Intensifying religious persecution in India and the U.S. response
In a joint statement released by the White House on June 22, President Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced several new technology, defense, and research initiatives that are set to bolster the economic ties between the United States and India. The statement came during Modi’s recent visit to Washington, D.C., signaling the Biden administration’s clear intent to further pivot U.S. foreign relations in the Indo-Pacific by privileging the nation which now boasts the largest democracy in the world with a greatly expanded trade partnership. Undoubtedly, this announcement will come as welcome news to many who are excited by the prospect of establishing India as a more reliable supplier of semiconductors to the U.S. and as a more militarily-secure neighbor to the Chinese Communist Party. However, the announcement also raises concerns in light of recent reports that have exposed the increasingly dire state of religious freedom and human rights within Modi’s India. Alarming reports about religious freedom In its 2023 report on religious liberty in India, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken designate India a “country of particular concern,” after finding increased instances of religious persecution against Muslims, Christians, and
STATEMENT
May 16, 2023, Washington DC. The Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations is greatly troubled by the large-scale assault on the Christian churches and homes in the Northeastern Indian State of Manipur during the first week of May by the Hindu nationalist BJP government-supported militia. The Federation has reasons to believe that it was a well-planned, coordinated attack by the party in government against the Christian population of the state. The attack has all the markings of the Hindu nationalist campaign seen in previous violent campaigns carried out by the BJP party and its mother organization, the RSS, in Gujarat 2002, Odisha 2008, and Delhi 2020. In all these cases, government authority was used to facilitate and protect the Hindu militia while the police were ordered to stand down for the duration of violence. During this government-sponsored violence, on May 3rd and the 4th, over 200 churches and over 500 homes of the Christians were burned by the BJP militia. The violence has forced more than 23,000 people to flee their homes. Initial reports indicate that the police were actively supporting the militia providing them tactical support. FIACONA strongly condemns the violence perpetrated by the ruling party on its Christian population. FIACONA urges the US
US report censures Indian states’ anti-conversion laws
USCIRF has called for repealing the laws to comply with the global human rights regime of which India is a signatory The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has called for the repeal of anti-conversion laws in India that have been enacted by state governments and often misused to prosecute Christians in the country. The commission, a US federal government entity, on March 14 said in its latest report, compiled after an extensive study, that the sweeping anti-conversion laws in India are inconsistent with the international human rights regime. More Indian states are considering introducing such laws, it added. The commission has recommended that the US State Department designate India as a country of “particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act. According to the report, anti-conversion laws are in force in 12 of India’s 28 states. “The anti-conversion laws also worsen religious freedom conditions in India, which are already poor,” the report said. “Such laws enable and embolden existing government harassment, vigilante violence, and discrimination against religious minorities, as well as crackdowns on civil society organizations,” it noted. It has also stressed the need for repealing these laws to comply with international human rights treaties to which India is a signatory. The report comes at
Constitution And Conversion: Does Right To Propagate Religion Mean Right To Proselytise, What’s Scope Of Article 25?
Article 25 of the Constitution of India provides the freedom to practise, profess, and propagate religion, but does it also cover the right to proselytise and convert others? The Supreme Court addressed the question of whether right to propagate also means right to proselytize in Stainislaus (1977) verdict Archana Hande’s installation ‘My Kottige’ is her innovative take on urbanisation and changing times. In her artwork, she has arranged discarded things as a witness of their time and spac “One of the most sacred principles of law is, that a written instrument must be construed upon the face of it, and that no parol evidence can be used for the purpose of inserting any words not therein contained.” — Sir R. Malins, High Court of England and Wales (1868) The founders of modern India chose a very clear path for the new country — a republic with no state religion where everyone would be free to practise any faith. This is enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution of India as the Right to Freedom of Religion. “Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess,
INDIA’S HUNGER
RSS body demands action against Global Hunger Index surveyors for ‘defaming India’ The Swadeshi Jagran Manch urged the Centre to take steps against a German NGO which ranked India 107th among 121 countries on the index. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an affiliate body of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Sunday urged the Union government to take action against German non-governmental organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe which last week ranked India 107th among 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index, PTI reported. The index has been prepared in an irresponsible manner to defame India, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch claimed in a statement. Ashwani Mahajan, the co-convenor of the body said that India was self-sufficient in food grains and a net exporter country. In the Global Hunger Index released on Friday, India fared worse than its neighbours Pakistan (99th), Nepal (81st) and Bangladesh (84th) for the second successive year. In 2021, India was ranked 101st out of 116 countries on the index that calculates the hunger levels and malnutrition across the world. This year, India had the highest child wasting rate in the world of 19.3%. Child wasting rate – one of the four indicators of the index – refers to the share of children under the age
Indian Church steels itself for govt onslaught
Federal government appears bent on cornering minority community on issues of land and properties besides conversion An Indian Supreme Court order on Sept 26 seeking a government response to a petition that pleaded for strict action against “religious conversion through fraud and intimidation” will not translate immediately into a national law against conversions to Christianity and Islam. The general allegory among those who accuse Christians of converting through fraud and allurement is that missionaries use their educational and health services to attract and trap poor Hindus and tribal people. The church is possibly right in steeling itself for government action on various fronts. At the top of its apprehensions is the government seeking a greater role in running educational institutions, and possible revocation of British-era land leases on which these are built. Places of worship — India has some majestic and historic cathedrals, churches, and hilltop chapels — may perhaps not be threatened for fear of international rebuke. But the process of safeguarding the land and buildings could take years of court battles and hundreds of millions of rupees in legal fees. The clamor for action, as well as the threat to church lands, comes in the wake of a sustained political campaign that began
The India Fix: Is global Hindutva now driving Indian foreign policy?.
