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On April 28, 2020, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that India be placed on the Blacklist for Religious Freedom. The Indian government has dismissed the report as “biased and a new level of misrepresentation.”
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In reality, the report has brought Pakistan, India, China and North Korea together on one platform. Not that the report means anything significant to the administration of the United States, but it describes the bias of left-wing liberals in the United States and other countries in the West and Europe. I will try to analyze this bias and look for the reasons. India will surely feel hurt as its vibrant democracy has been compared to countries where democracy does not exist.
Let’s try to understand what the report says. “In 2019, the conditions of religious freedom in India underwent a drastic downward turn, with increasingly aggressive religious minorities,” and “called on the United States to impose punitive measures, including visa bans, on Indian officials who they hold themselves accountable and grant funds to civil society groups. ” who monitor hate speech. ”
The commission said Modi’s ‘Hindu nationalist government’, which won a convincing electoral victory last year, “allowed violence against minorities and their houses of worship to continue with impunity, and also participated in and tolerated hate speech and incitement to violence. ” There was talk of revoking Article 370 in the Muslim-majority state alone and allegations that the Delhi police turned a blind eye to mobs that attacked Muslim neighborhoods in February this year.
In the context of the Citizenship Amendments Act, the report says that “the national government used its strengthened parliamentary majority to institute policies at the national level that violate religious freedom throughout India, especially for Muslims.” It read: “The Citizenship (Amendment) Act potentially exposes millions of Muslims to arrest, deportation and statelessness when the government completes its planned National Register of Citizens at the national level.”
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Those who know the Indian realities know that they are fighting against the fundamentalist forces using democratic means. This country has vibrant media, an independent judiciary, and vociferous opposition. This is a country where every citizen promises for the constitution and nothing is done or can be done that could undermine the spirit of the constitution. If the institutions operate according to the mandate, how can these institutions be accused of violating human rights or committing discrimination?
Why then such a damning accusation? There is definitely more than meets the eye. Recall that this report came after an irresponsible statement by Arundhati Roy, who compared the democratically elected government to the Nazis and said that Muslims were being discriminated against (April 18, 2020). A day later, the Islamic Cooperation Organization (OIC) criticized the Indian government saying there was Islamophobia in India.
“(We urge) the Indian Government to take urgent measures to stem the growing wave of Islamophobia in India and protect the rights of its persecuted Muslim minority under its obligations under international human rights law,” said a tweet issued by the Independent Permanent of the OIC. Human Rights Commission (April 19).
One hundred former Indian officials wrote an open letter to all chief ministers and lieutenant governors alleging harassment of Muslims while dealing with the spread of COVID-19 (April 23). United under the banner of the Constitutional Conduct Group (GCC), these All India Service officers have complained that the Muslim community has been facing hostility since news from the Tablighi Jamaat congregation spread across India. It included prominent Muslims, including Wajahat Habibullah, Siraj Hussain, Najeeb Jung, Harsh Mandar, and others.
The report of the US panel was followed by the chairman of the Delhi Minority Commission, Zafarul Islam Khan, who thanked Kuwait for “being with the Indian Muslims” and attacked the Hindus. He said that “Hindutva fanatics have miscalculated the reaction of the Arab world on the persecution of Muslims in India.” Hindus will face an “avalanche” if Indian Muslims complain to their friends in the Arab world, he said.
A careful look at the dates the statements were made would make anyone understand that there is someone working from behind and trying to smear India. Of course, the western world and Europe are not comfortable with India’s growing history. They continue to paint India in the negative and describe Kashmir as one of the critical points of the conflict. The Indian government has tried to solve that without any help from the West. Islamists, leftists, and anti-India forces who had calculated that everyone would come to support them had eggs on their faces. They have been selling lies to the western world that the Unit called India is artificial and that India is a nation of nationalities.
These forces did everything possible to prevent Narendra Modi from coming to power at the Center. The same groups of people who wrote a letter to the then President of the United States, Barack Obama, in July 2013, asking him to deny Narendra Modi a visa when he was the Prime Minister of Gujarat. The idea was to defame Modi and prevent his promotion.
It is not a tirade. I have worked with the British High Commission in Delhi and am aware of the tools that foreign governments use to express their opinion on Indian affairs. NGOs funded by them, which award international awards to certain categories of people and later use them to further their ends, have been ancient techniques that previously prevailed. Under the new regime it does not work. Most of the dummy NGOs have been closed or their funds have been stopped due to their failure on the accountability fronts. The panel’s call to fund these NGOs reflects their despair.
I remember an interesting anecdote. He had gone to London on an official visit to a foreign Commonwealth officer. Amnesty International and other similar organizations have mastered the tool to influence the government and shape its policies. The British government takes care of them because of their annoying value. They sent me a complaint and asked me to respond. There was an alleged attack on a Church in Rajasthan under the BJP Vasundhara Raje regime. The Church organization had sent a complaint through Amnesty International. I did an internet search there at the FCO and found a photograph showing the archbishop meeting with the prime minister just two days after the date of the attack. I did my own research and found that none of that had happened. I told them that the archbishop had expressed his happiness with the prime minister and had not made such a complaint to him. Many of those stories land on the Indian desk in these countries to create an anti-Indian narrative.
It is quite possible that the American narrative is the result of the combined effort of the anti-Indian forces. Western media bias was visible when the Washington Times and others reported negatively on the Delhi riots. Some of the facts that appeared in these media were questioned. They were determined to turn the riots into a pogrom. If we need to understand this, we will have to understand the background of the writers who are setting the narrative. Most of the foreign correspondents based in India collect their information so that the narrative is the same.
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemns the violence and attacks against any community, he does not give them news because it would harm their basic components of state-sponsored violence. The Prime Minister has always spoken about the welfare of all and has been working day and night to ensure that all Indians are safe. If the maulanas in Markaz are convicted of spreading the virus, the entire Muslim community is not being blamed. Ordinary Muslims make this distinction, but the international media and human rights community leaders ignore them. Others simply contribute to support their narrative.
They cannot be blamed because their stories would be sold back home only if it is negative. They think that India is a country of snakes and ladders. They want to see poverty, conflict, violence, rape, and inequality. India’s growing history cannot be sold. Furthermore, at some point they are suffering a complex because the whole west and Europe are trapped by Islamophobia. They try to show India in low light to sound relaxing for Muslims here and also at home.
