Your Voice | Clarifying Modi's record
As occasional readers of The Daily Pennsylvanian, we write to clarify important facts about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s record. The findings of the Nanavati-Mehta Commission and the Supreme Court- mandated Special Investigation Team found credible and considerable evidence of Modi’s complicity in the mass violence against Muslims in Gujarat. Apart from testimony of the survivors, the testimony by former police and government officials as well as of rank and file Hindutva cadres is a matter of public record. That all this could be ignored by the Commission and SIT constitutes not an exoneration of Modi, but a disturbing culture of impunity. At this time, Narendra Modi remains a defendant in two cases connected to the violence of 2002, even as the vast majority of riot-related cases still have not come to trial, and only one gang-rape case has resulted in a conviction. The question of Gujarat’s economic success IS certainly debatable; what is not, is Modi’s culpability for the targeted violence and ongoing discrimination against Gujarat’s minority communities.