Skip to main content

"Bailing out" Modi, US religious freedom panel now attacks his right-hand Amit Shah

Even as giving the impression that it has spared Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the influential US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), in its just released annual report has attacked his right-hand, BJP chief Amit Shah, along with other "high-ranking members of the ruling BJP" , for declaring the need for a "nationwide anti-conversion law".
Report says, the US government should instead ensure, through the Government of India, that Indian states, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Arunanchal Pradesh and Odisha, repeal or amend their respective anti-conversion laws to "conform with internationally-recognized human rights standards."
Wanting the US government put its foot down on this score, the USCIRF wants the White House to "integrate concern for religious freedom into bilateral contacts with India, including the framework of future strategic dialogues, at both the federal and provincial level".
While "bailing out" Modi, the USCIRF appreciates his recent statement where he stressed on the need for religious freedom, calling it "a positive development", recalling how he "honored" some Indian Catholic saints, telling them for the first time that his government “will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice.”
But it recalls that in 2005, referring to the 2002 riots in Gujarat, the US State Department revoked Modi's tourist visa under a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes any foreign government official who 'was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom' ineligible for a US visa." It underlines, "Prime Minister Modi remains the only person known to have been denied a visa based on this provision."
The report sharply attacks efforts by the Sangh Parivar, especially RSS and VHP, for its "ghar vapsi" campaign, referring to how in December 2014, "Hindu nationalist groups announced plans to forcibly 'reconvert' at least 4,000 Christian families and 1,000 Muslim families to Hinduism in Uttar Pradesh on Christmas day. In advance of the programme, the Hindu groups sought to raise money for their campaign, noting that it cost nearly Rs 200,000 (US $3,200) per Christian and Rs 500,000 (US $8,000) per Muslim."
While the programme was postponed after widescape outrage, the report says, ever since the last 2014 polls, "religious minority communities have been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to the ruling BJP", and this has continued alongside "numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by Hindu nationalist groups, such as RSS and VHP".
Voicing concern of "Christian NGOs and leaders", the report says, they particularly feel insecure because of the "Freedom of Religion Act, commonly referred to as anti-conversion laws" in existence in many states. As for Muslims, it adds, they have been "facing undue scrutiny and arbitrary arrests and detentions, which the government justifies by the need to counter-terrorism", all of which has followed terrorist attacks in 2008 and 2010.
Pointing towards 823 deaths during 2013 because of communal incidents, the report notes, "According to Muslim and Christian NGOs that track communal incidents, 2014 statistics, yet to be released by the Ministry of Home Affairs, will be likely higher." Giving instances of violence against minority groups in Bihar and Gujarat this year, the report points towards how hundreds of Muslims were forcibly “reconverted” to Hinduism in a mass ceremony in Agra.

Comments

TRENDING

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Socialist utopia challenging feudal and Brahminical systems: Kanwal Bharti on Sant Raidas’ vision of Begumpura

In a controversial claim, well-known Dalit writer and columnist Kanwal Bharti has asserted that a clever Brahminical move appears to be behind the Guru Granth Sahib changing the name of the 15th-16th century mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement, Sant Raidas, to Sant Ravidas.