Shadow Foreign Secretary Rt Hon Emily Thornberry has vowed that India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi will receive a warm welcome from the Labour party and leader Jeremy Corbyn if they come to power in the next general election.
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had sponsored a motion two years ago asking the British Home Department to reinstitute the ban on Narendra Modi for his 'role in the communal violence in 2002' in Gujarat. The motion stated: “This House calls on the Secretary of State for the Home Department to reinstitute the ban on (then) Gujarat’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, from entering the UK, given his role in the communal violence in 2002 that claimed the lives of hundreds if not thousands of Muslims, including British nationals; expresses its concern that the ban was lifted for economic and diplomatic reasons, ignoring the role Mr Modi and his administration played in the violence that warranted the ban that stood for more than 10 years; notes that Mr Modi was previously denied a visa on grounds that he was 'responsible for or directly carried out…particularly severe violations of religious freedom'; and calls on Mr Speaker and the House authorities to ban Mr Modi from entering the Palace of Westminster.”
Corbyn was also one of the 40 British MPs who signed an Early Day Motion calling on the then UK Prime Minister David Cameron to take up the issue of human rights with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit in November 2015. The Motion had also raised a number of issues such as the release of political prisoners in detention in India (it mentioned the Amnesty Special Report on violation of human rights in Kashmir); it condemned the ban on Indian Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai from visiting the UK; and questioned the government’s ban on the BBC documentary “India’s daughter’ and efforts to block it from being shown in the UK as well.
When Modi had delivered a speech to Parliament, Corbyn was not present in the royal gallery. This prompted Rt Hon Keith Vaz, the British-Indian Labour MP, to tell the Sun that he was “disappointed” with Corbyn. He said, “If the British Prime Minister can make the time to listen to PM Modi, so can Jeremy.”
Speaking about Labour's position towards India and Narendra Modi, Thornberry told Asian Voice, “Modi is a democrartically elected leader of India, the biggest democracy in the world. He is the legitimate leader, so we begin with that. I have been in many meetings with Jeremy with people who would seem to be our friends and with people who would not seem to be our natural allies.
“Jeremy is always the same — he will always criticise where he believes criticism should be levelled. But I think it would not be right to say that he is not a pragmatist and it would not be right to say that he wishes to turn his back on one of the largest and most important countries in the world. So yes I imagine his meetings with PM Modi would be heated, but I think proper friendship should be based on honesty.”
Shadow Foreign Secretary Rt Hon Emily Thornberry met the Indian Journalists Association members in St James's Hotel on Friday 20 October and discussed many issues including trade relations between India and UK, immigration, Sikhs demanding a separate ethnic identity in the UK, as well as climate change. While the issue of Kashmir and Operation Blue Star were a part of the Labour manifesto, partly drawn up by Thornberry herself, she insisted the Kashmir issue particularly needs to be settled by India and Pakistan, and Britain had no role in it. “It is our place to keep saying that it needs to be resolved in a peaceful way. This is not radical, this is common sense,” she said.
But she also adeed, “Our current position on Kashmir comes from a concern for human rights. We hear a kaleidoscope of stories, from the extremes to the less extreme. The human rights of Kashmiris continue to bubble up. I have spoken to the Indian high commissioner about this.
“Kashmiris want to live in peace. That should be our starting point. I know there are people in India who say these stories are exaggerated or indeed downright lies. And if that’s right, it does seem to me that India has nothing to fear from allowing human rights monitors into Kashmir in order to be able to support that it isn’t true.”
