Modi as the fall guy?

The truth is that no Indian leader – be it Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Atal Behari Vajpayee or Modi today – has managed to escape the scalding venom poured on them by Western media. Nehru was lampooned for his Non-Aligned Movement; Indira for standing up to violence in neighboring East Pakistan; Vajpayee for making India a nuclear power – and Modi, it seems, for everything he does. It doesn’t seem to matter that these leaders, at various times, were overwhelmingly voted into power by India’s massive population.

In essence, we are still witnessing the colonial and imperial hangover of the “North” against the “Savage South” who must get tutorials on “tolerance,” “peace” and “multiculturalism.” This colonial hangover is the binding thread of policy, business, academia and media in the West and is woven with the cloth of liberty, religious freedom and human rights; of American exceptionalism and the supposed superiority of the Anglo-Saxon world.

While an outsider like Donald Trump might be loathed by the establishment at first, the moment he makes the ‘right’ imperial policy moves against countries like Iran or Venezuela, he is suddenly a darling.
Yet, try pointing out the racial violence on American streets, the bogus wars it wages in the Middle East and elsewhere; or the travel bans it imposes on Muslims from around the world. Try asking Western media why they stridently oppose countries that choose an independent foreign policy course, like Russia, China, Syria or Iran – and yet pat dictators like Suharto and Pinochet, who reserved the bayonets for their citizens, on the back. Ask them why proven legends of humanity like Chile’s Salvador Allende, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda or Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah don’t have any place in their hearts.