than twenty years – first as chief minister of Gujarat state and then Indian Premier.

The US welcomed Prime Minister Modi, in 2019, with the largest-ever gathering for a foreign political leader in the country. The weather forecast had promised a flood, but the Texan sky was bright and sunny as people inched their way into the NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans American football team, for the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. The crowd waited in anticipation, wrapped in their finest silk sarees, lehengas and suits, many wearing turbans of the Indian flag and Narendra Modi masks and T-shirts. For ninety minutes, they were roused by Bollywood dancers who shook their hips and busts, Gujarati garba performers who clapped and twirled in circles, and yoga artists who posed as downward-facing dogs. As the foreplay ended, the crowd chanted, ‘Modi! Modi! Modi!’ against the beat of deafening drums. Finally, Prime Minister Modi took the stage, hand-in-hand with the US President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Modi said, ‘Mr President, this morning in Houston, you can hear the heartbeat of this great partnership in this celebration of the world’s two largest democracies.’

* * *

In Texas…protesters had gathered for a ‘rally for freedom’ and drove tractor-trailer trucks across Houston to the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. They complained about the increasing discrimination faced by Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Adivasis and Dalits in Modi’s India. The month before, in August 2019, just nine weeks after he was re-elected as prime minister in a landslide victory for the BJP, Narendra Modi had stripped Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, of its partial autonomy after seven decades. He had removed the state’s constitution, turned it from a state into a union territory, which restricted its freedom to make its own laws, and revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that had given special status to the people of Kashmir, including the ability to bar Indians from outside the state from purchasing property or settling there. Many Kashmiris knew that these changes would alter the demographic character and traditions of the Muslim-majority region by allowing non-Kashmiris to buy land there.

But their voices of objection were stifled. Ahead of Prime Minister Modi’s announcement of the changes he was imposing on Kashmir, tens of thousands of security troops were sent to what was already one of the most militarised zones in the world. A total communications blackout cut access to news about what was happening in Kashmir. In the longest internet shutdown in any democracy, internet services were cut for six months, and high-speed mobile internet blocked for one and a half years. Meanwhile, within Kashmir, a curfew was declared, 4,000 people were detained, 200 political leaders, including three former chief ministers, were placed under house arrest. Protesters were fired at by the Indian security forces with metal pellets that, since 2016, had already killed Kashmiris, fully or partially blinded 1,100 people there, and injured many more.

Outside the Houston stadium, protestors said that Modi was trying to commit genocide in Kashmir to enhance settler colonialism, while inside the prime minister declared everything is great in India and laid out his version of history. He said that terrorists and separatists had taken advantage of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir for decades. He said, finally its people would have equal rights to all other Indian citizens and the region could be developed. Dismissing the concerns of the protestors, a Modi fan said on Twitter, ‘dog’s barking’.

Photo credit © Chiara Ambrosio Alpa Shah is the award-winning author of Nightmarch. She has written and presented for BBC Radio 4. She was raised in Nairobi and studied at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, where she is now Professor of Anthropology. She will be the next Professor of Social Anthropology at All Souls College, Oxford from October 2024.

‘India is indeed the mother of democracy,’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in March 2023 at ‘The Summit for Democracy’. It was an event hosted by the US State Department to bring together the world’s democratic powers to push for a ‘democratic renewal’ to combat authoritarian trends and safeguard, amongst other things, human rights. India was now being positioned by its leader as not only the world’s largest democracy but also its oldest.

Prime Minister Modi said at the Summit, ‘The idea of elected leaders was a common feature in ancient India, long before the rest of the world. In our ancient epic, Mahabharata, the first duty of citizens is described as choosing their own leader.’ Since his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 2021 in New York, Prime Minister Modi had been on an international mission to displace the claims of the Greek Athenian city-state as the foundation of democracy. Using Hindu sacred texts about kings and princes, he was trying to promote instead the idea of India as not the ‘father’ but the ‘mother’ of democracy.

But there are at least two versions of the events unfolding over the last two decades in the world’s largest democracy. One is promoted; the other is suppressed.

The first version is the one that most people talk about, celebrated by Indians in WhatsApp messages that go viral across the world, and by the many Western politicians, bankers and journalists who talk of this, the twenty-first century, being India’s century. It is the story of the glory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India under his regime, visible in the magnificent welcome he received in the UK in 2015 and in the US four years later. He was the son of a man who served passers-by sweet milky tea from his railway cart, a chai-wallah, as they are known in India. But, by his own proclamations, it is the strength of Indian democracy that enabled him to rise from serving tea to serving his government at its head for more than twenty years – first as chief minister of Gujarat state and then Indian Premier.

The US welcomed Prime Minister Modi, in 2019, with the largest-ever gathering for a foreign political leader in the country. The weather forecast had promised a flood, but the Texan sky was bright and sunny as people inched their way into the NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans American football team, for the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. The crowd waited in anticipation, wrapped in their finest silk sarees, lehengas and suits, many wearing turbans of the Indian flag and Narendra Modi masks and T-shirts. For ninety minutes, they were roused by Bollywood dancers who shook their hips and busts, Gujarati garba performers who clapped and twirled in circles, and yoga artists who posed as downward-facing dogs. As the foreplay ended, the crowd chanted, ‘Modi! Modi! Modi!’ against the beat of deafening drums. Finally, Prime Minister Modi took the stage, hand-in-hand with the US President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Modi said, ‘Mr President, this morning in Houston, you can hear the heartbeat of this great partnership in this celebration of the world’s two largest democracies.’

* * *

In Texas…protesters had gathered for a ‘rally for freedom’ and drove tractor-trailer trucks across Houston to the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. They complained about the increasing discrimination faced by Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Adivasis and Dalits in Modi’s India. The month before, in August 2019, just nine weeks after he was re-elected as prime minister in a landslide victory for the BJP, Narendra Modi had stripped Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, of its partial autonomy after seven decades. He had removed the state’s constitution, turned it from a state into a union territory, which restricted its freedom to make its own laws, and revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that had given special status to the people of Kashmir, including the ability to bar Indians from outside the state from purchasing property or settling there. Many Kashmiris knew that these changes would alter the demographic character and traditions of the Muslim-majority region by allowing non-Kashmiris to buy land there.

But their voices of objection were stifled. Ahead of Prime Minister Modi’s announcement of the changes he was imposing on Kashmir, tens of thousands of security troops were sent to what was already one of the most militarised zones in the world. A total communications blackout cut access to news about what was happening in Kashmir. In the longest internet shutdown in any democracy, internet services were cut for six months, and high-speed mobile internet blocked for one and a half years. Meanwhile, within Kashmir, a curfew was declared, 4,000 people were detained, 200 political leaders, including three former chief ministers, were placed under house arrest. Protesters were fired at by the Indian security forces with metal pellets that, since 2016, had already killed Kashmiris, fully or partially blinded 1,100 people there, and injured many more.

Outside the Houston stadium, protestors said that Modi was trying to commit genocide in Kashmir to enhance settler colonialism, while inside the prime minister declared everything is great in India and laid out his version of history. He said that terrorists and separatists had taken advantage of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir for decades. He said, finally its people would have equal rights to all other Indian citizens and the region could be developed. Dismissing the concerns of the protestors, a Modi fan said on Twitter, ‘dog’s barking’.