Photo credit © Chiara Ambrosio Alpa Shah is the award-winning author of Nightmarch. She has written and presented for BBC Radio 4. She was raised in Nairobi and studied at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, where she is now Professor of Anthropology. She will be the next Professor of Social Anthropology at All Souls College, Oxford from October 2024.

The US welcomed Prime Minister Modi, in 2019, with the largest-ever gathering for a foreign political leader in the country. The weather forecast had promised a flood, but the Texan sky was bright and sunny as people inched their way into the NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans American football team, for the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. The crowd waited in anticipation, wrapped in their finest silk sarees, lehengas and suits, many wearing turbans of the Indian flag and Narendra Modi masks and T-shirts. For ninety minutes, they were roused by Bollywood dancers who shook their hips and busts, Gujarati garba performers who clapped and twirled in circles, and yoga artists who posed as downward-facing dogs. As the foreplay ended, the crowd chanted, ‘Modi! Modi! Modi!’ against the beat of deafening drums. Finally, Prime Minister Modi took the stage, hand-in-hand with the US President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Modi said, ‘Mr President, this morning in Houston, you can hear the heartbeat of this great partnership in this celebration of the world’s two largest democracies.’

* * *

In Texas too, protesters had gathered for a ‘rally for freedom’ and drove tractor-trailer trucks across Houston to the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. They complained about the increasing discrimination faced by Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Adivasis and Dalits in Modi’s India. The month before, in August 2019, just nine weeks after he was re-elected as prime minister in a landslide victory for the BJP, Narendra Modi had stripped Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, of its partial autonomy after seven decades. He had removed the state’s constitution, turned it from a state into a union territory, which restricted its freedom to make its own laws, and revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that had given special status to the people of Kashmir, including the ability to bar Indians from outside the state from purchasing property or settling there. Many Kashmiris knew that these changes would alter the demographic character and traditions of the Muslim-majority region by allowing non-Kashmiris to buy land there.

But their voices of objection were stifled. Ahead of Prime Minister Modi’s announcement of the changes he was imposing on Kashmir, tens of thousands of security troops were sent to what was already one of the most militarised zones in the world. A total communications blackout cut access to news about what was happening in Kashmir. In the longest internet shutdown in any democracy, internet services were cut for six months, and high-speed mobile internet blocked for one and a half years. Meanwhile, within Kashmir, a curfew was declared, 4,000 people were detained, 200 political leaders, including three former chief ministers, were placed under house arrest. Protesters were fired at by the Indian security forces with metal pellets that, since 2016, had already killed Kashmiris, fully or partially blinded 1,100 people there, and injured many more.

Photo credit © Chiara Ambrosio Alpa Shah is the award-winning author of Nightmarch. She has written and presented for BBC Radio 4. She was raised in Nairobi and studied at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, where she is now Professor of Anthropology. She will be the next Professor of Social Anthropology at All Souls College, Oxford from October 2024.

The US welcomed Prime Minister Modi, in 2019, with the largest-ever gathering for a foreign political leader in the country. The weather forecast had promised a flood, but the Texan sky was bright and sunny as people inched their way into the NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans American football team, for the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. The crowd waited in anticipation, wrapped in their finest silk sarees, lehengas and suits, many wearing turbans of the Indian flag and Narendra Modi masks and T-shirts. For ninety minutes, they were roused by Bollywood dancers who shook their hips and busts, Gujarati garba performers who clapped and twirled in circles, and yoga artists who posed as downward-facing dogs. As the foreplay ended, the crowd chanted, ‘Modi! Modi! Modi!’ against the beat of deafening drums. Finally, Prime Minister Modi took the stage, hand-in-hand with the US President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Modi said, ‘Mr President, this morning in Houston, you can hear the heartbeat of this great partnership in this celebration of the world’s two largest democracies.’

* * *

In Texas too, protesters had gathered for a ‘rally for freedom’ and drove tractor-trailer trucks across Houston to the ‘Howdy Modi’ event. They complained about the increasing discrimination faced by Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Adivasis and Dalits in Modi’s India. The month before, in August 2019, just nine weeks after he was re-elected as prime minister in a landslide victory for the BJP, Narendra Modi had stripped Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, of its partial autonomy after seven decades. He had removed the state’s constitution, turned it from a state into a union territory, which restricted its freedom to make its own laws, and revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that had given special status to the people of Kashmir, including the ability to bar Indians from outside the state from purchasing property or settling there. Many Kashmiris knew that these changes would alter the demographic character and traditions of the Muslim-majority region by allowing non-Kashmiris to buy land there.

But their voices of objection were stifled. Ahead of Prime Minister Modi’s announcement of the changes he was imposing on Kashmir, tens of thousands of security troops were sent to what was already one of the most militarised zones in the world. A total communications blackout cut access to news about what was happening in Kashmir. In the longest internet shutdown in any democracy, internet services were cut for six months, and high-speed mobile internet blocked for one and a half years. Meanwhile, within Kashmir, a curfew was declared, 4,000 people were detained, 200 political leaders, including three former chief ministers, were placed under house arrest. Protesters were fired at by the Indian security forces with metal pellets that, since 2016, had already killed Kashmiris, fully or partially blinded 1,100 people there, and injured many more.