Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is preparing for a volley of protests during his visit to the United States.
An unlikely alliance of Left-wing activists and radical, separatist Sikhs got some airtime during Modi’s Madison Square Garden appearance last year, and the same groups are again gearing up to voice their protest when the Indian leader goes to Silicon Valley later this month.
A Sikh human rights group under the banner of “Sikhs For Justice” announced on Monday that it would picket the Facebook headquarters at Menlo Park to highlight social media giant’s “collaboration with a human rights violator” when its founder Mark Zuckerberg will be hosting Narendra Modi on September 27 for a joint town hall Q&A.
The groups said it is against Facebook hosting PM Modi, who it alleged is leading a “Forcible Conversion” campaign “to turn India into Hindu nation”.
Separately, a broad array of liberal, Left-wing intellectuals and academics issued a statement against the Modi visit, decrying everything from his alleged inaction during the 2002 riots in Gujarat to the government’s invasive propensities that could subvert its digital India campaign.
Indian diplomats who have served long years in the US see all this as business-as-usual, suspecting some of the protests are backed by Pakistan – the same way Pakistanis suspect anti-Pakistan protests by dissident Baloch, Sindhi, Ahmadi, and Mohajir groups abroad are backed by India.
In fact, the Sikhs groups were protesting even when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister.
The proposed protests have also led to moments of mirth on social media. A tweet by a Pakistani exhorting all Pakistanis to quit Facebook to protest Modi’s visiting the campus resulted in a riposte about when Pakistanis would quit the various countries Modi was visiting to be greeted and feted.
