Thread by @jkishore

🧵A revealing exchange took place between US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a closed-door session of the “Quad Summit” of the US, Australia, India and Japan held last week. 1/

According to a report published by the Press Trust of India (PTI), Biden “praised” Modi “for handling the Covid pandemic ‘successfully’ and contrasted India’s success with China’s ‘failure’ in dealing with coronavirus, according to a senior Indian official.” 2/

The PTI added that “Biden said Modi’s success has shown the world that democracies can deliver, and busted the myth that ‘autocracies’ like China and Russia can handle the rapidly changing world better…” 3/

By what metric he was measuring the “success” of India or, for that matter, its “democratic” character, Biden did not say. But let us review the facts. 4/

India officially reports more than 525,000 deaths from COVID-19, out of 43.2 million cases. These figures—a staggering loss of life in and of themselves—are universally acknowledged, except by the Indian government of course, to be a massive undercount. 5/

In its report on “excess deaths,” the WHO estimated that the real figure is between 3.3 million and 6.5 million between 2020 and 2021. Of the total estimated global excess deaths from COVID-19, 14.9 million, India accounts for nearly one-third. 6/
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An earlier report from the British medical journal Lancet estimated India’s total excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 at more than 4 million. 7/
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Thus, according to Biden, the “success” of the Modi government consists in having overseen the most COVID-19 deaths of any country on the planet. 8/

India’s performance in this regard was significantly higher than the United States, which “succeeded” in killing only 1.13 million of its citizens, coming in second place. As a percentage of the population, however, the death rate is approximately equal. /9

The real success, for Biden and the financial oligarchy that he represents, is that India was able to keep production running throughout the pandemic, not least of all at the major production facilities of transnational corporations, including US auto manufactures. /10

And what of the “failure” of China? Lancet estimates that total excess deaths amounted to 17,900, while the WHO concluded that 68,000 fewer people died in the country during the two years of the pandemic than would have been anticipated based on national averages. /11

As Biden noted in his remarks to Modi, the populations of China (1.4 billion) and India (1.38 billion) are comparable. India’s death toll, however, is 223 times higher than China. The US, with a far lower population (329 million), had a death toll 63 times higher than China. /12

China’s ability to contain the pandemic, save lives and ensure a relatively normal life for its population for most of the past two years was due to its implementation of a Zero-COVID policy. /13
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The continuation of this policy, in the face of ferocious opposition from finance capital, has succeeded in bringing the most recent outbreak of the Omicron variant in Shanghai under control, with the city due to partially open up on June 1. /14
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Let us turn now to the “democracy” of the government of Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP. It is a fact, now universally ignored in the capitalist media, that Modi cut his teeth politically by overseeing an anti-Muslim massacre in Gujarat in 2002, when he was chief minister. /15

Modi ascended to his post as chief minister in 2001 after serving as general secretary of the fascistic RSS, a Hindu-nationalist organization founded in 1925 by admirers of Hitler and Mussolini. The BJP is effectively the political arm of the RSS./16

The Gujarat massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of communal violence in India since the partition. It began after a fire in a train coach carrying Hindu pilgrims, which Modi, without a shred of evidence, blamed Pakistan and Muslin “terrorists” in India. /17

As Modi’s police stood by, Hindu extremists, utilizing lists of Muslims prepared in advance, engaged in a campaign of rape and murder that resulted in as many as 2,000 deaths, with 100,000 rendered homeless from wholesale arson and destruction. /18

Testimony before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal noted, “Barring a few, in most instances of sexual violence, the women victims were stripped and paraded naked, then gang-raped, and thereafter quartered and burnt beyond recognition.” /19

A report by HRW concluded that the Modi government “created a climate of impunity, where perpetrators of the riots and those who took part in the violence feel they can threaten activists and witnesses to discourage them from pursuing justice." /20

So much for Indian “democracy”… Modi’s role in the atrocity was so egregious that the US State Department in 2005, denied him a visa to travel to the US, invoking a 1998 law that bars foreign officials who are responsible for “severe violations of religious freedom.” /21

The US travel ban was only lifted in 2014, when Modi was elected prime minister of India. On the part of the American ruling class, the inconvenience of his role in mass murder was swept aside, and Modi was welcomed with open arms by the Obama administration. /22

For the last eight years, Modi has enforced the policy of the Indian corporate elite, while serving as a key geostrategic ally of American imperialism, particularly in its conflict with China. /23

The Biden administration speaks of “genocide” in China, while it promotes the fascistic butcher of Gujarat. And the American corporate and financial oligarchy demands a COVID policy of endless mass infection and death, it hails the “success” of India as a model. /24

In the end, Biden’s comments to Modi serve as a self-condemnation of everything that is hypocritical, criminal, and homicidal in the American ruling class itself. /25
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