 From The Conversation, this is Don't Call Me Resilient. I'm Vanita Srivasthava. I think it's important to think about the South Asian diaspora as being energetic, complex, multilingual, multi-regional and multi-generational. And I think that's the most exciting thing for me right now. I look around and I see a lot of people who are invested in thinking about how do we end inequality? And Modi represents the worst avatar of inequality that we have. And I think people care about that. Later this month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be making his first official state visit to the United States. And if his visits to Australia last month, to Canada in 2015 and to Texas in 2019 are any indication, he'll be given a rock star welcome. Millions around the world in different time zones are with us today. They are witnessing history in the making. U.S. President Joe Biden has already joked that he wants Modi's autograph because so many people want to see him while he's in the United States. Of course, Modi has his critics too, who point to the populist leaders' far-right policies and human rights abuses. Still, Modi, leader of the world's largest democracy, remains one of the world's most popular leaders, not just at home, but among the tens of millions who make up the global South Asian diaspora. Today we're asking just how important that diaspora is, just how much overseas support is contributing to Modi's popularity and success. And what kind of an impact could a progressive element of that diaspora have on Indian politics? I'm excited to have Anjali Arandekar today on the pod to help us sift through all of this. She is a professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and she is also the founding co-director of the University Center for South Asian Studies. Great to have you here, Anjali, today. Jai Bhim, Salam and Namaskar to you and all your listeners. Whenever Modi comes to North America, he receives a rock star welcome. What are some of the reasons for his popularity here? That's a difficult question to answer because a straightforward answer would be because he has a lot of supporters, the Bharati Ajanta Party or the BJP, as it is shortly known, which is underwritten by a very broad organization, the RSS, which is a united network of organizations that stretches across the globe, all provide the infrastructure for Modi's popularity. Just to simply say he's popular because the diaspora is more Hindu right-leaning, would not be quite accurate. I think one of the reasons for Modi's popularity is, of course, that we have in the United States 5.4 million and growing South Asians living in the diaspora, mostly Indians. And I say South Asia because as we move forward, we should also address the fact that Modi's popularity addresses Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan because there are South Asians who are Hindu from all of those regions as well. So one of the reasons for his popularity is that without a robust relationship with India, the world cannot move forward environmentally, economically, socially in terms of all kinds of issues. And as you said, the kind of mantra that we use all the time is India is the world's largest democracy. And I would say, yes, it is India's largest democracy, but it is a democracy that's increasingly divided and increasingly verging towards an authoritarianism. So Modi's popularity is buttressed by the number of South Asians we have in the United States about the dissemination of a particular kind of information, what we call in shorthand in South Asia, WhatsApp University, where information and news is disseminated through WhatsApps, where facts are refigured. Social engineering is the sujet du jour. If only people listened to more conversations like this one, I could guarantee you that Modi's popularity would be vastly diminished. But there is no doubt that he is very popular both in India and here. And it's about the way the infrastructure of the BJP and the RSS has constructed this myth of Modi as the savior of India, as someone who's going to bring India into the modern future, all of which is currently under enormous siege. You mentioned that he is seen as the leader who's the harbinger of the future. He's projected as someone as a harbinger of the future because he's seen as someone who is modernizing India, its railways, its airports, its economy. I say those three things because those three things have been under enormous siege. If your listeners have been watching the news, you just saw the disaster in Odisha of the kind of excruciating loss of life, which was, of course, largely attributed to the kind of neglect of the central government of India's railway system, which is hugely precarious and vulnerable because it was constructed during the 19th century. And Modi's modernization has focused on building new stations, building new airports, but not on taking care of the structures that still exist. So on the one hand, we have images of new airports, which nobody is flying into as a sign of modernization. And then we have airports where people are standing in lines for five hours to get through immigration, where the services and facilities are awful that we're not thinking about. On the one hand, there is the kind of image of Modi as growing the economy, growing infrastructure. And on the other hand, the reality on the ground is that none of it is true. There is more poverty in India now, there is more death and devastation in India now, women's rights have eroded, the rights of minorities, particularly if you are a Muslim or a Bahujan or a Dalit. I am Bahujan myself and I am queer and these are not conditions of safety right now in India. And it is not an exaggeration. Every single day one lower caste person, particularly a lower caste woman is either murdered or sexually assaulted. Those are not statistics that one can ignore. So yes, there is the fantasy of modernization and it can be witnessed in slogans such as Swachh Bharat, which is a phrase that means clean India. One of the challenges for anyone growing up with the Global South is of course sanitation, clean water. And this I