NEW YORK/NEW DELHI  -  American and Indian newspapers on Saturday urged prime minister-elect Narendra Modi to reach out to Muslims and avoid the temptation of triumphalism after the Hindu nationalist leader’s crushing election victory.
A leading American newspaper Saturday warned Narendra Modi against exacerbating sectarian divisions by using divisive rhetoric against Muslims if he wants to achieve his goals of economic revival in the country.
‘Many Indian Muslims blame him for failing to stop bloody riots in his home state in 2002, leaving more than 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims,’ The New York Times said in an editorial, as media reports cited members of the Muslim minority in India expressing concern that their place in the country could become even more tenuous following the election victory of BJP, a Hindu nationalist party.
The Times said some others fear Modi would try to quash dissent and centralize authority. Noting Washington’s concern about the Gujarat killings, the editorial said Modi was denied a visa for nearly a decade. ‘The administration now is prepared to engage with a Modi government, particularly on economic issues, and President Obama moved quickly on Friday to invite Mr Modi to the White House,’ it said.
The United States and India, it said, would have to work hard to overcome the strain built up between them in recent years. ‘On security, the two countries should pursue deeper cooperation beyond occasional military exercises and arms sales, like calming tensions between China and Vietnam over regional waterways, building peace between India and Pakistan and stabilizing Afghanistan.’
In a separate dispatch the newspaper said discrimination against Muslims in India is so rampant that many barely muster outrage when telling of the withdrawn apartment offers, rejected job applications and turned-down loans that are part of living in the country for them. ‘As a group, Muslims have fallen badly behind Hindus in recent decades in education, employment and economic status, with persistent discrimination a key reason,’ correspondent Gardiner Harris wrote from New Delhi. ‘Muslims are more likely to live in villages without schools or medical facilities and less likely to qualify for bank loans.’
’Fear is a basic part of politics, and it’s actually how politicians gain respect, but for us fear also comes from the general public,’ Zahir Alam, the imam of Bari Masjid in East Delhi, was quoted as saying by the Times. ‘The meaning of minority has never been clearer than it is today.’
Noting that Modi was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 when uncontrolled rioting caused 1,000 deaths, mostly among Muslims, the dispatch said he the new Indian leader was linked with a police assassination squad that largely targeted Muslims.
Modi’s victory came in large measure from India’s aspirational urban electorate, who yearn for a better future for themselves and their children, the dispatch said. Christophe Jaffrelot, a professor at King’s College London, said that rapid urbanization and a growing middle class were softening barriers among Hindu castes, but that the same forces had increased divisions between Hindus and Muslims.
‘In the village, you are bound to meet Muslim families because it’s such a small universe,’ he said. ‘In the cities, you have these vast ghettos.’ Correspondent Harris wrote, ‘In recent months, residents of a well-to-do Hindu neighbourhood of a small city in Gujarat have protested outside a home purchased in January by a Muslim, saying his presence would disturb the peace and lower property values - the same arguments used for decades in the American South to exclude blacks from white neighbourhoods. ‘In Mumbai this year, a ship captain credited with helping to rescue about 722 Indians from Kuwait after the 1990 Iraqi invasion said he was unable to buy an apartment in an affluent section of the city because no one would sell to a Muslim. Zia Haq, an assistant editor at The Hindustan Times, was cited as saying it had taken him nearly a year to find an apartment in New Delhi several years ago because he kept looking in neighborhoods dominated by Hindus who refused to rent to him. He finally found an apartment in a Muslim slum.
‘This is the story of every middle-class Muslim who moves to a city in India,’ Haq said. ‘Sometimes landlords are very upfront and say they won’t rent to Muslims. Others have excuses, like they have decided not to rent the place at all.’
Indian newspapers meanwhile urged Narendra Modi to reach out to Muslims and avoid the temptation of triumphalism.
After winning the first outright majority by anyone for 30 years, Modi will not have to seek out coalition allies who might otherwise act as a moderating influence on his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party. But the main newspapers said it was vital Modi allay the fears of minorities who did not jump on his electoral bangdwagon, particularly Muslims who remember how around 1,000 people died in communal riots in 2002 soon after he took over as chief minister of Gujarat state.
‘The reality remains that there is a huge trust deficit with the minorities, especially the Muslim community, which must be addressed,’ said an editorial in The Hindu. ‘He is still regarded as a deeply polarising figure not really reaching out to minorities.’In order to close the credibility gap that persists as regards his acceptability to govern all Indians, Mr Modi must ensure that the idea of India as a pluralist and inclusive landscape in which all citizens have equality before the law as constitutionally decreed, is upheld consistently and transparently, while he is in office as Prime Minister.’
While Modi made governance and development the focus of his campaign, several senior BJP figures were accused of trying to whip up antagonism against the Muslim minority for electoral gains in key battlegrounds. A Modi government ‘needs to, first and foremost, reach out to those that did not vote for it. It needs to talk to the Muslim community,’ said an editorial in The Indian Express.
‘Ever since the violence in Gujarat in 2002 on the Modi government’s watch, and because of his refusal to directly address questions of his own political and moral accountability, a Modi prime ministership stokes insecurities in India’s largest minority that Prime Minister Modi cannot afford to relegate or ignore.’ While Modi said in a speech on Friday that he would ensure that he governed on behalf of all of India’s 1.2 billion people, the Times of India pointed out that the new parliament would contain just 24 Muslim MPs, the lowest number since 1952. The Hindustan Times said it was vital that what it called the ‘bad eggs in the party do not make overtly triumphal remarks about any community.’
The papers were all agreed that the result was an unmitigated disaster for the ruling Congress party which saw its share of the seats slump to an all-time low after a lacklustre campaign fronted by Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the country’s most famous dynasty. The Hindustan Times called the result ‘the rudest of wake-up calls’ that should prompt Congress, which has ruled India for all but 13 years of its post- independence history, to reinvent itself. ‘India has changed but clearly the Congress has not,’ the paper added.