{"id":20297,"date":"2025-09-23T21:04:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T21:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=20297"},"modified":"2025-09-23T21:04:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T21:04:19","slug":"eu-warned-over-indias-authoritarian-drift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=20297","title":{"rendered":"EU warned over India\u2019s authoritarian drift"},"content":{"rendered":"
As the European Union moves to court New Delhi with its \u201cNew Strategic EU\u2013India Agenda\u201d, Human Rights Watch has raised the alarm again, reminding Brussels not to hand Prime Minister Narendra Modi a free pass on India\u2019s \u2018authoritarian drift\u2019. The advocacy group warns that behind the language of partnership lies a government that has systematically eroded democratic norms.<\/p>\n

Across the entire 19-page document, human rights are mentioned only three times \u2014 each in the vaguest, most diplomatic manner, and never in relation to India\u2019s deteriorating domestic landscape. The EU hints at \u201cshared values\u201d and multilateral cooperation, but ignores the uncomfortable truth of minority persecution, civic repression and the everyday silencing of critical voices.<\/p>\n

In its commentary, issued as President Ursula von der Leyen presses her pivot to New Delhi, Human Rights Watch (HRW) calls out Brussels for its eagerness to crown the country a \u201clike-minded and trusted partner,\u201d while airbrushing its mounting rights abuses from the agenda.<\/p>\n

Strengthening EU-India trade, economic and political ties has long been among Ursula von der Leyen\u2019s top priorities. According to the New York-based advocacy group, this push has come at a price \u2013 an imposed silence in Brussels over India\u2019s authoritarian slide, a reality that HRW observes is well understood even within the EU\u2019s own institutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cVon der Leyen is personally invested in pursuing closer trade and political ties with India. She\u2019s made that clear in her political guidelines, as she\u2019s made it clear to EU staff that no criticism of India\u2019s rights record should be voiced in the process,\u201d Claudio Francavilla, Associate EU Director at HRW, told The Express Tribune.<\/p>\n

Under Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), HRW points out, violence and discrimination against religious minorities have been normalised. The rights group has documented unlawful expulsions and the demolition of homes and businesses on religious grounds, alongside assaults, arbitrary arrests, and the misuse of counterterrorism laws to target civil society and diaspora critics. It also cites threats to independent media, sweeping internet shutdowns aimed at quashing protests, and a climate of fear that haunts human rights defenders, journalists and activists. India\u2019s own national human rights commission, HRW cautions, is now at risk of being downgraded internationally.<\/p>\n

In its commentary, HRW urges EU leaders to \u201cseriously reflect\u201d on the long-term consequences of granting Modi a free pass. Turning a blind eye to India\u2019s deepening authoritarian turn, it warns, is difficult to square with Brussels\u2019 own ambition of prising Modi away from Moscow and Beijing.<\/p>\n

Francavilla argued that this silence amounted to complicity. \u201cIf India is the world\u2019s largest democracy, it should act as such. The EU knows that that\u2019s less and less the case, yet has decided to remain silent as Indian authorities implement increasingly abusive policies that are at odds with democratic values,\u201d he said. Silence, he added, was a form of impunity \u2014 and impunity fuels abuses. \u201cWhen silence is imposed by fear of prickly reactions or worse, that should raise an alarm — democracies should embrace scrutiny, not fear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francavilla placed India within a wider pattern of EU double standards. \u201cIndia is far from the only government whose abuses the EU overlooks in pursuit of economic, geopolitical or migration gains,\u201d he said, whose abuses the EU overlooks in pursuit of economic, geopolitical or migration gains,\u201d he said \u2014 a pattern that, he argued, has only sharpened under von der Leyen\u2019s tenure. \u201cThis weakens the credibility of EU action elsewhere.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Supporting human rights only when it comes \u201ccheap,\u201d Francavilla warned, sets in motion a race to the bottom \u2014 eroding the entire system and, ultimately, leaving victims of serious abuses everywhere without recourse.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time HRW has taken aim at von der Leyen\u2019s approach toward India. Earlier this year, the EU Commission led a high-level delegation to New Delhi to pave the way for a stronger partnership. In a letter to the College of Commissioners and von der Leyen, a dozen rights organisations \u2014 including Amnesty International, HRW, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and Reporters Without Borders \u2014 expressed concern over Modi\u2019s Hindu nationalist government\u2019s erosion of democratic institutions, suppression of dissent, and persecution of minorities with growing impunity. But von der Leyen ignored the caution and went ahead with her trip without much concern about the democratic backsliding.<\/p>\n

Francavilla described the EU\u2019s engagement with India as timid and half-hearted. \u201cThe EU is still active in trying to support Indian civil society, it does intervene behind the scene \u2013 yet indeed only behind the scene, timidly, failing the expectations one would have when reading about the EU\u2019s treaties, human rights action plans, and grandiose speeches and claims,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked whether EU member states had come to a consensus on how to deal with India, Francavilla pointed to trade as a file the Commission leads on with a mandate given by member states. \u201cIf one looks at how the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and others behave with Modi, the approach von der Leyen has taken doesn\u2019t look like one they would be bothered by,\u201d he explained. India, he stressed, is a huge market, set to only grow in the coming years and decades. \u201cWhat they all seem oblivious to is what kind of India they will deal with in time, if they don\u2019t intervene as democratic values erode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to the wider strategic backdrop, Francavilla was blunt: \u201cGeopolitics are not within our mandate, yet are part of the context in which we operate. And what many analysts have flagged is that the idea of bringing India into this or that camp is wishful thinking: everyone is courting India, and India is happy to be courted by anyone, with no need to choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

He cautioned that \u201cwhat Europe is failing to realise here is that if it just sits and watches as India becomes more and more authoritarian, it will eventually come more \u2018natural\u2019 for it to side with fellow authoritarians than with democracies.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the European Union moves to court New Delhi with its \u201cNew Strategic EU\u2013India Agenda\u201d, Human Rights Watch has raised the alarm again, reminding Brussels not to hand Prime Minister Narendra Modi a free pass on India\u2019s \u2018authoritarian drift\u2019. The advocacy group warns that behind the language of partnership lies a government that has systematically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}