applaud, right? The ambition is very seductive. Who doesn't want clean India? Who doesn't want a more environmentally sustainable India? But all of that is a facade. You see signs everywhere, but are there more public toilets for women in India? I would say no. Is the environment cleaner? No. So there are all of these kind of slogans which are very seductive and very appealing. So at this point you have even economists who have tried to shy away from these conversations being too political, stepping in and saying, we really need to turn around. The Indian rupee is at its lowest in relationship to the US dollar than it has been in a very long time. These are not signs of success. So the question for you and me and your listeners is if we know all this, there is massive information evidence of his failures. So why is he still successful? Why is he still winning? And I think that is because he's created an environment of fear and an environment of precarity in that people who speak up are getting increasingly incarcerated. I have many academic friends who are incarcerated. Artists are unable to speak because the exhibitions are being toned down. Movies are being censored. So if you have an entire environment of surveillance, it's very difficult to push back and say, I dissent. I have the privilege and liberty of saying what I do because I do not live in India anymore and my parents have passed away. And that is a real fact because many people who live in the diaspora like me who work in South Asia have to be very careful about what we say because we can be denied entry back home. And for many years I was more caged. I was more careful because I wanted to be able to go home for my research but also more to see my family. And I want to remind your listeners that non-action doesn't always mean you don't care. It simply means that we have restrictions to how we participate. And I want to encourage them to think of avenues in which we can participate because Hindutva is not an Indian project. It is now a global project. It is here on our shores. It is in our homes. It is in the books we read. It is in the re-manufacturing of Indian history. And it is there in the fact that Joe Biden is applauding Modi for his success in India when just in 2005 many of us rallied to deny Narendra Modi a visa precisely for human rights violations. When you talk about the challenges to people speaking out the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation here in Canada spoke to 18 Canadian academics. All of them who have spoken out against Modi or Hindu nationalist led project have been harassed or threatened by those who support Hindu nationalism and those harassments range from like hundreds of abusive emails to death and rape threats. So I'm glad that you said that. Why is the diaspora so important do you think to somebody like Modi? There are three, I would say three broad reasons. The first reason is material and numerical. Meaning as you said between Canada and the US there is a substantial diaspora numerically which cannot be ignored as an electoral project as a space of remittances as a space of alliances. The second reason which to me is the most important one is almost 20% of Narendra Modi's digital campaign funds came from the diaspora. Now I don't know how many of you listeners are aware but one of the kind of strengths of Modi's campaign in the last elections and the elections that are coming up in 2024 which is just around the corner has been his ability to mobilize the digital platform to get youth involved in his campaign and it is important to note that when we see Hindutva we are not talking about people who are out of touch a certain age group. The alarming feature of the elections has been how many urban youth in India have voted for Narendra Modi. So we've got to think about how is he reaching them what is important about them and the material contributions of these campaigns is super important and cannot be ignored. So I think that's the second reason. The third reason of why the diaspora is important is the global supply chain. What the pandemic did because of the way supply chains broke down and suddenly people realized oh my god that little object I bought from Amazon was actually made in India that moved through China and then got on a ship. These are supply chains that became super visible in China which in my mind have always been important players but have become formidable. So you can no longer do environmental change without them having a buy-in. You can no longer make any inroads into broader political issues if you think about what's going on in Ukraine India has remained on the fence for many reasons which I don't want to bore your listeners with but it's a very important stance because India's refusal to take a stance makes it very politically for other actors to weigh in. So there are masses of global factors at play there are material factors at play and also because Narendra Modi's multiple visits to the US are evidence of why he needs to garner that kind of popularity because it translates into financial support for his campaign. It's also important to note that his last visits were not state visits so even though he has been the Prime Minister for a while, this is the first visit he is making as a representative of a sovereign state. Also important is that we have a Vice President who is of South Asian origin, Kamala Harris who is both Black and South Asian and in the past has made critical comments about Narendra Modi so it'll be interesting to see as this moves forward whether she will be pushed on that question further. If it's an official state visit then she's not allowed to say those. She won't be allowed to say it but thank God for journalists and media we have ample evidence where she has made clear statements I'm sure they will skirt around the issue but it is important for that to be on the record. At this point all we can do is record and remind and hope something changes through that process. Because we're talking about the financial support and the idea of remittances 23% of remittances that go to India are from the United States and India is the largest