New Delhi: In her recently released book, Freedom: Memoirs 1951-2021, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has noted that in her meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she raised the issue that “an increasing number of members of other religions, predominantly Muslims and Christians, were being attacked by Hindu nationalists” in India since he had taken office.
As per Merkel, when she broached the subject with Modi, “he vehemently denied it and emphasised that India was and would remain a country of religious tolerance.”
The former German leader goes on to sharply dispute his denial: “Unfortunately, the facts said otherwise.”
She further adds that her “worries remained – religious freedom is, after all, a key component of every democracy.”
‘Modi loved visual effects’
Recounting her first meeting with Modi in April 2015 in Germany, Merkel notes that “Modi loved visual effects.”
Modi then told her 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.” Modi had used the hologram during his election campaign for the 2014 general elections.
Also read: Merkel Memoir Criticises Trump’s Dealmaking, Soft-Spot for Tyrants But That’s Music to Modi’s Ears
‘I could see his point’: On Manmohan Singh
The former German chancellor also recounts her meeting with former prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. Highlighting that the trained economist with wide-ranging global experience was “was the first non-Hindu premier” of the country, she writes that 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.”
“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,” she notes. “I could see his point, and began to study more closely the challenges faced by the emerging countries.”
Singh also 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.” She had first met Singh in 2006.
