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| Reuters' Arko Dutta's iconic image of Qutubuddin Ansari begging for mercy during the riots. |
TIME magazine has shown extremely poor editorial judgement by including Narendra Modi in a voting list of 2012’s “influential” people who are “leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes.”
As Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi is an elected leader - a sad outcome of India’s flawed democracy without law and order - but he is no innovator, no artist, no icon and certainly no hero. India and the world must be rescued from people like him.
If you don’t know much about him, here’s one really good reason he should be off that TIME list. Once you’ve read it, remember to vote against his inclusion.
In 2002, over 1,000 people were butchered on the streets of Gujarat by frenzied Hindu mobs while Narendra Modi was at the helm. An investigative magazine carried out a sting operation interviewing Hindu fundamentalists who all revealed Modi’s complicity in the riots.
According to the magazine Tehelka, “Several rioters, senior Sangh Parivar functionaries and the state government’s special prosecutor were caught on camera revealing in detail the role played by Modi in the carnage.” You can read more here.
Sadly, Narendra Modi has not yet been prosecuted for his role in the murderous violence and he has used his time since 2002 to destroy evidence against him, silence his critics and set up an aggressive PR machinery to whitewash his image.
How nicely TIME has fallen into the trap.
The magazine cops out by saying that Modi is “associated” with the ugly legacy of the 2002 Gujarat riots while featuring him under a list looking to short-list heroes, icons and others.
So heres what you can do about it.
Join this campaign to vote against his inclusion in the list. Click ‘No Way.’ Please do it now because there are only 3 days left and his legions of blind supporters are also at it.
You can also send @TIME a tweet to tell them that his inclusion was a dumb choice to begin with.
(I have voted and now I’m going to brace for the hate-filled comments to this post.)
6 comments:
Thanks for flagging this Alaphia,,
Done Voting (What else but "No Way")
Great. And please do share it with others.
while i agree Alaphia with Modi's complicity and (if Tehelka is to be believed) even encouragement in allowing the killing of Muslims by mobs during the Gujarat riots and the fact that since then he has vigorously attempted to suppress evidence against him; all of which would make him unworthy of being on the Time magazines list - it also needs to be acknowledged that the very same citizenry who has been exposed to all of this sought to elect him again and he continues to enjoy their vote and respect for the progress that Gujarat has made.in that sense he is not a dictator but a democratically elected leader. judged from that perspective he is an icon for a large number of people??
Vivek, democracy without law and order is really a mobocracy. Modi's election to me symbolises the triumph of the mob rather than the triumph of law and justice. So the argument that he is "democratically elected" doesn't make him any more of an icon in my eyes. I'm disappointed in TIME magazine because they chose to put him on that list. Another really alarming thing for me is how casually people dismiss the deaths of hundreds of people (and these were gory, grisly deaths with people being butchered in public) and point to "progress" and "development". Is India now so desperate for roads and electricity that bloodshed along the way is perfectly acceptable? And by Modi's own yardstick of "progress" where is the acknowledgement of utter and complete failure in 2002?
Alaphia... I do agree with your statement about "mobocracy". Though I am not a Gujarati, I have been working there since last 3 & half years... I have conversed with a lot of Gujaratis here... They are of the opinion that they are a lot happier under Modi's govt than previous regimes because of huge progress that Gujarat has made under him...
Many Gujaratis are of opinion that during previous riots in Gujarat, Hindus were at the receiving end(though I don't have any records/proof)... Then the media and the so called secularist(I would like to call pseudo-secularists) politicians never stood up for them... So, as per my conclusion, there was some kind of anger & frustration brewing amongst the Hindus about the inactions by the previous govts and silent media... And the "Godhra carnage" just added some kind of fuel into the fire and resulted into an inferno...
Coming back to your point about law and order in Gujarat... It is the best in the country... Believe me... Its my experience... When there is Goonda-Raj in UP & Bihar; innumerable rapes in Delhi; Naxalism/Maoism in several parts of Odisha,Andhra,Chhatisgarh,Jharkand,etc; secessionism in Kashmir & North-East; wide-spread Political Violence in Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh; draconian Khaps in parts of North India, Gujarat stands out from all of them...
I apologize, but I strongly believe you have to take back your statement regarding mobocracy...
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