NEW DELHI: Congress leaders have strongly criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks on the 2002 Gujarat riots during his interview with American podcaster Lex Fridman, accusing him of deflecting responsibility.
During the podcast, Fridman asked PM Modi about the riots, describing them as one of the most challenging periods in India’s modern history, leading to over 1,000 deaths. PM Modi, in response, placed the events in the context of a series of terrorist attacks in India and abroad, including the 1999 Kandahar hijacking, the 2001 Parliament attack, and the 9/11 attacks in the US.
He argued that Gujarat had a long history of communal riots and claimed that after 2002, the state had remained peaceful for over two decades.
Targeting PM Modi, Congress leader Danish Ali said that Prime Minister’s comments were an attempt to justify the riots, which he claimed reflected the failure of the then-Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led central government in handling law and order.
“The way the PM has tried to justify the Godhra riots shows the failure of the Vajpayee government regarding law and order in the country. The way he talked about the Kandahar hijacking, the Parliament attack, and more, this is, in a way, a condemnation of the Vajpayee government,” Ali said.
Former Uttarakhand chief minister and senior Congress leader Harish Rawat also criticised Modi, referring to Vajpayee’s well-known remark urging Modi to follow “rajdharma” (duty of governance).
“When the Godhra incident happened and riots broke out, the scenes were gory. Finally, the PM had to ask to uphold ‘rajdharma.’ If anything is wrong, the leader has to take responsibility—it will always be with a leader. These words of Atalji will keep on echoing in his ears,” Rawat said.
In the podcast, PM Modi also pointed out that India’s Supreme Court had twice upheld that he had no involvement in the riots. He dismissed allegations against him as politically motivated, saying that his government had prioritised peace and development over “appeasement politics.”