Increased Attacks on Muslims, Christians During Modi's Tenure: Angela Merkel

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has claimed that she raised the increasing attacks on “members of other religions, predominantly Muslims and Christians” by “Hindu nationalists” since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in meetings with him. Merkel mentioned in her recently released book, Freedom: Memoirs 1951-2021 that when she brought up the subject, PM Modi “vehemently denied it and emphasised that India was and would remain a country of religious tolerance.”

Disputing the Indian PM’s denial, she claimed in the book, “Unfortunately, the facts said otherwise.” She added, “worries remained – religious freedom is, after all, a key component of every democracy.”

PM Modi loved visual effects

Merkel recollected her first meeting with PM Modi in April 2015 in Germany stating, “Modi loved visual effects.” She noted that Modi talked about his “election campaigns in which he’d spoken in a studio and had his image projected as a hologram to more than 50 different locations, where thousands of people were listening to him in each.” During his election campaign for the 2014 general elections, PM Modi had used the hologram.

On Manmohan Singh

Merkel highlighted her meeting with former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh noting that the trained economist “was the first non-Hindu premier” of the country. Singh’s “primary aim was to improve living standards for the two-thirds of India’s 1.2 billion population who lived in rural areas. This amounted to 800 million people, ten times Germany’s entire population,” the former German chancellor wrote.

She further mentioned, ““In my conversations with him, I came to better understand the misgivings of the emerging countries toward us, the affluent countries. From his perspective, we expected them to take great interest in our problems, but we weren’t prepared to offer them the same courtesy.” “I could see his point, and began to study more closely the challenges faced by the emerging countries,” added Merkel.

Further, Singh told Merkel “about the cultural diversity of his country, a sub-continent with more than five thousand years of history. The Indian constitution alone recognises twenty-two official languages. The country’s unity arises from its diversity. In this respect, India is more comparable with the European Union as a whole than with one of its member states.” The duo had first met in 2006.