Narendra Modi: A Profile

Narendra Modi, the 57-year-old chief minister of Gujarat, grew up in the small town of Vadnagar in a middle-class Hindu family. He received a Master's in political science from Gujarat University. As a member of the Hindu supremacist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), he was a student activist of the RSS’s political wing, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the late eighties Modi, who worked as a RSS propagandist, was made the General Secretary of the Gujarat chapter of the BJP. His proximity to the RSS bosses, his organization skills and his dedication to Hindu supremacist ideology led to his meteoric rise to power. He took over as the chief minister of Gujarat in October 2001. His personal website describes him as “ a powerful orator, an avid reader and an original thinker.” Many more paragraphs describe the economic achievements of Gujarat and growth in foreign investment in the state under his leadership. The slogan, “Vibrant Gujarat” runs across the homepage along with eleven photographs of Modi in different outfits.

What is missing from his website is any mention of the February 2002 riots. Modi did nothing to stop the militant Hindu mobs from burning Muslim houses and businesses or murdering the Muslim citizens of Gujarat. Police officers repeatedly told Muslims seeking protection from mobs that they had no orders to help them, and simply watched the carnage. Many secular activists in India and Human Rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented Modi’s complicity in the violence. After the riots, his party workers continued with a campaign to threaten Muslims with further attacks if they testified before federal investigating agencies. A BJP legislator close to Modi offered 250,000 Indian rupees to Zaheera Sheikh, a Muslim woman who was an eyewitness to mass murder in Gujarat. Around six months after the riots, which killed more than 1,000 Gujarati Muslims and turned thousands homeless, Gujarat had elections for the state legislature. Modi lead an aggressive and brazen anti-Muslim campaign, equating every Muslim with terrorism. Modi and the BJP were re-elected, with the greatest gains in the areas worst affected in the riots. Modi’s website mentions his re-election as “his administrative acumen, clear vision, and integrity brought him a landslide victory in the general elections held in December 2002 and he was sworn in as the Chief Minister for the second term.”

Barely any perpetrators of the 2002 violence have been prosecuted. Muslims continue to live fear in Gujarat, reduced to bare lives, with no protection and no de-facto rights of citizenship. Yet Modi continues to enjoy immense support from the Hindu right in India and the right-wing sections of the Indian diaspora in the United States. After the State department denied him a visa to the States in 2002, the Hindu right-wing group which had invited to speak at the Madison Square Garden telecast his speech through satellite and around 4,000 people turned up to listen to him. On narendramodi.org, half of the blurbs under “Public Opinion” are from US-based Gujaratis. Two such posts read:

Pujya Naredrabhai,

It's not enough in words to express the respect we have for you & how proud we feel when we hear about the growth, prosperity & development in Gujarat. It is the fortune of the state to have you as our Chief Minister & we have lot more hopes from you. May God Bless you & help you for fulfil your vision & reforms. Jai Hind

Devang Brahmbhatt, Edison, NJ 08817

respected sir,

i listening your speech in mumbai .i really u deserve a chief of gujarat...sir you are great person....i lived in usa but i have lots respect for you sir....good luck to my gujarat.

raju, milwukee

LINKS

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Gujarat Photo Essay

In February 2002, activists of the RSS, the VHP, and the BJP gathered at the site of the demolished Babri Mosque in Ayodhya to place a foundation stone for the temple. After two weeks of negotiations, the Indian government allowed a token ceremony. The jubiliant activists were returning home when some of them had a fight with some Muslim shopkeepers at the railway paltform in a Gujarat town called Godhra. A Muslim mob attacked the Hindu-activist filled Sabarmati Express train. It caught fire and 59 were burnt. A federal enquiry later declared that the attackers did not set the train on fire but it broke out inside the train compartment.

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Labels: Basharat, Gujarat, photos

CSFH at Work

Posted by VVG 11:47 AM 0 comments

Labels: CSFH, Deepa, Modi

Campaign To Stop Funding Hate: Raja Swamy

NAME: Raja Swamy

AGE: 36

OCCUPATION: Graduate student, Ph.D program in Social Anthropology, U-Texas at Austin

ROLE IN CSFH: Member of collective since 2002. Various responsibilities including research, writing and tech support.

