“I am paying the price for telling the truth!” exclaims Rahul Gandhi, the main figure of the Indian opposition. On April 22, under the eye of the cameras, he was forced to leave the official accommodation which had been assigned to him, almost twenty years earlier, in his capacity as the nation’s elected representative, in Lutyens’ Delhi, one of the most beautiful areas of the capital, built during the British era. This framework of the Congress party – a mythical formation founded in 1885, of which he was the president, was expelled from Parliament, where he sat as a deputy, following his conviction, last March, to two years in prison for defamation. His crime? Having mocked Modi’s name.
The episode sent shockwaves through the country. “It is deplorable that in a democracy a questionable defamation case can be extended to such absurd levels that it deprives the parliamentary opposition of a key figure”, denounced The Hindu, the leading English-language daily. The facts date back to the campaign for the 2019 legislative elections. “Why do all thieves have Modi as their surname?” Rahul Gandhi said, referring to a fugitive Indian diamond dealer and businessman, but also to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. A sentence which earned him today, with the approach of the general elections of 2024, to be sentenced to the maximum sentence for defamation by a court in the state of Gujarat, Modi’s electoral stronghold. “This is one of the worst examples of the selective use of a law: the Prime Minister himself authorizes such ironic statements against other politicians”, regrets Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of a biography of Narendra Modi.
Out of the race for the 2024 elections
To return to the hemicycle, the heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has provided India with three prime ministers since independence in 1947, asked the court to suspend his conviction until the end of proceedings call. His request was rejected, presumably making him out of the running for the 2024 elections, his sentence being accompanied by six years of ineligibility. Disturbing detail, the judge who opposed the suspension of the sentence is also the former lawyer of the Minister of the Interior and right arm of Narendra Modi, Amit Shah.
Rahul Gandhi, long considered by the very powerful Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the very powerful formation in power, as a politician without great stature, has beefed up his game in recent months. At 52, he undertook last September a long walk “for the unity of India” of 3500 kilometers, connecting the country from south to north. A journey that allowed him to gain popularity and galvanize the troops within his dormant party. The opponent angered the BJP after denouncing the “attacks” on Indian democracy, during a conference at Cambridge University in late February, when he questioned the links between the Prime Minister and the billionaire Gautam Adani. This meteoric rise from India recently came under fire – and lost billions of dollars – after a report by US firm Hindenburg research accused him of “swindle”.
Was Rahul Gandhi getting too embarrassing? “Government institutions are now used as tools of coercion to scare the entire intelligentsia, from opponents to academics to journalists,” warns Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. Thus, 95% of the cases investigated against politicians by these government agencies in charge of criminal cases target members of the opposition, according to the revelations of the daily The Indian Express. In February, a spokesman for the Congress party was taken off a plane by the police who came to arrest him on the pretext that he too had insulted Narendra Modi. Delhi’s chief executive, opposition member Arvind Kejriwal, is also facing libel suits. He is also in the sights of the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI), the Indian FBI, for a supposed case of corruption: his number 2 was thrown in prison in February.
Padlocked company
Civil society is not spared. In mid-February, the administration raided the BBC offices in Bombay and New Delhi. The tax authorities’ visit came a few weeks after the broadcast in the United Kingdom of a documentary accusing Modi of allowing the anti-Muslim pogroms to take place in Gujarat in 2002, while he was in charge of this western state. Some 2,000 people had died in the massacres. “Before that, several independent Indian publications were the subject of this kind of visits”, underlines Kunal Majumder, representative for India of the Committee to protect journalists. Their common point: to have been critical of the government. As of May 1, 2023, six Indian journalists are languishing in prison, most under a draconian terrorism law, which makes it almost impossible to release on bail before a trial.
Think tanks and NGOs are no exception to the rule. The CBI has called for an investigation against Oxfam for violating the Foreign Funding Act. As for the Center for Policy Research, one of the most prestigious think tanks in the country, it was deprived of foreign funding. Another investigation targets Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), the organization of a prominent lawyer, Ritwick Dutta. LIFE is accused along with the American NGO Earth Justice of trying to obstruct coal mining projects in India through litigation.
“The government wants to set examples to create fear, believes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. Today, everyone thinks twice before saying anything that could be considered problematic.” As the 2024 elections approach, many fear that the repression will intensify.