The kudos are slowly piling up for the leader of a ‘Vibrant Gujarat’

ON DECEMBER 20, Narendra Modi is widely expected to lead the BJP to a third successive election victory in Gujarat. The state’s prodigious economic success in the past decade and the administrative efficiency and transparency of the Modi government, are now impossible to deny. This has led to a rethinking in diplomatic circles as well. A few weeks ago, the United Kingdom announced it would resume official contact with the chief minister of Gujarat and that the British high commissioner in India would travel to Gandhinagar to call on Modi. This ended an awkward interval. Following the Gujarat violence of 2002, certain diplomatic missions had seemed to lose the distinction between being neutral observers and participants in domestic political debates. In the case of the British High Commission, for instance, an internal report relating to an assessment of the violence in Gujarat was deliberately leaked to the Indian media. Over three years, from 2002 to 2005, a whole bloc of Western countries sought to boycott Modi and refuse him visas, or discourage him from visiting without explicitly denying him a visa. The most egregious case came in March 2005, when the United States cancelled Modi’s visa and refused to allow him to address a conference of the Gujarati diaspora. That decision by the Americans was actually preceded by vigorous argument. Professional diplomats in both New Delhi and the State Department were opposed to the decision to declare Modi persona non grata. They pointed out there was unlikely to be any charge of an act of commission against him. They were only likely to be accusations of acts of omission, and it would be impossible to prove these were deliberate, if they were recognised as having occurred in the first place. That aside, it was the job of diplomats to engage all sections of political opinion and not exclude one group or the other. That counsel proved completely correct in the long run. In 2005, however, it was ignored by recent political recruits to the South Asia Bureau of the State Department. They also believed that pushing Modi to the ropes would not just destroy his political career but also lead to the newlyelected UPA Government being grateful to Washington, DC. This too was an erroneous assumption. To be fair to him, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh criticised the US for seeking to anticipate the due process of law in India and sought a revocation of the travel ban imposed on Modi. That aside, the perception of at least one official in the State Department — she was critical to the Modi decision — that a black certificate from Uncle Sam would make the Gujarat politician unpalatable to Indian voters turned out to be nonsense. Gradually, as Modi altered the discourse in Gujarat and made it even more of an economic powerhouse, the chatter in Chanakyapuri began to change. Previous British high commissioners had hinted at the frustrating nature of the ban on engagement with Modi, even as British companies were rushing to solicit business. Aside from some naysayers within the British system itself — particularly MPs bothered about ethnic Pakistani voters in their constituencies — the British were constrained by their association with the European Union, which had adopted a hard line on Gujarat. The mood turned as it became clear that Modi was here to stay. In January 2011, Japan was the partner country at the Vibrant Gujarat business event and Ron Somers, president of the United States India Business Council, said he hoped the US would be the partner country for Vibrant Gujarat in 2013. It was obvious the US was looking for an appropriate opportunity to pull itself out of a self-created problem. The Australians too upgraded engagement with Mr Modi, as have a few EU countries. What has helped, of course, is the Special Investigative Team’s report exonerating Modi from any role in the 2002 violence. The fact that multiple police investigations, including one directed and monitored by India’s Supreme Court, have completely cleared Modi makes it easier for western governments to walk away from a maximalist position. In the coming months one can expect a drawing back from the State Department. One by one, the EU members will also crumble. Many of them already have a strong business relationship with Gujarat. Indeed, in recent years, individual politicians from many countries, including national legislators, have visited Gujarat and promised to work for better relations. Modi has not been without his advocates. Softer issues like human rights and civil liberties are becoming part of diplomatic discourse, and justifiably so. Even so, a diplomat needs to be a hardnosed animal. He must promote his country’s interests and have the clear-headedness to tell exaggeration from cold fact. This calls for maturity that unfortunately some diplomats of 2002-2005 just did not show. They were keener to appear on the right side of interested busybodies in New Delhi than make a legitimate appraisal of the political and social conditions in Gujarat. The issue goes beyond Modi and whether or not he becomes prime minister. To acquiesce in his judgement and conviction by foreign diplomats — rather than the Indian legal system and, more importantly, the Indian people — would have been very damaging for this country’s standing. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was both chief minister as well as home minister when the Singur- Nandigram violence took place in West Bengal. It was triggered by the brutal CPI(M) cadre and assisted by biased police action. There were enough civil-rights groups who wanted Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, prosecuted for hunting down Maoist insurgents. Their guilt — if any — is for India to sort out. It is not for a foreign visa officer to arrogate to himself the role of moral ombudsman.