Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be guest of honour as France celebrates its national Bastille Day holiday – a tribute to the country's historic commitment to human rights. Despite the symbolism, the French government is expected to overlook concerns about Modi's anti-democratic tendencies in favour of securing lucrative defence deals.
French President Emmanuel Macron is rolling out the red carpet for the Indian PM, who is fresh from a similarly high-profile state visit to the United States last month.
Modi will attend the traditional Bastille Day military parade on Friday, 14 July, where Indian troops will march alongside French ones in a symbol of the increasingly close military ties between the two countries.
France is the second-biggest supplier of arms to India, which is the world's largest market for imported weapons.
During his visit, Modi is expected to announce the purchase of another 26 of France's Rafale fighter jets as well as three Scorpene submarines. Together the deals would be worth several billion euros.
'Authoritarian shift'
Modi has visited France four times since Macron came to power in 2017, and the two leaders are famously friendly.
But not everyone is keen to see the Indian prime minister, a Hindu nationalist accused of steering India dangerously close to authoritarianism, given a warm welcome in France.
"It's regrettable that we’re rolling out the red carpet for Narendra Modi on 14 July – a day when we're supposed to be celebrating freedom – when Modi is responsable for an authoritarian shift that we consider very serious and a severe deterioration of human rights," said Philippe Bolopion, chief of staff at Human Rights Watch.
He pointed to what he called "systematic" persecution of religious minorities under Modi's BJP party, as well as attempts to silence critics, muzzle the press and restrict freedom of information online.
"The authoritarian turn is very, very worrying, and a situation that we think the French government should not ignore," Bolopion told RFI.
Macron's government insists that it isn't ignoring it.
"We have a relationship of trust with the Indian authorities that allows us to broach all subjects between ourselves," said French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre.
"And furthermore we are taking care to form ties with all elements of Indian society. We're building concrete partnerships with Indian NGOs on subjects such as education, press freedom and gender equality, and we carry out that work daily through our embassy on the ground."
But few expect the French government to criticise Indian policies publicly. Unlike some of its other Western allies, France has remained relatively quiet on Modi's rights record – a fact that may have helped it build the close relationship it enjoys with India today.
Counterweight to China
Trade between France and India was valued at €25 billion in 2022. As well as defence, the two countries have partnered on space exploration, commercial aviation, solar and nuclear power.
Their cooperation predates Modi or Macron, going back 25 years under a "strategic partnership" first agreed in 1998.
"Together the two countries are engaged in promoting security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region," said Colonel Patrik Steiger, who is responsible for international partnerships at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.
He told RFI that France and India work together to address potential threats including natural disasters, piracy, trafficking and terrorism.
But there is another question on which France values India's help: China.
"More and more, India is seen in the West as a counterweight to China's ambitions for power, which has increased the country's attractiveness in the eyes of its European and American partners," said Balveer Arora, a political scientist and chair of the Centre for Multilevel Federalism at the the Institute of Social Sciences in New Delhi.
Speaking to RFI's Tirthankar Chanda, he said that India was one of the few countries that straddles the divide between China and Russia on one hand and Western allies on the other. This position of "non-alignment" – or "multi-alignment" – makes India a valuable ally for France and the US, Arora said.
From persona non grata to guest of honour
Shifting global priorities have made other countries willing to overlook Modi's track record at home, notably the 2002 riots in in the western state of Gujarat that claimed more than 1,000, mostly Muslim lives. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and has been accused of failing to stop or even encouraging the killings.
"Let us not forget that Modi was practically an international pariah" when he first came to national power, Arora pointed out. The US barred Modi from its territory over the riots, only lifting the ban once he became prime minister in 2014.
On Thursday, as Modi arrived in Paris, a few dozen protesters turned out to denounce his visit, among them two far-left MPs. "No red carpet for an enemy of human rights," a banner read.
On the same day, the EU parliament approved a motion urging India to end violence and protect minorities in a northeastern state where over 100 people have died in fighting between ethnic groups.
Clashes in Manipur between the majority Meitei, who are mostly Hindus, and the mainly Christian Kuki tribe have left at least 120 people dead, 50,000 displaced and over 1,700 houses destroyed, the parliament said, criticising the "nationalistic rhetoric" of the local state government run by Modi's BJP.
The text's chief negotiator, French MEP Pierre Larrouturou, called the Bastille Day welcome for Modi "an affront not only to India's minority communities, journalists and human rights defenders, but also to India as a democracy".
(with AFP)
