The bickering between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party over mutual attacks from foreign platforms has sharpened after Rahul Gandhi’s remarks in California. This followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swing through Australia after visiting Hiroshima as special invitee to the G-7 summit. As the four-nation Quad summit was shifted to Hiroshima, due to US President Joe Biden’s need to address the budgetary logjam at home, and because Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in India in March, another summit was redundant. However, the much prepared diaspora gathering at Sydney beckoned.
Beginning with the Madison Square Garden jumbo gathering in New York in 2014, PM Modi has made addressing diaspora masses and besmirching his political opponents essential to his foreign visits. The Congress first protested, and then retaliated by having their leader Rahul Gandhi respond in kind when abroad. BJP complains that this belittles India and stains India’s growth story. The counterpoint is what about the prime minister deriding past governments and the principal Opposition party? Is not the Opposition as vital to the democratic structure as the ruling party?
The Indian diaspora falls into three broad categories. One, those who left as indentured labour to Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific islands and neighbouring states pre-1947. In some nations like Mauritius, the leadership has been in the diaspora's hands since the 1980s. In others like Guyana or Trinidad and Tobago etc Indian diaspora leaders have been in power occasionally. In some, like Fiji, the diaspora was disenfranchised and disempowered by migration and divisions. India’s Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, held on January 9, to mark the day Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa, was begun by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government in 2003. It commemorates the diaspora’s success and honours notable members from across all categories.
The second category are the six million plus Indians in the six Gulf nations. Their numbers swelled as the oil wealth grew in those nations from the 1970s. They continue to be Indian citizens and are a crucial funding and vote bank in politics of many states. The third are mainly in the developed Anglophone nations ie Australia, Canada, US and UK. They are the subject of contestation between the BJP and the Opposition.
This is due to many reasons. Firstly, they are affluent, mostly educated and gradually becoming politically conscious. Especially in the US, where lobbying with Congresspersons and Senators on specific issues is standard practice, they are politically useful. For instance, the Jewish lobby mostly protects Israeli interests. The Indian diaspora displayed its muscle when the India-US nuclear deal needed congressional approval during the Manmohan Singh government.
Secondly, BJP encourages the evangelical outreach to this diaspora by its affiliated groups with its Hindutva message. Huge crowds at the prime ministerial rallies are gathered by direct appeal and indirect lobbying by local groups affiliated to the BJP or RSS. High-level partymen go from India to coordinate the preparation. Although the hoopla and crowds, complete with Vedic rituals and sloganeering, create a huge buzz, there are negative implications.
The obvious one is that most attendees are citizens of those nations, having sworn loyalty to them. Having them cheer anti-opposition jibes amounts to interference by foreign subjects in Indian politics. The outreach to the diaspora must stop at cultural bridging and possible economic partnership. It cannot include siding with India’s ruling party against the opposition. Otherwise it is possible for a charismatic and strong western leader to use the diaspora for shaping Indian politics.
Finally, BJP’s domestic majoritarian agenda when exported polarises the diaspora. The religious and ethnic composition of the diaspora,however, in the four Anglophone nations is distinct. The Sikhs for instance are a third of the diaspora in Canada. In Australia the languages spoken are: Punjabi- 239,000; Hindi-197,133; Tamil- 95,000; Gujarati-81,334 etc. The India Australia Diaspora Foundation, which hosted PM Modi in Sydney is mainly led by Gujarati or BJP/RSS affiliated groups. Thus the fawning audience, while giving the appearance of universal adulation for Indian leadership, is in fact a polarised fragment. Though highly condemnable, this creates communal tension. An example are increased attacks on religious places in the last two years, post farmers’ protests. As the Sydney function was being held, in India the women wrestlers supported by farmers’ organisations were protesting over BJP’s reluctance to arrest and prosecute a BJP MP facing charges of sexual abuse. Diaspora from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh would have noticed the paradox.
Traditionally consensus existed that domestic political differences would not be carried abroad. Prime Minister Modi broke it soon after assuming power in 2014. Congress has over the years joined the game. It is good that Prime Minister Narendra Modi abstained from opposition-bashing in Sydney recently. But Rahul Gandhi, a victim in a criminal defamation suit, is unlikely to curb his narrative on India’s democratic recession in a year with crucial state elections, leading upto the Lok Sabha poll.’
KC Singh is former secretary, Ministry of External Affairs
