Southeast Asia: third term for Modi would be a double-edged sword for India, while Pakistan seeks coalition after vote

Rebecca Root, IBA Southeast Asia Correspondent Friday 1 March 2024

India will head to the polls in April and May in what’s expected to be a victory for incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But there’s some dispute over what this will mean for human rights and the rule of law in a country of over 1.4 billion people.

‘The good side is that [he brings] a lot of stability. He’s able to pass whatever legislation he’s able to bring in’, says Satyajit Gupta, former Secretary of the IBA Asia Pacific Regional Forum. But Modi is criticised, Gupta explains, for failing to look after the interests of minorities and protect the rule of law.

With little in the way of opposition, the government isn’t pushed hard on any contentious issues, Gupta says. Other parties, such as the Indian National Congress and the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance – a coalition of over 20 opposition groups – lack the support needed to generate much of a threat to the BJP. Modi’s party won state elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in 2023 – a preview, perhaps, of the 2024 poll.

Ramesh Vaidyanathan, former Co-Chair of the IBA Asia Pacific Regional Forum, says that India’s global profile will be enhanced if Modi wins a third term. He believes that, in respect of the human rights situation, tackling concerns has less to do with Modi’s regime itself and indicates instead a need for police and legal reforms.

One particularly contentious issue relates to the Uniform Civil Code Bill, which has been passed in one BJP-ruled state so far and is expected to be implemented elsewhere in India if Modi wins the election. The Bill replaces religion-specific civil laws with a blanket mandate to govern civilian personal matters, such as marriages, inheritance and divorces, equally. For example, the Bill would specify the age at which people can marry, contrary to the current situation whereby the age at which one can wed varies according to their community. Some groups have criticised the Bill for overruling historic and cultural practices, while others say that the changes would bring benefits to certain minority communities.

India should ‘be extremely watchful and learn from other countries’, says Gupta, highlighting the internal strife and civil war elsewhere in the Southeast Asia region that has resulted in the rights of religious minorities and others being compromised. The Rohingya ethnic group, for example, has been persecuted in Myanmar, leading to a case being brought to the International Court of Justice alleging that genocide has been committed by the country’s military against them. In Pakistan, meanwhile, leading human rights groups have called on authorities to act to prevent the persecution of Christians and Ahmadis.

Such conflict, Gupta explains, has had a ‘domino effect’, resulting in the institutions set up to protect human rights being weakened and unable to fulfil their purpose. Gupta says the legal community must use the judiciary to ensure minority groups are protected and human rights defended. ‘Ensuring that the judiciary and the legal protections play a significant, and an open and active role, and ensuring that the rights of minorities, the human rights of all, are guaranteed [and] protected is extremely important’, he says.

Pakistan is currently in the aftermath of its own election. Mired in allegations of rigging, a split election in February has meant weeks of wrangling to form a coalition government between the Pakistan People’s Party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party led by three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and independents who had, until weeks prior to the election, been part of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party led by Imran Khan, also a former prime minister.

A vocal critic of the military, Khan was removed from power in spring 2022 and in January this year was sentenced to jail after being found guilty of leaking state secrets in relation to a sensitive diplomatic cable; he has also been given a further sentence relating to allegations of corruption. His party has been dissolved. Khan denies all wrongdoing and has previously described the charges as part of a military campaign designed to prevent him from participating in the election.

February’s vote was only the third time Pakistan has held an election. It was not, however, free or fair, says Joshua Kurlantzick, Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, who refers to the vote as a ‘farce’ given, for example, the situation involving Imran Khan.

The military is accused of imprisoning Khan to retain an element of its former power. What it wasn’t expecting, however, was that the former PTI members who were forced to run as independents would gain enough votes to require a governmental coalition to be formed, says Asma Faiz, Associate Professor and Director of Political Science at Lahore University of Management Sciences.

A prime minister is yet to be named but if it’s Sharif, he will ‘probably be willing to work with the military in a way Khan was not’, says Kurlantzick. ‘The result will be a net negative for the rule of law and rights in Pakistan.’

In recent years, laws have been passed granting the military the power to search any person or place suspected of breaching the law and to arrest those who even unintentionally engage with a foreign power it views as jeopardising the safety and interests of Pakistan. Rights groups have also highlighted concerns about torture and forced disappearances in the country. ‘We have regressed as far as rule of law is concerned, as far as the notion of civilian supremacy is concerned, because the military is all powerful once again’, says Faiz.

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