Opinion | Biden's challenge: Praise India while cautioning Modi - The Washington Post

Opinion | Biden’s India challenge: Praise the country while cautioning Modi - The Washington Post

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has come to the United States regularly since he was first elected in 2014. But his arrival at the White House on Thursday will be his first state visit, including a South Lawn welcome, a state dinner and an address to a joint session of Congress. The United States can and must strive to strengthen ties to India during this visit, but it cannot remain silent about Mr. Modi’s worrisome democratic backsliding.

The case for India as a bulwark against China has never been more urgent. India — one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, the most populous nation, a digital powerhouse and a seven-decade-old democracy, however imperfect — has immense potential as guardian and pacesetter for a free and open Indo-Pacific region. President Biden will talk with Mr. Modi about enhanced cooperation in defense, clean energy and space, as well as climate change, health security and trade.

Some frictions are unavoidable. Mr. Modi has called for a cease-fire in Ukraine without condemning Russia’s invasion. Mr. Biden should also press Mr. Modi to halt India’s weapons sales to the military junta in Myanmar, prolonging and deepening a bloody civil war. These and other bilateral issues should not be difficult for Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi to navigate.

What will be more troublesome for Mr. Biden is to raise the retreat from democracy by Mr. Modi and his dominant Bharatiya Janata Party. Under the banner of a majoritarian Hindu nationalism, they have unleashed violence against Muslims and other minorities, eroded press freedoms and suffocated independent civil society. The president needs to be tactful. Mr. Biden and others who meet Mr. Modi should convey to him that democracy and respect for human dignity are force multipliers for India’s rising stature in the world and for dealing with its challenges at home. A weakened democracy, or a shell of one, will portend a weakened India.
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- D.C. Council reverses itself on school resource officers. Good.
- Virginia makes a mistake by pulling out of an election fraud detection group.
- Vietnam sentences another democracy activist.
- Biden has a new border plan.

D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to stop pulling police officers out of schools, a big win for student safety. Parents and principals overwhelmingly support keeping school resource officers around because they help de-escalate violent situations. D.C. joins a growing number of jurisdictions, from Montgomery County, Md., to Denver, in reversing course after withdrawing officers from school grounds following George Floyd’s murder.

Read our recent editorial on why D.C. needs SROs.

withdrew Virginia from a data-sharing consortium, ERIC, that made the commonwealth’s elections more secure, following Republicans in seven other states in falling prey to disinformation peddled by election deniers. Former GOP governor Robert F. McDonnell made Virginia a founding member of ERIC in 2012, and until recently conservatives touted the group as a tool to combat voter fraud. D.C. and Maryland plan to remain.

Read our recent editorial on ERIC.

Radio Free Asia. In the past six years, at least 60 bloggers and activists have been sentenced to between 4 and 15 years in prison under the law,

Human Rights Watch found. Read more of the Editorial Board’s

coverage on

autocracy and

Vietnam.

details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent

editorial on the U.S. asylum system.

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Specifically, Mr. Modi should be encouraged to brake the spiral of communal violence and toxic hate directed at India’s roughly 200 million Muslims and other minorities. Recent Hindu festivals were marred by violence sparked when Hindus in processions passed through Muslim neighborhoods brandishing weapons and shouting anti-Muslim slogans. The government at all levels has adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against Muslims, and authorities in some states demolished property of Muslims in response to protests. Increasingly, the authorities act with impunity, and they are rarely held to account. Vigilante attacks go unpunished.

At the same time, Mr. Modi has led a broad assault on freedom of expression and dissent. Journalists are under intense pressure, some have been arrested, and others have been subjected to online harassment. The government controls many media outlets with close ties to the owners, as well as with direct orders about what to print or broadcast. It has sought to take down social media posts it does not like. In reaction to a BBC documentary about Mr. Modi and his relationship with the nation’s Muslims, the government attempted to block people from streaming it and then sent tax agents to raid BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai.

Also alarming is Mr. Modi’s crackdown on nongovernmental organizations and civil society activists, forcing them to comply with burdensome accounting for foreign funding. A fresh example was recently described in The Post: Indian tax authorities simultaneously raided three nonprofit organizations that the government believed were critics of Gautam Adani, one of India’s richest men and a political ally of Mr. Modi. The raids were a case study in how the Modi government uses state power to crimp its critics.

None of these actions befit the world’s most populous democracy. There will be a strong temptation by the White House to bring up the issue only privately and keep public remarks upbeat. A private conversation is definitely worthwhile. But Mr. Biden should also say something openly, as the leader of one major (imperfect) democracy to another. Friends have an obligation to speak the truth to friends.

The Post’s View | About the Editorial Board

Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.

Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus: Opinion Editor David Shipley; Deputy Opinion Editor Karen Tumulty; Associate Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg(national politics and policy); Lee Hockstader(European affairs, based in Paris); David E. Hoffman(global public health); James Hohmann(domestic policy and electoral politics, including the White House, Congress and governors); Charles Lane(foreign affairs, national security, international economics); Heather Long(economics); Associate Editor Ruth Marcus; Mili Mitra(public policy solutions and audience development); Keith B. Richburg(foreign affairs); and Molly Roberts(technology and society).