On Wednesday, Time magazine issued its list of influential people of 2020. Indian PM Modi was the only Indian politician to make it to the list this year. However, the editor’s note about him was fraught with rigorous criticism on Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) divisive politics.
Many Indian journalists and hardcore critics of PM Modi highlighted the misreporting of Indian media in their tweets. An editor’s note by Karl Vick noted that two of India’s foremost features – secularism and pluralism – have snapped since Modi came to power.
Hey @IndiaToday you want to mention what they wrote about him ? https://t.co/XHlMMKRhVx
— Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) September 24, 2020
What the @IndiaToday tweet doesn't tell you. Modi's inclusion is for his destructive sectarian politics. Read what @TIME says. https://t.co/kE2qMQVySq pic.twitter.com/GlDDaGidXe
— r/India on Reddit 🇮🇳 (@redditindia) September 23, 2020
“All have abided in India, which the Dalai Lama (who has spent most of his life in refuge there) has lauded as “an example of harmony and stability…Narendra Modi has brought all that into doubt,” writes Vick in the Time’s 100 piece on PM Modi.
“Though almost all of India’s Prime Ministers have come from the nearly 80% of the population that is Hindu, only Modi has governed as if no one else matters,” he adds.
Read more: India is blazing in a fire ignited by Narendra Modi
Vick stressed that BJP has not only “rejected elitism but also pluralism”. Vick also wrote: “The crucible of the pandemic became a pretense for stifling dissent. And the world’s most vibrant democracy fell deeper into shadow.”
https://twitter.com/ashoswai/status/1309134050632892418?s=20
Yesterday, Indian Twitter brimmed with messages of people posting the screenshots of the editor’s note on Modi. Twitter users mentioned a number of Indian publications who side-stepped the original note of the magazine.
Earlier, Modi has appeared on the Time magazine list in 2014, 2015, and 2017, and the inclusion was reported with exuberance on Indian media.