Narendra Modi, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, cannot hope to lead India effectively if he inspires “fear” and “antipathy” among many of its people, the New York Times has commented in an unusual move.
“Modi has shown no ability to work with opposition parties or tolerate dissent,” the Editorial Board of the New York Times said in a stinging editorial on the 63-year-old BJP leader.
The editorial said that Modi has already “alienated” BJP’s political partners when Janata Dal (United), an important regional party broke off its 17-year alliance with the “party because it found Modi unacceptable.”
India was a country with multiple religions and “Modi cannot hope to lead it effectively if he inspires fear and antipathy among many of its people,” it said while recalling that nearly 1,000 people died in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. The editorial, published yesterday, also questioned Modi’s economic track record in Gujarat.
The “economic record in Gujarat is not entirely admirable, either,” it said. “Muslims in Gujarat, for instance, are much more likely to be poor than Muslims in India as a whole, even though the state has a lower poverty rate than the country,” the editorial said.
“His rise to power is deeply troubling to many Indians, especially the country’s 138 million Muslims and its many other minorities,” said the 19-member Editorial Board, headed by India-born Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of The New York Times.
1 comment:
Would wonder how Mr. Rosenthal would feel if some Indian journalist were to comment on US politics saying a white politician threatens the security of America's African American population given the history of slavery in the US. This article is as spurious in terms of data and logic. India has a stronger secular tradition than many democracies including the US where secularism simply means institutional separation of the church and state. It should be mandatory when such articles are written for the author to publish affiliations to make it clear to the readers if there is a hidden agenda being served....
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