Modi, martyr!

When Narendra Modi talks democracy and human rights, even ‘‘violation of judicial norms’’ and ‘‘religious freedom’’, and he gets away with it, you know the plot has gone terribly astray somewhere. The US government accomplished a marvellous feat on Friday. It denied the Gujarat chief minister a diplomatic visa and revoked an already granted tourist visa, for being a government official who was ‘‘responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom’’. In the process, it allowed Modi not only to affect the genuine outrage of the persecuted but also to legitimately divert the spotlight from his own earned notoriety to US hypocrisies on issues of religious freedom.

The revoking of visa to Modi is objectionable because it harks back to US double standards and because it is simply bad in principle. On the first count, the evidence is long and compelling. The US has memorably played hospitable host to, among others, the armed conspirators of Khalistan. Among its best friends, it counts the Saudi regime that continues to deny religious freedom to its people as a matter of course. In the visa rejection’s aftermath, the spurned Modi himself has made bold to question the US record in Iraq. Clearly, the US is not always, nor nearly equally, agitated about violations of people’s religious freedoms. But even if it had been so, the barring of Modi from US soil on these grounds is highly problematic, if not self-defeating. Banning and proscribing always ends up by lending more power to the politics of those who are banned and proscribed. If the purpose was to register its censure of Modi’s brand of hate politics, which propelled his government’s criminal abdication during the communal violence of 2002, the US would have done far better to let Modi travel to the country and then face protest groups and demonstrations of the kind that so embarrassingly greeted him in the UK not very long ago, instead of gifting him this opportunity to pose as martyr.

Democracies have ways of enforcing accountability from those like Modi and India is a mature democracy. Political and institutional mechanisms are at work. They are slow and tortuous, and they don’t always deliver unmixed results, but they will hopefully ensure that justice is done for Gujarat 2002 and its ghosts are fully laid to rest. As is well known, the Supreme Court has shown a remarkable commitment to this process, so has a fearless and independent media. India’s government has done well to register its protest at the US decision. The US government must rest assured that India can deal with its Narendra Modi.