The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) has condemned the US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s recent comments praising Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite the ongoing persecution of religious minorities, journalists, activists and critics in India.
IAMC is a Washington-based advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos.
Speaking at an event organised by the Indian Embassy on Sunday, Raimondo claimed Modi as “unbelievable, visionary” and “the most popular world leader for a reason”. “His level of commitment to the people of India is just indescribable and deep and passionate and real and authentic. His desire to lift people out of poverty and move India forward as a global power is real, and it is happening,” Raimondo claimed.
An IAMC in a press statement said Raimondo’s comments “are blatantly untrue on several levels.” It also rejected her assertion that “India has more than arrived” in terms of economic power belies the findings of the International Monetary Fund, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), and India’s Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation: that inflation is rising, unemployment has skyrocketed to a 45-year high, and India’s GDP fell to its lowest in a decade after Modi came to power. More importantly, the statement said, Raimondo’s remarks about Modi as a “visionary” leader are in direct contra-diction with the findings and reports published by her own government, including India Reports on Human Rights Practices by the Department of State, as well as the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) annual reports on egregious human rights and religious freedom violations in India. .—KMS
