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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been chastised by two female MPs in the UK for visiting a JCB factory in Gujarat just days after excavators razed homes and businesses in several states following communal clashes. The MPs also questioned whether the British Prime Minister discussed the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While the BJP-led governments and civic bodies have claimed that the demolitions were carried out to delete encroachment, the Opposition and activists have alleged them of targeting Muslims under the guise of removing encroachment.
Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, asked in the UK House of Commons if Prime Minister Johnson’s recent visit to India had helped legitimise the destruction carried out by the BJP-led government.
The BJP (Modi’s ruling party) is bulldozing Muslim homes and businesses with JCB diggers.
Boris Johnson posed with JCB diggers during his recent visit to India, but his minister refused to say whether he discussed the demolitions with Modi.
She pointed to photographs of Mr Johnson with an excavator taken during a visit to the factory of British heavy equipment maker JCB near Vadodara shortly after the BJP-controlled North Delhi Municipal Corporation razed homes and shops in Jahangirpuri.
“We know that during his visit, the Prime Minister was photographed leaning out of a digger in a JCB factory. Just days even before BJP used JCB bulldozers to demolish Muslim shops and homes, as well as the gate to a mosque in New Delhi,” Mrs. Whittome,
Did the Prime Minister bring this up with Prime Minister Modi? Why not, if not? And does the Minister agree that the Prime Minister’s visit to India has helped legitimise Modi’s far-right government’s actions?”
Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South, raised the issue in the UK Parliament as well, saying Mr Johnson’s visit to the JCB plant “shows how much he truly cares about human rights.”
During his visit to India, Boris Johnson failed to challenge Modi on the BJP’s incitement of anti-Muslim violence. Instead, the day after the company’s bulldozers demolished Muslim homes in Delhi, he paid a visit to a JCB factory “Ms Sultana, whose family had moved from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to the United Kingdom before she was born, took to Twitter to express her displeasure.
In response to both MPs, the government benches stated that they condemn discrimination and will bring it up when necessary.
Earlier, Mr Johnson’s April 21 visit to the JCB factory was criticised as “tone-deaf” and “ironic.”
The demolition in Jahangirpuri, Delhi, was carried out in response to clashes between two communities during a Hanuman Jayanti procession. On Ram Navami, there were several incidents of communal tension across the country.
