Till recently, our prime minister was entertaining the world with his pompous claim as a Vishvaguru to resolve all global conflicts, while trying to impress Indians at home with his awe-inspiring claim that he was not biologically born, but sent to this earth by God. At international meetings, the global leaders shook his hands patted on his back – grimaced when he tightly embraced them – but suffered him as a colleague officially representing India. Some of my Indian journalist friends in the US and UK, who are in the know of things, tell me that actually Modi has a low rating in the official assessment of both Washington and London. The acts of hospitality by the foreign dignitaries are just polite diplomatic gestures. They are quite aware of the pathetic state of things in Modi’s domestic backyard.
The contrast between Modi’s flamboyant rhetoric abroad and his utter indifference to the problems of poverty, unemployment and inflation at home, reminds me of a Bengali saying: “Matha-ye ghomta, ponde nangta” (Flaunting a veil from the head, while the arse in the backside is naked ) ! India under Modi’s rule has degenerated into the position of 105 out of 127 in the list of poverty-ridden countries according to the latest Global Hunger estimates. Findings by the International Trade Unions in 2020 reveal that India is amongst the ten most worst countries in the world in terms of workers’ rights. As for the situation on human rights and the condition of religious minorities, international agencies like Human Rights Watch, and even official US outfits which monitor the treatment of these minorities in different parts of the world, have come out with reports exposing the Modi government’s suppression of dissent by civil society activists and discrimination against religious minorities.
A blustering Modi’s swashbuckling plots abroad that misfired
Narendra Modi has been laughed at by global powers as a joker all these years. But behind the scenes, he had been operating in a conspiratorial way to further his objectives on foreign soils. From a joker, he has graduated into the position of a menace that threatens global powers. Two latest disclosures have exposed his malicious plans to target his political opponents who are refugees abroad. The first was the killing of the Khalistani activist Nijjar in Canada, and the second was the attempted assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the US. Canada came out with evidence of the complicity of some diplomats of the Indian embassy there in the killing of Nijjar. Toronto followed this exposure by expelling them. This is the first time that India faced such a humiliation. Meanwhile in the US, the state department on October 17, 2023 indicted Vikash Yadav, a former agent of the Indian intelligence agency RAW, for plotting to assassinate Pannun.
Vikash Yadav is now living in India. The Modi government, in order to keep Yadav under its protection and prevent his extradition to the US on the charge of an assassination plot, has resorted to a clever mischievous device. Soon after the US indictment of Yadav in October, the government ordered the arrest of Yadav on some frivolous charges of kidnapping and robbery. But it also ensured that he would be released on bail as long as the trial on those flimsy allegations continue – which will predictably go on for years, given the slow pace of our judicial system. So, Yadav can be extradited only after the trial concludes – and cannot be extradited if the trial ends in his being sentenced to a long prison term, which will entail his living in India. Either way, Yadav enjoys protection from the state. Meanwhile, being on bail, he is apparently having .a good time ! Interestingly, the day after his indictment by the US, Yadav on October 18, from an undisclosed location sent a message to his family, assuring them that he was safe.
But while Modi may be protecting his protégé Yadav in safe custody, the Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, whom Modi failed to eliminate in botched up attempts, is cocking a snook at Modi. From his safe haven abroad, he has issued a warning that an Air India plane could be attacked ahead of the fortieth anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. This has sent our security personnel in panic. Now, which terrorist would send a warning in public before undertaking an attack – a warning that will alert the security agencies ? Isn’t such a step a stupid suicidal act ? Pannun’s announcement is apparently a joke. But it had its intended effect – putting our security agencies in a tizzy !
Washington snubs Modi
Meanwhile, in another reversal of luck, Modi has been snubbed by Washington to which he has been cuddling up. A junior US official, the US ambassador in India, Eric Garcetti, dared to challenge Modi in a public statement (vide his interview in the Times of India, October 24, 2024) where he denounced Modi’s alleged practice of murder-for-hire, and made it clear that Washington wanted the guilty to be held accountable and not just an assurance that the crime won’t be repeated.
Let us note that this warning is being conveyed by Washington through its ambassador – indicating that at the upper level, President Biden does not want to waste his time on futile conversations with Prime Minister Modi, and has employed his junior representative, the US ambassador to warn Modi. Coming on the heels of Canada’s expulsion of Indian diplomats, Eric Garcetti’s statement is another slap on Modi’s face. Any government with a sense of self-respect would have expelled an ambassador who openly criticized the host state where he/she had been posted. But while Modi is a bully in domestic politics, he is a sniveling beggar at Washington’s doors.
At the same time, one cannot help laughing at the irony of the situation. Here is the US complaining about Modi’s practice of `murder-for- hire,’ while the US itself has been engaged in the same practice for years. Can one forget Washington’s repeated attempts to send mercenaries to Cuba to kill Castro ?
However, to come to the present context, Narendra Modi’s extra-territorial misadventures have thus landed him in the soup. He is fast reducing himself to a global pariah, looked down upon by foreign powers as a nuisance.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
