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India enacts fraught new citizenship law ahead of election
The Indian government implemented a new citizenship law on Monday after over four years of delay that critics say may be used to discriminate against the country’s large Muslim minority.
What’s the new law? The amendment extends Indian citizenship to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians who moved to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh before Dec. 31, 2014.
Supporters say the law is meant to help members of those faiths escape persecution in their countries of origin, but critics worry it is one step of a two-part plan. In combination with a proposed national register of citizens, they say this law could be used to render Muslims stateless. When the law was first passed in 2019, it triggered months of protests and riots that left dozens dead and hundreds injured, which is why the government waited years to implement it.
Why now? Prime Minister Narendra Modi has never looked stronger, and he’s aiming to fire up Hindu nationalist sentiment ahead of elections this spring. Modi is expected to win comfortably, but he’s aiming to run up his party’s vote count as high as possible and solidify its long-term prospects.
To that end, earlier this year he opened a controversial Hindu temple on the grounds of a former mosque in a massive symbolic victory, which had been the site of violent confrontation for over a century. And to woo less spiritually motivated voters, Modi announced he was spending $15 billion on infrastructure in the south and east, where he hopes to make inroads into opposition strongholds.India cracks down on anonymous donations before elections
The Supreme Court in India, the country with the most expensive elections in the world, has outlawed anonymous political donations ahead of national elections this spring.
The ruling, which dropped on Thursday, strikes down the electoral bond scheme concocted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. It allowed individuals and companies to send unlimited donations to political parties without the need to disclose their identity.
The ruling was praised by every political party besides the BJP, which received 85% of all donations and 90% of corporate donations in 2023.
Many criticize the decision as coming too late. The BJP has already amassed an extraordinary stockpile of anonymous donations – and it’s expected to maintain its majority because of its deep pockets and Modi’s strong approval ratings.
But the ruling brings political corruption to the forefront of the conversation in a country where voter bribery is common, and it could make future elections more fair and transparent.
Modi and the Maldives “beach off”
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new job is beach, and the Maldives aren’t having it.
In an attempt to boost tourism to Indian beaches, Modi posted some snaps of himself enjoying a vacation on Lakshadweep, an island chain in the Indian Ocean. Seventy nautical miles to the South, the Maldives – where Indian tourists comprise up to 11% of tourism revenue – took great offense, calling Modi ” a “terrorist” and a “puppet of Israel.”
A #boycottmaldives campaign flared up in response, with Modi’s cult following posting screenshots of their canceled trips to the island nation. Meanwhile, government officials, Bollywood stars, and cricketers have urged Indians to join Modi for a snorkel (with a life jacket on, of course) in Lakshadweep.
The Barbie-worthy “beach off” comes at a contentious time. The two nations are strategic allies, but their relationship is strained by the new pro-China Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu tilting the country away from New Delhi and toward Beijing.Memo shows Modi government planned ‘crackdown’
The memo, which India says is not real, did not direct consular officials to carry out assassinations, but it does show the government of Narendra Modi was urging “concrete measures” be taken by officials “to hold the suspects accountable.” It also includes a list of Sikh dissidents under investigation – and Canadian activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar is on it.
He was gunned down outside his gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18.
The memo instructs officials at its consulates to cooperate with Indian intelligence agencies to act against Sikh activists. A US indictment unsealed last month linked murder plots in both Canada and the United States to an unnamed Indian government official.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September that Canadian intelligence officials suspected India was behind Nijjar’s murder, prompting furious denials from Modi’s government. On Tuesday, Trudeau said that he decided to publicly reveal Canada’s suspicions “to put a chill” on relations between the two countries after India failed to cooperate. Canada "needed a further level of deterrence, perhaps of saying publicly and loudly that we know, or we have credible reasons to believe, that the Indian government was behind this,” he explained.
In response to Trudeau’s September allegation, India angrily expelled 41 Canadian diplomats, but after the Americans unsealed the indictment linking India to the murder plots, India announced it would investigate the matter. FBI director Christopher Wray is in India this week to try to take “a step towards deepening cooperation.”
The Americans are said to be hoping that India will renounce the practice of carrying out assassinations in friendly countries.
Victories in state elections put Modi in commanding position for 2024
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP Party wrested control of the states of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the opposition Congress Party and held onto power in Madhya Pradesh in closely watched local elections over the weekend. The results bode well for Modi's chances of winning a third term as PM in national polls next year.
