Why US academics are wrong to attack Modi
In view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming trip to the Silicon Valley, a group of academics based in the the US have issued a statement advising the CEOs Modi is scheduled to interact with to exercise caution in transacting with him. The grounds for their caution are the following:
1) The Digital India scheme the prime minister has been advocating would breach user privacy on a large scale enabling the government to eavesdrop on private conversations.
2) There is an active case against Modi on his alleged complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
3) Modi's government has interfered with academic freedom of premier educational institutions in India.
Borrowing the language used in the cautionary statement, we acknowledge that the academics based in the US have the right to advise the CEOs. It is, however, equally obvious that their statement is fundamentally flawed. As academics ourselves, let us point out the flaws. These are:
1) Digital India is yet to be operational in any scale worthy of consideration. No case of breach of privacy has naturally been reported. Given so, it was academically obligatory to cite which reports the academics were counting on while raising the bogey of potential breach of privacy. This was imperative to enable the readers assess the academics' contention on merit and not on grounds of hypothesis or political bias. It is worthwhile to note that reports are available in public domain that allege with significant substantiation that the US government routinely spies on its citizens and also citizens of other countries without any judicial sanction. The academics based in the US should perhaps focus on verifying such allegations against the government of the country they function in.
2) Prime Minister Modi has been cleared of any involvement in the riots of 2002 in a court in Gujarat which the Supreme Court had directed to adjudicate on the matter. The court has cleared him after careful perusal of a Supreme Court monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) report. Until higher courts reverse the order, surely, the commonly accepted modern principle of justice - "innocent until proven guilty" applies to him. This would incidentally apply even if he had lost the prime ministerial election. However, arguments invoked by some of his supporters in his defence that he stood vindicated given that a considerable number of Muslims had voted for him and the government of a Muslim country (UAE) had welcomed him were redundant and even flawed. Such arguments erroneously presuppose that it is only Muslims who can adjudge the innocence or guilt of an individual in cases of atrocities against them, and an extension of the same had led to the two-nation theory that eventually partitioned India causing unspeakable atrocities including murder, rape and loot of property. Every individual needs to be assessed only and only on the facts of the case against him, and the facts of this case so far are undoubtedly on the Modi's side.
3) We do not discuss in this article the veracity of the third claim given that even if it is true, it does not give any legitimacy to the concerned academics' standing to criticise Modi. Several of the signatories of the statement in question had led an initiative that cancelled the prime minister's lecture at a reputed University in the US (University of Pennsylvania) despite strong opposition to their move by a section of students and faculty of the same university [expressed through a) articles in Indian and the university press, b) debates in the university and c) protest meets organised in campus). Along with Prof Aseem Shukla of Upenn, one of the authors of this article had argued in detailed pieces, why the cancellation of (the then likely prime ministerial candidate and chief minister of Gujarat) Modi's lecture was a gross violation of core academic ethos and principles. It is worthwhile to note that to the best of the authors' knowledge, none of the signatories of the current report had protested the cancellation of Modi's talk then and the associated assault on academic values. Thus, their commitment to the ethos which apparently constitutes one of the foundations of their reservations against the prime minister is, at best, selective.
It is well understood that CEOs are not likely to act one way or the other based on, what some may say, unsolicited academic advice. If perceptions by populations in a country are the final arbiters of a prime minister of that country, then, in the future, Modi will be judged on, and only on, how well he governs his country, which includes, but is not limited to, the fulfilment of his pre-election promises (for instance, economic development, declassification of documents concerning Indian history, addressing the problem of illegal immigration which has been called external aggression by the Indian Supreme Court, providing refuge to persecuted minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan; cleaning of the river Ganga, and so on). That verdict will be delivered in about four years by the Indian electorate. The best defence for the academics issuing the unfounded statement is that they have engaged in an exercise of limited relevance - it is, after all, the end of summer in the US right now.