Community Responses To Narendra Modi And Wief

Your Voice | The Modi controversy is not about free speech

Saturday in the streets of Philadelphia, we got a much clearer picture of what it is that Modi’s supporters actually stand for. In a protest that was organized by a group describing itself as “Americans for Free Speech,” free speech seemed pretty low on the agenda.

Your Voice | Response to The Daily Pennsylvanian’s Horowitz explanation

Anyone paying close attention to The Daily Pennsylvanian will have noticed a curious inconsistency in its treatment of recent controversies.

Guest Column | Erasing culpability, furthering injustice: What the WIEF should discuss on March 23

A recent study session for an Urdu language exam took an unexpected turn when the Modi controversy came up. My Urdu tutor, who happens to be a Muslim woman from Pakistan, hesitantly asked my view on the issue. When I replied that Wharton was correct in its decision to rescind its invitation to Narendra Modi, she looked relieved.

Guest Column | The Penn Hindus are right: This is about freedom of speech (they are also right on the facts)

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.

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.

Your Voice | A troubling level of discourse

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.

Guest Column | We will not move on: A Gujarati-American recalls witnessing the 2002 riots

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.

Guest Column | Modi and Wharton: Fostering dissent

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.

Your Voice | Attacks on Hindus play out in the theater of the absurd

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.

Your Voice | Response to “On WIEF and Modi”

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.

Your Voice | Modi and the right to free speech

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.

Your Voice | Taking an informed stance on Narendra Modi: A student voice

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.

Your Voice | Our right to free speech: A response from signatories of the Modi petition

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.

Your Voice | In defense of Loomba

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.

Your Voice | Response to “A closed forum is no forum”

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.

Your Voice | Response to “‘Shutting down the debate’”

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.

Your Voice | Modi should have stayed

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.

Your Voice | It’s not a free speech issue, it’s an economic one

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.

Editorial | A closed forum is no forum

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

Your Voice | On WIEF and Narendra Modi

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: