EU blinks on riots, cosies up to Modi

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi may have never apologized before a domestic audience for his controversial role during the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat, but he did refer to the communal flare up as unfortunate events during a lunch with western countries’ envoys to India in early January, when the European Union quietly ended its 11-year-long boycott of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘Hindutva’ mascot.

Modi is learnt to have struck all the right notes during the lunch hosted by German Ambassador to India, Michael Steiner, on January 7 last. He told the EU member nations’ envoys that everything should be done to avoid recurrence of the communal flare-up, which had engulfed Gujarat over a decade ago.

Steiner on Friday confirmed that Germany had taken “a fresh look” on its position on Modi. Recalling that he had told media persons during the run-up to the polls in Gujarat that Germany would not do anything that could be used to influence the elections and would take a fresh look later, he said: “That is exactly what we were doing and part of it is to talk directly to Modi.

India is a democracy. We respect democratic institutions. We respect election results in India and we have full trust in its judicial system. Because of this respect and trust, we are now in a new phase”.

The lunch at German Ambassador’s residence in New Delhi signaled the shift in European countries’ stand on Modi, who in December led the BJP to its third straight victory in the Assembly polls in Gujarat and has since been emerging as the face of the party for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Both Modi and the western envoys, however, had kept it secret for about four weeks, till the European Union’s Ambassador to India, Joao Cravinho, made it public during a news conference on Thursday.

“This respect from us towards India is what the people of India expect from us,” Steiner said on Friday, as he explained to the journalists that Germany had decided to end the boycott of Modi, recognizing the results of the recent assembly-polls in Gujarat.

The German Ambassador, however, declined to divulge the details of the conversation Gujarat Chief Minister had with him and his counterparts from other countries.

“Modi came to (have) lunch with us in January at our invitation to discuss what happened in 2002, to discuss issues that have risen in terms of judicial process, accountability for 2002, to also discuss the development in Gujarat and his recent electoral victory,” PTI quoted Cravinho saying on Thursday. The Gujarat chief minister is understood to have told European envoys that one had to take an “inclusive approach” in a pluralist and diverse country like India.