Sunita Williams and Narendra Modi

An Indian artist celebrating Sunita Williams' return

Prime Minister Modi has extended a cordial invitation to Sunita Williams. In a Letter dated 1 Mar 2025, Modi expressed India’s pride in her achievements and extended the invitation. “After your return, we are looking forward to seeing you in India. It will be a pleasure for India to host one of its most illustrious daughters.”

Will Ms Williams accept the invitation? I have serious reservations. She won’t, in all probability. Her cousin was allegedly murdered by Modi’s men during the investigation of the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The young generation in India are probably not aware of the 2002 riots in Gujarat orchestrated by Modi and his party for political mileage. In the last few years, whenever I raised the question in my classes, hardly one or two students out of the 200-odd ones were faintly aware of the riots.

Inhuman violence was unleashed in Gujarat against the Muslim community after some Hindu pilgrims were attacked on a train allegedly by Muslims. Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat then. He is reported to have encouraged the inhuman assaults on Muslims in order to gain certain political advantages, especially since he was going to lose the chief minister’s chair. PM Vajpayee was utterly saddened by the violence and also aware of the state administration’s complicity in it. Eventually, however, Vajpayee gave in to BJP’s Islamophobia as well as the party’s admiration of a macho leader like Modi.

Haren Pandya was one of the ministers who provided testimony to a citizen’s tribunal against Modi’s handling of the riots. There was incontrovertible evidence against Modi as Manoj Mitta’s book, The Fiction of Fact-finding, revealed clearly. Pandya was murdered in 2003 for standing against Modi. Many others like Sanjiv Bhatt IPS, Teesta Setalvad, and R B Sreekumar IPS (Additional DGP then) were arrested later with unconcealed malice by the state police.

Sunita Williams is a first cousin of Haren Pandya. If Modi had a modicum of sensibility, he wouldn’t have invited Ms Williams to his India.

Ms Williams had declined an earlier invitation of Modi. During one of his countless visits to the USA, Modi met with Williams and her father, Deepak Pandya, at the Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial in Arlington. He extended an invitation at that time too which was politely (perhaps with concealed contempt too) declined by Ms Williams.

Public memory is short. Modi knows that. But he doesn’t seem to know that individual memories are long, very long. Some Indians whose memories aren’t all that short are proud of Modi’s thick skin, it seems.

For me, and a lot of others whom I know, this invitation by Modi to Ms Williams smacks of utter insensitivity. Worse, it is also a reminder of unresolved justice.

Ms Williams, reportedly, has shown her sensitivity. She is reported to have felt “touched by the gesture.” Let’s hope that Mr Modi understands the meaning of that ‘touch.’