Concern Over India PM's Silicon Valley Visit 80
New submitter SAsiaFaculty writes: India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, will visit Silicon Valley on September 27, 2015 to promote his vision of "Digital India." Mr. Modi was denied the right to visit the United States from 2005 -2014 because of his role as the chief minister of Gujarat in the violence that rocked the state in 2002 when 1,000 people died. The visit, his second to the United States since becoming Prime Minister, has generated enthusiasm in India and in the Indian community in the United States. It has also elicited a cautionary statement with more than 135 signatures from faculty who teach and do research about South Asia at U.S. universities.
The letter urges Silicon Valley leaders to be mindful of their corporate responsibility and ensure that Mr. Modi's Digital India project promotes transparency, protection of human rights and civil liberties and intellectual freedom. Aspects of the "Digital India" program have raised questions in India about the lack of privacy safeguards and the possibility of enhanced surveillance and the repression of Indian citizens' constitutionally protected rights. A response to comments critical of the statement has been posted on the AAUP site.
The letter urges Silicon Valley leaders to be mindful of their corporate responsibility and ensure that Mr. Modi's Digital India project promotes transparency, protection of human rights and civil liberties and intellectual freedom. Aspects of the "Digital India" program have raised questions in India about the lack of privacy safeguards and the possibility of enhanced surveillance and the repression of Indian citizens' constitutionally protected rights. A response to comments critical of the statement has been posted on the AAUP site.
FUD against Modi (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
He is million times better than the corrupt congress politicians
Exactly. If he is economically competent, and reduces corruption, we should just ignore the fact that he was complicit in the violent deaths of thousands of people, and heads a hate mongering political party that is the moral equivalent of the KKK.
Re:FUD against Modi (Score:5, Interesting)
> we should just ignore the fact that he was complicit in the violent deaths of thousands of people
India had a history of riots, clashes between the Hindu and Muslim communities in certain regions that come with a society with still weak institutions (government was always weak in India's history). Note that these were riots and clashes, not pogroms from the top. Both communities indulged in violence, although expectedly, the majority community ends up inflicting more damage in the end. India seems to have gotten the riot problem under control since the Gujarat riots.
India's supreme court is a trusted institution. It examined the case for several years and had not found Mr. Modi complicit in the matter. Finding him complicit is akin to finding US presidents *personally* complicit in LA riots, Abu Gharib, Iraq death toll etc.
> heads a hate mongering political party that is the moral equivalent of the KKK
Consider that the person who coined the term Hindutva (the party's alleged ideology) was an atheist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
and that the party's spokesperson is a muslim intellectual... and that this "KKK" celebrates the recently passed muslim president as the people's president and one of its own... and honored him as no president before him. Indian politics should not be seen through such extreme and simplistic lenses.
BJP is more like the republican party. There may be a few KKK elements here and there, but it is not defined by it. Mr. Modi is like Reagan, in terms of his politics and his popularity.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm confused. The rest of your post seemed to imply you approved of him.
Re: (Score:2)
I am not approving or disapproving. I am cautioning against hyperbole.
I mean that the Modi legacy will likely be that of Regan, in both positive and negative ways. The one major modifying factor is that India is at a very different stage of development than US was when Reagan was in office. So pro-business policies in India mean industrializing it. In US, they meant de-industrializing it. Their policies had/will of course have environment and social justice consequences that will shape their legacy. In poin
Re: (Score:3)
But neither is KKK nor ISIS.
Nobody before you said anything about ISIS. The modern KKK may be odious, but they don't go around beheading people. The BJP is aggressively forcing Hindu traditions onto non-Hindus. For instance, they are trying to outlaw eating beef. When muslims object, they are told to "go to Pakistan". How is that different from the KKK saying that black Americans should "go back to Africa"? Saying that non-Hindus are not "real" Indians is no better than saying non-whites are not "real" Americans.
Re:FUD against Modi (Score:5, Insightful)
> The modern KKK may be odious, but they don't go around beheading people.
The KKK is only better than ISIS in that they never had total control of territory like ISIS. If you take note of the carnage of christian fundamentalism in the not-too-distant colonial era, ISIS isn't even that brutal - blowing people off cannons, slitting throats of fellow christians for being of a different sect, plenty of slave rape etc etc. Yes, that was all in the past. And no, it is not proper to compare the maturity of people from an advanced & prosperous country, with those at a very different stage of development.
> The BJP is aggressively forcing Hindu traditions onto non-Hindus.
The national government isn't. A few local governments are... mostly for reasons of populism (a milder equivalent in US is Ten Commandments everywhere). Strictly speaking, there are plenty of instances and even recommendations to eat beef in Hindu scriptures and the case is being made. India isn't like Ireland denying life-saving abortions to non-christians, because it is a "catholic country".