Modi’s tactic of campaigning personally for his party largely paid off, and why wouldn’t it? He is one of the most popular leaders in the world, with approval ratings well above 70%. His victory in next year's general election (as always, the largest democratic exercise in world history) is hardly in doubt.
India is now the fastest-growing major economy and its power on the international stage has never been greater — particularly as New Delhi positions itself simultaneously as both a leader of the Global South while also a partner to the US in Washington’s rivalry with a rising China. But the BJP’s better-than-expected performance is mainly a reflection of Modi’s successes at home.
Over the past nine years, Modi’s government has pushed through important big-picture economic reforms like reducing the tax burden and streamlining foreign investment, while also delivering practical improvements that have improved life for hundreds of millions of ordinary Indians, such as mass toilet installation and rural electrification. How do you not vote for the guy who made sure your kid has light to study by at night and isn’t missing school because of illnesses caused by poor sanitation?
Criticism from local activists and international watchdogs of Modi’s mistreatment of Muslims and other non-Hindu minorities simply hasn’t dented his popularity.
While Modi’s BJP isn’t a lock everywhere in India — Congress won the state of Telangana and a regional party won in Mizoram — the overall picture for Modi could hardly be better.
Biden wants to take away Modi’s license to kill
Before Narendra Modi became prime minister, he said India should be quicker to kill terrorists outside its borders – carrying out extrajudicial assassinations on foreign soil, giving his spies the license to kill, James Bond-style.
An indictment unsealed in New York on Wednesday suggests that Modi did do that, and then angrily denied responsibility for an assassination in Canada.
Modi is popular enough in India that this should not dent his popularity or threaten his reelection bid next spring, but the news raises challenges for him internationally, not least with Canada, whose leader has been vindicated.
The US indictment alleges that on June 9 an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, arranged for a payment of $15,000 to an American hitman to carry out a $100,000 murder contract on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist leader who lives in the United States. The problem for Gupta, and Modi, is that the “hitman” was an undercover officer with the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
Eight days later, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh separatist leader, called Pannun, who was his lawyer, to tell him that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had just warned him his life was in danger. The next day, Nijjar was gunned down by a team of killers outside his gurdwara in Surrey, B.C. That night, the indictment says, Gupta sent a video of Nijjar’s bullet-riddled corpse to the fake hitman he had hired.
The next day, he messaged again — “we have so many targets” — and urged him to take out Pannun.
Gupta was arrested in the Czech Republic later in June on murder-for-hire charges.
The indictment alleges an Indian government official — presumably a senior spy — “directed the assassination plot from India” and that three more assassinations were planned in Canada.
This indictment makes everything that India has said since look ridiculous. When Justin Trudeau announced in September that Canada suspected Indian involvement in Nijjar’s death, Modi’s government responded with furious denials and expelled 41 Canadian diplomats. India’s media attacked Trudeau, even accusing him of being coked out in New Delhi for the G20 meeting, an entirely made-up allegation that nonetheless went viral around the world.
Joe Biden’s government was put in an awkward position by Trudeau’s accusation. Washington confirmed that it had intel that seemed to back Trudeau’s claim but also sought to calm tensions between its closest ally and India, whose cooperation it needs in containing China.
Behind the scenes, the Americans were exasperated, says Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Eurasia Group’s practice head for South Asia, who lives in New Delhi. “I’ve heard that the Americans have yelled at both sides and said the world has some serious problems going on right now. This is just bullshit. Let’s get this off the table very quickly.”
But India kept applying pressure to Canada, motivated by long-standing resentment of Canadian inaction on Sikh separatism.
Both Nijjar and Pannun had been helping organize a diaspora referendum calling for the creation of “Khalistan,” a majority Sikh state in northern India, which enrages the Indian government. There is little support for that idea in India, but it lives on in the hearts of Sikhs around the world, and India believes Canadian Sikhs finance terrorist attacks in India.
A Canadian inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing, which killed 329 people, blamed poor intelligence and policing for failing to prevent it, and nobody was ever convicted. India regularly complains that Canada does not do enough to crack down on separatists, alleging, for instance, that Nijjar was running a terrorist training camp. They accuse the Liberals of failing to crack down because they need Sikh votes.
India has legitimate complaints, but it now seems clear that Trudeau was entirely right and Modi entirely wrong about who was responsible for killing Nijjar.
