Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in the United States this week for a state visit, hosted by President Biden and then the next day he will address a joint-session of Congress.

No question this is happening because of India’s strategic and economic importance. But by embracing Modi, the US potentially undermines its moral authority around the globe.

Modi combines a rock star, entertainment-type telegenic figure with ethnocentricity. Sound familiar? It’s a playbook he helped create which has now been replicated in the US among right-wing figures. Prior to his his election as Prime Minister, Modi, then the Chief Minister of the State of Gujarat was once denied a US visa by the Bush Administration for his religious bigotry.

In, fact Modi’s right-wing nationalism has combined religious bigotry with a more socialist economy. Much like the right-wing populists in the US today. His election as Prime Minister in 2014 heightened tensions with Pakistan while empowering religious fundamentalists to attack the nation’s large Muslim minority.

The Hindu nationalist Prime Minister had inherited a nation with a history of secularism in 2014 has radically altered the face of India in a very short period of time. His first term efforts at proactive change have become even more pronounced since his 2019 reelection.

His government pushed hard but ultimately lost in the courts on a measure to force the playing of the Indian national anthem before any movie in a cinema. For those who do not know, the cinema in India is an even more lucrative business than in the US, with Bollywood, netting a worldwide audience of 3 billion. Despite the law being struck down, vigilante justice to enforce standing during playing of the anthem has taken hold in the country.

Modi’s right-wing allies have started a cable news channel, Republic TV which broadcasts in both Hindi and English. Republic TV is the NewsMax TV or OANN of India, with some of the existing cable news channels like TimesNow shifting into FOX News mode. A lone English-language dissenter, New Delhi Television (NDTV) came under great pressure to shift into a more “neutral” (pro-government mode)via various methods of transactional intimidation not dissimilar from the way we’ve seen Republicans beginning with Tom Delay and culminating with Ron DeSantis operate here in the US. Eventually NDTV was bought by a Modi ally and changed its editorial policy.

In August 2019, the Modi government abolished a constitutionally protected status for the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the nation’s only majority Muslim state. Since the special status was revoked, the Internet was shut down for over 145 days. The move, a reaction to a 30-year insurgency in the Kashmir Valley has met with large-scale condemnation in the west. Still Modi’s government seems to have public support its actions and the nation’s influential English language media, who are fearful of repercussions were largely neutral on the issue.

The country passed, a new citizenship law that took stripped manyof their nationality. The law makes it abundantly clear that Muslim exiles to India aren’t entitled to the same rights as Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain refugees. What the law does is codify discrimination in a way that the Indian Constitution never permitted and Modi’s forerunners never seriously contemplated. The passage of the bill  awakened India’s intellectual class and led to massive protests at major universities, as young urbane Indians, accustomed to a secular life with western influence fight back.

Meanwhile right-wing groups like the RSS, an ideological heir to fascists and brown shirt traditions of the past are organizing and matching in support of Modi.

Modi is a key ally of Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, while freedom of the press has been undermined the last several years during his Premiership and the government has tried to jail it’s most prominent political opponents, including opposition leader Rahul Gandhi who was arrested on the most frivolous, in fact humorous of charges.

Photo Credit: By Prime Minister’s Office – https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/image-gallery/, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129147491

But despite all this, Modi has some serious support among Indian-Americans who call themselves Democrats in this country.

The high socioeconomic status of many American Hindus coupled with bigotry toward other immigrant groups (“we are the right immigrants, the benevolent ones, the ones who contribute brainpower to the American economy and society”) has driven some Indian-Americans toward Trump. The majority of those of South Asian extraction in the United States vote Democratic, but a vocal minority who aligns with Hindu fundamentalist though have embraced Donald Trump in a very aggressive manner. But still many of those voting Democratic are supporters of Modi.

These Indian-Americans of Hindu extraction that are Democrats bemoan racism when they are in the minority in this country, but somehow don’t have a problem with bigotry in India, where they are in the majority. Once you comprehend this, you also can understand why the Democrats have begun to move away from traditional progressiveness, as immigrant groups like Indian-Americans that tend to be high income and not really values based gain more influence in the party.

Modi’s American supporters will be out in full force this week. Don’t be fooled by them.