From Delhi To Paris, Did Modi Trigger The Right Wing Wave?

With the Indian election done, the legacy of Narendra Modi’s campaigning and his style of politics finds ground in Europe.

The message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Indian people during the recent election campaign was clear: populist rhetoric has its limits.

After successfully forming a coalition that propelled his National Democratic Alliance back into power, Modi has embarked on his third term as PM but the path to victory wasn’t easy, his campaign littered with missteps, misinformation and allegations of complacency from the incumbent government.

From Modi to the world

Modi didn’t waste any time moving on from the election results. Just days after being sworn in, he was in Italy attending the G7 Summit.

There, he reunited with his friend, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The two are close.

Modi chuckled as the Italian Prime Minister shouted “Hello, from the Melodi Team,” into her mobile phone in a video viewed more than 41 million times since Meloni posted it on X.

The friendship is no surprise — both ascended to the pinnacle of their country’s political system by appealing to right-wing populists.

360info’s South Asia Editor Bharat Bhusan says the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) movement, which is the ideological north star for Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party, has decades-old links with the Italian fascist movement, which Meloni’s party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) is said to have also found its foundations.

“The relationship with far-Right organisations in Europe and in India is nothing new. The RSS (National Volunteers Association, as it calls itself) was set up by people who actually went and sought advice from Mussolini, in the mid-1920s,” Bhusan said.

“They learn from each other. You would be surprised to know that this time when Modi did not get a simple majority and was not even the prime minister-designate, Giorgia Meloni of Italy called him and congratulated him as if he was already the prime minister and helped him thwart any challenge, before it could even come up.’’

Macron’s gamble

French President Emmanuel Macron and Modi have little in common.

Modi is instead idolised by Macron’s bitter rival, French far-right politician Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen and her fellow National Rally party leader Jordan Bardella caused the most seismic shift in the recent EU vote, with more than 30 percent of French voters supporting the right-wing movement.

Macron dissolved parliament and called a snap election in response, calling attention to the danger of what he called “nationalists and demagogues” to France and the world.

France prepares for its first round of parliamentary elections on June 30, followed by the second round a week later.

It’s possible Macron would have to swear in France’s first far-right prime minister since the end of World War Two. This development would undoubtedly reshape the country’s trajectory.

Associate Professor Ben Wellings, an expert in European Nationalism at Monash University, told Leave it to the Experts that President Macron and his challengers are once again testing the core of French nationalism.

“She [Le Pen] draws on that Republican tradition that goes back to the French Revolution, where the idea was that division and disunity was death. But of course, at the time of the French Revolution, the French were being attacked … now the distinction is really about Islam.”

The battle for democracy

According to Wellings, this trend doesn’t bode well for democracy.

“It’s not good … because pretty much all of them, although I said that they endorsed democracy, I think they like democracy when people vote for them, and I suspect that the commitment to voting as an element of democracy would start to weaken a bit as if fewer people started voting for them,” he said.

Macron’s gamble echoes then-UK prime minister David Cameron’s call for a referendum on the European Union, which led to the Brexit vote in 2016.

Britain also goes to the polls this week. Another nation gripped by the allure of national sovereignty against the globalisation it helped to create.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.