India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has received many awards. He often receives international awards and recognition just before key elections in India. It is surprising then, that he hasn’t been in the reckoning for the Nobel Peace Prize. If he could win the Seoul Peace Prize, why not the Nobel?
The Nobel Peace Prize goes to either issue-based campaigners or peace-makers. Narendra Modi is both. To make a stronger claim for the Nobel, Modi may want to look at the 2019 winner of the prize Abiy Ahmed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia.
Hope and expectations were high when Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, defeating an unpopular incumbent government. Abiy Ahmed became the Prime Minister of Ethiopia under similar circumstances in April 2018. Such was the promise his rise held out that it was termed ‘Abiymania’. Modi and Abiy have another great similarity: both believe in personal touch, especially in diplomacy. Both believe in promoting a personality cult around them.
To draw an analogy is not to say the two situations are exactly the same. Of course, Ethiopia is not India. India’s GDP per capita is nearly three times that of Ethiopia’s.
The conflict in Ethiopia, the number of internally displaced people, the levels of political violence and repression, the number of journalists and political opponents in jail and in exile have all been of a scale that India hasn’t seen. Except, today we can’t be sure if India isn’t hurtling down that path.
If PM Modi wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he should see how Abiy has been taking Ethiopia from authoritarianism to democracy, from repression to freedom, and from conflict to reconciliation. Abiy is climbing up a ladder that Modi is climbing down.
Also read: Abiy Ahmed has won the Nobel Peace Prize, but Ethiopia still faces big challenges
Who wants a national security state?
Ethiopia was ‘partitioned’ in 1993 when Eritrea broke away from it. The separation was messy, and both sides fought a war over territorial claims along the border, especially over one disputed region, from 1998 to 2000. The war ended in a stalemate. A low-intensity conflict continued to take lives. The story would sound familiar to any Indian or Pakistani.
The United Nations found that the disputed land should go to Eritrea, but Ethiopia wouldn’t part with it. The conflict over a piece of land cost 80,000 lives. Among those engaged in the war was Abiy Ahmed, who was then an army intelligence officer.
You would expect an army officer-turned-president to be a hyper-nationalist like Modi. Instead, Abey said Ethiopia would follow the recommendations of the peace agreement signed in 2000. Violence and hostility immediately ceased. It is for this effort that Abiy has been given the Nobel Peace Prize.
Narendra Modi’s rule, by contrast, has only heightened tensions with Pakistan. The Indian case has always been that the Pakistani army wants permanent hostility and therefore uses terrorists. But India can neutralise Pakistani terrorism by arriving at a rapprochement with Kashmiris. Kashmiri alienation from Delhi has provided the ammunition to Pakistani terrorism.
Modi’s actions, however, have destroyed whatever goodwill New Delhi had in Srinagar. With the dismantling of the state of J&K, the conflict with Pakistan has deepened. This raises the risk of terrorism, which will be followed by military action. The vicious cycle of violence could make India a national security state.
Who needs dissent?
Former army officer Abiy Ahmed does not want Ethiopia to be a national security state. He wants peace, freedom and democracy. His Eritrean counterpart wasn’t made to share the Nobel prize because he runs a repressive regime.
Since 1995, Ethiopia has been run by a coalition of four parties, together called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Elections are a bit of a joke: the EPRDF won 500 out of 547 seats in 2015. Press freedom was muzzled, opposition leaders jailed, dissenters exiled. When Abiy took over in 2018, he released thousands of political prisoners, invited exiled dissenters back, and put dissenting voices in key positions.
Among them was a former political prisoner and opposition leader who was appointed the head of national election board. Abiy wants the 2020 general election to be free and fair. Ethiopia is already enjoying unprecedented freedom of speech and expression. The opponents and dissenters in Ethiopia were earlier labelled terrorists. In Modi’s India, they are now labelled anti-national, anti-Hindu and ‘urban Naxals’, whatever that means. Abiy has significantly expanded political space, Modi is shrinking it.
In Modi’s India, journalists could soon start filling up the jails if you look at how the Uttar Pradesh police has been filing FIRs against local journalists. While Ethiopia wants its elections to be credible, Narendra Modi’s government is going after a dissenting Election Commissioner by sending his family I-T notices. The Election Commission of India did not come across as impartial in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The entire political class in Kashmir has been put under house arrest, and a selective anti-corruption purge across India is targeting only political opponents. As Ethiopia improves on press freedom indices, India’s rank has been slipping.
There’s another area where Modi could learn from Abiy Ahmed in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize. Abiy is reforming Ethiopia’s economy for real, privatising state-owned companies and driving economic growth. India is going through an economic slowdown while Ethiopia’s growth rate is touching double digits (and nobody is accusing Abiy of fudging data).
Also read: What is the Ethiopia-Eritrea deal, which won Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize
Unity in diversity
None of this is to say that all is well in Ethiopia, but unlike Modi, Abiy isn’t claiming all is well. Greater political freedom has meant Ethiopia is seeing a revival of ethnic conflicts. While Ethiopia witnesses an aggressive debate over Ethio-nationalism and ethic-nationalism, the fate of 2.9 million or 29 lakh internally displaced people hangs in the balance.
Abiy is trying to strike a balance between federalism and nationalism. Given how Modi has converted the state of J&K into two union territories without people’s consent, it is tough to say Abiy should look at Indian federalism as a model. Modi’s regime threatens to impose one language, one religion, one election, one party on the country, whereas Abiy is figuring out a way for ‘unity in diversity’, Nehru-style.
He has set up a truth and reconciliation commission to end the country’s ethnic conflict. Modi, on the other hand, could be on his way to putting millions of Indian Muslims in detention centres and disenfranchising them. As lynchings of Muslims continue, his government refuses to act on the Supreme Court’s suggestion of enacting a new law against lynching.
Abiy’s slogan for Ethiopia is “Medemer”, which means adding together, similar to Modi’s promise of “Sabka Saath”. Since Abiy Ahmed’s slogan has been put into practice, he has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Modi must do an ‘informal summit’ with him soon to borrow some tips.
Also read: Brazil, Ethiopia & Kenya: A new wave of unlikely economic reformers
Views are personal.