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This article reflects the current state of mind of the people of India.
In October 2012, I spoke to a crowd of mostly Indians in the Detroit area about the need for innovation in Indian media. After
my talk, I was stopped by an Indian woman who looked to be in her
forties, was elegantly dressed, well-spoken, and struck me as someone
who I could have easily run into at a gallery opening in Mumbai or high
tea at a five-star hotel. She complimented me on my speech, I thanked her, and we began talking about the far-off 2014 Indian election. What she said to me that day festers in my memory:
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“Even if Narendra Modi was involved in the Gujarat riots, I don’t care. His economic work wins out. I will vote for him.”
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Since
then, I have not been able to shake a deep-seated disturbance at her
disregard for essential humanity. This disregard, I fear, is shared by
many in India. Before I lose your attention, this is not another piece
debating Modi’s guilt. In fact, the argument about
Modi’s guilt feels to me like the argument about whether Delhi is better
than Mumbai—it will never end. I have my view, you have yours, and
facts are facts—some we know and others we never will. That’s not the
point. The point is not even whether you think Modi is better than Rahul
Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, or any other potential prime minister. What
matters here is where you draw the moral line between what is acceptable
in a politician and what is a deal breaker.
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What
this woman showed me—and I have heard this thinly veiled sentiment
often—is that if Modi walked into a press conference tomorrow and
confessed to all of the crimes he is accused of, then she would still
vote for him. She had already made peace with the possibility of him
being guilty. To me, that position is untenable.
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Certain
stances or items on one’s political resume should disqualify them from
consideration. If Modi came out and said women should not be allowed to
vote, or that the caste system should be formally reinstated, or that he
supported ethnic cleansing, then it wouldn’t really matter what his
stance on taxation is. Such views are so contrary to the principles of
India’s democracy that they should cancel his eligibility. We all have
different spectra of morality and your list of deal breakers will likely
be different from mine. Yet, our lists will probably contain a lot of
similar items, too. Suggesting we end homelessness by rounding up and
gassing all the homeless people? Nope, you’re out. There are some things
we can all agree on—hopefully, “no mass executions” is one of them.
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We
also should not obscure the facts of the incident with our views on
Modi’s guilt. The 2002 Gujarat Riots have been called ethnic cleansing, a
pogrom, and even genocide. The government estimated, according to the BBC, that
“790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, 223 more people reported
missing and another 2,500 injured.” Those are facts, regardless of
whether you think Modi was involved. Here comes the test: if you believe
he was behind the riots—behind “genocide”—then Gujarat’s economic
growth rate does not matter. Rather, it shouldn’t matter.
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Has
India become so desperate for rapid economic growth, so blinded by the
promise of prosperity, that she has forgotten basic humanity? It seems
that, in the race towards higher GDP, the majority of India is willing
to inject itself with the steroids of bigotry or ruthlessness. Ethics be
damned.
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When
I took European history, I was always puzzled when it came to the
politics leading up to World War II. I wondered, how could the German
people have ignored Hitler’s obvious anti-semitism (he laid it out plain
as day in his book, Mein Kampf) just because he preached a fast
road to national recovery? The only reason this large electoral
oversight makes sense to me is extreme economic need. If I were starving
or my family were starving, I might not care about the costs attached
to keeping them alive or to electing a person who promised to put bread
on my table. While India certainly has enormous need, those are not
exclusively the pockets that support Modi. The woman I spoke to was not
starving. The political columnists of India’s newspapers are not
starving. Anyone reading this article on this website is not starving.
Obsession with the promised economic wizardry of Modi is not selfless
patriotism for India’s advance, it is greed without regard for cost.
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Is
it extreme to compare electing the BJP (with Modi at its head) to
electing the Nazi party with Hitler as its chancellor? Maybe, but it is
eerily similar in many ways. If anything, it brings into sharper relief
the absurdity of Modi’s candidacy. India has not just lost a war, or
recently faced hyperinflation, or had her national pride stomped on by
embarrassing terms of surrender. And let’s not forget that the political
right of India has an odd, not-quite-closeted obsession with Hitler’s
leadership style. Shiv Sena, anyone?
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We
look back at Weimar Germany and think “never again could we be so short
sighted; those things cannot happen today.” Such sentiments are the
blinders of ignorance—symptoms of our human need for proximity to facts
before we believe them. We see war on television and think “not in my
hometown,” but, sadly, the march of backwards thinking continues
everyday. The Gujarat violence happened barely more than 10 years ago.
In the United States, Kansas is about to pass a law
that re-creates the “No Blacks Allowed” segregation of the 1950s and
1960s, they’re just changing the word “blacks” to “gays.” Our duty as
informed citizens of the world is to always remain vigilant against
regression, regardless of how modern we think we are.
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In a recent New York Times article, Ashok
Malik, an Indian columnist, was quoted saying: “Twenty or 30 years ago,
Modi may have believed a lot of those things to different degrees, but
Modi’s experience as a chief minister for the last 12 years, especially
in a state like Gujarat, has proven an enormous learning process for
him.”
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To
be clear, Malik was not referring to the riots when he said “those
things” in the above quote, he was talking about cultural censorship.
However, at best I hope people who support Modi feel similarly when it
comes to the riots and acknowledge that he has learned not to instigate
violence to achieve his political aims; they hope he has, well, matured.
At worst, his supporters just don’t care. For myself, I don’t want to
cast my vote for someone who requires that learning curve at all. I
learned that lesson in detention in third grade.
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If you truly believe Modi is innocent, then you are excused. You
then only have to reconcile with having a prime minister who is
obviously incompetent at maintaining law and order in a nation where
Naxals abound and multiple secessionist movements are ongoing. But
if you believe he may be guilty of either ordering the riots or not
preventing them, then you cannot comfortably ignore that judgment just
because it is convenient to your privileged view of India’s future. To do so is nothing less than cowardice.
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