REASONS FOR ENGAGEMENT: Primarily sought to contribute to a radical response to the virulent growth of Hindutva, particularly in the aftermath of the Gujarat genocide. Also interested broadly in the relationships between neoliberalism and the wider Indian right, and the growing ties between the Hindu right and Zionism. The folks who started CSFH were extremely committed and displayed sheer brilliance in designing strategies to confront Hindutva's growing appeal among expatriates and second-generation Indians within the multiculturalist U.S. mainstream.

See CSFH's Girish Agarwal

Look at a pictogram of CSFH's strategy

Posted by VVG 10:56 AM 0 comments

Labels: CSFH, Deepa, Gujarat, Hindu right, Modi, Raja Swamy

Campaign To Stop Funding Hate: Girish Agrawal

NAME: Girish Agrawal

AGE: 43

OCCUPATION: Civil engineer & lawyer-in-waiting

ROLE IN CSFH: Founding member of CSFH. Did background research on the Sangh Parivar, analysis of tax documents, writing and editing sections of the report, media outreach

REASONS FOR ENGAGEMENT: "The immediate impetus for the campaign was my outrage over the anti-Muslim pogroms organized by the Sangh Parivar in Gujarat, and the extensive support that this ethnic cleansing received from Sangh Parivar outfits based in the U.S., support that included collecting large amounts of money from the U.S.-based diaspora in the name of development, but transferring it to India to fund the activities of hate groups associated with the RSS. In the background was my long, intimate familiarity with the RSS and its various front organizations operating in India and in the U.S."

See CSFH's Raja Swamy

Look at a pictogram of CSFH's strategy

Posted by VVG 10:48 AM 0 comments

Labels: CSFH, Deepa, Girish Agrawal, Gujarat, Modi, RSS, Sangh Parivar

Reactions From Hindu Right Leaders in India and New York

The Indian-American Hindu right groups have mostly remained silent on the question of Gujarat. There are a few references to the Godra train killings but an expected silence about the more than1,000 murders, arson , and rape in Gujarat afterwards. Vishwa Hindu Parishad America (World Hindu Council America):

On February 28, 2002, Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America strongly condemns the dastardly act of torching of 59innocent Hindus including 25 women and 17 children in the Sabarmati Express at Godhara, Gujarat on Feb 27, 2002. It is an act of terrorism in continuation with the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, and the attack on the Indian parliament on December 13th. This attack, from all indications, was preplanned, premeditated and carried out by over 2000 people equipped with gasoline cans. We urge Hindus of America and world over to impress upon the Indian Government to facilitate the construction of temple.

A later press release in March reads: Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) strongly condemns the barbaric attack and torching of Hindu pilgrims in Sabarmati Express in Godhara and the despicable violence in its aftermath.Hinduunity.org, a militant Hindu website doesn't talk about the violence either but links counter claims against Biju Matthew and the Committee Against Genocide. It also features Matthew on a Hindu Hit List.

Ashok Singhal, President, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) on Gujarat riots: "What happened in Gujarat after the Godhra carnage had the blessings of lord Rama. The VHP would not rest and prepare for any sacrifice till the Ram temple in Ayodhya was built." Indian Express, Delhi-based English Newspaper.

Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, on the riots:

"The innocent Sikh was murdered after 9/11. Why? Because he looked like the terrorists. If the educated in America can get provoked, why use a different yardstick to evaluate Gujaratis?"

On former Parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri's murder:

Modi also said that Jaffri had fired in the air with a personal weapon when confronted by the mob. This, he said, had further incensed the mob.

More Reactions:

“With the entire population of Gujarat very angry at what happened in Godhra much worse was expected”.-- Narendra Modi at a Press Conference in Gujarat, Feb 28.

“Asked about the violence, Modi quoted Newton's third law – ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ - to virtually justify what is happening.
-- The Times of India, March 3, 2002.

Gujarat Police Commissioner, P.C. Pande: "Police were not insulated from the general social milieu… (When) there’s a change in the perception of society, the police are part of it and there’s bound to be some contagion effect." -– The Telegraph, March 2, 2002

Professor Keshavram Kashiram Shastri, 96-year-old chairman of the Gujarat unit of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad: "In the morning we sat down and prepared the list (of shops owned by Muslims in Ahmedabad). It had to be done, it had to be done. We don't like it, but we were terribly angry. Lust and anger are blind. The rioters were well-bred Hindu boys.

