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Intolerant India
from Sikhophobia to Islamophobia and now Christophobia
Jagmohan Singh
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The Christian world is in a state of shock at the turn of events
in India with unending violence against poor Christians in the
states of Orissa and Karnataka. Jagmohan Singh writes an Open
Letter to the chairperson of the Washington-based United States
Commission for International Religious Freedom urging strict
monitoring of India and putting it on the Watch List of
countries which violate religious freedoms. He also urges
censure of France for continuing to deny Sikh school students to
wear the turban in government schools. |
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 Hon.
Mr. Michael Cromartie
Greetings from
the land
of Guru Tegh Bahadur, who laid down his life for the protection of
the right to religion of another community.
Two faces of
India
were revealed to the world in the last two months –nuclear India and
intolerant India. Nuclear
India
is a relatively new phenomenon, though the world has yet to fathom
the designs of India to become a super power and Intolerant India
has been around for ages, but as Christians are the victims this
time around, may be the international community will take notice and
action.
 This is the
recent toll: 37 Christians killed, 101 churches attacked, one nun’s
modesty violated and 27,000 Christians rendered homeless in
Kandhamal distict of Orissa. Rampant forcible re-conversion of
neo-Christians is a regular habit for the 6000 centres of RSS, 1500
Tribal welfare projects and 1,200 education centres –all manned by
right-wing forces who are at war with all minorities and regional
peoples of India. The government of Orissa resorted to lies and
protectionist measures to hide the truth, its police did not file
First Information Reports. The government’s complicity with the
Hindutva bodies is apparent and brazen.
The march of the
brahamanical forces against Christians and Dalits is on for a very
long time and has been documented by Human Rights Watch and other
human rights groups, prompting Dalit organizations to call for the
institution of an UN Special Rapporteur on Dalit Rights.
India is one
country which does not acknowledge the existence of indigenous
peoples in the country and continues with the nomenclature of
Adivasis –the Stone Age people.
The Indian
onslaught is “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violation of
religious liberty. Having suffered Sikhophobia for many years,
presently
India is going
through a phase of Islamophobia on the one hand and Christophobia on
the other. The spread of Sikhophobia across the country fetched
votes for the Congress party, the spectre of Islamophobia fetched
votes to fascist leader Narendra Modi in
Gujarat
and his party –the Bharatiya Janta Party all over the country when
their leadership and followers brought down the centuries-old Babri
Masjid. Who will Christophobia benefit, is anybody’s guess.
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“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or
belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others
and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in
teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
Article 18, Universal Declaration of Human Rights |
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Islamophobia and
Sikhophobia are creations of state agencies unable to build a
response to the fight for rights and fundamental freedoms and
Christophobia has been started by fascist forces unable to tolerate
equality and reduction in their ranks and is abetted by the state
through silence and complicity.
This year
India has
celebrated its sixtieth year as a socialist secular republic. Later
this year, the United Nations will be observing the sixtieth year of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is opportune time for
the USCIRF to hold a mirror unto India and put India’s socialism and
secularism into a proper perspective and not to be influenced by the
size and scale of the growing market mechanism in the country.
From the burning
alive of Graham Staines to the violation of the modesty of a young
nun, the emboldened lumpens of the right parties which are receiving
funding from British and American residents have to stopped in the
ranks. Their resources must be cut off. According to Angana
Chatterjee, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the California
Institute of Integral Studies, “the following Sangh-affiliates,
registered charities in the
US, allocated
sizeable amounts of money under ‘programme services’,
disproportionately directed to Hindutava-affiliated groups in
India. Per 2006 tax record, Ekal Vidyalaya allocated more than two
million dollars to
India,
India Development Relief Fund allocated 1.6 million USD, and Sewa
International USA allocated 284,000 Dollars.” All this money has
directly and indirectly reached Orissa.
Bajrang Dal
activists have been caught red-handed making bombs in Nanded and
Kanpur.
Some died making bombs. The police have failed to register cases,
prosecution would be a far cry. Prakash Sharma, Suhas Chouhan,
Vinay Katiyar, Surendra Jain of the Bajrang Dal and Dr. Praveen
Togadia should be debarred from entering US and other countries.
Simply, they are terrorists who have not been classified as such.
 India has to be
put up on the Watch List of countries where religious freedom
conditions are such that they require close monitoring due to the
nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in and
tolerated by India. The RSS, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal –to name a
few have been engaged in all activities against multi-religiosity,
secularism and pursuit of their professed aim of making India a
Hindu-India, actually Brahman-India.
