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”.
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.”
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”.
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