NYT seeks UN intervention, says: Modi turning autocratic, talks absurd on Kashmir

By A Representative
In what appears to be a scathing reply to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-publicized “New York Times” (NYT) article on Mahatma Gandhi titled “Why India and the World need Gandhi”, NYT’s powerful editorial board has said, Modi “didn’t address” the Kashmir issue in his United Nations (UN) speech, calling his assertion at the Houston rally a few days – that revoking the constitutional clause on Kashmiri autonomy meant “people there have got equal rights” with other Indians – “absurd”.
Insisting that Kashmir currently is “essentially under martial law”, the NYT editorial, dated October 2, the same day Modi’s Opinion piece appeared in the paper, said that the UN “can’t ignore Kashmir anymore”, though regretting, UN’s “lack of resolve is a sad sign of the dysfunction in international diplomacy”.
Describing Modi as “increasingly autocratic”, the editorial, which is a collective opinion of the daily’s editorial board, the editor and publisher, says, “President Trump has offered to mediate, but his warm relations with the increasingly autocratic Modi —Trump attended the Houston fan fest — hardly make him an honest broker”, adding, what is forgotten is that India has cracked down “on a long-disputed region”, leading to a situation where “two nuclear powers face off.”
Even as giving space to Modi, NYT, ironically, praises Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, calling him “a man on a mission” at the UN, “imploring members” to persuade India to “lift its siege of Kashmir, a longtime flash point between the two nations, which both have nuclear weapons.”

Calling Modi, on the other hand, “a Hindu nationalist prime minister”, the editorial recalls how the “semiautonomous status of the Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, was revoked on August 5 by imposing “a curfew” and detaining “nearly 4,000 people, including lawyers and journalists”, pointing towards “serious allegations of torture and beatings.”
Lamenting that Khan resting any hopes on UN “seems futile, given the approach it has taken to the dispute in recent decades”, the editorial also recalls how UN “made an effort to play peacekeeper in Kashmir”, with the Security Council trying to “mediate tensions between India and Pakistan within months of their independence and partition in 1947.”
The editorial notes that ever since 1970s, after the two nations went to war, “pressure from India helped keep Kashmir off the Security Council’s agenda”, though it may come up for discussion in August, when China-backed Pakistan’s request for a discussion of Modi’s “power grab.”

New York Times, ironically, praises Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, calling him a man on a mission at the United Nations

The editorial believes, “Countries are unwilling to risk crossing Modi and losing access to India’s huge market. Pakistan is economically weak.” It adds, Pakistan “also damaged its standing, and its position on Kashmir, by supporting militant groups that have attacked Indian troops, stirring a conflict that has torn Kashmir apart for decades.”

Disagreeing with Modi that his clampdown would resolve the Kashmir conflict and bring normality and development to Kashmir, the editorial says, “It seems more likely that it will only heighten tensions and make life more miserable for Kashmiris.”
The editorial concludes by asking the Security Council to “make clear that it opposes Modi’s brutal tightening of India’s control on Kashmir.”
Modi’s NYT article talks of how Gandhi gave and continues to give “courage to millions globally” through his “methods of resistance”, even as envisioning “Indian nationalism” not as “narrow or exclusive but one that worked for the service of humanity.”
Asserting that Gandhi “epitomized trust among all sections of society”, Modi cites the instance of his intervention in the huge textile strike in Ahmedabad, saying, “When the conflict between the mill workers and owners escalated to a point of no return, it was Gandhi who mediated an equitable settlement”, giving the concept of “trusteeship.”
Ironically, the article does not say a word about how Gandhi tried to usher in a secular ethos in the country by seeking Hindu-Muslim unity.