> When muslims object, they are told to "go to Pakistan".
The statements of a few colorful demagogues do not constitute official policy. No one is forcing muslims to leave the country. India is the only country in the neighborhood where the population of its minorities as a %, actually increased. In all the rest, it declined. India has special laws that give additional support to minorities. But no, you prefer to miss the big picture and insist on focusing on non-representative and colorful press reports because it suits your prejudices. You probably also think India has a special rape problem.
> How is that different from the KKK saying that black Americans should "go back to Africa"?
Different by not sustaining a campaign of physical intimidation like KKK did?
> Saying that non-Hindus are not "real" Indians is no better than saying non-whites are not "real" Americans.
Actually, even the proponents of Hindutva say that non-Hindus are sons of the soil, as long as they acknowledge their ancestral roots and a common civilization. Hindutva is about nationalism, more than religion. The angst comes from the partition and the colonial experience, not religious fundamentalism. India had a tradition of such harmony where muslims wrote epic poems on hindu mythical figures and hindus went/and still go to muslim mystics and shrines. After the painful partition, the balance of trust was damaged between the communities.
Re: (Score:2)
> wrong is wrong
Of course.
> and no one gets a pass because they're "at a very different stage of development".
Its not a question of getting a pass. We all agree in the ideal of the modern liberal societies. But it is pure schadenfreude to mock and criticize agrarian communities for not have the values of post-industrial societies. If they economically develop, but remain socially backward, criticism and even mocking would make sense. A good question to ask: how were my ancestors behaving when they ha
Re: (Score:2)
> Different countries (or more precisely, different societies) at different levels of development need to be measured by different yard sticks. That is my key argument. US and Europe should be held to a higher standard, as they had more time (after industrialization) to get it right. China hard-pressed to think of a nationalism movement that did not, ultimately, turn out to be a bad deal for a great many people
It looks like my thoughtless use of angle brackets ate some text.
Corrected: Different countries
Re: (Score:2)
> not sure on sexual assault statistics
There's your problem.
> but India, like most of the world (unfortunately), absolutely has a problem with respect for women.
No more than other similar countries in the region with similar levels of development. It is NOT a special case as the press would have you believe.
Re: (Score:2)
This discussion should ideally be neither about christians nor about hindus. The conflation of hindu fundamentalists with hindu nationalists is however the same as the christian analogue. Like I said, the person who coined the term Hindutva and first promoted it, is a hindu atheist (hindu being a cultural identity, rather than a religious identity), rather than a religious fundamentalist.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they exist in different contexts across the countries. Many Indians in US are equivalents of WASPs, when in India (legal immigration by airplane selects a different class of people than does illegal border crossing). So they may support a right-wing party in India. When they come to US, they become minorities, privileged minorities, but still minorities nonetheless, and experience this strange angst of being a minority that they never did before. A party that leans left caters to that insecurity.
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough. As I said, I don't disagree that BJP does have some extremist elements in it (along the lines of my insistence of comparing similarly developed societies, it is perhaps more like the the Democratic Party, soon after the US civil war, until the Southern Strategy). I just argue that it isn't defined by it.
I don't disagree with the point about courts either. Indian lower courts aren't good. Higher courts are good, for a country of its development. I have no illusions about the perfection of proces
Re: (Score:2)
contd...
I just saw John Oliver's video. It mostly gets things right. The main miss is that people outside of India often just mention the casualties of one side. This ends up painting the violence in the tone of a pogram - Indian law tries very hard to maintain communal harmony and has laws that supersede free speech, when the question is communal harmony (the partition was very painful). It was an unanticipated communal clash, granted, 3-4x more died from one group in the final tally and that should indeed
Modi is accused of dissing a certain religion (Score:5, Interesting)
Look through that list of "concerned" professors of gender and ethnic studies, and you'll get the idea.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It has nothing to do w/ it. Most faculty lecturers are Leftists, and today, in the absence of the Soviet Union, they've decided to switch loyalties from Communism to Islam. Modi's inaction in 2002 ensured that Muslims in his state never torched another train again. That's what they hate about him - that he showed that Muslims can be stopped in their tracks (pun intended) if the will is there..
So you approve of street justice then. Let all Muslims be torched because a couple of them killed some Hindus. Isn't a government is supposed to protect all its citizens, irrespective of their race, religion. color and all etc; or is that just a school textbook stuff?
Re: (Score:1)
Did you actually look at the list yourself? I would say that it has almost an even distribution of Muslim, Christian and Hindu names.
