UNITED NATIONS: As crowds protest outside, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on Wednesday with UN officials and staff celebrating the International Day of Yoga. He was with Indian diaspora in the garden of UN Headquarters in New York.
This year’s commemoration was organized by the United Nations India Mission in collaboration with the UN Office under the theme of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam Yoga (The World Is One Family).
Protesters outside the UN building accused him of enforcing the law to protect minorities, making them suspicious and making India a Hindu state. They chanted “Butcher of Gujarat” against Modi.
UN Secretary General António Guterres, in his video message for the event, reminded everybody that the results of this ancient practice are especially nourishing and valuable to share.
Critics of Prime Minister Modi have blamed him of using yoga to divert him from his unsatisfactory record on human rights and following Hindu nationalists who harshly punish India’s minorities, especially Muslims.
Modi is in the US to meet with President Joe Biden, whom the White House believes will strengthen “one of the partnerships of our time.”
Modi has visited the United States five times since becoming Prime Minister in 2014, but this will be his first state visit in an official capacity, despite concerns on the worst human rights record of Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) whose key leader is Modi.
Modi will travel from New York to Washington for dinner with Biden Wednesday night, followed by a speech and a state dinner at the White House on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Time magazine, a major US weekly news magazine, said that India has a big democracy with its poor human rights record that has dropped significantly under Modi’s rule.
In their new book, How Long is the Moon, researchers Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia identified nearly 250 political activists on trial after Modi’s rise to power in May 2014 and such detainees are rising in number until July 2022.
Detainees include lawyers, writers, human rights activists and other social activists. India is the world leader in web blocking, as Western tech companies have learned, threatening telecom and social media companies to remove content and threatened by the police if they don’t comply, according to regulator Access Now.
Time magazine wrote in an article commemorating Modi’s visit to the United States: “The bad treatment of Muslims, who make up 14 percent of India’s population, has increased.
“A 2019 report by Human Rights Watch documented 44 murders of lynching gangs (36 of whom are Muslims) who killed people they suspected of owning, eating or trading cattle. In these cases, some were banned from entering mosques and praying.
They are even preventing them from praying at home. One state has banned Muslim female students from wearing the hijab.
“The BJP-ruled state enacts legislation that makes marriage arrangements more difficult.
“Right-wing Hindus celebrate the early release of 11 men convicted of raping a Muslim mother and killing some of her family members during the 2002 massacre.
“These events happened after Modi, as the prime minister hailed from Gujarat, failed to stop Hindu violence against Muslims. Modi was banned from entering the United States.
Or the EU until the Supreme Court of India says Modi has no case to answer.
“BBC’s latest film accusing Modi of committing a crime is banned in India. Same is done with Al-Jazeera documentary on Muslim Genocide.” –APP
