Well, it was meant to be a rock star reception. And it was! The British government had pulled out all the plugs, dusted the red carpet thoroughly and filled every hour with rapturous praise. No Prime Minister could have asked for more. Yes, our media friends from India have been asking about “those articles in the UK press” questioning Narendra Modi’s past, present and future. But, by the way, there were plenty of articles welcoming him too… hey, has anyone noticed that?
In any case, the UK press is equally savage about their own Prime Minister, David Cameron, as well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.
Especially harsh is the Guardian, which has a long history of supporting left-leaning politicians, and so this outpouring was to be expected. All of us dedicated Guardian readers (and writers, as I occasionally write for it) are used to it, and we take much of the venting of well-meaning “bleeding hearts” with a large dose of sea salt. Of course, different opinions are excellent, but at the end of the day, the pragmatic India observer will look at the stability of the country and make up his or her own mind. The country is robust and, despite propaganda that Bihar was being communalised, etc, journalists have noted that the elections in the state were incident-free. That is what the UK investor is interested in. It was a very healthy vote for India and that made Mr Modi’s UK visit successful.
However, some of the anti-Modi social media propaganda has been quite low-level. I found, for example, on my Facebook page, a photograph of Mr Cameron and Mr Modi walking through the House of Commons with empty benches. The caption said, very misleadingly, that the UK MPs had boycotted Mr Modi’s visit. Obviously someone wanted to create a false perception. The reality is that since Parliament is in recess, MPs are not in attendance. But as a very special tribute to Mr Modi, MPs from both Houses assembled at the Royal Gallery, inside the House of Lords. And there was absolutely no “boycott”. This sort of misleading propaganda is malicious and only harms India’s image.
The other sophisticated “cut and paste” job, it has now been revealed through police investigations, we are now told, is about the hologram on the side of the Parliament building (in which Mr Modi’s photograph was merged with a Nazi symbol) which has been attributed to a group called “Awaaz”. We learnt that the bobbies found it to be nothing more than an image of the hologram pasted on another image of the side of Parliament, all photoshopped. It will be interesting to learn what “Awaaz” has to say about this, if true! Apparently, another subversive group, “Fathers for Justice” had tried this stunt before, and so Awaaz decided to do the same. But their methodologies, it appears, are entirely different. As the social media war zone reaches deeper into the dirty tricks department, it can only lower the credibility of what we read and hear.
And as far as the visit went, the highlight for us was obviously when the two Prime Ministers visited the Mahatma Gandhi statue outside Parliament. It was a special moment, especially as Lord Meghnad handed them the flower petals to place at the feet of the Mahatma’s statue. Suddenly, the poignancy of the moment became even stronger. Gandhi, when he fought for our freedom could not have imagined that one day the Prime Minister of free India would honour him together with the leader of the erstwhile ruling country, just outside the British Parliament. Accompanying us were trustees, Rami Ranger and Vivek Chadha. We were also joined by three other Cabinet ministers — Jo Johnson, Sajid Javid and Priti Patel. It was a small gathering, interrupted only by the impressive fly past in the Indian tricolour.
And then, we literally dashed across Parliament Square to reach the Royal Gallery in time to listen to Mr Modi address parliamentarians from both houses, as well as few select visitors. The speech received a standing ovation.
Another slice of history awaited Mr Modi at Wembley Stadium, where over 50,000 of us had gathered in an American-style rally to receive the Indian Prime Minister. Manoj Ladwa, the man behind this gargantuan get-together had ensured complete synchronisation and so the event which included a careful packaging of British Indian talent as well as a rousing oration by an indefatigable Mr Modi, went off without a hitch. Following that, some of us got a private audience with Mr Modi (and, during a photo-op I quickly told him about our plans to set up the Partition Museum in Amritsar). The weather held up and the UK press was distinctly overwhelmed. No one in UK could have failed to notice that the Indian Premier had arrived!
Kishwar Desai is an award-winning author