It is easy to understand Trudeau’s moves now. He came under heavy criticism for taking the impolitic position he did, instead of trying to resolve the matter quietly, but he knew all along he would be vindicated. It’s much harder to understand Modi’s moves, especially after Gupta was arrested, and after both Trudeau and Biden raised this issue with him at the G20 meeting in September. How did he think this would end?
Biden has invested a lot of time and energy in wooing Modi, cultivating him as a crucial Asian ally in the soft-power struggle with a rising China. Wednesday’s news will inevitably raise questions about how useful an ally he can really be.
But India has now promised to investigate the matter. “The Biden administration is pushing the Indian government to make a commitment not to carry out such targeted killing on ‘friendly soil’ and against citizens of friendly countries,” says Chaudhuri.
“I suspect they have already told the Indians in no uncertain terms that this cannot happen again,” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's global macro-geopolitics practice. “But Washington needs New Delhi on a range of high-priority issues, and New Delhi knows that.”
Despite this ugly business, the Americans have continued to engage on all fronts and will keep doing so. The same day the indictment came down, NASA announced it would train an Indian astronaut.
Biden is signaling that India and the United States need one another so much that the relationship will continue to deepen, whether or not Modi reins in his bumbling assassins.
Trudeau’s assassination allegations put Canada’s allies in a bind
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the House of Commons there were “credible allegations” that India was involved in the killing of Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June. The immediate fallout was swift: Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat; India, which denied the allegations, retaliated by doing the same.
But Canada’s closest allies aren’t exactly rushing to its defense. There is speculation that American intelligence contributed to Canada’s allegations, but while the Biden administration says it is “deeply concerned” about the case and wants the perpetrators to be punished, it pointedly avoided criticizing India or PM Narendra Modi. The other Five Eyes allies are showing similar caution, The U.K. in particular emphasized that its ongoing trade talks with India will proceed.
The reality, of course, is that broader geopolitical interests are shaping the response: no one wants to antagonize India at a time when New Delhi is seen as a crucial counterweight to China. Realism is alive and well in international relations!
Indo-Canadian ties, meanwhile, have been chilly for years despite some recent attempts to warm things up. Although the trade relationship has been growing, and India is the top source of Canadian immigrants (and students), New Delhi has long contended that Canada’s large Sikh diaspora community harbours separatists and terrorists. Canada, for its part, has criticized Modi’s spotty human rights record, and is including India in its new inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian politics. A 2022 effort by Trudeau to advance an Indo-Pacific strategy, meanwhile, has mostly stalled – the interaction between Trudeau and Modi at the G20 in India earlier this month was visibly hostile. Things certainly won’t improve after the Nijjar accusations.
We’re watching to see how the Nijjar investigation and foreign interference probe unfold, and how Canada’s allies react as new and potentially more incriminating details emerge in the days and weeks to come.
Canada accuses India of assassination
In a bombshell accusation on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told lawmakers that India was responsible for the murder of a Sikh community leader in British Columbia in June.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down in his car near a Sikh temple, was a Canadian citizen.
The accusation is a bombshell. “This is like if the Saudis had killed [Jamal] Khashoggi in New York,” one former adviser to Trudeau’s government told us.
Sikhs are a religious minority that make up less than 2% of the Indian population. A militant wing of the community has long agitated for the creation of a Sikh state called Khalistan. In 1984 Sikh bodyguards assassinated India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Nijjar, a supporter of the Khalistan movement, was accused by New Delhi of involvement in terrorist acts in India.
Canada is home to the largest Sikh community outside of India. Barely a week ago, Narendra Modi scolded Trudeau about anti-India protests by Canadian Sikhs. The Canadian prime minister clapped back that his government respects “freedom of expression” in a veiled rebuke of Modi’s own human rights record. Trudeau has also included India in a broader investigation of foreign meddling in Canada’s elections.
The revelation about the Nijjar killing comes at a time of rapidly worsening relations between Canada and India. Trudeau had reportedly raised the issue with Modi at last week’s G20 summit. Whatever answer he got in private was evidently unsatisfactory, and he decided to go public.
All of this puts the US in a tough spot: Washington has been cultivating India as a much-needed partner against China. But New Delhi has now allegedly murdered a Canadian citizen in Canada, one of the US’s closest allies. It’s a staggering violation of international law and norms, especially between two democracies. The Biden ardministration now has some tough choices to make.