Understanding Pakistan in Prime Minister Modi’s speeches

Abstract

In the road down from democracy to authoritarian rule, the role of perceived ‘enemies’ are often very important. While the existence of these ‘enemies’ might be questionable, they are shown by the beneficiaries of authoritarian rule as the harbingers of evil, and the reasons for whom/which democratic rights must go down the drain. In the context of India, which is still a democracy as I write, there are several candidates who can take up the role of this ‘enemy’ in less fortunate times. A very important one among them is the neighboring country Pakistan. It receives an enormous amount of space in political discourses including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches, and it is important to scrutinize the importance it receives. The paper takes into account these speeches delivered by the prime minister which mention Pakistan, and uses the method of discourse analysis to inspect parts where Pakistan has been mentioned. Using the same, it tries to understand why the neighboring country has been mentioned, the purpose it serves and how the speaker wants his audience to view Pakistan. It asks if Pakistan is being used as a red-herring to distract attention from more important issues. It assesses the techniques used by the speaker to create the enemy named Pakistan in his audience’s minds.