Howdy Modi in Houston: why India's Narendra Modi puts so much effort into wooing
the diaspora
Ian Hall, Griffith
University
With President Donald Trump as his "warm
up act", India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a rally of 50,000
members of the Indian diaspora at Houston’s NRG Stadium
on September 22.
Dubbed Howdy, Modi!, the event kicks off
a busy week in the US for Modi, with
no fewer than 40 meetings to attend. Apart from bilateral talks with Trump,
he is due to speak at the UN General Assembly, attend a celebration of the 150th
anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, and appear at the UN’s Climate Action Summit.
Modi will also
collect a "global goalkeeper" award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
for his government’s Swachch Bharat or "Clean India" initiative.
It is the Howdy, Modi event that will attract attention, however, and not just because
of the praise Modi and Trump heaped upon each other. Few leaders hold these kinds
of events when they travel. But Modi has a long history of speaking to gatherings
of the Indian diaspora when travelling overseas.
In 2014, after the landslide election win that first brought his government to power,
he appeared before a crowd of 18,000 at Madison Square Garden in New York,
and then at another gathering, attended by a similar number, at the
AllPhones Arena in the Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia. A year later,
Modi was joined by his British counterpart David Cameron
in front of an estimated 60,000 members of the Indian diaspora at Wembley
Stadium in London.
Campaign Modi
Gatherings like Howdy, Modi are effectively campaign rallies, albeit organised abroad
and involving people who, for the most part, cannot vote in India’s elections. They
are organised by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), working with diaspora civil
society groups, and not primarily by officials from the local embassies or consulates.
They allow Modi to be seen by viewers back home in as positive a light as possible,
fêted by an overwhelmingly supportive crowd made up of people whom ordinary Indians
would consider savvy and successful. In this way, such events are part of Modi’s
broader, ongoing effort to consolidate his position as the most dominant Indian
politician of his era.
There is, however, more to these events than just public relations. In recent years,
India’s elections have become colossally expensive. In 2014, an estimated
US$5 billion was spent by the candidates. In 2019, some estimate that figure
grew to
at least US$7 billion. Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP almost certainly accounted
for the majority of the spending. Prior to the poll, it had
reportedly amassed a considerable war chest.
A sizeable proportion of this money came from
big corporations and some from ordinary BJP members and supporters in India.
But it’s likely that a significant amount came from the Indian diaspora, despite
the fact that many cannot vote in India, either because they are no longer citizens
or, if they are, because they were unable to travel back home to cast their ballot,
as they must do under
current electoral law.
The Delhi High Court found that both the BJP and the opposition Congress Party
accepted foreign donations, including from foreign-based companies, prior
to the 2014 elections. Since then, the
Modi government legislated both to make it harder to trace the sources of
campaign financing and to make it easier for foreign individuals and entities to
donate money. Rallies such as Howdy, Modi are designed to thank past donors and
to solicit future contributions, rather than to appeal for diaspora votes.
Uniting the diaspora
These events also serve as instruments of political consolidation. India’s diaspora
is as heterogeneous as India. And abroad, people of Indian origin and Indian citizens
often coalesce into groups that reflect regional, linguistic, caste and religious
identities, as well as national, "Indian" organisations. These sub-national groups
help preserve those identities, but arguably also weaken the diaspora as a political
force. Forging India lobbies in places such as the US that might influence governments
on New Delhi’s behalf is hard under such circumstances.
The BJP uses events like Howdy, Modi to try to address that problem, as a focal
point around which various smaller groups can gather. The prime minister’s Twitter
feed made that clear, posting video of Modi meeting the representatives of particular
communities, such as the
Shia Muslim Dawoodi Bohras, the
Kashmiri Pandits, and
local Sikhs. It is telling too that the organisers managed to attract
sponsorship for Howdy, Modi from more than
six hundred diaspora groups from across the US.
Since 2014, the Indian diaspora has been one of Modi’s biggest supporters, politically
and financially. Whether this backing will persist through his second term will
be a key test. As India’s economy began to falter in 2017,
some thought that the diaspora would grow disillusioned, and withdraw their
backing. During the recent election campaign, however, there were no signs of a
mass defection from the cause, with diaspora Indians continuing to
contribute time as well as money to ensure Modi’s BJP were returned to office.
Ian Hall, Deputy
Director (Research), Griffith Asia Institute,
Griffith University
This article is republished from The Conversation
under a Creative Commons license. Read the
original article.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this commentary are author's personal
observations.