For much of September, Leicester in the United Kingdom saw sporadic bouts of communal tension between Hindus and Muslims. The incident, while unfortunate, was purely a local law and order issue that the city police handled. Unusually, because of the charged communal situation in India, the issue became the focus of prime time television debates in India. A UK journalist pointed out that communal programming by India’s pro-government news channels, already under criticism for pushing hate, had “completely distorted” the events in Leicester. This mainstream media programming was driven by intense social media interest in India about these faraway events. A BBC investigation estimated that half of the tweets about tensions in Leicester actually originated from India. Much of the communal messaging that pushed hashtags such as #HindusUnderAttack displayed “classic signs” of “inauthentic activity, ie a likelihood that individuals are deliberately using multiple accounts to push a narrative”. The BBC singled out OpIndia, the Hindutva website based in India, for spreading misinformation around Leicester. Representing Hindutva, not India However, what was truly odd about this narrative over Leicester was that the government of India soon barged into the conversation. On September 19, the Indian High Commission in the United Kingdom issued an official statement
Christianity hasn’t failed in India. Conversion isn’t its only goal
It is not that Indian churches are without their problems. But Dilip Mandal is wrong to use proselytisation as the yardstick to measure Indian Christianity. Periodically, experts of mainstream media come up with theories on why Christianity is a “failed project” in India. Recently, senior journalist and author Dilip Mandal put forth the argument that Christianity has no future in India and, therefore, there is no reason for the Rashtriya Swayamevak Sangh or the Vishva Hindu Parishad to spread false alarm or panic about the proselytising capacity of Christian missionaries. Mandal also points out that the Christian population in India is either static or dwindling. Mandal is, obviously, not open to recognising the idea that conversion was not the main purpose of the educational, medical and social work of Christian missions in India. Compassion International, a Christian organisation mentioned by him, in a detailed statement pointed out that their sole purpose in India was social outreach. And no official complaint of conversion has been filed against organisations such as Compassion International. Dilip Mandal’s severe criticism that the Christian missionary’s work in India became “a tool for Brahmins and elites” seems baseless. He argues that the failure of Christianity in the early centuries in
Kerala’s Syrian Christian history gets a Hungarian saviour—new keyboard, old manuscripts
István Perczel could well be a modern-day Indiana Jones for Kerala’s elite approximately 60,00,000-strong Syrian Christian community spread across the globe. But instead of engaging in gun fights and discovering lost treasure and ancient cities, The Hungarian scholar of Byzantine history and early Christianity is bringing to life a forgotten body of Malayalam scholarly literature—one that is written in a script based on the Syriac alphabet, an ancient writing system that dates back to the 1st century AD, and shares similarities with Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic and Sogdian. He is now on a quest to develop an InScript keyboard for the lost script—the first of its kind—for which he had to decode thousands of palm-leaf documents lying forgotten in cupboards. They were arguably the oldest written historical records of the Syrian, or Saint Thomas Christians, a community that converted long before colonisation and missionary expansion in India. Most of the records, popularly believed to have been destroyed in the 16th century by the Roman Catholic Church, are written in Garshuni Malayalam. While Garshuni is traditionally referred to as Arabic in a Syriac script, the records Perczel is digitising are Malayalam written in the Syriac script. It was used by the Kerala Syrian Christian
Banker issues cryptic tweet as inflation soars, rupee falls
‘Burning Lanka’ tells all what not to do, says Uday Kotak In the backdrop of the country's economic crisis, Kotak Banker Uday Kotak has come out with an intriguing comment as an outbreak of violent civil unrest in neighbouring Sri Lanka forced a regime change in the island nation with the resignation of its Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, on Monday. “The Russia Ukraine war goes on and the going gets tough. True test of nations is now. Strength of institutions like the judiciary, regulators, police, government, Parliament will matter. Doing what is right and not populist is crucial. A ‘burning Lanka’ tells all what not to do!” Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak said in a tweet on Tuesday. Couched in generic terms, there was no explicit indication that this was a rare bit of advice to the Modi government from one of its most ardent supporters. The Modi government has been battling a crisis on several fronts: inflation has shot through the roof and is expected to cross 7.5 per cent — an 18-month high — when the government statisticians come out with the numbers for April on Thursday. Rising food and fuel prices, surging commodity prices, a severe disruption in supply chains, and
