The forthcoming visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US has sharpened fissures in the Indian-American community of academics and other professionals. This should have been avoided. But the reverberations of the divisive politics at home were bound to be heard in faraway places as well, especially among highly-educated Indian-Americans who remain connected to the home country through various modes of communications. Yet, allowing their hostility to trump the national interest was something one had least expected from those who claim to be left-liberal intellectuals.
Unfortunately, displaying a visceral animus against the Indian Prime Minister, a number of American-Indian academicians and others from allied disciplines had called upon the iconic heads of global IT majors in Silicon Valley to boycott the prestigious Digital India project. The jaundiced left-liberal gaggle barely managed to camouflage its partisan political agenda behind a miasma of a so-called assault on the country’s open democratic system. Motivated by nothing better than the loss of a cushy perch as the controversial headman of the Nalanda University, these self-appointed guardians of India’s welfare had appealed to the IT titans not to cooperate with the Indian Government in implementing the ambitious Digital India project.
Personal pique and resentment at the rise of Modi came through in their public complaint. Last year, some of the same worthies had written an open letter to the US President to boycott the Indian Prime Minister. Privileging the personal over the collective is hardly the hallmark of an accomplished intellect. Clearly, the virus of divisive domestic politics has bitten these so-called liberal-left intellectuals so hard that they are unable to see through things in the correct perspective. Fortunately, another set of academics based in the US have made it bold to counter the partisan appeal of the left-liberals. Calling upon the tech biggies to ignore the petty call of the left-liberal-separatist cabal based in the US, a statement issued by some 150 US-based academics appreciated the efforts made by the Modi Government to empower Indians through the use of modern technology. The statement said that the Digital India project “… heralds a new age of participatory democracy and enhances transparency in governance, leveling the playing field for vast numbers of Indian citizens…” Members from various academic institutions across the US, including those from liberal arts, business schools, engineering institutes, etc., were signatories to the statement welcoming the decision of Silicon Valley giants to roll out the red carpet for the Indian Prime Minister, rejecting disdainfully the boycott call of the hateful academics of Indian origin a few days earlier.
Meanwhile, a number of Indian academics came out openly against the US-based intellectuals who had opposed the Digital India project fearing that it would breach citizens’ privacy. Notable figures from the world of academia, arts, business and industry pointed out that `e-governance had helped curb corruption’. As the statement noted, the left-liberal intellectuals had indeed crossed the `lakshman rekha’ by seeking to damage the wider national interest in the guise of their anti-Modi agenda. Given the visceral opposition to constructive policies by the domestic opposition, is it any surprise its surrogates abroad reflect the same hostility in an equally unbecoming manner?