idea of remittances globally but legally the idea of remittance is going to political campaigns in India it's not legal correct? So I want to distinguish between remittances that are sent for family support for education and the different kind of structuring of capital through which money is funneled into the campaign for the BJP so if you're an overseas citizen of India like I am you're allowed to have a bank account where you can have money in a way that someone I don't know if your listeners how many know the distinctions but overseas citizen of India basically gives you most rights except the right to vote and currently there is a petition going on in the Indian diaspora here in the United States for the overseas community to have legal representation in parliament that we should actually have which is I doubt whether it will happen but it is definitely something that is worth noting so when you are an overseas citizen of India there are different capital parts through which you can funnel money but of course this is the global south there are ways of getting resources through both above board and under board and in South Asia and India we have a term called jogard jogard basically means you adjust you make do you figure out a way to make it work and politics is jogard right and it is both our strength in that we adjust to situations of peril but it is also a way in which as anyone who has been to India why the bureaucracy is such a nightmare because there is always some jogard the government is also using this idea of foreign money to monitor organizations like amnesty international and other non profit organizations that no longer have a footprint in India because their foreign resources are being judged as coming from corrupt influential foreign organizations like the open society which the BJP loves to dump on like the BBC for example as soon as the documentary about Modi came out the BBC offices in Delhi were ransacked and now they are going through a tax evaluation and are being accused of tax fraud so of course there is money but the question is which money is allowed to go through which money isn't and it is significant that organizations that work on human rights are the organizations that increasingly under peril and can no longer get money from foundations that are based in the global north you are telling us that part of the reason Modi is so popular both in India and here but here in North America is because of this infrastructure that exists and this messaging so part of that messaging that I understand is this idea and I think you alluded to it when you talked about the open society and the BBC but this idea that he stands up to like western bullying or that it is like finally we are letting go of our colonial past or any of those kinds of cultural ideas a lot of people grab on to and I want to unpack that a tiny bit that is a terrific question and in some ways it is a red herring not your question but that invocation of the west as the corruptive form and the rest as being the kind of vigilant dissenting body I think one of the things that I am a historian so I have to remind viewers of this is that the rise of Modi is concurrent with the rise of authoritarianism across the world right so we can't imagine Modi as in isolation we have the Philippines now has a different president but Duterte who was the president of the Philippines was just as bad Bolsonaro in Brazil the canvas across the world particularly Imran Khan in South Asia so this is not a new phenomenon right the kind of script to justify the rise of authoritarianism shifts yes for a long time it was that Modi will with his nativism with his vigilant Bellicose masculine nativism with his celibate it's very important that Narendra Modi gave up his wife and has devoted his life to the country this is all a version of Bellicose masculinity that needs a story to make it seem even more seductive the idea of standing up the David and Goliath standing up to the west is certainly one but it's not working even for the BJP anymore and a terrific example of where it's both working and not working is something that is very dear to me which is the question of same sex rights so for example the BJP for a very long time when I say BJP it's a shorthand for the ruling party so for the longest time the BJP was very much against rights and recognition for the LGBTI and growing community section 377 which I have written about a lot which criminalized same sex behavior primarily sodomy was on the books and after a lot of back and forth the law was finally now what we learned during that was that the BJP on the one hand was very much homosexuality is a western import but on the other hand what they also realized that the world was changing and the demographic was changing Arnold Schwarzenegger who was a governor of the wonderful state of California is a great example he was socially progressive I don't know what that means but basically it means he was down with the queers but he was a horrible conservative and he came to social policy so in some ways I think the BJP had to recycle and refurbish so you had really right wing hard right people from the BJP now sexuality is part of our culture if you read our holy texts etc so you have to think what happened because we have on record as a queer person growing up in India and having moved here there was no doubt that there was homophobia in a very dated way so what happened is that they realized that if they did not open up their doors to that kind of logic they would lose money they would have sanctions they would appear as economically as corporations are invested in public images as well you could see what is happening in Uganda right now with the ferocious backlash against homosexuality and what is the first thing that happens companies say look we are not going to invest you have horrific laws so the BJP understands I don't think it is because their views changed they understood but now we are in 2020-23 where the queer community is asking for same sex marriage to go back again because obviously same sex marriage is less about marriage it is about the reworking of the family