A Good Reason To Cheer

After a very long time it seems that one sees some kind of justice in a US government action. A lot of people one knows, (mostly young people wanting to study in American universities), have been denied visas, and one would invariably shake one’s head in regret. When I heard the news about Narendra Modi’s not being allowed to enter the US, I literally jumped for joy, and cheered loudly. It is bad enough that he gets to travel freely within the country, (India), keeps coming to Mumbai and being felicitated by top industrialists, or goes electioneering to other states preaching his particularly vicious brand of fundamentalism. I believe he has even been permitted to enter the UK, feted by his band of Gujarati brothers for presiding over genocide in his state.

When human rights groups can actually affect state policy, that will be the dawning of a new age. For whatever reason, the US has done a good thing, right after its banning Gerry Adams from the White House. Clearly, George Bush is trying on a new face. As I said for whatever reason it’s been done, Mr. Modi has been slapped not just on his knuckles but with a good hard swing on his ugly face.

Not enough. Of course it is not enough. Unless he faces the International Courts of Justice like Milosevich, nothing will be enough. After hearing the news, (and having finished cheering), I dug up all the piles of evidence I had collected after those dreadful days: newspaper cuttings, journals with unbearable photographs, cover stories by eminent writers and instantly, I was filled once more with that desperate grieving that most Indians must have felt in March 2002. I look at a photograph of a watchman burnt alive in Ahmedabad, mutilated corpses of children, decapitated bodies, women with no breasts or wombs, heads with eyes gouged out, charred and blackened naked human bodies. This particular magazine managed to put names to otherwise anonymous images, identities gone beyond recognition. If just by looking at these pictures, I want to throw up, imagine what people who actually witnessed and experienced the horror of slaughter must feel, with memory replaying endlessly the evil that was done.

Who are the people who invite these politicians abroad and what are they thinking? As one writer suggested, Mr. Modi’s intended excursion to meet all those nice, approving groups who live off America’s high traditions of human rights, must have been to raise funds. As we all know, the Hindu Right is well and thriving in the West. Heavy funding of the VHP and its fundamentalist cohorts is seen as a primary duty. They care little that India has changed and moved on, that Hindutva is seen as something barbaric and antediluvian. The older, enlightened Hinduism is what works in today’s world: the all-embracing, all-inclusive message of not just tolerance, but acceptance in every sense. Tolerance has something patronizing about it, comes from a position of feeling superior, set apart.

When Mr. Modi speaks about the pride of India being insulted by his being rejected by the US government, let him know that he himself is considered a blot, a blight a horrible insult to India.