India’s election campaign turns negative as Modi and ruling party embrace Islamophobic rhetoric

CNN —

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is increasingly resorting to overtly Islamophobic language during his election campaign, critics and observers say, as he seeks a third straight term governing the world’s most populous nation.

As turnout in the polls so far shows a slight dip from five years ago, the popular leader – and overwhelming favorite – has embraced negative campaigning, they say, and received little pushback from civil society or election authorities.

Followers of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – and some of its top figures – have long been accused of using inflammatory language to describe the country’s 200 million Muslims, but rarely Modi himself. However this election has brought a clear shift, critics say.

“What is unique about what we’ve seen recently, is that these statements are being uttered by the Prime Minister himself,” Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Not necessarily by surrogates – the Home Minister, or by the chief minister – or by other kind of party apparatchiks.”

CNN " data-fave-thumbnails="{«big»: { «uri»: «https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyimages-2136563452.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill» }, «small»: { «uri»: «https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyimages-2136563452.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill» } }" data-vr-video=«false» data-show-html="" data-byline-html="By Will Ripley, CNN " data-check-event-based-preview="" data-network-id="" data-publish-date=«2024-04-17T02:29:56.842Z» data-video-section=«world» data-canonical-url=«https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/16/world/video/narendra-modi-india-elections-profile-ripley-pkg-ovn-hnk-digvid»