Modi said the journey of the past 75 years had seen ups and downs with India battling against all odds with resilience and perseverance. He asked people to remove any trace of a colonial mindset.

In 2020 the government said practitioners of ayurveda, the traditional system of medicine, should be allowed to perform surgery, to the horror of the medical establishment. Modi has spoken frequently of freeing Indians of the “colonial mindset” left by the British empire and of removing the relics of that rule. Just this week, Modi spoke of the “slavish mentality” surrounding English. After becoming the Prime Minister he also authored a book called Exam Warriors, a guide for children to commendably face exams. Modi has written eight other books, mostly containing short stories for children. [507] Private life Jaffrelot doesn’t just remind us of what has been happening to unravel the liberal consensus in the past 7-8 years. He also brings to bear on these data an enormous scholarly literature and theoretical toolkit about ethnic democracy, populist strongmen, rightwing nationalism, charismatic leadership, the deinstitutionalisation of the state, creeping authoritarianism that appears electorally mandated, the relentless reduction of minorities to second-class citizenship, and the mobilisation of identities in new patterns of conflict, domination and exclusion, jettisoning tolerance, equality and inclusion.

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Modi's administration launched the 2019 Balakot airstrike against an alleged terrorist training camp in Pakistan. The airstrike failed, [14] [15] and the deaths of six Indian personnel to friendly fire was later revealed: but the action had nationalist appeal. [16] Modi's party comfortably won the 2019 general election which followed. [17] In its second term, his administration revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, an Indian-administred portion of the disputed Kashmir region, [18] [19] and introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act, prompting widespread protests, and spurring the 2020 Delhi riots in which Muslims were brutalised and killed by Hindu mobs, [20] [21] [22] sometimes with the complicity of police forces controlled by the Modi administration. [23] [24] Three controversial farm laws led to sit-ins by farmers across the country, eventually causing their formal repeal. Modi oversaw India's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which 4.7 million Indians died, according to the World Health Organization's estimates. [25] [26] In December 2021, Modi signed an agreement with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to extend military technical cooperation. [399] The Modi government bought the S-400 missile system, an anti-missile striking system, strengthening the relationship between the two nations. [400] India refused to condemn the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and stayed neutral. [399] [401] The Indian government's Operation Ganga initiative sought to return Indians stranded in Ukraine during the war. More than 19,000 Indian nationals were evacuated, [402] [403] including some from neighbouring countries. [404] Environment Modi (right) at CoP21 Climate Conference, in Paris, announcing the founding of an International Solar Alliance (ISA). November 2015. Self-reliant India is the responsibility of every citizen, every government, every unit of society,” he said.

Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Indian general election, following which, Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots. [159] [160] Western nations also raised questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims: the US State Department barred him from entering the United States in accordance with the recommendations of that country's Commission on International Religious Freedom, [161] [162] the only person to be denied a US visa under this law. [161] The UK and the European Union (EU) refused to admit Modi because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK [163] and the EU [164] lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election as prime minister in 2014, the US lifted its ban and invited him to Washington, D.C. [165] [166] Modi meeting with then- Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh in 2004 Several BJP politicians accused the BBC of having an anti-Modi agenda in revisiting allegations that were two decades old and that the courts had dismissed. A petition was filed in the supreme court calling for the BBC to be banned from operating in India, which was dismissed. The Modi government has also been notoriously thin-skinned about international criticism. Among those rebuked for speaking out are Greta Thunberg, the climate activist, and the singer Rihanna, who both expressed support for farmers protesting against Modi’s policies and who were subsequently the subject of a damning foreign ministry statement. What have been the implications for the BBC?At grave personal risk, several Indian journalists have shed unflattering light on Modi’s majoritarian rule. Some have been jailed for their reporting. One is Siddique Kappan, who was charged with sedition and conspiracy to incite violence for trying to report on the gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman. (Dalits, pejoratively known as the “untouchables,” are at the bottom of India’s caste system.) Others, like Ayyub, have been hit with spurious fraud and money-laundering charges; their cases are laborious and expensive to defend. The BJP-controlled state does not need to worry about time or money, so the process is the punishment. T his ideal of a pluralist, secular India is popular not only among its religious minorities. A 2021 study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that by a wide margin, Indians of all faiths consider religious tolerance an essential part of what it means to be “truly Indian.” This civic value is as old as the country itself: Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, rejected any concept of the nation as Hinduism’s answer to Pakistan. His India would not be “formally entitled to any religion as a nation,” he said, but a place where all faiths could coexist and be celebrated equally. It was also raised in the UK parliament, where the Labour MP Imran Hussain challenged the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, over the British government’s alleged knowledge of Modi’s role during in the violence. “I am not sure that I agree at all with the characterisation,” responded Sunak. This push for Hindi has been enshrined in this policy which, among other things, emphasises the teaching of technical and medical courses in Indian languages. The rationale is that students can better develop their cognitive and analytical skills and be more rooted in their culture if they are taught in their mother tongue. Right now, we are witnessing a slow genocide of minorities. The lives of India’s 200 million Muslims are at stake, and the Biden administration can no longer afford to stay silent. This meeting is the right time to send a stern message to India,” Syed Ali, the president of an advocacy group, the Indian American Muslim Council, told Al Jazeera.