Indian Supreme Court pushes back against growing authoritarianism

The Indian Supreme Court has delivered a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ruling that the ongoing blocking of the internet in the states of Jammu and Kashmir is unlawful. The block on the internet and on phone communications in these sates was put in place shortly after Modi’s government repealed their autonomous status and was accompanied by curfews and the imprisonment of local political leaders. The states are majority Muslim and have been the subject of a long running territorial dispute with Pakistan as well as secessionist terrorism.

While landline service was slowly restored and SMS blocking stopped 31 December the internet block is ongoing – and is now the longest running in any democracy.

Today the Supreme Court ruled the block violated free speech and gave Modi’s government just seven days to provide a detailed justification, which affected parties can then challenge in court. The court also criticised the government’s widespread of Section 144, a colonial era ordinance used to ban public assemblies. Section 144 was also used on a large scale by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency.

Indeed, the current situation increasingly resembles the Emergency of the 1970s – the last time an Indian government flirted with autocracy. Modi, like Indira Ghandi, is a charismatic and incredibly forceful leader who overwhelmed his own party to remake it in his image. Modi’s initial political success was then turbo-charged by military success during the border clashes with Pakistan February 2019, an admittedly less dramatic event than the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. The perception Modi had successfully defended India’s honour was key in his party, the BJP, unexpectedly winning a thumping majority in the May 2019 elections despite economic headwinds. Now, like Indira, Modi has become increasingly authoritarian in an attempt to reshape India – this time around to suit his Hindu nationalist vision.

To this end Modi’s government not only repealed Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomous status but also pressed ahead with highly controversial citizenship tests and a refugee naturalisation policy in the Citizenship Amendment Act which were seen as discriminating against Muslims. These sparked large protests in December 2019 which have only grown more intense in the face of the violent response by the police and pro-BJP groups.

The violence has continued to spiral. On 5 January masked men shouting Hindu nationalist slogans stormed the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and attacked the students while the police doing nothing to intervene.

The protests are increasingly becoming a general expression of all existing frustrations with the government. While jingoism might have let the government paper over the growing economic difficulties in the May 2019 elections anger over them has only grown since then.

Slowing growth (set to be 5% in 2019/20 fiscal year down from 6.8% in the 2018/19 fiscal year) has seen unemployment reach 6.1%, the highest in 45 years. A drought over the summer of 2019 also hit India’s millions of farmers, already in severe difficulties as shown by the national debate over their high suicide rates, and drove up food prices. A vast strike, which some claimed involved over 250 million people, took place on Wednesday protesting various government policies including proposed privatisation of state companies.

As the protests and irregular violence continues the parallels to disruptions that eventually forced Indira Gandhi from power grow. In this context the Supreme Court’s actions take on a special significance. The courts played a key role in pushing back against Indira during the Emergency. As such many Indian liberals have despaired in the face of the courts’ apparent supine attitude towards Modi’s authoritarian Hindu nationalist agenda. This was epitomised in the controversial ruling authorising the construction of a Hindu temple of the land where a mosque torn down by a Hindu nationalist mob once stood.

This recent ruling on the Jammu and Kashmir internet block suggests the Indian judiciary may be emboldened by ongoing protests to push back against the government.