The United States and the Democracy Question in South Asia

Ideologically, the United States is a self-proclaimed promoter and protector of democracy in the world. Its democracy policy has evolved over the past century. The U.S. fought World War II, in part, to defend democracy against fascism and waged a three-decade-long struggle during the Cold War against communism.

Soon after the Cold War, U.S. President George H. W. Bush proposed a “New World Order” based on “freedom, peace and democracy.” His successor, President Bill Clinton, said at the United Nations on September 27, 1993, that the “overriding purpose” of U.S. foreign policy was to “expand and strengthen the world’s community of market based democracies.”

In order to advance this purpose, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took the initiative of establishing a Community of Democracies (CoD). At the first meeting of the CoD in Warsaw in 2000, 106 countries promised to advance democratic norms and institutions. The United Nations endorsed this intergovernmental organization and later raised a “U.N. Fund for Democracy,” with contributions from members.

In more recent years, President Joe Biden convened the “Summit for Democracy.” The first such summit was convened in a virtual form on December 9-10, 2021. Its objectives were “defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, and advancing respect for human rights.” The second summit was hosted by the United States in collaboration with Costa Rica, Zambia, the Netherlands, and South Korea in March 2023, and the third summit was hosted by South Korea in March 2024, in a hybrid format.

Biden promised at the second Summit for Democracy that he would work with the U.S. Congress to “commit $9.5 billion across all our efforts to advance democracy around the world.”

These efforts are motivated by the perception of “autocratic assertion and an ongoing democratic recession,” as put by Thomas Carothers and Francis Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in a February 2024 assessment of the Biden administration’s approaches to democracy policy.

The U.S. strategic community (both official and unofficial) has identified Russia and China as the two key states pursuing “autocratic” assertion, thus integrating the United States’ ideological stance on democracy with the foreign policy goals of containing Russia and China.

In their critical assessment of Biden’s approach, Carothers and Brown said that “Biden’s democracy policy has been dominated by periodic needle-poking relating to policy actions that belie the administration’s soaring rhetoric about standing for democracy against autocracy.”

The inconsistencies and contradictions in U.S. democracy promotion, however, are not limited to the Biden-Harris administration alone, but to the U.S. approach as a whole. Recall Clinton’s campaign speeches in 1992, when he criticized his predecessor, Bush, for aligning U.S. interests with a variety of dictatorial regimes, while highlighting the values of democracy and freedom.

Democracy in South Asia

Let us look closely at these inconsistencies in U.S. democracy policy in South Asia over the years. South Asia as a region occupies a strategically important place in U.S. foreign policy as it accounts for a third of the world’s population, closely neighbors China and the turbulent Middle East, and is a potentially attractive economic market. And South Asia’s countries are jostling with diverse and fluid forms of democratic governance.

The U.S. State Department bring out a report every year to monitor human rights all over the world. Another annual report produced by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) makes recommendations to the State Department in regard to international religious freedoms. These reports cover in detail various aspects that underline democratic processes and governance, like violations of human rights and personal freedoms, political freedoms, the role of the judiciary, media censorship and prosecutions of journalists, government corruption, discriminatory nationalism, the status of ethnic and religious minorities, gender justice, and more. These reports serve an important role in U.S. domestic politics as demonstrations of how committed the government of the day is to the cause of democracy.

In these reports, policy recommendations are also made to the U.S. government in its approach to specific countries, depending on their positive or negative record on various aspects. Measures like sanctions, denial of economic assistance and visas, and trade and other restrictions on those who violate norms (including individuals, leaders, business houses, managers of democratic institutions, and the like) are implemented in an effort to motivate change.

In these reports, South Asian countries have been found wanting on many of the human rights and religious freedom parameters of democratic functioning.

The 2024 annual report from USCIRF recommended that four South Asian countries – Afghanistan, India, Myanmar, and Pakistan – be designated as “countries of particular concern.” Sri Lanka was nominated to be added to the list of countries under “special watch.”

Pakistan was dinged in the USCIRF report for its discriminatory and harsh blasphemy laws. India was described as a country where “religious freedom conditions continued to deteriorate,” where the government “reinforced discriminatory nationalist policies” and failed to “address communal violence… against Muslims and their places of religious worship.” In Sri Lanka, too, the report noted that “religious freedom continued to decline,” pointing out that lands belonging to Hindu and Muslim minorities were being acquired for construction of Buddhist places of worship.

Similarly, detailed country reports on the state of human rights, annually prepared by the U.S. Department of State since 1977, also show South Asian countries in poor light. Most of them have been censured for restraining freedom of expression, violence and discrimination against minorities, life-threatening conditions in prisons, gender violence and injustice, persecution of political opponents, and other related issues.

