In another reprehensible exhibition of warped totalitarian behaviour, a section of the Indian expatriate community in the US has yet again demonstrated its evil propensity to indulge in crafty manipulation to subvert the right to be heard of its opponents. Wharton’s decision orchestrated by a parochial Indian lobby to retract its invitation to Narendra Modi, a three-time chief minister of Gujarat and a possible contender for prime ministership, to speak via video at the annual Wharton-India Economic Forum slated to begin on March 23 is an unequivocal example of this boorish tendency.
Of late, it has become the norm for Indian-origin academics and students at prominent US universities to deny their ideological adversaries from back home a platform at these institutions by resorting to ham-handed tactics that belong to back alleys in lieu of a civilised dialogue. In 2011, a Harvard don and her Indian watering boys managed to coerce the Harvard establishment into revoking Subramanian Swamy’s privilege to teach his customary economics course. His crime: a controversial op-ed titled, How to Wipe Out Islamic Terror, that he had penned in an Indian daily. Regardless of the validity or invalidity of his opinion, Harvard’s decision to dock him on an unrelated matter was a gross violation of the tenet of free speech.
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton’s parent body) appears to be following this same disturbing trend. By succumbing to the illegitimate pressure mounted by an Indian clique, U Penn, as it is commonly known, has shown extremely poor judgment. In reaching its decision to bar Modi, the university has been hasty, taking at face value the contention of Modi’s detractors without subjecting their charges to a logical analysis or a factual validation.
Invoking a rationale that is faulty, Modi’s opponents—faculty members and prominent alumni of Indian-origin in a petition—claim: “We find it astonishing that any academic and student body at the University of Pennsylvania can endorse ideas about economic development that are based on the systematic oppression of minority populations, whether in India or elsewhere.”
It is apparent that this is an outrageous inference. Modi’s economic success is a stand-alone, pristine achievement which cannot be even remotely linked to ‘systematic suppression of minority populations’. It cannot be likened to slave trade in the US of yore or British colonialism which exploited the underprivileged. Modi deserves unqualified credit for his achievements in the economic arena.
Referring to Modi’s alleged role in the Gujarat riots, the petition avers: “Recently, there have been efforts to whitewash Modi’s grim record and to grant him respectability.”
Such an allegation may have carried some weight in the immediate aftermath of the riots, but 11 years later after an intensive investigation directed by a respectable authority, the Supreme Court of India, which found no evidence of wrongdoing on Modi’s, it is redundant. Exoneration by the Supreme Court cannot be dismissed as an attempt to ‘whitewash’ a crime. Therefore, to persist with charges that have been repudiated is nothing short of bigotry and is a devious attempt to hoodwink the world at large.
Modi’s castigation at this juncture takes on a wider dimension to include the nation as a whole. Wharton’s decision cannot but be seen as a censure of the Indian electorate that has endorsed Modi three times and as an attempt to trivialise the acumen of India’s highest judicial authority. Government of India representatives, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Union minister of State for IT and Communications Milind Deora must register their approval by withdrawing from the meet in the national interest.
Wharton by its faulty decision has sullied its own image and eroded its own credibility as an institution that celebrates diversity of thought. Wharton needs to rectify its mistake.
vivek3021@yahoo.com