Narendra Modi

The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has just given a speech to a gathering in Parliament.
The speech was laced with history and our common interests in using the skills that each can bring the other. The speech was, as all's peaches are, a proclamation of "wants" rather than the reality on the ground and one wonders, with such a huge diverse country, can a democratically elected leader with his need to negotiate change, unlike the Chinese leader who was here a couple of weeks ago. The grip the Chinese Communist Party has on all aspects of running their country is far from Modi's position.
India with 28 States, 7 Union Territories and 1,27 billion people is a very complex web of competing interests. The religious and class differentiation make such a conflicting tapestry which in some ways has not changed from the beginning of written time and is so engrained into the culture that no amount of legislation will break down the barriers. We boggle at a nation that can design and build rockets to do interplanetary travel and yet places the cow on an almost mystical level. We marvel at the high tech graduate system which produces thousands of highly qualified student who live and work in a country which at the same time has a class system which denigrates millions of people to be "untouchables".
How do we value this mammoth arising in the East, how do we acknowledge the tremendous potential for trade whilst closing our eyes to the unspeakable brutality of life for some sections of society.
In life we say we are civilised when we have the gift to recognise good from bad but surely it is the mark of a civilised man or women to speak out against oppression even if that oppression is part of the fabric of the existing society and slides under the bar by being called "cultural".
The pragmatists will say that it is none of our business what goes on in foreign countries and maybe if we want to survive in a global community we have to acknowledge the massive variations which make up the global community.  But of course running parallel to the pragmatic view is also the 'collective' view governing "Human Rights" and we are caught in a conundrum.
The Jeremy Corbyns of this world have no doubt that Human Rights gains precedence, the David Cameron's of this world would argue for a deal on trade before anything else.
Who is right, well I leave that to your conscience !!!