Narendra Modi’s invitation by Emmanuel Macron to the July 14 parade, a bad calculation

Emmanuel Macron has decided to roll out the red carpet for the Indian Prime Minister. Narendra Modi will be the guest of honor at the July 14 military parade on the occasion of the national holiday, which celebrates the storming of the Bastille, the victory of the people and their emancipation, freedom, equality and fraternity , so many values ​​weakened in the subcontinent since the Hindu nationalist came to power in 2014. A reality that France has chosen to ignore.

The decision of the President of the Republic takes on a particular tone, because it comes at a time when Indian power has taken a new step in its authoritarian evolution. The main representative of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, was excluded from the competition for the general elections of 2024. He was stripped of his mandate as an MP and declared ineligible for six years, after being sentenced to two years in prison for ironic remarks deemed defamatory, made during the 2019 election campaign against his opponent Narendra Modi.

The heir to the prestigious Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which gave three prime ministers to India, had become embarr***ing for power. He demanded loud and clear from the Indian Prime Minister about his relations with the billionaire Gautam Adani, after the publication of an explosive report, on January 24, by the company Hindenburg Research who accuses the businessman of a gigantic fraud.

“For the first time, the reputation of incorruptibility that Modi enjoys in India is seriously undermined”, believes Achin Vanaik. For this former professor of political science at the University of Delhi, who wrote a column in the American magazine Jacobin, the Modi government and the hindutva forces working for the advent of a Hindu nation “seek to establish a de facto ethnocracy”. ” That, he writes, does not require the complete elimination of liberal democracy and ***ociated rights, which could be counterproductive, since the majority Hindu population must be convinced to welcome this project, but it does require the structures of democracy to be rendered obsolete . »

“Electoral poaching”

The independence of the press and that of the judiciary, two pillars of democracy, have been seriously undermined since 2014, and freedom of expression drastically reduced. Testifying, contradicting, protesting, investigating, tweeting can lead directly to prison in India. The government uses draconian colonial-era laws to arrest intellectuals, journalists and activists.

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