The flipside of the enthusiastic official and diaspora support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi on display during his visit to the United Kingdom is a deep undercurrent of opposition to recent developments that have occurred in India under the Prime Minister’s watch — from Mr. Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat when over 2000 Muslims were killed in a pogrom in 2002, to more recent instances of intolerance for free speech.
A group of leading U.K. academics have published a letter in the Guardian calling for an acknowledgment of the “darker side of what’s happening in India today”.
Alleging that “inflammatory hate speech and violent acts against Christian and Muslim minorities” have “steadily increased”, the signatories say that Mr. Modi’s “silence and delayed response to all these crimes does nothing to stem the violence”. Supporting recent statements by scientists and academics in India they said, “In the past year, various freedoms have been attacked, including what people may think, eat, wear and whom they choose to love. Three secular critics have been brutally murdered and these crimes are linked to extreme rightwing groups.”
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In addition to the letter by academics, 200 British writers from PEN International including Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Henry Marsh and Val McDermid have written an open letter calling on his government to “take legal action to safeguard freedom of expression in India”. Their letter highlights the “rising climate of fear, growing intolerance and violence towards critical voices who challenge orthodoxy or fundamentalism in India” and urges Mr. Cameron to “engage with Prime Minister Modi both publicly and privately on this crucial issue”.