Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party gets mixed results in state elections, political protests and a terrorist attack strike Pakistan over the weekend, and Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu makes a five-day trip to India.
Sign up to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Wednesday.
Sign up to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Wednesday.
On Tuesday, India announced the results of legislative elections in the state of Haryana and the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The votes were the first test for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since national elections that concluded in June—when it failed to win an outright majority, leading Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to govern in coalition for the first time.
The BJP won the election in Haryana, but it lost to a group of its rivals in Kashmir. Despite the split result, both votes could be seen as delivering a victory to the BJP: One brought the party an obvious political boost, while the other gave it a more strategic triumph.
In Haryana, the BJP became the first party to win a third straight term in the state assembly—defying the anti-incumbency factor. According to Indian analysts, that is in part because many of the state’s leaders are relatively fresh faces, including Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, who has only been in office for six months.
The triumph comes in a state that has been the site of high-profile anti-BJP activism—from farmers opposed to Modi’s agricultural policies to protesters seeking the resignation of BJP lawmaker Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who was accused of sexual harassment when he led the Wrestling Federation of India. The opposition Indian National Congress party performed well in Haryana in the national elections.
Exit polls, which are often wrong in India, predicted a BJP loss in Haryana. But the party had worked hard to win. Its top national leadership played a direct role in strategy: Interior Minister Amit Shah visited the state ahead of the election to oversee planning, and he and BJP president J.P. Nadda signed off on the party’s candidates in the state.
The BJP campaigned heavily in rural areas, where the Congress threat was strongest. In a possible sign of lessons learned from this year’s electoral setback, Modi participated in fewer campaign rallies in Haryana than he did previously. The BJP also crafted a narrative around boosting jobs and incomes—not rallying around the communal issues that likely hurt the party in national elections.
By contrast, the BJP suffered a blow in Jammu and Kashmir, winning only 29 seats compared with the 42 won by the National Conference party, which will form a government in coalition with Congress.
The vote was the first held in Kashmir in nearly a decade and was widely seen as a referendum on New Delhi’s 2019 decision to strip the region of its autonomy—a move that was bitterly opposed by many people in Kashmir, especially in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. Most of the seats won by the National Conference, which rejects the move, were in the Kashmir Valley.
Yet the BJP can still claim a strategic victory in Kashmir. It has repeatedly insisted that the revocation of Article 370 would ultimately bring more stability to the restive region. The idea of a normalized Kashmir has become a BJP rallying cry: The government has hosted tourism summits in the region and recently brought foreign diplomats to Srinagar, its largest city. Now, Modi’s party can point to a successful election process.
In reality, Kashmir remains highly volatile. It has suffered a few recent terrorist attacks, and authorities retain a heavy security presence in the Kashmir Valley that curtails freedoms and makes many residents unwilling to speak freely. Nonetheless, the election and its outcome give the BJP compelling data points to brandish in response to such criticism.
The BJP will now set its sights on state assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, both scheduled for later this year. As in Haryana, the BJP suffered setbacks in both states in the national elections. But the party heads into the votes with fresh momentum and confidence as it seeks to undo the political damage it suffered earlier this year.
Pakistan’s violent weekend. On Saturday, supporters of jailed Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan heeded his call to protest in the province of Punjab—defying bans on demonstrations and crackdowns that included road closures and tear gas. Dozens of police officers were injured in clashes with protesters.
Khan called on his supporters to oppose proposed constitutional amendments that would give Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership more influence over the courts, but many protesters were mainly demonstrating for Khan’s release.
Then, late on Sunday local time, the Balochistan Liberation Army, a violent separatist group, bombed a Chinese convoy outside the Karachi international airport that killed two Chinese nationals. The terrorist attack was the latest in a series on Chinese targets in Pakistan in recent years. Beijing’s security concerns there have become a major tension point in its otherwise close alliance with Islamabad.
Taken together, the political protests and the terrorist attack present an unsettling challenge for Pakistan, which is hosting a high-level summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on Oct. 15 and 16. Pakistani officials, sensitive to global criticism that the country is not safe for foreigners, are determined to make sure the summit succeeds.
