印度总理莫迪在2021年9月的联合国大会上称印度是“民主之母”。
在印度接任G20（二十国集团）轮值主席的标识、主题和网站推介仪式上，莫迪进一步阐述了印度在全球的角色。他说，我们有责任向世界介绍印度的思想和实力，印度的文化和社会力量。我们有责任以我们几千年的文化智慧和其现代性，增强世界的知识。我们要将几个世纪甚至千年以来一直实践的“Jai-Jagat”（世界共赢）理念，重新注入活力，呈现给现代世界。
印度和莫迪事实上拥有许多支持者，尤其是在西方政治领导人、政策分析家和媒体中，即使他们对印度文化的“几千年”智慧持有怀疑态度。
人们对印度赞不绝口：“世界上最大的民主国家”；“杰出的发展典范”；西方的“首选经济和战略伙伴，因拥有共同理念如法治等原则”；“以规范、良好治理、开放、透明和平等驱动的国家”等等。
那些标榜印度为民主和发展典范的人，并不是因为他们是印度式民主的粉丝，也不是因为他们相信来自“自由世界”的媒体经常提到对印度赞美之陈词滥调。
反之，他们将印度作为制衡工具，以争取其支持来应对中国的崛起，他们认为中国这个限制人们权利和自由的威权体制，却拥有现代历史上最成功的扶贫和发展记录，将会为发展中国家提供一个不同的角色模型。
对于他们来说，中国共产党的一党制执政是不可接受的体制，这也与基于西方议会选举概念的印度多党制形成对比。
对于西方来说，最令他们无法接受的是，中国的崛起及威胁到了当前由西方主导的国际世界秩序。
因此，西方热衷于夸大宣传印度在促进民主治理和作为发展中国家宪政民主模范的角色，特别是在一些场合中，如印度在加入Quad（四方安全对话组织），与美国、日本和澳洲组建安全伙伴关系，以及其他旨在谴责和遏制中国的类似倡议活动中。
为了迎合西方的期望，莫迪在2022年5月的Quad（四方安全对话组织）峰会上演讲中称，Quad是一股“对全球有利的力量”，因为“民主价值把我们（四方安全对话组织成员国）联合在一起”。
但是莫迪政府推行的所谓“民主”到底为印度和世界带来了怎样的“增价”作用？事实上，过去一直被政策研究和公众视野忽略的现实正在浮现：印度的民主不仅存在缺陷，而且正在倒退，这更被瑞典哥德堡大学旗下的知名研究机构V-dem（民主形态）研究所称之为，过去10年里最糟糕的独裁统治。
该研究所于2023年发布的报告，将印度在自由民主指数中排在了倒数40-50%的第97位，在选举民主指数中排在了第108位（低于坦桑尼亚、玻利维亚、墨西哥、新加坡和尼日利亚），在平等结构指数中排在了第123位。或许报告中最令人不安的是，印度的宗教自由程度是自1975年以来最低的。长期以来，印度一直被视为一个世俗国家的光辉榜样，但实际上，印度政府越来越倾向兴都教及兴都教徒。
实际上，卡内基国际和平基金会早在2019年就提出了这一趋势的预警。卡内基国际和平基金会是美国为数不多提供全球重大课题分析的独立智库之一。在其“印度人民党执政：印度民主和宗教民族主义”的专题报告中就警告，莫迪政府激发了兴都教民族主义高涨，也在重塑印度的社会、世俗主义、经济和外交政策。
因此，一些在过去十年追捧新德里的西方媒体开始用更为批判的视角看待莫迪领导下的印度。《纽约时报》发表的一篇评论文章得出了以下结论： 在印度迈向一个健康、有活力的民主过程中，其面对著的一个更深层、久远的障碍，即一直以来未能改善其贫穷民众的处境。在印度每年有数十万儿童因饥饿而死亡，超过1/3的儿童营养不良，而印度的亿万富翁则在全球财富榜上不断攀升。
实际上，新自由主义政策加剧了不平等，国家退出了提供卫生和教育等基本责任。这导致数百万生活在无尊严和无权力状态下的民众，寻求族群身份的认同，进而向承诺保护他们免受其他族群侵害的强势领导者靠拢，并很容易沉迷于宗教仇恨的“大众鸦片”，这种仇恨正在被用来把印度从世俗国重新定义为兴都教国家。
对于这些指责，印度的回应，可从印度外交部长苏杰生在2021年3月印度南部对话会上反映出来。他说：“你们使用了民主和独裁的二分法。你想要真诚的答案……这可称之为虚伪。因为你们有一群自封的世界监护人，他们很难接受印度不寻求他们的认可，不愿意按照他们想要的游戏方式。”“所以他们发明自己的规则、参数，通过自己的判断，然后像这是某种全球行动一样的表现出来。”
苏杰生的回应听起来非常像中国外交部长王毅对西方在批评中国于西藏、新疆、香港、法轮功和其他类似地缘政治课题上的回应。现在印度和西方的蜜月期似乎已经结束，也许这是中印两国和解契机，解决双方边界争端并合作对抗“自封的世界监护人”的时机。
林德宜《印度能否继续成为西方民主典范？》原文：
Can India Remain The West's Democracy Poster Child
“India - Mother of all democracies” according to Prime Minister Modi in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021.
