Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently decided to cancel his planned visit to India. The national emergency caused by the bushfires rightly prompted the cancellation. But the underlying commitment to build closer relationships with India remains firm.
The reason seems carbon-clear: coal exports and courting Indian companies to invest in Australian coal mines. But the rhetoric is both economic and political. Morrison has cited India as a 'regional success story', a 'land of durable institutions and shared values', making India 'a natural partner for Australia'.
It may be true that India has historically shared many political values with Australia: democracy, a secular constitution, and a commitment to a plural society. But Australians should be aware that the current government of India is committed to dismantling precisely those values.
And while many Australians are assembling, tweeting and signing petitions in solidarity with the unprecedented protests in India in defence of basic human rights, and to uphold the constitution, the Coalition government has so far preferred to take an unprincipled approach. Going beyond diplomatic civility, Morrison has taken selfies with Modi, tweeting one picture with 'How good is Modi' written under it in Hindi after last year's G20 Summit.
Some sections of the Australian media have represented the current protests and strikes simply as 'riots'. But the situation is more serious than non-specific unrest in a far-off land. The catalyst for the protests has been the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by the Indian Parliament on 9 December 2019, and the associated National Citizenship Register (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) processes.
The CAA fast tracks citizenship for migrants from various named minorities from the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but specifically excludes Muslims (including persecuted Muslim minority groups, such as the Ahmadiyas). The act and register come hand in hand with widespread misinformation campaigns and hate speech against the Rohingya Muslims, fleeing extreme violence in Myanmar.
The NPR-NRC process would upscale the ongoing process in Assam, which has disenfranchised 1.9 million people who could not provide documentary evidence of their right to Indian citizenship. Widely condemned by civil society, the process is being accompanied by the construction of detention centres to hold those effectively stripped of citizenship, until now understood as presumptive in a country where many people, especially the poor, have no access to official documents.
"These are the practices of political leaders who seek power through cracking the demos and pitting the jagged pieces against each other."
These actions come hot on the heels of the unilateral revocation of the constitutional protection for the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. This is a long-contested region, and the story of violence is not one-sided. But like the other legal changes introduced by the ruling BJP, each change has been followed by a violent suppression of dissent.
In Kashmir, the revocation of status was followed by curfews, the detention of political leaders and cutting off all communications, including phones and the internet. Landlines have since been restored, and SMS services were reinstated five months after their suspension, but the internet is still shut down, a measure held by the Indian Supreme court just five days ago to be an unjustified abuse of power.
Students who have led significant protests against the government have been the subject of direct police violence, and violence carried out by sympathisers, almost certainly incited by government figures.
All of this has been accompanied by a range of moves growing tragically familiar in our increasingly unequal world. Economic policies which contribute to growing inequality, but conducted in the name of the poor; social media campaigns designed to polarise the polity and increase social divisions; the vilification of Muslims as the consolidating outside of a secular nation-state; invocations of 'terror' and anti-national sentiment against those who dare to dissent; attacks on independent public institutions through practices like court stacking; defunding and fostering contempt for universities and students.
These are the practices of political leaders who seek power through cracking the demos and pitting the jagged pieces against each other. It is ironic for those of us who have long wished for a closer and more respectful relationship between India and Australia to be arguing now for caution. But perhaps the time has come for a relationship of political solidarity between the people of India and the people of Australia, rather than the economic expediency that seems to be on offer.
Sundhya Pahuja is a Professor of International Law and Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at the Melbourne Law School and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences.
Main image: Locals in New Delhi protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019. (Credit: Sanjeev Yadav / Wikimedia Commons)