Skip to main content

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.’

Comments

  1. magiceyeMarch 21, 2025 at 6:19 PM

    He is amoral, shameless and a congenital liar.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanMarch 21, 2025 at 6:20 PM

    Hari OM
    I had not known of this close connection between SW and the recent history of Gujarat, although I was, of course aware of the events. For her and her colleague, I am relieved for their safe return. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 21, 2025 at 7:40 PM

      Their return was long overdue and many of us were getting worried too... Relieved now.

      Delete
  3. Liz A.March 22, 2025 at 3:56 AM

    Let's hope her memory is long, too. Shameful that he would act like this was just a gesture and not a way to try to erase the bad things he's done.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whispers of the Self

Book Review Title: The Journey of the Soul Author: Dhanya Ramachandran Publisher: Sahitya Publications, Kozhikode, 2025 Pages: 64 “I n the whispers of the wind, I hear a gentle voice.” Dhanya Ramachandran’s poems are generally gentle voices like the whispers of the wind. The above line is from the poem ‘Seek’. There is some quest in most of the poems. As the title of the anthology suggests, most of the poems are inward journeys of the poet, searching for something or offering consolations to the self. Darkness and shadows come and go, especially in the initial poems, like a motif. “In the darkness, shadows dance and play.” That’s how ‘Echoes of Agony’ begins. There are haunting memories, regrets, and sorrow in that poem. And a longing for solace. “Tears dry, but scars remain.” Shadows are genial too occasionally. “Shadows sway to the wind’s soft sigh / As we stroll hand in hand beneath the sky…” (‘Moonlit Serenade’) The serenity of love is rare, however, in the collecti...
7 comments
Read more

Jatayu: The Winged Warrior

Image by Gemini AI Jatayu is a vulture in Valmiki Ramayana. The choice of a vulture for a very noble mission on behalf of Rama is powerful poetic and moral decision. Vultures are scavengers, associated with death and decay. Yet Valmiki assigns to it one of the noblest tasks of sacrificing itself in defence of Sita. Your true worth lies in what you do, in your character, and not in your caste or even species. [In some versions, Jatayu is an eagle.] Jatayu is given a noble funeral after his death. Rama treats Jatayu like a noble kshatriya who sacrificed his life fighting for dharma against an evil force like Ravana. “You are blessed, O Jatayu!” Rama tells the dying bird. “Even in your last moments, you upheld dharma. You fought to save a woman in distress. Your sacrifice will not go in vain.” Jatayu sacrificed himself to save Sita from Ravana. He flew up into the clouds to stop Ravana’s flight with Sita. Jatayu was a friend of Dasharatha, Rama’s father. Now Rama calls him equal to ...
17 comments
Read more

Mandodari: An Unsung Heroine

Mandodari and Ravana by Gemini AI To remain virtuous in a palace darkened by the ego of the king is a hard thing to do, especially if one is the queen there. Mandodari remained not only virtuous till the end of her life in that palace, but also wise and graceful. That’s what makes her a heroine, though an unsung one. Her battlefield was an inner one: a moral war that she had to wage constantly while being a wife of an individual who was driven by ego and lust. Probably her only fault was that she was the queen-wife of Ravana. Inside the golden towers of Ravana’s palace, pride reigned and adharma festered. Mandodari must have had tremendous inner goodness to be able to withstand the temptations offered by the opulence, arrogance, and desires that overflowed from the palace. She refused to be corrupted in spite of being the wife of an egotistic demon-king. Mandodari was born of Mayasura and Hema, an asura and an apsara, a demon and a nymph. She inherited the beauty and grace of her...
18 comments
Read more

Karma versus Fatalism

By Google Gemini The concept of karma plays a vital role in the Ramayana. You will get the consequences of your actions – that’s what karma means in short. Dasharatha, a king who followed dharma quite meticulously, committed a mistake in his youth. While hunting, he killed a young boy mistaking him for a deer because of a sound. Dasharatha was genuinely repentant of what happened and he went to the blind parents of the boy to atone for his karma. But the understandably grief-stricken blind father of the boy cursed Dasharatha: “Just as we are dying in sorrow caused by the loss of our son, you too shall die grieving the separation from your son.” So, Dasharatha’s death during Rama’s exile was a consequence of his karma. It was predestined, in other words. Immutable fate. Ravana’s karma brings upon him the disastrous end he has. He has lived a life of adharma altogether. Interestingly, it was his fate too following him from another existence altogether. He was destined to live the l...
17 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
46 comments
Read more