Outside government, U.S. think tanks and advocacy institutions engage in regular studies and analysis of the democracy situation in the world. In its latest “Freedom in the World” report, Freedom House categorized all the South Asian countries as “partially free,” and India’s Kashmir as “not free.” On India, the report said that “separate incidents of violence resulted in damage to mosques, Muslim-owned businesses and Christian churches.”

South Asian countries have rejected such categorizations. South Asian governments have dismissed these reports as biased and distortions of reality. India’s Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar described the 2024 USCIRF report as uncalled-for “interference.” He said:

It cannot be that one democracy has a right to comment on another, and that’s part of promoting democracy globally. But when others do that, it becomes foreign interference… Foreign interference is foreign interference, irrespective of who does it and where it is done.

Describing USCIRF as a “biased organization with a political agenda,” Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said, “We reject this malicious report, which only serves to discredit USCIRF further.”

Similarly, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahara Baloch, reacting to the 2023 report on religious freedom, had said: “Such ill-informed reporting exercises about internal affairs of sovereign states are pointless, irresponsible, and counterproductive.”

India has not issued visas to USCIRF representatives for over a decade.

Cold War Policy Inconsistencies and Contradictions

Assorted entities – from independent advocacy organizations like Freedom House to Congress-mandated commissions like USCIRF – make various policy recommendations for the U.S. government, which include sanctions, visa restrictions and other diplomatic measures, to be imposed on countries and entities violating the rights of their citizens.

The U.S. government has only selectively accepted such recommendations, depending upon its perceived strategic, economic, and other interests. This is evident in U.S. policies toward South Asian countries.

During World War II, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of India’s freedom struggle, asking for him to cooperate with the British war effort. “Our common interest in democracy and righteousness will enable your countrymen and mine to make common cause against a common enemy,” Roosevelt said.

Gandhi and India’s freedom fighters refused the request and asked for the granting of Indian independence first.

After independence, India denounced military alliances and emerged as a leader of the non-aligned movement. India’s non-alignment and its cordial relations with the then-Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China – the perceived bastions of communism and adversaries of the U.S. – so annoyed policymakers in Washington that they decided to contain India within South Asia.

During the Cold War, the United States preferred the military regimes of Pakistan over a democratic India. India had refused to follow the U.S. vision of the world and Pakistan was more than willing to do U.S. bidding in return for U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic support against India.

India’s push for the democratization of the Himalayan Kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim was only selectively welcomed by the U.S. In Nepal, the United States’ preferred option remained monarchy since the rise of King Mahendra in 1955, until the elimination of the monarchy under King Gyanendra in 2008. The democratizations of Sikkim (1975), which then voted to join India as a state, and Bhutan (2008), however, were accepted in Washington.

India’s support for the emergence of an independent and sovereign Bangladesh in 1971 was militarily resisted by the United States. Subsequently, the U.S. was seen by some analysts as being actively involved in the military coup engineered by Pakistan and China in Bangladesh in 1975 that overthrew a democratic regime, brutally killing its popular Prime Minister Mujibur Rahman and much of his family. During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. even allied with China to isolate the Soviet Union and force it to retreat from Afghanistan.

This served to reinforce the consistent Indian assumption that the Cold War was being waged not to fight communism ideologically but to contain the USSR and to consolidate U.S. power and supremacy in the world.

The broader strategic irritation and indifference toward India in U.S. policies was punctuated by periodic and limited economic and military support, in particular after the Chinese aggression in 1962. There were also U.S. presidents like Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan who appreciated India’s democratic credentials and wanted to improve bilateral relations, but overriding strategic interests motivated a maintenance of the status quo.

The real shift in the U.S. approach toward India only became evident in the context of India’s declared nuclear weapons power status in 1998, its growing economy since the early 1990s, and the rising challenge posed by China to U.S. supremacy. Washington sees India as a credible force in the Indian Ocean to balance Chinese expansion and assertion, and India looks to the U.S. for military, technological, economic, and diplomatic support to match China’s phenomenal rise.

Writing for Foreign Affairs in June 2023, Daniel Markey of the United States Institute of Peace noted that the India-U.S. relationship should be understood as a marriage of strategic convenience, not a partnership based on shared values. In pursuance of this strategic convergence, Washington has soft-peddled its response to India’s democratic deviation, and India is willing to absorb minor ideological shocks from the U.S. To accommodate India’s unease, the U.S. State Department has consistently declined to take up USCIRF’s recommendations in recent years that India be designated a “country of particular concern.”

U.S. support for Pakistan started with the firming up of the Cold War against the communist powers Russia and China. Explaining this support, a senior State Department official observed in 1951:

We do however have a great incentive to help Pakistan for the reason that Pakistan is very cooperative with us and the Western countries. Pakistan has a very forthright attitude with respect to the basic cold war issues. Pakistan… has in other ways demonstrated her willingness to participate with us.

