“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth”.
-William Faulkner.
Biratnagar: Sabrina Siddiqui, the White House correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, set the ball rolling in the United States of America during the much-publicized visit of Indian Prime Minister Modi to the US.
The US visit of PM Modi brought, let us admit, untold slur and loss of face to the entire Indian regime as against what was expected of prior to the visit.
The entire Hindutva gang in India had thought that the global politics revolve around PM Modi whom the South Asian population summarily loves to hate.
Kenneth Roth, former longtime executive director of Human Rights watch, says that “as Joe Biden honors PM Modi with an utterly unnecessary visit (an ordinary meeting would have sufficed). Modi has shown himself to be a global leader in …. democratic backsliding”.
Analysts say that the current US tensions with China have placed urgent new demands on the US-India relationship and thus the present visit of PM Modi to the USA.
So, it is surely the China factor which compels both India and the US to come closer with each other which then again means that China is handling the combined threats from the US and India at a time.
I would say, India needs the US more seriously than the other way around because for the Americans, China indeed is a formidable and competing force only but not an enemy, however, for India, China is not only a nearest rival but an enemy of the highest order.
Notably, India has yet to forget the 1962 insulting defeat when India and China came face to face.
It was this full-scale India-China War that allowed some breathing space to late King Mahendra to consolidate his rule and shield his country from the onslaughts of the neighboring India’s enemy regime.
And King Mahendra since then concentrated his entire efforts in the acts of Nepal development.
Today’s Nepal is what King Mahendra left for the Nepali population.
Back to the point:
The ground reality is that India can’t compete with China as was very freshly revealed by the Indian Foreign Minister S. Jay Shankar himself.
Minister Shankar point blank admitted that “India can’t fight China because China is a bigger economy which explains why Modi doesn’t dare to confront China even if China has presumably taken 1500 square Kilometers of Indian area.
This frank admission apart, yet India, born in 1947 projects itself as a much bigger force/threat to China.
China understands that the Indians talk too much and deliver little.
Though, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just recently visited China and met President Xi Jinping and vowed that the US now will never talk on Taiwanese independence or say the US will take Taiwan as an integral part of China.
The top U.S. diplomat and President Xi Jinping both stressed the importance of having a more stable relationship, as any conflict between the world’s two largest economies would create global disruption.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken upon the conclusion of his visit to Beijing said that the United States and China had made “progress” toward steering relations back on track as both sides agreed on the need to “stabilize” the bilateral relationship between the two superpowers, reported the CNN.
Secretary Blinken made several ear pleasing remarks on US-China relations this time around and expressed his fervent desire to jointly work for the institutionalization of global peace. So much so good.
But yet Indian PM Modi-the born rival of China was invited to the US but why?
Just to keep PM Modi in good stead? Or something is hidden?
Yet the Godi media believes that PM Modi’s US Visit was a resounding success.
Inviting PM Modi to the US, the latter wants to signal China that the US has a friend in South Asia which tentatively too is formidable a force that could compete with China should the situation so demanded.
In effect PM Modi was greeted on several occasions in the US with abusive slogans like, for example, “PM Modi Stop prosecuting Christians, “Stop Ethnic Cleansing in Manipur, India”; “Hey Joe Biden, Ask Modi why India is under Genocide watch today”; “we support equality, not Hindu supremacy”, and may more.
India’s Godi media (aka Modi’s lapdogs) had aired that India for the US is as important as Oxygen one needs to survive.
However, some influential US media took Indian PM Modi as “pet” Prime Minister.
It was too much perhaps even for the detractors of PM Modi in Nepal and across South Asia including Pakistan obviously.
The Indian media critical to PM Modi conclude that the visit to the US by PM Modi was a calamity.
The mushrooming Youtubers in India, the self-declared analysts as they were, left no stone unturned to damage the prestige of the Indian Prime Minister Modi the way he spoke and behaved with the US dignitaries and high officials in the US.
Some even talked about Modi’s “hugging” habit and termed it as Modi’s obnoxious phenomenon which at the end added to his own embarrassment.
