No one should be that surprised India has chosen to permit United States military flights to return illegal immigrants. The decision followed swiftly after Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first meeting with any foreign official, that with India’s foreign minister.
Progressives, who regularly denounce Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a religious fundamentalist strongman, may cast the evident alliance with the Trump administration as evidence that he is a populist authoritarian. But time spent in the world’s most populous nation tells a different story: Call it the un-China, the democratic contrast to the People’s Republic of China—which is far from likely to take back its own thousands of illegal immigrants who’ve been sneaking across the Mexico border.
The reality for one traveling in India—enjoying dinner with local families, reading local papers (The Hindu or the Times of India), talking with rice paddy farmers—is that of an affinity with the U.S. not only militarily (through the QUAD group which includes Australia and New Zealand, as well) but culturally. One comes away convinced that as threats from China loom, we must root for India.
In the un-China, political dissent is part of a normal day: newspapers simply teem with American-style op-eds of all kinds, from expressing concern about fraying family life to denouncing Modi’s BJP party for seeking to win elections by distributing “freebies”— such as benefits to inefficient rural small farmers. The Hindu expresses concern that such redistribution may undermine the goal of 8% economic growth—the best means to uplift the country’s poor.
Indeed, in India, information flows freely. There is no firewall that limits access to international media, nor are stories that reflect poorly on the government. The Times of India is unflinching in such criticism— as per a recent editorial calling for safe drinking water to become the norm throughout the country and calling out the government for not making it a priority.
Modi may embrace traditional Hindu values based strongly on ethical behavior, but religious freedom is unrestricted in practice. Two Muslim women selling fashionable saris in the city of Kochi express unconcern to the point of being puzzled about the question of persecution. “We have many Hindu friends. There is no problem”.
Christianity thrives in the southern state of Kerala, and the non-Hindu Sikh party rules Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state (241 million). (It denounced the flights returning illegal immigrants.) Local Mumbai philanthropy has helped restore a grand 19th-century synagogue. Even more important, the Chabad of Mumbai continues to thrive, notwithstanding the murder of its rabbi and his wife in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 that killed 164, the dead murdered at hotels across the city and the main rail station by Pakistani Muslim extremists.
Like the U.S., the un-China is a deeply religious country, where pilgrims travel by overnight bus from temple to temple. The world’s largest gathering of people just concluded, saw 90 million pilgrims attend the Maha Kumbh in the city Prayagraj, where the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers meet, and devotees dip in what are said to be holy waters that purge one’s sins.
In the un-China, no one’s freedom of movement, from farm village to city or back, is restricted. This includes the legal right to work abroad. At a rice paddy in Kerala, the woman of the house, pointing to her smartphone, says she receives direct remittances from her son in Saudi Arabia, where he works as a welder. That helps pay for her daughter to attend nursing school. A sense of ambition and drive for individual upward mobility abound, even at a farm where five water buffalo still serve as beasts of burden.
Freedom of internal movement has led to the growth of Mumbai’s Dharavi, the world’s largest so-called slum, where a million people, Hindu and Muslim from throughout India, have moved to what’s termed the “City of Hope.” This is far from the poverty one might imagine; the city provides power and water and every manner of small business-from plastic recycling to ceramics—thrives.
Modern bathhouses have advanced Modi’s Clean India initiative, which has dramatically reduced the problem of outdoor defecation. On a Dharavi alley, a family of four shares a single room (neat and clean, with spaces and clothes on shelves), accruing savings toward buying their own “flat,’ in a better neighborhood. The two daughters attend a private school where instruction is in English. The elder aspires to be a flight attendant for the recently privatized Air India. The overwhelming majority of rural children plan to leave the farm.
In the un-China, aspiration is not limited by political party membership (albeit caste discrimination remains a problem). At dinner (served on a banana leaf) at a family’s home in the provincial southern Indian city of Trichy, a young adult daughter discusses her plans for when she completes her pending master’s degree in computer science. Her teenage brother plans to be a doctor.
Tradition and modernity coexist. If the daughter gets an IT job in Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley equivalent, her mother will move with her for at least two months, she says, to make sure her daughter is safely settled. The family’s three children all expect arranged marriages, as per that of their parents. “Nothing is more important than family,” their father tells us.
In the un-China, school choice, as Americans would call it, and for which Donald Trump expresses support, is already the norm. Since 2009, when the country passed a Right to Education Law, enrollment in private high schools has increased by 330%, compared to 30% in government schools. Slum families scrimp to pay tuition for English language private schools. In Kerala, the state with the highest literacy rate, only 44.5% of students attend government school, down sharply from 64.5% in 2022. In this supposed religious state, in other words, the decision about what to teach and how is left up to thousands of individual schools.
The un-China, like the U.S. projects, soft power—through literature and film. Bollywood, based in Mumbai, releases hundreds of films each year. Although many are replete with escapist song and dance, others broach the most sensitive problems. The acclaimed All We Imagine As Light, set in Mumbai and winner of the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize, not only tells the story of a romance between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man but also that of an unscrupulous developer who forces a poor woman out of her home. Luxury high-rise construction in Mumbai, a metro of 20 million and growing, defines the city’s skyline.
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An affinity for the U.S. is evident on the teeming streets of the city, where pedlock is the norm. Insignia merchandise from U.S. cities and schools— Boston, Houston, New York, L.A., even the Bronx —abounds. Indians are well aware that emigrants from their country have become CEOs (Microsoft, Alphabet) in America.
In a nation allegedly run by an aspiring strongman, it is democracy that is strong. Prime Minister Modi’s BJP party took a beating at the polls last year, falling far short of its goal to attain a parliamentary majority. There is palpable pride in democratic governance and the rule of law (much of it literally a British legacy). On an Air India flight from Kochi to Mumbai, the flight crew took time for an announcement recognizing Republic Day, the January 26 commemoration of the adoption of India’s federalist-style constitution, proclaiming aloud its guarantees of “democracy, equality, and justice.” Just a routine announcement in the un-China.
Howard Husock is a senior fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.