Narendra Modi

Modi in 2015

Narendra Modi (born 17 September 1950) is the conservative Prime Minister of India. He has served in the position since 2014, when he won a historic landslide election in which his party received more votes than any other party in the world had ever received in history. He served as the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014. In 2017, his party, the conservative BJP, won another astounding victory, giving the party complete political control over India. While not having a Christian foundation as a Hindu, he has taken more conservative and free market political positions. Narendra Modi also has close ties with Christian Conservative Jair Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil. He is a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. He has called for population control.

One of his most notable decisions as Prime Minister was to declare worthless 500–1000 Rupee notes in order to combat the black market. Another notable decision was his revocation of Articles 35a and 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019.

Both the mainstream media and the conservative media have compared Modi and his policies to United States President Donald Trump. He has also been compared to the earlier U.S. President Ronald Reagan. In November 2019, Modi pulled out of a proposed multilateral trade treaty with other Asian countries as it was not in India's interests. In December 2019, India's parliament passed a bill giving citizenship to religious minorities from Muslim-majority countries that sought refuge in India.

In early-July 2017, Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel.

Modi faced a difficult re-election campaign in 2019, but cruised to a landslide victory, winning even more seats than before the election.

On September 22, 2019, an event was held between India and the United States, specifically between Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump, titled "Howdy Modi!" During this meeting, Sylvester Turner the Mayor of Houston, Texas handed PM Modi the Key to the City. 70,000 Americans, including many Indian-Americans, were present, and the two leaders discussed pertinent issues, such as terrorism, Iran, and Pakistan.

Addressing the G20 summit in March 2023 Modi said, “The architecture of global governance created after the Second World War was to serve two functions…First, to prevent future wars by balancing competing interests…Second, to foster international cooperation on issues of common interests…The experience of the last few years – financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, terrorism, and wars – clearly shows that global governance has failed in both its mandates”.

Criticism of Narendra Modi

Narendra Modi has been criticized, by Christians, Muslims and the Secular Press, for inaction or complicity in Persecution of Minorities.

Record contrasted with former Indian PM Vajpayee, also of the BJP, but not extreme

"How dangerously irresponsible Prime Minister Modi’s behaviour is can be judged by comparing it with that of his predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee. When, within months of the NDA coming to power in 1998, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal raised a hue and cry against conversions to Islam and Christianity, began to attack Christian priests and nuns and vandalise churches, Vajpayee sharply criticised their lawlessness and undertook a fast to force BJP-ruled state governments to take stern action. When cadres of the Bajrang Dal set fire to the car in which Graham Staines, an Australian Christian missionary, and his two sons were sleeping outside a church in Odisha, and burned them alive, he took immediate action. Mass arrests followed, and in less than four years, Dara Singh, the main culprit was in prison, sentenced to death, while his accomplices received lesser sentences.

When the VHP began another campaign against the conversion of tribals to Christianity in the Dang district of Gujarat, Vajpayee pushed the state government to end it forthwith. He also called a conclave of the BJP’s coalition partners and set up a National Coordination Committee headed by George Fernandes as a counterweight to the RSS within his government. That balancing act gave India one of the best governments it has had since Independence.

When the Gujarat riots began on February 28, 2002, after repeatedly failing to contact Modi on the phone, Vajpayee sent defence minister Fernandes to Ahmedabad to call in the army to end the violence. When he visited Ahmedabad a month later, he openly criticised Modi at the Shahpur refugee camp stating, “Main yahan lashe ginane nahi aaya hoon. Aman kayam rakhna rajneetik neta aur adhikariyon ka zimmedari hai. (I have not come here to count the corpses. It is the responsibility of the political leaders and officials to maintain peace.)”

Complicity in and Indifference to the Civil War and Persecution of Christians in Manipur

The Wire continues: "Civil war has been raging in Manipur for more than three months. The entire state is split into warring camps. By the first week of July, nine weeks after the civil war started, 142 persons had been killed, dozens raped and several thousand injured or had their homes burned or razed to the ground – in a total of almost 6,000 atrocities reported to the police. Today, the death toll is closing on 200, but Modi not only continues to maintain his silence but, more significantly, has not levelled a word of criticism against Manipur chief minister Biren Singh in all of the three months that Singh has taken to destroy his state and endanger the unity of India.

This is the stubborn silence that drove the opposition into demanding a vote of confidence against his government. Its goal was not to oust him, which it knows is impossible, but just to force him to account for his government’s misrule to the people of India."