EDITORIAL: Briefing journalists on the State Department’s recently released annual report on religious freedoms, which lists attacks against religious minorities in India, Muslims and Christians, a senior official tried to turn attention away from the real issue as he said “we’re continuing to encourage the government to condemn violence and hold accountable [those] who engage in rhetoric that’s dehumanizing toward religious minorities.”
This amounts to saying the far-right Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi should condemn itself.
For those making hate speeches and perpetrating violence against minorities, mainly Muslims, are leaders of the ruling BJP-RSS combine and its affiliates whose avowed goal is to turn India into a Hindu state in which Muslims can live only as second class citizens.
The saffron-robed monk-turned-politician chief minister of the most populous state, UP, Yogi Adityanath, routinely spews out incendiary speeches against Muslims describing them as terrorists and criminals, and threatening to kill 1000 of them if harm comes to even one Hindu.
He has bulldozed so may Muslim homes and businesses in UP that the bulldozer has become a symbol of anti-Muslim hostility; it was included in last year’s Indian independence day parade in the US state of New Jersey, drawing angry protests by its Muslim residents as well as some federal legislators.
The list of the BJP-RSS combine’s crimes is too long to be recounted here. Modi has maintained his characteristic silence after each act of violence, including a call for Muslim genocide. Clearly, he is complicit in all those atrocities.
After all, as chief minister of Gujarat state, he had presided over the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom, prompting the US to deny him visa. Since his assumption of the PM’s office he is courted and offered a place at the High Table. It needs to be recognised that what has been going on in India is not an organic development, but the outcome of a deliberate policy pursued by PM Modi and others of his ilk to create communal tensions.
It has worked well for them as a vote winning stratagem. For the third consecutive year, in its annual report issued earlier this month the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a statutory federal government body, has recommended that the State Department designate India and certain other states as Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs), because their governments engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations” of the right to freedom of religion or belief. But that won’t happen.
While presenting his department’s report Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticised China, Iran, Myanmar and Nicaragua but, as expected, failed to mention India.
On earlier occasions whenever pressed by journalists for US’ position on the issue all he could say was that he would raise it in private meetings with Indian officials. He might have done that but too politely to have any effect, as the USCIRF and State Department reports show.
The Biden administration claims to put human rights front and centre of its policies around the world, accusing China and some other states of abusing human rights.
When it comes to India, human rights and democratic values take a back seat as defining America’s relations with that country is its vast market and value as a counterweight — so far, inconsequential — to China’s geopolitical heft. Sadly, Washington’s interests vis-à-vis India will continue to transcend all moral considerations.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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