Attack on scribe stains Modi’s Madison Avenue jacket

A little-noticed sidelight of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's triumphal US visit was the physical mauling of senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai by the 'Modi, Modi' crowd at Madison Square Garden.

The incident took place outside the New York venue just before Modi's address to the mammoth crowd, mostly comprising Indian emigrants. Sardesai was assigned by TV news channels to cover the event, and was interviewing groups of Modi supporters.

Unfazed by heckling and slogan-shouting, he continued to ask sharp questions which the crowd didn't like. In a second round of interviews later in the day, the crowd got physical, even as he was told that his family and he should ''banish themselves to Pakistan''.

He was hit from the back, then pushed and shoved around, till fellow-journalists came to his rescue and prevented a perhaps more severe thrashing.

The Mumbai Press Club has taken a lead in the matter; having studied video-clips available as well as eyewitness accounts to conclude that pernicious clips floating around on the net falsely suggest that Sardesai started the agression.

The New York Police were probably too bemused and understaffed to interfere; they would not have seen a fanatic Indian crowd in the heart of their city before. But that is no excuse for inaction, as the club points out in a release.

The fact that the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party's foreign arm, Vijay Jolly, was present on site but did nothing to intervene is particularly notable.

The unprovoked attack on Sardesai while he was carrying on his journalistic duty will not do any good to Prime Minister Modi's global image, even if big business gushes over him.