With the only
declared country –Nepal
ceasing to be a Hindu country, there is a greater sense of urgency
in the nefarious minds of these fascist zealots to make
India
a Hindu country. This is the root cause for the growing intolerance
in India.
As you are
mandated "to advance the visibility of and serious thinking about
how the
United States can best address the challenges of religious
extremism, intolerance, and repression throughout the world", all
such organizations, who in the name of social work are pursing their
anti-minority and anti-people agenda, should be put under the
scanner in the Untied States. If minority organizations seeking to
pursue their ethnic rights can be listed as terrorist organizations,
surely it would be proper to debar those organizations that have a
proven record of racist actions and ethnic cleansing roles. The
USCIRF should not delay in checkmating RSS, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa
Hindu Parishad. The embargo on the entry of mass-terror specialist
and chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi should be followed up
with these measures.
 It
is significant that
India’s National
Commission for Minorities has for the first time since its inception
called for a ban on the right wing body, Bajrang Dal, but that is
certainly not enough. Fascist methods are being adopted in this
country with such glaring impunity that the events unfolding daily
are a grim reminder of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Ethnic minority
peoples eagerly await the report of Ms. Asma Jahangir, the Special
Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights, who this year spent two weeks to have a
first hand understanding of the religious rights situation in
India. USCIRF
can draw up on that information too and intervene soon.
Sometime back -a
few years ago, USCIRF came close to putting
India
on the Watch List, but the intervention of one of the commissioners
saved
India.
As many
activists in many countries do not know about the role that your
organization plays as a bipartisan federal body assessing and
proposing US foreign policy action to advance freedom of thought,
conscience, and religion and other freedoms needed to protect people
at risk of abuses, such as killing, detention, or torture, I think
that USCIRF should make special efforts to popularize its work and
also undertake more regional studies to advance its mandate,
particularly in South Asia. It is appropriate that the USCIRF seek
data from various credible members of civil society in
India about the
right to religion in the country.
Your Commission
has rightly stated that the “internal affairs” argument used by
authoritarian and totalitarian regimes dissolves when those
governments undertake international commitments. To further its
nuclear ambitions,
India has made a
variety of promises and the test on the religious liberty front
would be a small one to gauge whether it will fulfill its bigger
promises. The worldview should be that Nuclear India must be kept
under observation and while the celebrations are on in
New Delhi
and Washington, apolitical bodies must send out the right message
–loud and clear.
While Kandhamal
still burns and poor Christians are being lynched and their homes
ransacked, the Sikh, Muslim and civil society leadership has rallied
behind the Christians. The Sikhs have done so as it is teaching
they have imbibed. Bhagat Kabir in Guru Granth Sahib says, “pwrosI
ky jo hUAw qU Apny BI jwnu ]167] -You know that whatever happens
to your neighbours, will also happen to you.”
 The Christian
leadership, though very influential, has all along inured itself
from the misery and suffering of other minorities when under
attack. In June 1984 and November 1984, there were comments in the
Christian Science Monitor and words of compassion from the Pope in
Vatican,
but the Christian religious leadership in
India
chose silence and neutrality. Same has been the case when Muslims
were the butt of attack in the carnages in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. It
is high time for the Christians to throw up political leadership in
the country. It is my belief that if Indian Christians continue to
shy away from activism, turn a blind eye to misery of other
communities and limit themselves only to educational, oecumenical
and proselytization activities, that would be a wrong policy.
I am sure that
you will take up the Christian case. I also urge you not to forget
the case of Sikh students in
France. In a
paradoxical statement, given out just a few days ago, in response to
a journalist’s question, President Sarkozy has said that France
respects Sikh customs and practices, but the Sikhs are welcome to
France without the turban as the Sikhs will have to adhere to French
rules and regulations. Need we say more?
Holocaust writer
and himself a victim of Nazism, Eliezer Wiesel while accepting the
1986 Nobel Peace Prize said: “We must always take sides. Neutrality
helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When
human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy,
national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men
or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or their
beliefs....”
Your call,
USCIRF.
Sincerely
Jagmohan Singh
Jagmohan
Singh is a human rights activist based in Ludhiana, Punjab. He may
be contacted at jsbigideas@gmail.com
8 October 2008
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