To criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi over an allegation made by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in a BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots would be like supporting the western world politicians who lied about Saddam Hussein's non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify the Iraq war, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3 lakh Iraqi people.
No one should condone the Gujarat government's commissions and omissions, which resulted in the deaths of around a thousand people mostly Muslims, in the riots. The prevailing political ecosystem in India lent tremendous support to project the riots in a distinct category out of hundreds of such communal riots that happened in India. It was no problem for Desi and Videshi media which carried consistently a virulent campaign against Narendra Modi. Post-2014, there happened a vertical split in the Deshi media and social media to set new narratives for and against Modi. While one set of media keeps on targeting all opponents of the ruling party, the other opened a front against Modi.
Going by the past track record, it is also not a problem for the Videshi media, desperate to bring down the Modi government and replace it with someone who will listen better to western powers. Few political developments in the past few months in the sequence and timing of this BBC Documentary stink of some likely design of India baiters.
Projecting out of proportion a sense of assertion by some fringe Hindu groups against the longstanding one-sided appeasement and narrative, and the hegemony of India's established political class, as Hindu-Muslim hate, is nothing but to deny blindly the decades old prevailing Hindu-Muslim communal wedge in the Indian sub-continent.
Pakistan's novice foreign minister, Bilawal's outburst at the UN, Shahbaz Sharif's offer of talks, and Straw's comments about 2002 could all be interpreted as an attempt to portray India and its Prime Minister as the villains of the peace. As a result, the moral compasses of desi and videshi media outlets constantly tilt violently in favour of their patrons while de-legitimizing their detractors. Of course, even when both do ‘vulgar propaganda,' there is a huge qualitative gap between them.
While Modi's supporters refuse to accept and analyse the Gujarat Police's complicity in the riots, Modi's opponents will never understand proportion when they use the term “pogrom” for the terrible massacre in Gujarat without referring to the gruesome act of burning alive the Hindus in a train at Godhra – that too in Gujrat. They also do not speak for the genocide of thousands in Naukhali in Bengal in 1946 or of 30 lakh people in East Pakistan in 1971 or the 3 lakh Iraqis
killed.
The lakhs of people killed in East and West Pakistan or Iraq do not appear to be worthy of the subject, inquiries, investigations, or notable 20th or 50th-anniversary documentaries as BBC came out with one on Gujarat.
Obviously, if a great sense of empathy for helpless victims shapes foreign policy and drives the British diplomatic corps and their publicly funded media, then similar exercises would have been conducted to not only unearth the perpetrators of the Bangladesh holocaust and the destruction of Iraq, but also to question such sanctimonious administration for the 30 lakh people killed in the Bengal famine. Straw is clearly attempting to focus on the Hindu-Muslim faultline in India, which the British have historically emphasised in order to hold on to their empire's survival.
It is difficult not to recall Pakistan foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's crude outburst at the United Nations Security Council briefing, just a month ago when he called Modi the ‘butcher of Gujarat'. Straw's BBC comments could be interpreted as a bit refined version of Bilawal's outburst. Despite Straw's claims of ‘ethnic cleansing and Bilawal's epithets, the Muslim population of Gujarat
increased by over 12 lakh between 2001 and 2011, in contrast to the declining Hindu population of Pakistan and also in Bangladesh.
Interestingly, just weeks after Bilawal called Modi names, Bilawal's boss, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, pleaded for talks with India, even admitting to mistakes made during the two countries' wars. Pakistan has sunk deeper and deeper into poverty. However, this must be attributed to Pakistan's western handlers, who have been using the country against India to build bridges with China. Even the most recent gift of $450 million in military aid to Pakistan could be a token of gratitude for aiding in the resolution of the US-China standoff. In its overall view, Bilawal's outburst, Sharif's offer of talks, and Straw's remarks could be interpreted as an attempt to portray India and its Prime Minister as the villains of the peace. However, this will not achieve the western strategic goal, if any, because a BBC documentary or an interview with a Pakistani prime minister can no longer influence Indian public opinion as they once did.
