• India’s General Elections: Manipulations & Pressure Tactics Endanger Democracy & Federalism
  • ISIS: Making Sense of the Moscow Attack
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla Modi:  The Puppet Master & Would-be Strongman   India’s general elections are fast approaching and Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are leaving no stone upturned – i.e. using all sorts of underhand tricks – to manipulate the elections and pressurize the opposition. With their manipulative election tactics and general strategy Modi and his BJP are not only endangering democracy as such, but also the federalism of the union. Even the prestigious The New York Times (NYT) has injected a severe sign of warning. Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar write that political strife is straining the federal formula that holds India together (March) They write convincingly that in his ten years at the helm of office, he has methodically “made it his mission to turn a approaching a monolith dominated by his sweeping Hindu nationalist vision.” Modi and the BJP have relentlessly bent the news media, the national parliament, civil society and sometimes even the courts to their collective will. However, the states of southern India have been a critical group of holdouts, and they also happen to be the engines of its rapid growth. Thus, the future trajectory of the world’s largest democracy [although flawed] and its vital economic development now hinges on the ongoing power struggle between north and south. Modi and the BJP are wielding a very heavy hand in an extraordinary unfair effort to eject the governments of the states they do not control. The Modi government at the centre has been guilty of egregious steps against the letter and spirit of federalism:
  • Delaying federal money for major projects;
  • Jailing or hounding opposition leaders;
  • While shielding anyone who joins the PM’s party;
  • Obstructing the delivery of basic services;
  • Throwing state politics into chaos.
The Modi-engineered multi-sectoral tensions are rupturing India’s delicate formula of power sharing and political competition, the glue holding the country across 28 constituent federal states and 8 union territories [ like the capital territory Delhi ]. Regional leaders describe the actions of the central government, which holds more power than in federal systems like the United States or Germany, as that of a colonial overlord. In the south, the most developed and innovative part of India, officials have even spoken of a “separate nation” for their region if the “patterns of injustice” continue. “It is ultimately self-destructive,” said P. Thiaga Rajan, a cabinet minister in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The regional parties have been scathing. They have repeatedly sued state governors appointed by the central government [ and not elected as the US state governors or the German ‘Minister-Praesidenten'], who hold largely ceremonial roles, over complaints they are stalling the work of elected state governments. “You’re playing with fire,” India’s chief justice, Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud, told the central government after the governor in the opposition-controlled state of Punjab repeatedly prevented legislative work. “Will we continue to be a parliamentary democracy?” In Tamil Nadu, officials said they were struggling to expand a subway in the capital city Chennai, because Modi’s administration was delaying the federal share of the funding. In the south-western state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, India’s financial and film capital, Modi’s lieutenants have splintered the state’s two largest parties through a mixture of pressure from investigative agencies and offers of incentives. Such “smash and grab” politics has paved the way for the BJP to emerge as a kingmaker in a coalition government. In the Delhi capital region, the BJP is hell bent on destroying the small Aam Aadmi Party (the common man’s party) that swept to power promising to improve basic services. The territory’s elected government has been stripped of important powers, and federal agencies have bogged down the top leaders of the party in corruption cases. The party’s deputy leader and a key cabinet minister have been in jail for over a year. Last week, in a dramatic nighttime raid, government agents arrested Arvind Kejriwal, the party’s leader and Delhi’s chief minister, whom they have accused of financial crimes. He is the first serving chief minister to be arrested. A court has now ordered the prominent opposition politician to be remanded in custody until April 15 (AP/Associated Press, April 1). Saurabh Bhardwaj, an Aam Aadmi official in Delhi, said Modi’s intention was clear: to push the country toward one-party rule. By reducing the state governments’ work to such an extent, the impression is created that only the BJP can deliver. “That means the federal structure will collapse”. The biggest federal-state fault line pits the more prosperous south against Modi’s support base in the north. Except for a brief period in the state of Karnataka when the BJP took control by orchestrating defections, the party has been unable to win power in the five southern states (Mashal/Kumar, NYT). Southern officials say that Modi is blocking them for their refusal to embrace his (misguided) brand of politics, including his party’s provoking of Hindu-Muslim tensions and its push to make Hindi – which is not widely spoken in the south – a national language. In pressuring state governments, Modi is exploiting to the hilt structural flaws in India’s Constitution, which created a republic – but a quasi-federal union of states – in 1950. The colonial/imperial British Raj ended in 1947. In the first decades after independence, the Indian National Congress ruled uncontested. Starting in the late 1980s, the decline of Congress and the emergence of regional centres of power ushered in an era of coalition politics. This was also the period when India opened its heavily centralized economy to the free market. As economic growth followed, the distribution of resources was subject to more push and pull between the central and state governments. “The emergence of regional powers made the centre commit to certain principles,” according to Kalaiyarasan A. an assistant professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. “The 1990s was a golden period of federalism.” Today, Modi is attempting to push the clock back and steam roll Indian federalism. He pitches himself as the only driver of development and growth with the BJP as the only party working in sync at both the national and state levels – a so-called “double engine” government. This megalomania  -- in multiple sectors: economic, political, social and cultural --  would certainly lead to the certain demise of Indian federalism as we know it. Russia Faces Jihadist Terrorism Jihadist terrorism faded from international headlines after the fall of ISIS’s caliphate in 2019. The renewed attack on a Moscow-area concert venue raises a number of pertinent questions:
  • What can be said about ISIS-K -- the group that claimed responsibility?