“From Godhra to Ahmedabad, in so many places, there are so many incidents of people being burnt alive, including helpless women and children. This is a blot on nation’s forehead and has grievously harmed India’s image in the eyes of the world”.-- Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then Prime Minister of India, statement on March 3, 2002.

Blog by Ramesh Rao, an Indian-American supporter of the pro-Modi groups, who is a professor of communication at Truman State University.

Listen to Biju Mathew speak about organizing against Modi's visit to the U.S.Look at a photo essay of the riots in Gujarat

Posted by VVG 10:41 AM 0 comments

Labels: Ashok Singhal, Basharat, clips, Gujarat, press, quotes

Legacy of Hatred: The Campaign To Stop Gujarat's Chief Minister From Coming to the U.S.

On an October 1947 morning, a few months after the partition of British India and the creation of independent nation states of India and Pakistan, Nathu Ram Godse, an activist of the Hindu supremacist group, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, (National Volunteers Group), which draws inspiration from Hitler and Mussolini and aspires to the creation of a Hindu India “purified of Muslims and Christians”, assassinated the greatest Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who was preached harmony between the Hindus and Muslims of India. Gandhi’s murderer was arrested and sentenced but the group he belonged to worked in silence, ran indoctrination schools throughout India, strengthened its cadre base and waited for its moment.

In 1992, as India was opening its socialist economy to global markets, LK Advani, a leader of Bhartiya Janata Party, the electoral wing of RSS, came up with a plan to engineer the rise of his Hindu nationalist party. Throughout the late eighties, Indian state television had been airing an immensely successful series based on the Hindu epic, Ramayana, which tells the tale of Hindu God and Prince Rama’s exile from his city of Ayodhya and his battle against the demon king Ravana of Lanka, who kidnapped Rama’s wife Sita.

Advani sought to raise support for building a temple in honour of Ram in the northen Indian town of Ayodhya, which many Hindus believe corresponds to the mythical Ayodhya of Ramayana. Advani and other leaders of the Hindu right argued that a general of the medieval Muslim ruler of India, Babar, had destroyed the original temple of Ram and built a mosque known as Babri Mosque in its place. Volunteers of the RSS and the BJP went door to door throughout India seeking cash donation and bricks to rebuilt the Ram temple. Advani rode a chariot--- like old Hindu kings did—from the western Indian state of Gujarat to the small town of Ayodhya in the northern state of Utter Pradesh, urging people enroute to assemble in Ayodhya to “rebuilt” the Ram temple.

On 6th December 1992, after many clashes with the local police, activists of the RSS and the BJP cheered by many leaders including LK Advani, charged at the medieval Babri mosque and demolished it. Most secularists saw it as the darkest day for a secular, democratic India. Sectarian violence throughout the towns and cities of India followed the demolition of the Babri Mosque. Hundreds of Muslims were killed and their houses burnt in Bombay, where the Hindu right had gained strength. Reprisals followed when a Muslim underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim organized “revenge attack” and a series of bomb blasts ripped the city killing hundreds in 1993.

Religious tensions continued, the Hindu supremacist and nationalist groups, RSS and the BJP grew in strength. The BJP rose from two representatives in the India parliament to lead a coalition government in 1996. It further fueled the “Hindu pride” by conducting nuclear test in 1998 and propelling the arch-rival Pakistan to conduct its own tests. RSS and BJP members took parcels of the nuke-blasted sand from the test site in Pokhran desert and worshiped it at temples. BJP, which had risen to power on the promise of building the temple for Ram at Ayodhya had yet to fulfill that promise.

In February 2002, as various Indian states were going for elections (which were bound to impact the forthcoming 2004 national elections), volunteers of the RSS and the BJP gathered again at Ayodhaya, demanding they be allowed to set a foundation for the Ram Temple. India feared sectarian violence for the two weeks the Hindu right activists, known as "karsevaks," negotiated with the federal government. They were allowed to place a token stone at the site. Hundreds of the karsevaks were from the states of Gujarat, where the Hindu right is the strongest and also the neighboring state of Maharashtra.