The Western world is not used to the hugging practices which Modi has made as his own “Gujarati brand”.
Some even cut a joke at PM Modi’s English language speech wherein he made some erratic and unwanted speech much to the chagrin of those voters back in India who speculate that Modi is the next Prime Minister come the approaching next elections.
PM Modi himself contributed much to push his own country to disgrace across the South Asian region and much beyond.
PM Modi’s follies must be held responsible to have frustrated the Indian aspirations and expectations across the country.
Sabrina-the WSJ media woman stole the show as much as PM Modi is talked to have.
Indeed, PM Modi too added to the fanfare in the US but the other way around.
Sabrina exhibited her courage to ask a question to PM Modi in the US which perhaps frightened PM Modi as his answers later were as irrelevant and bogus as it could be.
Modi reiterated democracy in his DNA, however, how has the DNA worked in India is best understood by destitute minority Indian Muslims.
While answering Sabrina’s tough question, PM Modi at first did not comprehend the content of the sharp question that it was, however, when he could guess that Sabrina was talking or say asking a question to which he for over his nine years merciless rule of India had easily avoided summarily.
In fact, PM Modi’s honest critics claim that over nine years of his chaotic rule in India beginning 2014, PM Modi has never ever addressed a single press conference perhaps for fear of being undressed by the fiery questions of the energetic media men.
So PM Modi all along his elongated span in India as Prime Minister avoided facing the media for some understandable reasons.
Some say that a guilty mind remains ever suspicious of his guilt being exposed.
However, Sabrina Siddiqui did it for the entire South Asians and more so to the satisfaction of the former US President Barack Hussain Obama.
Pakistani nationals and the media have plenty of reasons to have a cunning smile looking at the somewhat disturbing slogans abusing PM Modi while being in the US.
For some analysts in Nepal too, they enjoyed PM Modi being attacked by the pressmen in the US or back home in India.
A section of enlightened Nepali nationals loves to hate Indian PM Modi and his erratic lapdog Godi media.
Godi media is a very repulsive name in Nepal’s media sector as several India bend crooks on occasions work against their own motherland Nepal and favor the enemy regime.
These sold Nepali media men are generally taken as the adopted sons of Indian Godi media who necessarily shield “mother India” for hefty financial gains.
Coincidently, Barack Obama while being interviewed in Athens by Christiane Amanpour of the CNN made some references to PM Modi and his established Islamophobic credentials and urged sitting US President Joe Biden to bring into bilateral discussions some points that were important to the US’s standard policy on religion being practiced by minorities across the globe more so in India where PM Modi’s rule has brought myriad sufferings to the minority Muslims and Dalits in India.
The timing of Obama’s interview with the CNN international affairs anchor Christiane Amnapour in Athens, Greece, came close on the heels of PM Modi’s US visit.
This was meaningful indeed which in a way speaks of the shrewd functioning of US diplomacy.
Obama was in Athens for some works of the Obama Foundation.
Barack Obama appeared while being interviewed that he was in full knowledge of what was happening in India to the minority Muslims, however, he maintained a calm posture as if he was unaware of what was happening in India-the USs strategic ally in the QUAD that has Australia, Japan, the US and India as key members.
Look how politically and diplomatically seasoned Barack Obama took the advantage of PM Modi’s visit to the US and set the tone for the entire US media and the US administration suggesting all to necessarily touch upon the continued cruelty on the minority Muslims in India after the dawn of PM Modi as Prime Minister of India.
Needless to say, PM Modi is a terror machine of sorts for the entire Muslims residing in India.
The wearer knows where the shoe pinches; it has rightly been said by elderly men.
Barack Obama recommended Joe Biden if and when he meets PM Modi to raise the issue of the state of India’s minority Muslims.
Look how he briefs the CNN reporter Amnapour.
“If President (Joe Biden) meets with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi, then the protection of Muslim minority in a majority Hindu India is something worth mentioning”.
For Obama, PM Modi was no more and no less than an “autocratic…illiberal democrat”.
