The Opposition's Silence Has Let the BJP Diminish India's Political Discourse

The rhetoric being employed by the multi-party delegations sent by India to other countries – ostensibly to shape the global narrative around Operation Sindoor – is puzzling. Far from offering any fresh geopolitical perspectives, opposition members of these delegations have limited themselves to enthusiastically endorsing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government's foreign policy on Pakistan. While it is unclear as to why a foreign audience is expected to find the same arguments more compelling when endorsed by members of Indian opposition, this endorsement has been portrayed as a matter of national duty. Two weeks in, it would appear that far from influencing international opinion, this outreach has barely been noticed.Certainly, there have been no groundbreaking shifts in the way in which Pakistan is viewed globally. They have, in this period, secured further funding from the ADB and also been appointed to chair the UNSC's Taliban Sanctions Committee as well as sit as the vice-chair of the UNSC counter-terrorism committee. The political compulsion felt by the opposition to perform in this seemingly fruitless public charade is interesting. It is unlikely that seasoned politicians in the opposition could not foresee this outcome. Their participation was therefore likely driven by what they imagine their own voters expect of them. These expectations are the product of a domestic public discourse where foreign policy has increasingly been taken out of the realm of political contestation and elevated to the realm of security, where the act of criticism is in itself seen as 'anti-national'. Securitisation in international relations refers to a practice whereby issues are presented as existential threats, taking them beyond the realm of ordinary politics. The securitisation of an issue generally requires it to be framed as an existential threat to what is called a referent object, and for the audience to accept it as such. Once the audience accepts an issue to be an existential threat, it legitimises the breaking of previously accepted rules (whether international or domestic) to guard the referent object. This referent object can be a population, or even a broader principle or idea. The American 'war on terror' for example was framed as combatting a global existential threat and that was used to deviate from both established international legal principles – including on the use of force, criminal jurisdiction and the treatment of prisoners – and to curb individual rights within countries in the West (including through the mass surveillance infrastructure created pursuant to the PATRIOT Act). The securitisation discourse is not limited to international issues. Globally, the immigration discourse serves as perhaps the most tragic example of the securitisation of a domestic concern. Some of the most vulnerable and persecuted people in the world – asylum seekers – are repeatedly framed as existential threats to an imagined 'western' way of life generating cross party consent for their violent removal, often through means of questionable legality. In India, similar rhetoric has been targeted at 'illegal' immigrants from Bangladesh and against Rohingya refugees, and has been widely employed by the government as well as by several opposition parties. This has contributed to the legitimisation of practices like Assam 'pushing' people made stateless by the draconian NRC over the border into Bangladesh. There have also been extremely serious allegations raised with respect to Rohingya refugees being pushed off navy vessels with life jackets in the sea near Myanmar. Tellingly, the Indian Supreme Court refused to expedite the hearings on the matter stating the 'nation is going through difficult times'– a classic case of a security framing being used to dismiss serious human rights concerns. Theorists generally agree on two things with respect to securitisation. First, securitisation does not automatically follow from a grave threat. It is a language act where rhetoric is used deliberately to create this perception of an existential threat. For example, not all wars or terrorist attacks, become removed from the political discourse. In 1962, during the war with China, Francine Frankel points out that Nehru was severely criticised both by capitalists who insisted that the state should have focused on defence and left heavy industry under private control, and others who blamed defence minister V.K. Menon's perceived communist leanings, and Nehru himself, for what they saw as the failure of non-alignment and the collapse of the Panchsheel agreement. Similarly, the 26/11 terrorist attacks, and the UPA government's handling of it were subjected to near continuous scrutiny and political debate. Second, an issue being framed by the state as an existential threat does not by itself elevate it to the status of a security issue – for an issue to become securitised, this framing must be broadly accepted by the audience. This is where the absence of the opposition in recent years in India has really been felt. The securitisation of political issues has been a defining feature of the BJP years in India. Domestically, this has been accomplished by invoking anti-terror statutes against members of civil society, student leaders and to punish minorities for communal violence. A vast majority of these instances have not been rhetorically resisted by the political opposition to the BJP. In 2019, for example, the Congress voted in favour of amendments that dangerously broadened the scope of the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in the Rajya Sabha. Few opposition political parties have stood in clear solidarity with the detainees of either the Bhima Koregaon case or the Delhi riots conspiracy case. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this relentless push towards the securitisation of political issues have been the Indian television news and entertainment media. The framing of every issue as an existential threat, especially to the majority Hindu population, has been profitable for them. Popular news channels have seen massive spikes in TRPs around such framings. Films like Kashmir Files and Kerela Story that have been used to create the perception that the Hindus in India are under serious threat have also done extremely well at the box office. This means that in addition to any state imperative to avoid scrutiny by turning political issues into security issues, there is also a strong commercial imperative to keep the audience in this perpetual state of existential anxiety. Once an audience is brought to this state of existential anxiety, it is very difficult to reverse. This traps both the audience and the government into a framework where the only acceptable solution to any problem is increasing militiarisation in the sphere of foreign policy and the rolling back of rights domestically. It is telling that the Congress' only consistent criticism of Operation Sindoor today is that a ceasefire was agreed upon too easily. Their criticism of the BJP government's handling of border disputes with China also revolves around the same theme. Without going into the merits of either position, it is important to note that this is because the only criticism possible of a government in front of an audience under the sway of a securitizing discourse is that they didn't go far enough or act aggressively enough. This discourse becomes a particular handicap in situations where increased military force cannot deliver the desired outcome. If, as Joseph Nye puts it, power is the ability to change the behaviour of states, then a situation where one state is compelled by domestic public opinion to use military force against another, even as such displays of force do not change the behavior sought to be changed, is not an effective demonstration of power. On the contrary, a public discourse that prevents the government from introspecting on its strategies, returning to the drawing board, or exploring alternative pathways, including diplomacy, arguably reduces its power. Theorists generally agree that in any democratic society, national security must never be idealised. And while some issues will need to be securitised from time to time, desecuritisation must always be the long-term goal – to move issues out of this threat defence sequence and into the ordinary public sphere. For the last decade or so, the Indian opposition has preferred to allow the ruling party to set the boundaries of what issues can be debated politically and what issues are elevated to the realm of security. Given the hold the BJP has on the media and consequently, the public imagination, perhaps they believed that to do otherwise would be electorally harmful. It is important to remember that securitisation is not an innocent reflection of an issue being a security threat. To securitise, or to accept a securitisation framing is always a political choice. And this isn't a political choice that requires political power to exercise. It is a battle fought in the realm of rhetoric. And by refusing to challenge any of the state's securitization framings over the last decade, in domestic policy, as well as in foreign affairs, the opposition has contributed to the shrinking of the political discourse in India. Today, the opposition faces a choice – they can either continue to allow the boundaries of political engagement in the country to be decided by the ruling party or they can ground their opposition in democratic principles, and challenge the boundaries themselves, when required. But they would do well to note that to continue along the former path is to contribute to their own growing irrelevance. Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.

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