form it is about saying the family is no longer the Hindu family it is not the heterosexual family it is different and that has really put them in a panic and say look we are fine with the queers but you have to do it in your bedrooms you can't take it out so I think this is where the kind of story of the west is awful because economics intervenes so I don't think the BJP has actually changed any of his ideas if we look at the statistics the violence against queer people queer youth, trans youth, trans folks has not diminished even though we have more recognition now so socially things haven't quite changed that much even though legally they may have so I think there is going to be more of this especially when it comes to women's rights and of course the rights of Muslims and lower caste people it is impossible to be safe as a Muslim in India if you have BJP leaders openly saying in rallies take out your weapons and go kill Muslims and this any one of your listeners can just google it it is available freely this is not censored speech there is an invitation to go kill, commit, murder in the name of Hindutva so caste and religion continue to be the most divisive corrosive forces and the BJP cannot cover them up anymore and I think this is where we are seeing the slight change in the recent victory in the state of Karnataka which is in southern India is a very important sign because it's a break the dams have not opened but there is a break in the kind of story that has worked for so long and the recent visit of Rahul Gandhi to the United States who is of course the head of the opposition signaled that a kind of victory talking about Rahul Gandhi you recently hosted a discussion in California with the former opposition leader he was sentenced to two years in jail for comments that he made a criticizing Modi so let's talk about what Rahul Gandhi who's in their Gandhi's grandson and the former opposition leader what was he doing here Rahul Gandhi just completed a very successful journey which was called the Bharat Jodo Yatra which basically would translate to uniting India through walking but that sounds very unpoetic the phrase is actually much more poetic but it's about bringing people together through a journey across the country and of course this is a very Gandhian Nehruvian project and despite much of our suspicion and skepticism the Bharat Jodo Yatra was a success he walked from Kanyakumari to Kashmir which is an enormous length of space over a period of six months and as a result talked to people and of course his PR machinery did a wonderful job of explaining of showing us videos and a lot of people from the left walked with him as well which is very significant and I would be one of them I did not walk with them but I have had enormous skepticism about Rahul Gandhi as a dynastic figure as someone who's not equipped to be a politician and I still have that skepticism but I would like to bring out another version of India which is of course for many still something we remember and we aspire to the conversation I held with him was focused on justice and democratic futures and it was a way to get him to theorize explain to the people in the diaspora who were there about what vision of India can he offer that can rouse rally but also that can become a political reality unless it translates like totally nothing of this matters and I also wanted to hear a little bit more about what he thinks the diaspora can do so as you were saying before I get about two emails every day for the last I would say three years from some RSS supporter about my being treated to the Indian nation about murdering and raping me and my family etc and also invitations to join their party to start student organizations but I have as yet never received anything from the Congress I don't mean the bad stuff but even an invitation so there's a complete lack of organization they do not have the infrastructure that the BJP has here and I think this was in recognition because he has a lot of young people in India 50s as young so I am a young person a lot of young people who are managing him right now and I think that was an effort to do that I don't know how much difference it will make but there is certainly a lot of goodwill that he has right now on his credit because of this Jodo diaspora in India which we have been dying to see which is where Muslims, Dalits queer people, trans people are walking together and I know it sounds like a terrible old fashioned Benetton ad but for many of us the sad part is Indian politics is full of criminals and rapists and awful people so Raul Gandhi despite his dynastic origins besides his upper class access provided a sliver of possibility when is the last time you heard an Indian politician speak about love and again I have to underscore that I remain enormously skeptical but what I was taken by was when I asked him I said what will you do if an RSS man comes up to you during the diaspora what did you do and he said I looked at him and I said I love you and he said I did it because I wanted to disarm him with the fact that I wasn't going to respond hate with hate now again all of this sounds wonderful for now but it will not guarantee or in fact I don't think the BJP will lose in 2024 but at least we are seeing some signs of oppositional unity which we haven't for a while so that's where I feel like Raul Gandhi is not the solution at all but at least he offers up a possibility of another version of India which we are so desperate to see in some ways you're saying that this is the beginning of the understanding that the South Asian diaspora does and could have some impact on politics. The diaspora has been super active for a long time and often times we forget so Raul Gandhi's visit is great but I feel like we have been organizing particularly around caste discrimination which has been an issue for example the Toronto School District caste discrimination was recognized as a protected category by the California Senate which are enormous and this happened because young people in the diaspora understand inequality to be not a place of possibility and for your listeners who don't