India’s hosting of the G20 summit this weekend will put its growing power on display. But its leader’s divisive religious politics threaten its rise.
Inside a sprawling golf resort south of New Delhi, diplomats were busy making final preparations for a fast-approaching global summit meeting. The road outside was freshly smoothed and dotted with police officers. Posters emblazoned with the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi bore the slogan he had chosen for the occasion: One Earth, One Family, One Future.
Not far away, however, were the remnants of bitter division: grieving families, charred vehicles and the rubble of bulldozed shops and homes. Weeks before, deadly religious violence had erupted in the Nuh district, the site of the resort. The internet was shut down, and thousands of troops were rushed in. Clashes quickly spread to the gates of Gurugram, a tech start-up hub just outside New Delhi that India bills as a city of the future.
These scenes sum up India’s contradictions as it basks in its moment this weekend as host of the Group of 20: Its momentum toward a bigger role in a chaotic world order is built on increasingly combustible and unequal ground at home.
Mr. Modi, India’s most powerful leader in decades, is attempting nothing less than a legacy-defining transformation of this nation of 1.4 billion people.
On the one hand, he is trying to turn India into a developed nation and a guiding light for the voiceless in a Western-dominated world. The country, now the world’s most populous, is the fastest-growing major economy, adept digitally and awash in eager young workers. It is also a rising diplomatic power that is seeking to capitalize on the frictions of the superpower competition between the United States and China.