One Year On....

PM Narendra Modi has contested the notion that his government is anti-minority , telling Time magazine in an interview that “so far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book --the Constitution of India“. In a conversation with the magazine's editors on the occasion of his government's first anniversary later this month, the PM, addressing a global audience, maintained that “wherever a (negative) view might have been ex pressed (about) a minority religion, we have immediately negated that. India's unity and integrity are the topmost priorities“. PM Narendra Modi, in an interview to Time magazine, has said that in India “all religions and all communities have the same rights“, and it was his “responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection“.
“My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion,“ he added, in the face of a spate of divisive, communal, and incendiary pronouncements by some of his colleagues.
The PM also addressed the issue of terrorism at some length, saying “countries that believe in human values“ should come together and fight terror, and it was important for the countries to go beyond groups, beyond individual names, beyond the geographical location they come from, beyond even looking at the victims of terrorism, and fight terrorism as a collective.
Modi disclosed that when he met President Barack Obama both in September last year and in January this year, he requested him to lead the charge in delinking terrorism from religion. “We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates--which group they belong to, what are their names, what is their geographical location, who are the victims of terrorism...I think we should not see them in individual pieces. We should rather have a comprehensive look at the ideology of terrorism, see it as something that is a fight for human values, as terrorists are fighting against humanity ,“ he said.
Ahead of his visit to China next week, the PM also addressed New Delhi's complex ties with Beijing in an interview where Pakistan was a non-issue. Modi said both India and China were showing great maturity and commitment to economic cooperation. “There is by and large peace and tranquility on the India-China border. It is not a volatile border. Not a single bullet has been fired for over a quarter of a century now. This essentially goes to prove that both countries have learnt from history ,“ he pointed out.
Asked whether he would like to have the kind of authoritarian power that China's leader has, Modi maintained that “India is a democracy; it is in our DNA“, and he did not think a dictatorship was needed to run India. “If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values,“ he said.
Modi also described India and US as “natural allies“, an expression first used by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee which had since been jettisoned. “We are natural allies ... (It's not) what India can do for the US, what the US can do for India ...The way we should look at it is what India and the US can together do for the world...strengthening democratic values all over.“ Time's editors said the two-hour-long interview was conducted on May 2 with Modi “at the center of a whirlwind, with an ambitious reform program at home, 16 trips abroad with China up next, a new al-Qaeda threat against him, and economists challenging whether he would be able to drive India to the 8% GDP growth projected for the coming fiscal year“. They said the PM spoke mostly in Hindi, and choked up when speaking about his impoverished upbringing.
Modi told them that the question about what influences him touches his deepest core. “I was born in a very poor family . I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child.My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely . I have lived in poverty . As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty . For me, poverty , in a way, was the first inspiration of my life...I decided that I would not live for myself but would live for others,“ Modi told the magazine.
The magazine's editors also had upbeat words for India.“The US and India are more than just the world's two biggest democracies. They are diverse, multi-ethnic and multicultural democracies, and at a moment when many nations are debating how to balance national identity with ethnic diversity , India continues to provide a bracing example,“ Time Editor Nancy Gibbs, who flew to India to lead the interview panel, wrote.