Several studies hold U.S. support for Pakistan responsible for the erosion of its democracy and the rise of its military as a domestic power center. The sudden death of its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, followed by the assassination of popular Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan broke the back of democratic evolution in Pakistan.

In his 1967 book, “Friends Not Masters: A Political Autobiography,” Pakistan’s first military dictator, General Mohammad Ayub Khan, wrote that U.S. support for his army gave it strength and confidence between 1952 and 1958. This encouraged the army to take control of the Pakistani state in 1958. By then Pakistan had become a military ally of the United States.

Pakistan’s military has consistently received U.S. military, political, and economic support (estimated to be $67 billion between 1951 and 2011). After the Cold War, the United States needed Pakistan to fight its post-9/11 war on terrorism in Afghanistan. Even after realizing that Pakistan was not an honest broker in combatting terror networks, and noting its growing strategic proximity with China, the U.S. continued to support Pakistan and its military’s dominance in its polity.

More recently, popular Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan tapped into this history when he alleged that the United States and the Pakistani military joined hands in a conspiracy to oust him in April 2022 (something strongly denied by both Washington and Rawalpindi). Pakistan’s nuclear weapons power status, its proximity to the turbulent Islamic world, and its location on the Persian Gulf and in the neighborhood of China cannot be ignored by Washington’s strategists.

Recent Democratic Upheavals in South Asia

Three South Asian countries have undergone democratic upheavals in the past two decades.

Nepal saw democratic mainstreaming of a decade-old Maoist insurrection in 2006 and the elimination of its monarchy in 2008, creating an inclusive, federal, republican democratic order. The Maoist leadership had promised to create a “New Nepal” through systemic transformation.

In Sri Lanka, during March-July 2022, a popular uprising called Janatha Aragalaya (People’s Struggle) forced its elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country. The Rajapaksa clan was known to be authoritarian, corrupt, and strategically leaning toward China. In the presidential elections in September 2024, Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National People’s Power – the latest avatar of a leftist outfit, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), known for its violent rebellions in 1971 and 1989 – emerged victorious. Dissanayake has promised to bring about systemic changes in the Sri Lankan polity.

In Bangladesh, a massive student uprising defied violent suppression and forced Sheikh Hasina, prime minister for 15 years, to resign and flee the country. An interim political setup that includes student leaders and led by Noble Laureate and activist Mohammad Yunus has assumed power. The new administration promises to radically reform Bangladesh’s political dynamics.

The United States reacted differently to each of these transformations.

In Nepal, Washington strongly opposed the Maoist insurrection. While pleading for a peaceful resolution and condemning human rights violations both by the Maoists and the ruling monarchy, the United States offered military and financial assistance to the latter to crush the former. U.S. support, along with support from China, emboldened the autocratic monarchy to avoid reaching a peaceful compromise with mainstream democratic parties and the Maoists. These two anti-monarchy forces joined hands and, blessed by India, eventually forced the king to surrender his executive power in April 2006.

Mainstreamed into politics, the Maoists, with support from other Nepali democratic parties, eliminated the monarchy through a popularly elected Constituent Assembly in 2008. The United States accepted this change and has since pursued cordial relations with Nepal, including under Maoist-led governments. Indeed, Biden invited Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the former Maoist guerrilla leader who was then Nepal’s prime minister, to attend the second Summit for Democracy in 2023.

In Sri Lanka, when an inefficient and autocratic president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, triggered a huge popular uprising, the United States stood by the people. The State Department opposed Rajapaksa’s imposition of an emergency and the violent police action to deal with the uprising in 2022. The U.S. ambassador in Colombo, Julie Chung, was in direct contact with the protest leaders, and some Sri Lankan sources claimed the U.S. financially backed the protesters.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, on May 4, 2022, Chung said: “The freedom to engage in peaceful protest without fear of arrest is fundamental to democracy. The US urges restraint on all sides and reiterates our support for the rights of peaceful protest.”

Whispers in Colombo’s political circles pointed to the U.S. embassy’s efforts, while supporting the protests, to help Rajapaksa (prior to 2019 a dual U.S.-Sri Lankan citizen) escape without being personally harmed. A U.S.-friendly successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, stepped into power.

Before Sri Lanka’s presidential elections, Chung visited with all the major candidates, including a meeting with Dissanayake at the NPP office. This underlined, in view of the Nepali example, that the U.S. is willing to engage and support radical forces in South Asia, even those with a history of armed rebellion, when such forces join democratic politics.

