By Aravind Bhatikar
PRIME Minister Modi will be visiting USA at the invitation of First Lady Jill and Joe Biden from June 20 to 24, 2023. Narendra Modi is neither the first, nor the last prime minister to visit the USA. Nine former prime ministers had visited USA and had discussions with the American president of the time on various bilateral issues. Five Union prime ministers, namely Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh were invited to address joint sessions of US Congress.
At no time in the past was an official visit of the Indian prime minister to USA so hyped up as is being done now by India’ godi media. What should be seen as a normal function of any prime minister is being touted by godi media as a unique achievement of Narendra Modi!
What is unique, however, is the private screening of “India: The Modi Question,” being organised by the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in Washington, just before Modi’s official engagements in New York and Washington. The BBC documentary on the Gujarat carnage in 2002 and Modi’s role in it is banned in India. The office of the BBC in India was raided by the Income-Tax department. The bank accounts of Amnesty International in India were frozen on grounds of violations of Foreign Exchange Laws of India much earlier. It is no wonder that the Human Rights Watch based in New York City and Amnesty International based in London have taken this unusual step to acquaint American media leaders with the current working of Indian democracy.
Modi, in his reply to President Joe Biden’s invitation, referred to the “share democratic values” between India and USA. Modi should have clarified to Biden that the following do not form a part of our democratic values:
• Misuse of religion for political purposes.
• Use of CBI, ED and Income Tax departments to decimate opposition parties.
• Defiance of Supreme Court to achieve political ends.
• Riding rough-shod over India’s federal structure.
Talking of hypocrisy, how much is too much?
