Visa is no soap

It is highly inappropriate that a group of members of Parliament, both from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, wrote a letter to US president Barack Obama requesting him that his government deny a visa to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. The impropriety has been compounded by the suspicion that the signatures of some of the MPs may not have been genuine. A number of them, some of whom like CPM leader Sitaram Yechuri are strong critics of Modi and the BJP, have denied that they signed the letter. While they would not like to be seen as making a request to the US president, the stronger and more legitimate reason is that writing to any head of state on such an issue is wrong and ill-conceived. Those who were behind the move should be made answerable for forgery, which seems to have been there.

The letter was sent in December and again last week. Granting a visa to Modi is an internal matter of the US. The US state department has said that it would consider the matter in accordance with the country’s immigration laws if  Modi applied for a visa.

The impropriety of the MPs’ request is in the fact they tried to influence an internal decision of the US government on considerations which only have a political value for them. It also amounted to seeking the help of a foreign government on  an issue of assumed electoral importance in India. It was absolutely wrong to involve a foreign government in a political debate in India. If some US Congress men had written to the Indian government making a similar request it would have been considered interference in India’s decision-making  processes and procedures.

The assumption that a US visa is a certificate of approval of Modi is also demeaning. It exposes a psychology of subservience to the opinions and attitudes of others. If  BJP president Rajnath Singh who was in the US this week lobbied for the grant of a visa for Midi, that is also as improper and shameful as the MPs’ request to Obama. A US visa  will  not cleanse Modi of the taint of Gujarat riots. The denial of a visa cannot be taken as confirmation of his guilt either. His position in the country has to be decided in terms of the laws and politics of the country. There is no need to bring a foreign element into it.