The rise of the populist figure in global politics is reshaping how countries committed to human rights and democracy approach international relations. It’s forcing countries like Australia to ask: how do you solve a problem like Narendra (Modi, that is)?
As Rodgers and Hammerstein might have put it: There’s many a thing you know you’d like to tell him / Many a thing he ought to understand / But how do you make him stay / And listen to all you say?
This year, it’s been a significant challenge for both Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden during their bilateral meet-ups with the Indian prime minister for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad).
These meetings are supposed to be where the national self-interest of one country is brought to match that of the other. But when a populist personality like Modi claims to embody his country’s spirit, where do national interests end and leaders’ interests begin?
Sure, Modi’s recent visits to Australia and the US concerned advancing the usual shared interests in trade, security and migration. But for Modi, international engagements have become about something more — just another stop in the “permanent campaign” at the heart of what’s become the go-to populist strategy.
For him, the international goes beyond the world-stage strutting that, to be honest, even the most ordinary of leaders come to enjoy. It’s domestic politics by other means. That’s why Modi’s team builds the most overt of campaign rallies into his schedule, to ensure the continued alignment of one nation with one leader.
Grace and favours are power plays in the populist handbook. To the domestic audience, then, the Modi visits are a gift from the leader. Indian media, for example, made much of Modi’s generosity in going ahead with his Australia visit in May, even after the Quad meeting he was to attend had been cancelled.
There are risks for any leader who acts as Modi’s host (or guest). On the one hand, they have to walk a fine line on the human rights abuses inherent in the populist project, as Charlie Lewis wrote in Crikey recently regarding Modi’s May visit to Australia. On the other, they struggle to avoid being trapped in Modi’s campaign semiotics as the respectful — admiring — supplicant.
Played back by the compliant media in Modi’s home environment, Albanese’s joking comparison between the audience reception for Modi and that of Bruce Springsteen at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena became a deferential nod to the authoritarian strongman. More critical media noted the empty seats, something unlikely at any Springsteen concert.
Trump pulled the same stunt back in 2019 when he dragged (an admittedly willing) Scott Morrison into an Ohio campaign rally (it’s not certain this rally benefited Morrison as much as he may have hoped). The same month, Trump and Modi made a joint campaign appearance at the “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston, Texas.
No doubt, both Albanese and Biden know what he’s up to. Maybe they figure it’s all just part of the theatrics of the transactional deal-making over trade and security.
Maybe their own more hard-nosed campaign teams see a shared benefit in the rallies as a way of channelling the Indian community’s votes. Certainly, in Australia, Labor has a real-time example of how international relationships impact local politics, seeing how the Morrison government’s anti-China rhetoric shifted votes in the 2022 election.
But sometimes the normal rules can trip things up. In last month’s visit to the White House, Modi did something that was deeply unusual for him: he participated, as US protocol demands, in a press conference. It’s thought to be his first, anywhere, since at least 2015 — so insisting on the conference was a strong flex by the US.
Modi’s team negotiated the demand down to just two questions, including one from the Wall Street Journal’s Sabrina Siddiqui about (*gasp*) declining human rights in India. Modi waffled it off with the usual rhetoric: “democracy runs in our veins”; ”absolutely no space for discrimination”. Shrug. How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
What happened next shocked Washington — but not Delhi — as Indian politics-as-usual broke the banks of the carefully curated international visit with the all-too-common pile-on from the Hindu nationalist BJP’s troll army, attacking Siddiqui over her religion and heritage.
Outside India, that pile-on provided a clearer response to Siddiqui’s question about human rights in India than Modi’s waffle. It showed the real limits to the permanent populist campaign once it moves off-shore.