Security measures in Islamabad next week will likely be massive in anticipation of the arrival of top officials from China, Russia, and India—the latter of which will be represented by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
Muizzu visits New Delhi. Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu arrived in India on Sunday for a five-day visit. It’s a significant trip for a leader who campaigned on a vow to expel the Indian military presence from the Maldives and who has moved quickly to strengthen defense ties with China. However, the visit is another reminder that Muizzu is not abandoning his country’s long partnership with India, contrary to some commentary.
Muizzu is keen to better balance ties with both China and India, which may entail boosting defense ties with Beijing but also involves doubling down on an economic partnership with New Delhi. Indeed, since taking office last year, Muizzu has never stopped calling India a close partner—a recognition of the Maldives’ dependence on India for economic support.
Muizzu, who attended Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in June, has often acknowledged India’s importance as a source of financial and development support—a critical role in the Maldives, which is still struggling to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic’s hits to the tourism sector. And New Delhi, ever keen to counter Beijing’s influence, has been happy to oblige.
After meeting with Muizzu on Monday, Modi announced that India has approved a new currency swap with Malé. This comes after India agreed in April to expand food exports to the Maldives. The two leaders also said their governments will soon start talks on a possible free trade accord.
Bangladesh marks Hindu festival. This week, Hindus in Bangladesh will mark Durga Puja, a festival that honors the goddess Durga. Though it typically brings large celebrations, some Hindu community leaders in Bangladesh have said they may be limited this year due to concerns about security threats since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country in August.
That month, there were hundreds of attacks on Hindu targets, according to Bangladeshi reports—retaliatory violence against those perceived to be supporters of Hasina and her party. The security of Bangladeshi Hindus is a major concern for India: Last week, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said it expected that Dhaka would provide security to religious minorities during Durga Puja.
Bangladesh’s interim government insists that it is taking steps to protect religious minorities. Soon after taking office, chief advisor Muhammad Yunus met with Hindu community leaders. Still, Durga Puja will be a test case of Dhaka’s ability to ensure this security. Hasina’s ouster created more political space for Islamist hard-liners, which her government sought to curb.
If the holiday period passes relatively peacefully, the interim government will be able to say its efforts to ensure security have been successful. But if there are violent incidents, anxieties will mount within affected communities—and pressure on Dhaka to do more will intensify.
Nepal has once again been hit by deadly floods in recent days, leaving rescue workers with a familiar challenge: how to bring immediate assistance to the most remote and inaccessible affected areas in the mountainous country.
This time around, however, emergency responders are using a novel approach. The Kathmandu Post reports that responders have dispatched drones to deliver food, water, and other essential supplies. The drones are owned by an NGO called Hami Nepal, which says they were imported from China and are being operated with assistance from a Nepalese tech firm.
On Sunday alone, the drones conveyed around 600 kilograms (about 1,300 pounds) of relief materials and made 30 total flights. Sudan Gurung, the head of Hami Nepal, said it is the first time that the drones have been used for this particular purpose in the country. But according to the World Bank, drones have been a part of some disaster rescue efforts there for several years.
After serious flooding in 2021, Nepal’s main national disaster authority—in collaboration with the World Bank—used drones to gather data, including information about the most heavily flooded areas. The bank notes the obstacles of using drones at a greater scale in Nepal, from permit delays to strict import rules. But this shouldn’t take away from the successes last weekend.
In the Daily Mirror, doctor Himantha Atukorale worries that older Sri Lankans are being exploited during election campaigns. “Election monitoring bodies, alongside civil society, must take an active role in safeguarding the rights of elderly voters,” he writes. “This could involve stricter oversight, better education on their electoral rights and establishing dedicated support groups.”
In Pakistan Today, writer Tanzeel Khanzada argues that Islamabad must undertake rigorous privatization reforms. “The sad reality is that every major state-owned institution in Pakistan has become a symbol of corruption, inefficiency, and public exploitation,” he writes. These “institutions are draining the country’s resources while delivering little in return.”
In the Print, scholars Sunil Badve and Shekhar Mande discuss how India is working to boost cancer treatment. “[M]uch of India’s cancer care has relied on data from Western countries, leading to an increasing realisation among caregivers that generating India-specific data is essential so that Indian patients can be better managed based on their genomic information,” they write.
The post India’s BJP Sees Split Results in State Elections appeared first on Foreign Policy.
