One day after India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, returned home from Silicon
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Valley after being feted by Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg and other fawning IT CEOs, a Muslim man was lynched and his son beaten into a coma by a Hindu mob not far from Modi's New Delhi residence. What was their crime? Plotting a Modi assassination? A terrorist attack? Raping someone?
No. They were suspected of harboring and consuming beef. BEEF.
But what has PM Modi's reaction to this horrible incident that has sent shockwaves in India been. After all, Zuckerberg hailed Modi as a model leader who would revolutionize governance with his masterful use of social media "to connect with citizens."
Complete and total silence, I point out in my column at The Week. This frenetic tweeter has issued not a single tweet, nor posted a Facebook statement expressing regret or offering condolence for this dead Muslim citizen.
But if Modi thinks he can get away by giving Hindu zealots free rein to persecute and kill others in the name of his religion, it is because he thinks folks like Zuckerberg have his back. These CEOs engage in selective diplomacy, naively lapping up Modi's happy talk about "inclusive development," allowing Modi to bury the rest of his odious agenda in international glory.
But there are three things Zuckerberg can do to wash off his bad Modi karma, including sponsoring the slain man's family for asylum.
Read what the others are in my column here.
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