Lhe rise in power of India is beginning to modify the place of international affairs in the electoral competition which opened on April 19 and which will close on the 1er June. The idea that foreign policy is not the major concern of voters undoubtedly remains valid, but something is changing, because the construction of the Hindu nationalist narrative has taken on, under Narendra Modi, in power for ten years, a color international on an unprecedented scale. A triple electoral rhetoric is thus at work.
A first part of the speech takes note of this rise in power, India now being the most populous country in the world. In 2019, it became the fifth largest economy in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom and France. Electoral argument: give me a third term, and I will make India the third largest economy in the world – an achievable goal when we compare the IMF’s growth forecasts for 2024: 6.8% for India, 0.9% for Japan, 0.2% for Germany.
Longer term goal: India must be a developed country by 2047, 100e anniversary of its independence. Beyond growth, it is therefore necessary to improve the poor human development index, which placed India at 134e world rank in 2022. It doesn’t matter: those in power tell us that India entered, that year, that of the 75e anniversary of independence, in the auspicious times of‘Amrit kaala concept from Vedic astrology, here announcing a flourishing economy.
G20 Presidency
The second part of the official rhetoric links India’s rise to power to its “civilizational ethos”, finally rediscovered and allowing it to liquidate the remains of colonialism which would have persisted in people’s minds after independence. The portrait is thus painted of an India which defines itself as Bharat, its Sanskrit name, the “mother of democracies”, notwithstanding the traditional structuring of castes; an India which aims to be the guru of the world, vishwa gurubut also the friend of the world, vishwa bandhu.
The Indian presidency of the G20 illustrated this conjunction between nationalist discourse, claimed place in the world and electoral strategy, New Delhi having changed the calendar of presidencies to assume the one which ended five months before the general elections. The Sanskrit sentence “The world is a family” inspired the motto of the Indian G20: “One land, one family, one future. » A G20 whose logo not only offered the image of the lotus, “national flower” of India but also the symbol of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), party of Narendra Modi: the terrestrial globe rests on this lotus, a way of suggest that India carries the world…
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