“Thorns of the White Saffron”—A study of Political Polarization in India and the US, Aly Rashid, UG '26 (3993447)

The growing degree of political polarization across the world which has yielded power to increasingly nationalistic leaders. How large of a threat does political polarization pose to modern democracies and to what extent does the rise of polarized leaders in one country affect another? This paper explores answers to these questions by comparing India, the world’s largest democracy, and the United States of America, the perceived ‘trendsetter’ of modern democracy. In particular, this paper studies a political exchange between two elected leaders whose campaigns relied heavily on polarization—Donald Trump and Narendra Modi. This paper not only analyzes the actions of both leaders during their meeting but also tries to understand the events which led to them coming to power. In order to do so, the first half of this paper draws three major parallels between the growth of severe polarization in both countries to show how they have walked similar paths to their current divided state. The second half expands upon the aftermath’s of when these two countries come together at a highly polarized time of their history—labelled as a “convergence”—by taking precedent from Indira Gandhi’s visit to Richard Nixon. By first establishing that the increase of adversarial barriers in both the US and India have followed historically similar trends, I argue that intervention, including intervention in the form of tacit approval, by the US could serve as an accelerant for greater polarization in not just India, but South Asia as a whole.

Aly Rashid, '26: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aly-rashid-5abb6a191/