After the token ceremony at Ayodhaya, the karsevaks, took the trains back to Gujarat. When one of those trains stopped at a small town in Godhra, the karsevaks got into an argument with the Muslim tea-vendors at the platform. As the train left the platform, a mob of Muslims from a neighbouring slum attacked it. The train caught fire and 57 people were killed. Most believed the Muslim mob had set the running train on fire though a federal inquiry later determined that the fire had started inside the train only.

Hours after the burning train reached Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, volunteers of the RSS and the BJP armed with computer print outs of the Muslim houses and business spread out throughout Gujarat, murdering Muslim men, raping women, and setting Muslim-owned establishments to fire. Narendra Modi, the chief minister (highest elected official) of Gujarat, allowed the rioters proceed with the carnage and directed the police to do nothing. More than a 1,000 Muslims were killed in a few days and thousands were displaced from their homes. Modi told the press, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” The dead included a distinguished former member of Indian Parliament, Ahsan Jafri, a Muslim, who lived in Gulbarga Housing Estate, a sort of gated community surrounded by Hindu houses. Before a mob hacked him to death and burnt Gulabarga Hosuing Estate, Jafri had made several phone calls to Narendra Modi and the police chief of Gujarat. Modi did not take his call. Luke Harding, the Guardian’s India correspondent, who reached Jafri’s house a few hours after his death wrote, “At the bottom of his stairs I discovered a pyre of human remains - hair and the tiny blackened arm of a child, its fist clenched. Two police officers in khaki told us the situation was dangerous, and that we should leave; they seemed resigned or indifferent to the horror around them.” Apart from Jafri, the dead included scores of pregnant women, stabbed by tridents in their wombs.

After the rioting stopped, thousands of Gujarat’s Muslims were forced to leave their homes and move to slum-like refugee camps on the outskirts of various cities and towns. India’s liberal English-language media and non-governmental organizations pressed hard for prosecution of the rioters. Nothing happened. Trials held in Gujarat were more like farces; eye-witnesses to murder, like a woman Zaheera Sheikh, who watched twenty-two people being murdered in a bakery called Best Bakery, were intimidated and offered millions of rupees to turn hostile in the court, by legislators of Modi’s party. Modi was only emboldened when he won the Gujarat state elections with an overwhelming majority a few months after the pogrom.

Gujarat’s Muslims continue to live in the refugee camps in a fear-filled world, very far from the democratic that exists elsewhere. Modi continues to rule Gujarat, appear in newspaper pictures and on television talking about making Gujarat India’s most investor friendly state and inviting American and European companies to set up offices there. He remains a despised man, a slur for the liberal India, who has faced continued protests at most high-profile functions he attended in India. But for the Hindu right in the Indian-American community, Modi is a hero.

In March 2005, the mostly Gujarati Asian American Hotel Owners' Association (AAHOA), whose 7,000 members own over businesses worth $ 40 billion but lack any influence invited Modi to be the chief guest at its annual function and he agreed. Earlier invitees to the functions of this cash-rich, prestige-seeking group have been Indian-origin US congressman, Bobby Jindal, a Republican from Louisiana. MP Rama, the AAHOA President described the invitation to Modi as a “cultural boost” and “opportunity to talk about business potential in Gujarat.”

But the other invitation for Narendra Modi was to deliver a lecture at Madison Square Garden. It came from Association of Indian Americans for North America, a group formed by the members of American chapters of the various Hindu right wings groups like Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the overseas RSS, and the Overseas Friends of the BJP. They described Narendra Modi as the "Lion of Gujarat" and a "Visionary and Dynamic Young Leader of India".

After a group of Indian-American left/liberal activists led by Biju Mathew of Coalition Against Genocide, led an intensive web campaign and ensured the US State Department deny a visa to Narendra Modi, the main organizers of his Madison Square Garden lecture, Mahesh Mehta, the founder of VHP (US), Suresh Jain, Sudhakar Reddy and Mukund Mody of the Overseas Friends of BJP, broadcast Modi’s lecture via satellite to a crowd of the Hindu-right Indian Americans at Madison Square Garden.

Listen to Biju Mathew talk about organizing against Modi's visit to the U.S.

Read profiles of the Hindu Right

Posted by VVG 10:35 AM 0 comments

Labels: Basharat, Gujarat, history, Modi