How India’s Modi and Trump are Two Peas in a Bigoted Pod
Both have built their legacies around hatred toward specific racial and religious minorities and have worked tirelessly to villainize, jail, and incite violence against them.
by Jessica Quiason, ACRE Senior Research Analyst, Ramah Kudaimi, ACRE Deputy Campaign Director & Munira Lokhandwala, Little Sis Community Manager
On September 29, Amnesty International announced it was halting its work in India following a crackdown by the government, including a complete freezing of its bank accounts. This is just the latest example of repression of human rights defenders and activists by the Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and mirrors similar attacks in the US by the administration of President Trump. While the right wing in India has consolidated its power and unleashed attacks against vulnerable communities, including Muslims, Modi has enjoyed political support from both sides of the aisle in the US. But even a superficial look into his administration would render any progressive speechless, and what becomes clear is that Modi and Trump are two peas in a bigoted pod. Both have built their legacies around hatred toward specific racial and religious minorities and have worked tirelessly to villainize, jail, and incite violence against them. Taking examples of how Trump and Modi act towards Latinx and Muslim communities, respectively, we see how they continually set new standards for wielding state power to extinguish whole communities and strengthen bigoted supremacist hierarchies that spread fear and hatred globally.
Using bigoted, misogynist language to characterize minorities as parasitic sexual predators
- Trump has repeatedly called Mexicans “rapists” that threaten the safety of American women and “infest our country.”
- Modi has spread similarly baseless lies about Muslims, perpetuating the myth of the “love jihad,” which accuses Muslim men of targeting Hindu women in an attempt to shift India’s demographics. Modi’s administration has referred to majority-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh as “termites.”
Passing citizenship policies that clearly target Muslims and Latinx minorities, respectively
- Under Trump, the US government has told US citizens of Mexican descent that their birth certificates were not enough to prove citizenship and has arrested people during Green Card interviews.
- Modi’s party has also changed the rules for citizenship, rendering about two million people stateless. His administration has begun operating sweeps starting in India’s poorest and predominantly Muslim regions. The administration has since created pathways for many religious minorities to regain their citizenship, but not for Muslims.
Establishing camps to terrorize victims of bigoted immigration and citizenship policies
- Trump significantly lowered legal protections for children who are separated from their families during immigration, allowing them to be held in camps with widespread accounts of illness and poor living conditions.
- Modi has built camps and has plans to build several more to imprison people whom he has stripped of Indian citizenship. Many of the camps are overcrowded and unsanitary.
Inciting mob violence to eliminate minorities
- Trump’s repeated characterization of Latinx immigrants on Twitter as “criminals” that are launching an “invasion” of the US has coincided with a white supremacist who citied an “invasion” as motivation his mass shooting, murdering 20 people.
- Following Modi’s increased police crackdowns and anti-Muslim rhetoric on Facebook from members of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party- Modi’s political party), lynch mobs have sprouted up, injuring and murdering Muslims in states controlled by the BJP.