Obama further said to CNN that if “I had a conversation with PM Modi, who I know well, part of my argument would be that if you don’t protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, there is a strong possibility that India would at some point start pulling apart”.“And we have seen what happens when you start getting into those kinds of large internal conflicts. So that would be contrary to the interests of not only the Muslim India but also Hindu India. I think it is important to be able to talk about these things honestly”, Obama continued.
Let’s hope that President Joe Biden may have raised the issues suggested by Barack Obama with PM Modi at the time of the bilateral discussions.
Barack Obama’s CNN interview from Athens was aired on June 22, 2023.
Talking of the erosion seen in the democratic practices in his own country, Obama said that the “democratic institutions in the United States and around the world have grown creaky and it remains now on incumbent American leaders to find ways to sustain them into the future”.
During the course of the CNN interview in Athens, Obama hinted that the Indian PM Modi of late has demonstrated a drift toward authoritarianism that has worried the West and he has cracked down on dissent, targeted journalists and introduced policies that Human Rights Groups say discriminate against Muslims.
Thus Obama explains PM Modi’s recent undemocratic acts and simultaneously predicts that India may split sooner than later if PM Modi doesn’t correct his hatred against the Indian Minority Muslims and the Dalits.
A seasoned leader of the US like Barack Obama must have said so only when he may have been briefed by his South Asian political advisors that all was not well with PM Modi in India.
Now on Sabrina Siddiqui:
Now the question is who is Sabrina Siddiqui who jolted the entire Modi’s Indian regime with a most common question which could have been easily answered.
However, the question which was avoided by PM Modi for the entire nine years of his tenure in the Indian government confronted him in the US.
It was this question from Sabrina which, as stated in the earlier paragraphs, demoralized PM Modi at the time of the Press conference in the US.
Sabrina’s question basically was on the “alleged discrimination of minorities in India during his visit to the US”.
In no time, Sabrina was trolled online by so-called pro-Hindutva social media users in Facebook and twitter.
Accusation to this Wall Street Journalist Sabrina highlighted her Muslim heritage and connections to Pakistan-the immediate rival of India.
Sabrina’s parents presumably hail from Pakistan.
The BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya termed Sabrina’s question posed to PM Modi as to have been a “motivated one”.
Sabrina’s Question to PM Modi:
“Mr. Prime Minister, India has long prided itself as the world’s largest democracy, but there are many human rights groups who say that your government has discriminated against religious minorities and sought to silence its critics. As you stand here in the East Room of the White House, where so many world leaders have made commitments to protecting democracy, what steps are you and your government willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in your country and to uphold free speech?”
To this question, Modi responded in a shaking voice that, “Democracy is our spirit. Democracy runs in our veins. We live democracy…our government has taken the basic principles of democracy…we have always proved that democracy can deliver. And when I say deliver, this is regardless of caste, creed, religion, or gender. There is absolutely no space for discrimination.”
Sabrina Siddiqui is a White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She is the daughter of a Pakistani mother.
Sabrina Siddiqui is the great granddaughter of the acknowledged philosopher Sir Syed Ahmed Khan took to twitter to quash some of the trollers, posted pictures of her cheering for the Indian cricket team and wrote “Since some have chosen to make a point of my personal background it feels only right to provide a fuller picture. Sometimes identities are more complex than they seem”.
In sum, thus ended PM Modi’s much highlighted US visit which saw 6 US lawmakers boycott Indian PM Modi’s address to the US Congress.
They were Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Rep Rashida Talib; Rep Ilhan Omar and Rep Jamaal Bowman, Rep Summer Lee and Rep Cori Bush.
And some 75 US lawmakers wrote a letter suggesting that PM Modi be denied to address the US congress.
A top BJP intellectual and former Harvard University Professor Subraminyam Swamy once told a lady reporter that “Muslims make trouble. They don’t deserve equal rights”.
His daughter Suhasini Hyder, fortunately is married to a Muslim and the couple is living a happier life.
Professor Swamy thus possesses abundant hatred for the Indian Muslims.
Similarly, some US lawmakers as stated earlier, too have plenty of hatred for PM Modi in the US.
And yet the visit of Modi was a success? Did Obama talk sense? Let’s wait. That’s all.