Global Media on NaMo

The international media has been largely unsparing towards BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi.
The most recent issue of The Economist had the PM hopeful on the cover, with a strongly worded editorial inside that said: “This newspaper cannot bring itself to back Mr Modi for India’s highest office.” While the piece created ripples among Modi supporters in India, it comes in a series of similar damning reports and editorials.
In an April 14 article in the Guardian titled ‘Narendra Modi: Britain can’t simply shrug off this Hindu extremist’, author Priyamvada Gopal made a case for the UK severing its links with the man. She writes: “In the face of a global resurgence of the right we must be alert to all its extremist forms. Britons committed to anti-fascism must not allow their country to abdicate morality.”
A piece by Thane Richard in the Quartz also went viral on social media last month. It spoke of how India would cross the “moral line of no return” if Modi becomes PM. Taking on Modi’s insistence on leveraging development over other issues, Richard writes: “Has India become so desperate for rapid economic growth... that she has forgotten basic humanity? It seems that, in the race towards higher GDP, the majority of India is willing to inject itself with the steroids of bigotry or ruthlessness. Ethics be damned.”
Even Modi’s recent admission of his marriage in his election affidavit came in for international attention.
The Pakistan press has, predictably, focused on Kashmir. Calling Modi a “challenge to the conscience of South Asia”, Sanjay Kumar writes in The Express Tribune, “Any attempt to question the status quo in Kashmir and reverse the nuclear doctrine will have a strong reaction.” The piece was titled, “Narendra Modi will be bad for Pakistan — and India”.
The Huffington Post, however, hosted a more favourable article on the three-time Gujarat CM by Sunil Adams on 31 March. Adams argues that with Modi at the helm, “India can finally leave its past behind, or at least the unsavory parts, and really make, what one illustrious Brahmin once called, ‘a tryst with destiny.’”