For years, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attacked the foundations of his country’s democracy. His government has rewritten election rules in its favor, assailed the rights of the Muslim minority, jailed anti-government protesters, and reined in the free press.
On Friday morning, it took another major step in an authoritarian direction: kicking Modi’s principal rival, Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, out of office and disqualifying him from competing in future elections.
The pretext for this move was Gandhi’s conviction on defamation charges a day earlier.
In 2019, in the midst of national elections, Gandhi made a joke about people with the last name “Modi” being thieves — citing a wealthy fugitive, a crooked cricketer, and the incumbent prime minister as examples. In response, a politician from Modi’s BJP party named Purnesh Modi filed a criminal complaint in which he accused Gandhi of defaming the “Modi community.”
On Thursday, a court ruled against Gandhi, sentencing him to two years in prison for his attempt at campaign trail humor (a sentence that won’t be implemented for at least 30 days). The BJP-controlled Parliament moved swiftly to boot Gandhi and prevent him from holding office again.
If this all seems fishy, that’s because it is.
India’s defamation law is notoriously punitive, owing partly to the legacy of British colonial speech restrictions. Historically, Indian governments and other powerful actors have used it as a tool to suppress speech they don’t like. Under Modi, these longstanding problematic laws have been deployed as part of a systematic campaign to strengthen their hold on power.
“This government has not invented any new tools; they’re just much more purposive and efficient in deploying them,” says Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They campaigned on a pledge to bring about a ‘Congress-mukt’ Bharat (Congress-free…
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