INDPRIDE

The Indian American community is outraged and appalled at the recent US’ decision to deny Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi a diplomatic visa and to revoke his pre-existing tourist/business visa. While every nation has the right to deny visa to a foreigner, the grounds upon which the US denied Modi a visa raises serious doubt about the real motive of US foreign policy towards India.

Modi was denied a visa under the US Immigration and Nationality Act and the International Religious Act which prohibit the admission to the US of any foreign government official responsible to serious violations of religion freedom. When applying this law, the State Department’s Mr. Adam Ereli said that “It’s a matter of US responding to NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) finding [which points] to a comprehensive failure of the Gujarat Government to control persistent violation of rights” ( PTI 3/20/05).

Reacting to the above, a top NHRC official denied condemning Modi and commented: “There was no indictment in general of Modi or his government” (UNI Report). It means that NHRC was wrongly implicated in the US’ decision to deny a visa to Modi. Even most Indian political leaders, setting aside their political differences, condemned the US action. The Indian government also lodged a strong protest with the US and asked it to review its decision. Notwithstanding the NHRC and Indian government’s reactions, Modi, constitutionally elected with more than a 2/3^rd majority in the world’s largest democracy, has neither been charged with nor found guilty of being “responsible for or [having] directly carried out particularly severe violations of religious freedom” by any court of law in India.

Obviously, the US’ decision to deny Modi a visa must have been made on factors other than those stated by the State Department. Ever since passing the anti-conversion law in Gujarat, Modi has been the target of Christian Evangelists upon whose strength President Bush won the recent election. They and their supporting allies, fundamentalist Islamists, Marxists/Leftists and a score of so-called human rights organizations in India and US had spearheaded a virulent and malicious hateful anti-Modi campaign over the last several months. By making Modi the scapegoat, the US government has not only satisfied the main Christian vote bank but has also mollified the Islamic world which hates America for its several human rights violations including the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, that too at the expense of India.

The well orchestrated ‘stop-Modi’ campaign was based on innuendoes, insinuations, and gross misrepresentations of facts about the Gujarat riots and Modi’s response to those riots. The campaign theme was to demonize Modi while distorting the facts about the provocative cause of the Gujarat riots, the premeditated Godhra massacre where 58 innocent Hindu pilgrims, mainly women and children, were burnt alive by a mob of more than 2000 Muslims who set a train compartment on fire. Another lie was invented to project Modi as a promoter of racial supremacy, racial hatred and Nazism through a high school text book. The truth is “that book was prepared, published, and enlisted as a prescribed textbook in 1992 when neither Mr. Modi nor the BJP were anywhere near power in Gujarat which was then ruled by the Congress. Mr. Modi, on becoming Chief Minister, had this particular textbook removed from the list of prescribed school books” (Kanchan Gupta, Pioneer, 3/20/05).

There have been many prior riots throughout India including Gujarat. More than 3000 Sikhs were murdered in Delhi in 1984 when Mrs. Indira Gandhi was killed and the recent inquiry report submitted to the Indian Government points fingers at some Congress Party workers and a few prominent Congress leaders (who continuously travel to US) for their involvement in the riot. Thousands of Hindus and Muslims have been killed in Kashmir by the Islamic terrorists. There were communal riots in Gujarat in 1969 and 1985 when the Congress Party was in power. In all these riots and many similar ones no head of the state has ever been branded guilty. Why then are these selective morality, selective justice, and selective criticism being used against Modi? Why have NHRC, Amnesty International, and may of these bleeding ‘Human Rights organizations’ remained completely silent in these bloody events? Why didn’t the Muslim and Communist partners in the anti-Modi coalition speak out against the brutalities committed against innocent Muslims, especially women by the Taliban in Afghnistan? Where was their conscience when more than half a million were slaughtered in Rwanda? Why didn’t they form the similar coalition against Sudan when thousands of black African Muslims were butchered by the Arabs in Darfur?

While the US denied Modi a visa based on religious and human rights violations, it paradoxically ignores the Human Rights Watch’s denunciation of countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Pakistan (all autocracies) when granting diplomatic visas to their leaders. Surely, these countries aren’t exactly a shining epitome of religious freedom. In regards to China, Human Rights Watch writes that China “remains a highly repressive state” and continuously violates “rights to free expression, association and assembly, religion and belief [and] repress[es] minorities in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia.” Non-Muslims are strictly forbidden to worship their religions in Saudi Arabia. The Washington Times reported on 3/26/05 that the “Saudi religious police have destroyed a clandestine makeshift Hindu temple in an old district of Riyadh and deported three worshippers found there” (www.washtimes.com/world/20050326-111002-8593r.htm). The pervasive human rights violations like arbitrary detention, torture of detainees and lack of official accountability in Saudi Arabia are well recorded and documented. But still these autocratic Wahabi rulers are accorded red carpet treatment by the US President. Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, and Islamic terrorism are the products of Pakistan. President Mushrraf is the father of the Kargil War and terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir. More than 400,000 Hindus have been ethnically cleansed from their homeland, Kashmir by Pakistani sponsored Islamic terrorism. The Hindu population in Pakistan has been reduced from 30% in 1947 to less than 1% now. In spite of all these recorded human rights abuses by Pakistan, President Mushrraf is warmly welcome by President Bush and hosted at his ranch in Texas. There is genocide of Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians taking place in Bangladesh but their leaders are given diplomatic visa by US. One can site a long list of such countries involved in human rights abuses with whom the US is friendly and their rulers are regularly allowed diplomatic visas.

It is obvious that the US’ definitions of human rights abuses and religious intolerance are based on political expediency and convenience. Unfortunately, when the world’s most powerful country sets its foreign policy based on double standards, hypocrisy, and a complete disregard of its own human rights violations for centuries, it risks losing its moral authority and respect in the world forum. This is not what America is about. If the US Supreme Court allows US flag burning and freedom of speech even to the Nazis, allowing Modi to visit US would have shown to the world that America still stands for justice, liberty and freedom of speech.

In denying a visa to Modi, the US has insulted India and Indian Americans living in US. It has created a worldwide perception that America still considers India as a ‘Banana Republic’ which can be a pushover. Undoubtedly, the Modi episode has severely undermined the growing relationship between the US and India, especially the warming between the people of world’s two largest democracies. Walter Andersen, former State Department official, now associate director of the South Asian Studies Department at the John Hopkins University said “It is an issue fraught with dilemmas. It has opened up something of a Pandora’s Box for the US.” Further he stated: “But in some ways, it does turn out to be a blunder as some people have maintained” (Indo-Asian News Service).

Who benefited from this visa denial to Modi? Certainly, the US national interests were not threatened in any respect if Modi was allowed to visit America. He is a small fry in the overall US-India relationship. As a matter of fact, Modi’s proposed mission to America was to promote bilateral business and trade relations between Gujarat and US. In denying him the visa, America not only lost a business opportunity but may have changed Modi’s positive perception of the US to a negative one. The only winners in this game are the diehard anti-America, Anti-India, and anti-democracy Marxists and fundamentalist Islamic partners in the ‘stop-Modi’ coalition.

And finally, some Indians and NRIs, masquerading as intellectuals, secularists, and human rights protectors have joined the anti-Modi forces and sold their souls and the country for their own political or financial agenda. But they should realize that they have unknowingly become a tool in the hands of those forces that are trying to Balkanize and weaken India. They will go down in history as ‘betrayers of their motherland’ and the modern day ‘Jaichands’ Have we already forgotten the East India Company and the consequent colonization of India?