In a more recent address on the occasion of the unveiling of the logo, theme and website of India’s G20 Presidency, Modi elaborated on India’s role in the world
“It is our responsibility to introduce the world to India's thinking and strength, to India's culture and social power. It is our responsibility to enhance the knowledge of the world with the intellectualism of our thousands of years old culture and the modernity contained in it. The way we have lived the idea of 'Jai-Jagat' for centuries and millennia, today we have to bring
it alive and present it to the modern world.”
India and Modi in fact have many admirers especially among Western political leaders, policy analysts and media even if they may be sceptical about the “thousands of years old” intellectualism of Indian culture.
“Biggest democracy in the world”; “exceptional and exemplary model of development”; the West’s “preferred economic and strategic partner based on shared principles such as the rule of law”; “ a country “driven by norms, good governance, ...openness, transparency and equality” - these and more accolades have been showered on the country.
Why India is the West’s Democracy Role Model
Those touting India as the role model for democracy and development have done this not because they are fans of Indian style democracy or because they believe in the pro-India platitudes regularly trotted out in the ‘free world’ media.
They have taken to marketing India to enlist its support to counter the rise of China and what they regard as the challenge by an autocratic system with limited rights and freedoms for its citizens but with the greatest poverty alleviation and development record in modern history and which provides a different role model for developing nations.
For them, the Communist Party governing China is an unacceptable single party system in contrast to India’s multi-party system based on western concepts of parliamentary elections.
This is especially repugnant to the West as China’s rise and development threatens to upset the current western dominated international world order.
Thus bromides on India’s unique role in the enhancement of democratic governance and as a model of constitutional democracy for developing nations are sprouted particularly on occasions
such as when India joined the Quad, the security partnership with the US, Japan and Australia, and during other similar initiatives aimed at condemning and containing China.
Playing to the Western gallery, Modi in his speech at the Quad summit in May 2022 described the Quad as “a force for global good” because “We [the four Quad countries] are united by our democratic values.”
India’s Electoral Autocracy
But what really is the value added democracy that Modi’s government has introduced to India and the rest of the world?
The reality - kept out of policy and general public sight - is now emerging that India’s democracy is not only flawed.
It has also regressed into what the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, calls "one of the worst autocratisers in the last 10 years". The Institute’s 2023 report placed India in the bottom 40-50% on its Liberal Democracy Index at rank 97; 108 on the Electoral Democracy Index (below Tanzania, Bolivia, Mexico, Singapore and Nigeria) and 123 on the Egalitarian Component Index. Perhaps the most disconcerting is the finding that religious freedom in India is at its lowest level since 1975. Long seen as a shining example of a secular state, in reality the Indian state has increasingly privileged Hinduism over other religions and religious communities.
An early warning of this development had in fact been provided in 2019 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, one of a very few American think tanks providing independent analysis of major global problems.
Its special feature on “The BJP in Power: Indian Democracy and Religious Nationalism” warned that the upsurge in Hindu nationalism ushered in by Modi’s government is reshaping Indian society, secularism, economics, and diplomacy.
(https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/04/bjp-in-power-indian-democracy-and-religious-nationalism-pub-78677 )
Since then, some Western media that have actively courted New Delhi during the past decade are beginning to view Modi’s India through less rosy lenses.
An opinion piece which appeared in the New York Times, one of the most influential newspapers had the following conclusion：
But a deeper and much older hindrance to the development of a healthy, resilient democracy has been India’s historical failure to ensure the welfare of its poorest citizens. Hundreds of thousands of children die each year from hunger, and more than a third are stunted even as Indian billionaires race up the global wealth charts.
Neoliberal policies have compounded inequality, with the state retreating from fundamental responsibilities such as health and education. This breeds a life of indignity and powerlessness for millions who take refuge in group identity, gravitate toward strong leaders promising to defend them against other groups and easily become hooked on the mass opioid of religious hatred now being used to redefine secular India as a Hindu state.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/opinion/india-modi-democracy.html)
India’s Response
India’s response to the downgrading of its democratic credentials can best be seen in this denunciation of the reports by Foreign Minister S Jaishankar in March 2021 at the India Today Conclave South 2021：
"You use the dichotomy of democracy and autocracy. You want the truthful answer...it is called hypocrisy. Because you have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world, who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval, is not willing to play the game they want to be played,"
"So they invent their rules, their parameters, they pass their judgements and then make out as though this is some kind of global exercise".
Jaishankar's response sounds very much like what Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, has been saying to the West on Tibet, Xinjiang, Hongkong, Falun Gong and other similar subjects of western criticism in the geopolitical sphere.
Now that India's honeymoon with the West seems to be over, perhaps this is the time for the two Asian nations to make peace on their boundary dispute and get their act together to take on the "self-appointed custodians of the world"
