Na Mo unites .... Indian legislators petition US... ?!?!?!?

Every  morning old and poor people gather before the State Secretariat – they come travelling miles – they carry a written petition representing their grievance and seek the Sovereign authority to redress their grievances.. perfect – in a democracy, one needs to present their woes before the appropriate authorities and can expect them to addressed and redressed…. But will somebody stand before the US Embassy or Russian embassy wanting to submit a petition ~ may sound ridiculous – only when they are ordinary citizens….

USA is anathema to many political parties especially the Communists here… to some most global events are consequence of US Imperialism, autocracy, monopolistic hegemony and more…. ‘anti-people attitude’ – we condemn, we condemn…… is the slogan raised in many such platforms. To almost all of them there is another anathema – ‘Narendra Modi’…….

The idea was to cause embarrassment to Narendra Modi in perpetuity. It ended up embarrassing those who tried to ensure that he does not get a US visa instead. The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) which campaigned for a letter from Indian lawmakers against Modi and supposedly obtained their signatures, real or cut-and-paste, surely has left a lot of MPs red faced according to this report in First Post.  The controversy around the current letter, bearing signatures of 25 Rajya Sabha members and 40 from the Lok Sabha, first sent to Obama on 26 November, then on 5 December last year and re-sent on Sunday is because of its content. It says: “We wish to respectfully urge you to maintain the current policy of denying Mr Modi a visa to the United States”.

Adding to their discomfiture is a Washington Post story which begins by saying: “It is almost unthinkable that Indian lawmakers would appeal to the United States to take a stand on an internal matter. Most Indian politicians, many of whom still nurse a Cold War-era suspicion of Washington, would bristle at the very thought of it.”

CPM leader and Rajya Sabha member Sitaram Yechury immediately denied  that he signed on any such letter. He appeared to be at discomfort on being publicised as being a co-author of a letter that was addressed to the American President to respectfully urge him to intervene in a domestic political and legal issue. DMK MP KP Ramalingam followed Yechury in issuing a denial. “I have not signed any letter to the US regarding Narendra Modi’s visa. I am not a US Senator. I am a Rajya Sabha MP. Why would I interfere in their things,” he said. But then the man behind the campaign, Mohammed Adeeb, Independent Rajya Sabha member, claims that it was duly signed by Yechury and others. CPI MP Sayeed Aziz, too, claims that the signatures on the letter by Yechury and other leaders are authentic.

Many thanks to Firstpost for this newsitem and here is the one of Washington Post reproduced click here to read the original : Indian legislators petition US

NEW DELHI – It is almost unthinkable that Indian lawmakers would appeal to the United States to take a stand on an internal matter. Most Indian politicians, many of whom still nurse a Cold War-era suspicion of Washington, would bristle at the very thought of it. It couldn’t have been easy, then, for 65 members of India’s parliament to fax a letter to President Obama on Sunday requesting that his government not grant a visa to thecontroversial Hindu nationalist politician Narendra Modi, the chief minister of the state of Gujarat. The lawmakers had sent the same letter last year as well.

Modi is emerging as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s likely candidate for prime minister in the national elections next year. But he has been accused by international human rights groups of looking the other way when Hindu-Muslim religious violence paralyzed his state in 2002. Over 1,000 people died in the riots, most of them Muslims. After widespread criticism, the U.S. denied him a visa to visit in 2005.

Within India, Modi’s political stature has risen since the 2002 Gujarat violence. He’s seen as pro-business and his state hosts the factories of U.S. companies such as Ford and General Motors. At a time when the national government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is plagued by corruption allegations, Modi’s reputation for administrative efficiency is serving him well. He has not expressed regret for the riots and has said that the charges against him are politically motivated.

Many European nations have renewed ties with him.

Earlier this week, the president of Modi’s party, Rajnath Singh, told reporters in New York that he will urge Washington to reconsider the visa denial. That prompted the group of lawmakers who had earlier written Obama to once again send their letter, which they released to the Indian media on Tuesday.

“We wish to respectfully urge you to maintain the current policy of denying Mr. Modi a visa to the United States,” said the letter, signed by mostly Muslim lawmakers from several parties, including the ruling Congress Party. “Given that legal cases against the culprits including many senior officials in Mr. Modi’s administration are still pending in the court of law, any revoking of the ban at this juncture would be seen as a dismissal of the issues concerning Mr. Modi’s role in the horrific massacres of 2002. It would legitimize Mr. Modi’s human rights violations and seriously impact the nature of US-India relations by sending a message that the United States values economic interests over and above the universal values of human rights and justice.”

The Times Now television news channel ran a primetime debate on Tuesday titled, “Is it appropriate for Indian politicians to drag their fight with Modi to Washington’s court?”

Jay Narayan Vyas, a senior colleague of Modi in the Gujarat government, said it was like “washing dirty linen outside the country.”

“Please maintain national dignity, we are the largest democracy in the world,” said former diplomat Gopalaswami Parthasarathy

On Twitter, it fueled humor.

Sure it appears total contradiction of parties who claim on every platform that US interferes, meddles and forces its way into the affairs of every country… but they plead to the sovereign country going against the very principle that they campaign….

If they had signed without even caring to see to whom the petition was addressed or without reading the contents – the statement itself speak volumes of their action…..

If they had not signed or had their signatures been forged, it would only be appropriate that they institute legal action against those misusing their signature….

Will any of this happen ?