Glass houses (Score:5, Insightful)
The letter urges Silicon Valley leaders to be mindful of their corporate responsibility and ensure that Mr. Modi's Digital India project promotes transparency, protection of human rights and civil liberties and intellectual freedom.
To be fair, it would be nice if Silicon Valley leaders themselves cared a bit more about those things, too. The start-up, VC-driven culture in the Valley isn't exactly known for its nuanced interpretation of things like privacy, security, and honesty with customers about where things are going and how much of what they're buying into will still be there later.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Making a moral equivalence between a riot that killed 1,000 and an app that defaults to "on" for location tracking.... um, not even close.
India has a loooong way to go to catch up to the ethics of even the worst Silicon Valley startup. Pushing for them to advance is a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Please note that I didn't propose any such equivalence. I'm not familiar with the background to the riot and make no judgements about it here.
However, to give one obvious category of ethically dubious systems coming out of the Valley, building systems that effectively turn humans into spies to report on their friends and family is shady as hell in itself, and if you don't think government monitoring of that information and in some cases harmful actions also follow then I know a Nigerian prince with a great
Re: (Score:2)
Riots, unless pre-planned, are not moral issues. They are episodes of collective madness in the absence of adequate policing infrastructure.
> India has a loooong way to go to catch up
Sure, it still has to distribute cholera blankets, needs its own trail of tears etc etc.
> Pushing for them to advance is a good thing.
Of course. How will the East learn morals without the West?
Re: (Score:2)
Riots, unless pre-planned, are not moral issues.
Actions, and inactions, by political leaders, that lead to those riots are moral issues. Also, the post-riot response by political leaders is a moral issue.
Re: (Score:2)
> Actions, and inactions, by political leaders, that lead to those riots are moral issues.
As the saying goes: "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence".
In a country with 1.5K per capita, you can expect only so much swiftness in response. If all the wealth, organization and technology of US could not save it from the botched response to Katrina, why would you expect prompt response to *anything* in India? If you compare the response of India to responses of countries
Re: (Score:2)
> torching of the train cars in which Hindu extremists were traveling
Why do you say that the Godhra victims were "Hindu extremists"? So that you can cast them as sub-humans and casually explain away their massacre? What extremist activities did they perform? What activities did their attackers perform?
> who said that "killing of Muslims is a natural reaction to their killing of Hindus
Quoting Wikipedia:
The train was attacked by a mob of around 2,000 people. After some stone-pelting, four coaches of the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't rationalized anything and you haven't provided any counter arguments.
What I did was I called to look at things in historical and developmental context. I feel there is a general tendency for people living in relatively advanced countries (not just the West) to lecture people who don't, while completely forgetting where they were before they got to where they are now... just like how a rich person likes to lecture the poor about hard work and discipline. This lecturing isn't much about doing good,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I completely agree with your point. SV should care about disrupting society in the same way that they care about disrupting industries. Valley visionaries are more than willing to preach technolibertarianism when it helps them improve their bottom line but they are (willfully) ignorant about the ways that their disruptions can affect real people.
Besides the privacy implications (default to auto-on location tracking, etc), there are actual physiological and family implications (covering Uber passengers assau
One of the scholars who protested Modi murdered (Score:1)
Matthew 7:5 seems appropriate here (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
... but first they should repatriate all their countryman working in the US IT industry.
Why is that pre-condition? A majority of those have chosen to become naturalized. So you are saying that they are second class citizens and should not critique the policies of their government? They have the same rights as any born citizen unless they are stripped of their citizenship. I don't wanting to improve the conditions of their country - even if it is not the country they are born in - is not treason. They are doing their duty as conscientious citizens.
Only a few uptight Indians are concerned (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
red flag (Score:1)
The new user is really a political group with left leaning mindset. They are trying to publicize their own personal opposition to Narendra Modi via Slashdot and managed to fool its editors. Usually people submit stories pointing to others work, but in this case, the user is pointing to the work of its own group and hence technically this qualifies as an advertisement. There is not an iota of substance in their open letter to bother about. If we go by that standard, then virtually none of the foreign leaders
Narendra Modi will pick RSS; (Score:1)
Choose between India and RSS; Narendra Modi will pick RSS;
Modi is just promoting Brahmin/Bania hegemony in India; He never had any plans for development/prosperity of India;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Brahmin population is less than 3% in India; Check the number of Brahmin in Narendra Modi regime;
Parrikar is Brahmin; Doval is Brahmin; Gadkari is Brahmin; Sumitra is Brahmin; Sushma is Brahmin; Jaitely is Brahmin; Smriti is Brahmin; Nirmala is Brahmin; Suresh Prabhu is Brahmin; Ravi Shankar is Brahmin; K