Recently, several University of Pennsylvania professors made accusations in The Daily Pennsylvanian against the Indian politician Narendra Modi as part of a campaign of social pressure that managed to stop his presentation at the Wharton India Economic Forum.

As occasional readers of The Daily Pennsylvanian, we write to clarify important facts about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s record.

We, scholars of South Asia in the United States, have been appalled at the extent of vituperation and the insults leveled against three distinguished scholars because they wrote a letter opposing the decision of the organizers of the Wharton India Economic Forum to invite Narendra Modi as a keynote speaker.

I will never forget that first day of the riots, February 28, 2002. I watched a mob walk down my street and burn down a Muslim owned business as the police watched.

Since the retraction of Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to the Wharton School, events continue to unfold ominously. The opportunity for public discourse, multiple perspectives expressed in an open and civil manner, has been lost at least twice.

The episode at Wharton squelching the free speech rights of students is only the latest event in a long running campaign to shut out a billion Hindus from participating in political affairs around the world.

Opposing so strongly the invitation of an elected official because they feel that he is a dictator unfortunately gives me the impression that they have allowed personal opinions to cloud better judgment.

The events surrounding the cancelation of Modi’s invitation were not an inhibition of speech, but the product of dynamic free speech of private individuals without government intervention. Even if you disagree with the outcome, this was free speech in action.

Penn’s name attached to Modi would have granted him all of the legitimacy that comes with that name, and his cancellation is potentially a huge blow to his political ambitions.

Unfortunately, The Daily Pennsylvanian has revealed its severe miscomprehension of this very basic point and, in fact, has worried us with the very serious prospect of our suppressed speech.

Agreeing to speak at Penn was a political move for Modi — it would have assisted him in obtaining legitimacy for his “developmental” agenda, while simultaneously erasing his involvement with the Godhra riots.

I am dismayed by the lack of critical thinking evinced in The Daily Pennsylvanian’s editorial, which drew a specious analogy between what Narendra Modi’s keynote at the Wharton India Economic Forum could have been and what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 2007 speech at Columbia was.

Unlike the opposition to the BDS conference, the motivation behind the anti-Modi campaign had little (if anything) to do with the substance of what Modi planned to say.

As members of the Penn faculty, we have shared our views on the mishandling of Modi’s invitation and are gratified that students at Penn rightly perceive this kerfuffle singularly as a matter of free speech.

Under Modi, Gujarat has experienced dramatic growth in per capita income, but this has coexisted with statistics for basic human development indices that are below the natural average in a third world country.

The petitioners succeeded. But the WIEF organizers had it right the first time around.

In response to a letter of protest written to them by a large group of Penn faculty and students as well as concerned citizens, the organizers of the Wharton India Economic Forum withdrew their invitation to Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat. We wish to reiterate briefly here why we (and virtually every member of the faculty teaching South Asia at Penn) objected to Modi being invited to deliver a keynote: