Response to "Faculty Statement on Modi" by Professor

Vamsee Juluri

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TR. Narasimha Rao, Ph.D.

Loflin Chair Professor-Emeritus of Computer Science

University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA

Former President, Hindu University of America, Orlando, FL

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Professors’ Response to Prejudice and Fear-mongering in the “Faculty Statement on

Narendra Modi’s Visit”

We wish to register our strong exception to the position signed on to by some of our

colleagues against the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to California in

September. Their document not only misreads and disregards Indian democracy,

religious pluralism, and civilizational self-understanding, but also perpetuates a culture

of delusion and deception in South Asian studies. As faculty who have taught, published

or worked with industry on and in India for several decades, we believe it is important

for readers to recognize that the views of signatories to the anti-Modi statement by no

means represent everyone in academia today.

The allegation that Narendra Modi ought to be viewed with suspicion, if not disdain, by

business leaders in Silicon Valley because of his Digital India initiative and because of a

“powerful” signal sent by the denial of his visa several years ago reveals an utter lack of

respect not only for objectivity and truth but also for the sacred institutions of democracy

and judicial process. (One may also note in passing the irony in some of these scholars

who have rarely seen anything good about Silicon Valley and its idealism now

presuming to lecture its CEOs. The White House only recently issued a statement

announcing Indo-US partnership in cybersecurity, a step that will presumably not to be

the liking of these scholars either). Their exhumation of slanderous allegations against

Narendra Modi needs to be seen in the light of the facts first, which are as follows.

Narendra Modi was cleared by several investigating agencies of any complicity in the

riots that broke out in Gujarat in 2002 following the burning of a train carrying Hindu

pilgrims by a Muslim mob. He ran an inclusive campaign for Prime Minister and was

vindicated by one of the largest mandates received by an elected official on the face of

the earth. The powerful support Modi has received from two major institutions that

govern civilized modern societies should be proof enough of the inappropriateness of

the allegations that have been relentlessly leveled against him by a section of academia

and the press.

However, if there is any new evidence that the signatories to the petition have to

support their bizarre charges against a democratically elected leader of a sovereign

nation, then by all means they are free to leave their comfortable campuses, travel to

India and present their evidence in Indian courtrooms. Fighting for justice and truth, in

our view, requires far more commitment than merely adding names to a document that

mocks the aspirations of people in India and around the world who believe in Mr. Modi’s

innocence and integrity.

If India’s perception of Narendra Modi somehow fails to dent their academic

presuppositions about him, perhaps these scholars could consider what the

international community has been saying about him instead. That President Obama was

the invited chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations, and has personally

endorsed Narendra Modi in the annual Time magazine review of influential world

figures, and other world leaders have rushed to invite the Prime Minister for long-

delayed talks with India have been conveniently ignored by these naysayers. Mr. Modi’s

most recent visit, it should be noted, was to the United Arab Emirates, where he was

warmly welcomed by senior members of the government—who, unlike several of our

self-styled academic protectors of Islam, actually happen to be proud and devout

Muslims who have accepted Mr. Modi for who he is.

The truth is that Narendra Modi has won the trust of Muslims, Hindus and others in India

and abroad through his words and actions in the face of one of the most relentless and

unjust witch-hunts a public figure has faced in recent times. The fact that tens of

thousands of admiring people fill stadia to listen to him speak, leaders of state and

industry (including several Silicon Valley CEOs) are waiting eagerly to meet him, and

most of all the process of justice that has been duly followed, should all have inspired at

least some introspection and intellectual growth among South Asian academic experts.

Instead of presenting facts, all that they have done is to latch on to trivialities and errors

of judgment that the world has moved well beyond, like the U.S. government’s past

actions in denying Mr. Modi a visa, an action that even high-ranking U.S. government

officials have admitted that they were indeed wrong to have ever taken.

That the allegations about the 2002 Gujarat riots have been revived yet again, and on

this occasion repackaged under the pretext of a hitherto unknown and unheard of digital

surveillance scare (as commenters have pointed out, the policies that the signatories of

this allegation refer to were set in place by the previous UPA government), gives us

cause to ask our colleagues if their self-professed expertise in South Asia is really as up

to date as they think it is. In our view, their position represents a stark decline in

academic standards as a result of their dogmatic and ideological obsessions when it

comes to Narendra Modi, Hinduism, and India.

Not only have they have failed to keep up with current thinking but they have instead

sought to play the card of academic censorship to excuse themselves from it. For all

their talk about assaults on academic freedom, our colleagues have failed to recognize

that the greatest victim of censorship and distortion in recent years has not been any

one of them but Narendra Modi. Just a few years ago, he was effectively prevented

from addressing by videoconference students and faculty at The Wharton School in

UPenn because of a campaign by academic crusaders like themselves. We therefore

have to ask: what is it about Narendra Modi that academicians such as the signatories

of this petition fear so much? If their scholarship is that astute and their understanding

of India so clear, why do they prefer to shut out Modi, time and again, rather than

engage in an open and evidence-based debate about his record?

Unfortunately, this sort of highly selective and distorted posturing about academic

freedom and integrity is something that many of us have seen in our academic careers.

It is an unspoken reality that the dominant academic position on South Asia, with its

demonization campaign of Modi at the center, sustains itself entirely on a system of

exclusion, censure and silencing. We have found, over the years, peer review being

used tactically to deny publications, invited submissions to anthologies on secularism

being suddenly rejected for merely questioning this academic consensus on Modi, our

words in interviews misquoted and misrepresented egregiously in articles seeking to

demonize us as “Hindu fundamentalists,” and our responses declined the courtesy of

publication by journals and magazines, even as mere letters to the editor. It is a very

sorry state of affairs indeed that an area of scholarship in academia that purports to

represent the lives, struggles and aspirations of over one billion people has descended

into such a murky and incestuous miasma of meaningless, dishonest and self-righteous

posturing.

For our part, we wish to merely caution readers in academia and outside about the

prejudiced nature and questionable intent of the original petition against Mr. Modi. An

open debate on India, Hinduism, and Narendra Modi has been made virtually

impossible in academia today as a result of this cliquish and prejudiced culture of

exclusion and censorship in South Asian studies. We urge our colleagues to rise above

their prejudices and shortcomings and help restore the community’s trust in academia,

and in particular, in the field of study that exists in their name.