know what caste is or need a better understanding of caste I will quote Dr. Babasai Bambedkar who is the person who wrote the constitution, Indian constitution and was important for galvanizing lower caste people who we refer to as Dalit Dr. Bambedkar described caste as both the segregation of labor and the segregation of laborers meaning that caste is a system of social stratification it's a hierarchy that creates a difference not in terms of the work that people do but also in terms of how people are regarded so for example manual scavenging which is not something we see in the United States is still undertaken 80% by people from lower caste that people who take out your hands and throw it away with their hands who go into drain holes and clean them out with their hands these are communities that continue to service and they are usually the most caste oppressed communities but I want to signal our strengths in the diaspora the kind of global expansion of awareness around questions of caste so for example Isabel Wilkeson who wrote this book called Caste and its Discontents it was less about India but mainly about the moment in which black history and anti-cast history converges in their understanding of difference and hierarchy as this very kind of strangle holding place that needs to be taken down so I think it's important to think about the South Asian diaspora as being energetic, complex multilingual, multi-regional and multi-generational and I think that's the most exciting thing for me right now I look around and I see a lot of people who are invested in thinking about how do we end inequality and Modi represents the worst avatar of inequality that we have and I think people care about that the globalization of queerness which has its problems has also had its strengths in that people who are speaking from one part of India where perhaps there is no other queer people can reach out to someone here in the United States through internet or social platforms etc so I think the diaspora is not a unified thing it never was it's not like suddenly we're ready to fight and we've always been ready to fight but I think economics, our settlement, our awareness the presence of people like you and me more brown faces in the media in politics, in activism has changed things right and we have South Asian progressive politicians and we have South Asian awful politicians like Nikki Haley who is running for president right so it's good there is diversity, we need diversity so we can't be pigeonholed so I think this is a moment of great possibility for us and I think the fact that we wield electoral influence both here and in India matters in what I read so much about in mainstream media anyways is that Modi's been called India's Trump and that there are a lot of South Asians in the diaspora that supported Trump and continue to mention Nikki Haley and continue to support some of his legacy ideas but what do you think about that this idea of the Trump impact on Hindus for Trump and this idea of the comparison of Hindutva to America's far right I think the comparison is valid but I think the comparison should be reversed I would say it's the Modi impact on Trump the comparison is but it is also skewed again by questions of caste right the kind of infrastructure of right wing organization in the United States is organized around immigration around race around gender in a very different way than it is organized in South Asia and in India in particular where questions of communalism and caste make a big difference so for example even though Trump probably thought it he never actually said Muslims need to be killed Modi's army can say Muslims need to be killed or love Jihad Muslim men are going out and recruiting Hindu women so that they can breed more Muslims so there is I think the scale of the right wing craziness needs to be understood I could never say any of this in India right now without being aware of the consequences that I could experience whereas in the United States the scale is vastly different and this is the one thing I would invite listeners to really meditate on that yes we see violence we are seeing awful stuff happening in North America and it is not to say that the North America is a bastion of human rights it is not Canada has a lot of problems we'll need another talk show for that but in India the scale is very different because of the economic disparity the access people have to rights and representation Thank you so much Anjali it's really wonderful to speak with you It was my pleasure and I look forward to many more conversations That's it for this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient I don't know about you but I learned so much about the South Asian Diaspora and Indian politics from Anjali If you want to read more about some of the issues we talked about today there are some links in the show notes on theconversation.com Come find us on Instagram at Don't Call Me Resilient podcast or find me on Twitter at writevenita That's W-R-I-T-E-V-I-N-I-T-A If you like what you heard today great news because we'll be back next week In the meantime make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss an episode Please consider sharing this pod with a friend or a family member or drop a review on whatever podcast app you use Finally, if you have ideas about news stories that you'd love to hear us cover we'd love to hear from you email us at dcmr at theconversation.com Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada This podcast was produced in partnership with the Journalism Innovation Lab The lab is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada The series is produced and hosted by me Vinitha Srivastava Vokey Sai Si is our producer Oli Nicholas is our assistant producer and student journalist Jennifer Morose is our consulting producer Our audio editor is Remitula Shake Ataka Kaki is our audience development and digital innovation consultant And Scott White is the CEO of The Conversation Canada And if you're wondering who wrote and performed the music we use on the pod that's the amazing Baki Bee Breathe The track is called Something in the Water