WASHINGTON - Since Modi took office in 2014, and especially after winning reelection in 2019, he has systematically taken a hammer to the core institutions of Indian democracy, writes Zack Beauchamp in VOX.

The prime minister’s government has undermined the independence of the election supervision authority, manipulated judges into ruling in his favour, used law enforcement against his enemies, and increased its control over the Indian press.

The prime minister’s anti-democratic behaviour has accelerated over time. This assault on democracy is a deeply ideological project. The BJP is the electoral offshoot of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a radical Hindu nationalist organization to which Modi has belonged since he was 8 years old.

Christophe Jaffrelot, a leading India scholar at France’s Sciences Po, told me that its ideology amounts to “an Indian version of fascism.” You would think that a pseudo-fascist assault on democracy in the world’s largest country (by population) would merit an international outcry — certainly as much as the attention given to other prominent democratic backsliders like Hungary.

But perhaps because of India’s geopolitical significance, criticism from the world’s leading democracies has been largely muted — left off the agenda as Washington and its Pacific allies court New Delhi in their effort to balance a rising China.