  • Why did the terrorist group attack Russia?
  • Is jihadist terrorism back globally?
The ISIS-K Group The ISIS-K is an ISIS branch, the “K” standing for “Khorasan” – a historical region spanning northeastern Iran, northwestern Afghanistan, and much of Turkmenistan. Today, the group is best known as the ISIS branch in Afghanistan, where it wages a jihadist insurgency against the ruling Taliban. In recent history, as US troops departed Afghanistan in 2021, ISIS-K took advantage of the turmoil to perpetuate a deadly bombing at the crowded and chaotic Kabul airport. In early January this year, ISIS-K struck further afield: US intelligence assessed it to be responsible for two devastating bombings in Iran, Reuters reported. As for ISIS-K’s links to ISIS writ large, terrorism expert Clemson university professor Amira Jadoon said at a panel discussion hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that the links between ISIS and ISIS-K are murky, but there appears to be some degree of organizational and financial connection. ISIS-K recruits from across the region, Jadoon said. Summing up the main argument of a book on ISIS-K she co-authored with Andrew Mines, Jadoon said the group’s “strategic selection of alliances, as well as its rivalries and local groups, have really been central to not just its initial rise but also its ability to overcome its losses and then resurge post-2021.” Why attack Russia? As Colin P. Clarke of The Soufan Center points out in a comprehensive interview with Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal, Moscow has fought against Muslim insurgents in Chechnya and Dagestan, and the Soviet Union waged a nine-year war in Afghanistan. Bloomberg columnist Marc Champion notes that extreme Islamists “make no distinction between Russian and Western colonialism, Putin’s military interventions in Syria and Chechnya are no different from America’s in Iraq or Libya.” So is jihadhist terrorism back? At American Purpose, Jeffrey Gedmin repeats an argument against withdrawing from Afghanistan: By departing, the US left in place conditions for transnational jihadist terrorism to fester. Writing at The Conversation, Jadoon and Sara Harmouch see broader ambitions for ISIS-K: “By targeting a major power like Russia,” they write, the group “aims to project a broader message of intimidation aimed at other states involved in anti-Islamic State group operations and undermine the public’s sense of security…Additionally, operations such as the Moscow attack seek to solidify ISIS-K’s position within the broader Islamic State group network potentially securing more support and resources.” Then again, as The Soufan Center’s Clarke tells FP’s Agrawal, jihadist terrorism never really left. Attacks in Europe generate more headlines, but jihadist groups govern large stretches of territory in West Africa for instance; attacks in the developing world don’t cause the same degree of global alarm. The State of Preparedness Against Similar Attacks? Did the Moscow attack reveal a broad weakness among world powers in the face of jihadist terrorism? Strategic and International Studies senior fellow Daniel Byman told Fareed Zakaria on the CNN’s ‘Global Public Square’: The US warned Russia of danger well ahead of time, which suggests US intelligence has some ability to monitor groups like this successfully (CNN). At the Stimson Center, Arman Mahmoudian speculates that ISIS-K may have targeted Russia and Iran because among world powers, they may appear to have fewer intelligence and security capabilities or, in Russia’s case, to be distracted by another war [in Ukraine]. The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.