In the case of Bangladesh, the United States has been consistently unhappy with the Awami League (AL) since the elections of 2009, as its sympathies lay generally with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) established by post-1975 military dictator General Ziaur Rahman and led after his death by his wife, Begum Khaleda Zia. In subsequent elections, the U.S. found it difficult to accept the legitimacy of the Hasina-led AL’s electoral victories given credible accusations of vote-rigging and the violent oppressions of opposition parties. The elections were also not conducted under an “independent” interim administration, a provision made under the BNP government but amended by the AL government in 2011.

After 2021, the United States openly pressured Hasina to ensure “free and fair elections” under an interim arrangement. In December 2021, Washington imposed sanctions on Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a paramilitary counterterrorism force. The RAB allegedly carried out extrajudicial killings, abductions, and election fundraising via extortion.

Ahead of the January 2024 elections, the U.S. Department of State imposed visa restrictions in May 2023 on “Bangladeshi individuals responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process.” The sanctions were reiterated in September 2023, with the State Department stressing, “The United States is committed to supporting free and fair elections in Bangladesh that are carried out in a peaceful manner.”

The U.S. viewed the January 2024 elections as unfair and rigged. In the summer of 2024, it lent support to the anti-government student uprising, condemning the Hasina government for atrocities against the protesters, who then began demanding her resignation and the “restoration of democracy.”

After her ouster, Hasina claimed that the U.S. leveraged the student movement to overthrow her regime because she had refused to toe the U.S. strategy line for the Indo-Pacific region. Bangladesh had reportedly refused to sign two U.S.-proposed defense agreements – the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) and the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA). She publicly accused Washington of pressuring her to let the United States build a military base on Saint Martin’s Island, an allegation for which she provided no evidence.

To bolster her case, Hasina’s supporters point out that Yunus, who heads the post-Hasina interim government, has long had ties to the United States, including a personal friendship with the Clintons. However, the protest leaders have denied that their movement was instigated by the United States.

India has generally been uncomfortable with any major external intervention in its immediate neighborhood, including from the United States. However, the recent democratic upheavals in South Asia have occurred amid growing strategic proximity between India and the U.S. They have a common objective of containing China’s assertive and expansionist approaching to the Indo-Pacific region, though their pursuance of this objective has mutual nuances and deviations.

India was unhappy with the U.S. in its support of the Nepali monarchy’s military approach to the Maoists while repressing democratic institutions and parties. After the mainstreaming of the Maoists, the U.S. has accepted the primacy of India’s strategic interests in the Himalayan state and the two countries are coordinating their approaches to Nepal.

In the case of Sri Lanka, both India and the U.S. converged on supporting popular resentment against the Rajapaksa ruling clan, which had been unduly leaning toward China. Both also found Wickremesinghe to be eminently acceptable as a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and are generally working in harmony to ensure that newly elected Dissanayake builds an inclusive and stable democratic order.

India has, however, felt seriously disturbed by regime change in Bangladesh, which the United States welcomed. New Delhi had built a strong economic and security relationship with the Hasina regime, based on respect for mutual sensitivities and core interests. The forces opposed to Hasina, like the BNP and Islamists of the Jamaat-e-Islami, are traditionally close to Pakistan and inimical to India’s interests. The rise of these forces and the prevailing instability, including attacks on the Hindu minority, and the fragility of the Yunus-led arrangement, are a matter of deep concern to India.

Through quiet diplomatic channels, India has brought U.S. attention to these issues. It may be hoped that in the larger regional interest of both partners, the U.S. would be responsive to India to see that these forces do not gain ground in the evolving political dynamics of Bangladesh. In this respect, India’s loss will only be to the benefit of Pakistan and China.

In a recent interview, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell described the U.S. role in “developments inside Bangladesh” as “limited.” However, he admitted that “this is an area that has raised some anxieties in India,” adding, “we have sought very much to communicate directly of our strong desire to make sure that India’s interests are noted and acted on.”

If the discordance between the U.S. and Indian approaches to Bangladesh is not bridged, the interests of both will suffer and Bangladesh will not be able to stabilize itself, which Campbell identified as the primary U.S. interest in the country.

The ideological passion for supporting democracy in the world is clearly evident in U.S. foreign policy. However, in translating the ideological commitment into concrete policy measures, priority has always been accorded to strategic and economic interests. The cause of democracy has been subordinated to U.S. geostrategic concerns.

Balancing ideology with core strategic interests has been all the more challenging for the U.S in relation to South Asia, where the countries of the region are flexible and resilient in their own democratic commitments, but they carry no in-significant strategic value in the U.S. strategic calculations. The U.S. however is not alone in this mismatch between ideological values and strategic core interests. All other major countries, including India, suffer from this dilemma.