The USCIRF Hearing: Is India Really a Cause for Particular Concern?

Anti-Hindu riots and violence in Delhi

‘Exert pressure on India’ was the most frequently heard phrase at the hearing convened by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in September (the sequel to which is recently in discussion) to discuss the apparent erosion of values of religious freedom for the minority religions in India with the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Dr. Fernand de Varennes. Hearing the recorded proceedings of the trial would truly shake your beliefs about the inclusivity and brotherhood that every Indian prides himself on and while, prima facie, this may all paint a very gruesome picture, it is not the full picture by any means. The unfortunate truth, as it stands, is that for all the talk about justice, only selective justice was applied when it came to presentation of facts by Dr. Varennes and only those facts that painted the picture that the numerical majority religion was majoritarian were presented. While actively trying to stop ourselves from taking a political stand on this, through this article, we try to present the other side of facts that were conveniently not presented in the hearing and to prove to you that not only was the sole purpose of this meeting to denounce India but also to selectively victimize certain ‘minority’ communities while demonizing the majority community.

It was said by Dr. Varennes, that India is a CPC (Country of Particular Concern), even more so than Tajikistan. I would agree; where the call for genocide of around 80% of the population is considered normal, there must be concerns.

Mr. David Curry, one of the commissioners at USCIRF, betrayed the true line of questioning when he suggested that drafts exist for a new Indian constitution that will deny voting power to minorities, to which Dr. Varennes testified saying that there probably are, without, much less providing a shred of empirical proof of the same, even a hint of where this conclusion was being drawn from. The commission then went on to discuss persecution by the Indian government of its minority religions abroad, and especially the Sikh minority, making direct allusions to the wild claims hurled by Canada relating to the killing of Nijjar, a Khalistani terrorist. They concluded on this regard, again, like they did on all others, that though the veracity of Canada’s statements was not known, a strong message needed to be sent to the Indian government nonetheless. A hearing and wild accusations, and yet, no proof!

At one point in the hearing, Dr. Varennes exhorts all other nations who exercise the values of law, democracy and inclusion to exert any and all kinds of pressure on the Indian government to ‘force’ them to take cognizance of the decadence of minorities in India. Neither have other nations, like India, tolerated, welcomed and accepted every single victim of persecution into their country, irrespective of the religion they belong to or their ethnicity, nor have most countries have trysts with democracy as far back as India did. We do not even feel it necessary to provide credentials when we say that if there has been one country that has been truly inclusive, it is India.

What was particularly shocking was the fact that certain legislations that form the core of Hindu thought were criticized for being myopic in their view and for enabling the persecution of religious minorities. Anti-conversion laws that prohibit conversion of religion by force, were criticized for restricting the freedom of religious expression of minorities; as were policies restricting the impartation of religious education and cow slaughter. Other legislations too were criticized. These include the restriction that had been placed on the wearing of Hijabs inside educational institutions, the revocation of Article 370 and the Citizenship Amendment Act. While each of these are vast topics by themselves, we shall endeavor to limit ourselves to providing the other side of the facts misrepresented by Dr. Varennes on these legislations.

When not eating the meat of certain animals is expected out of certain religions, like pigs in Islam, why can the situation not be similar in Hinduism, where the cow is worshipped as a divine entity in its own right, without double standard arguments of communalism being hurled? Also, it is a well known fact that despite the constitution providing for the provision of protection of cows from slaughter, instead of banning cow slaughter indiscriminately, only the slaughter of humped cow with horns, Bos Indicus,has been restricted.

India has seen institutionalized violence. Most of it, however, has been directed towards the one religious community, Hindus, that had neither any representation in the USCIRF council hearing, even though it is the minority religion in eight of the Indian States, nor saw any mention of itself in Dr. Varennes’ report. Reports relating to forceful conversions, or even worse, brainwashing to convert people, exhorting examples of those such as Tipu and Aurangzeb, going back decades can be easily accessed. To stop such blatant acts of trying to separate masses from their religious consciousness, various legislations restricting, and not prohibiting, religious conversions were introduced.  Under these, anyone wishing to convert to a different religion must undergo some legal formalities relating to filling of forms before the permission to convert is legally granted. However, not only is it interesting to note the Dr. Varennes feels that restriction on religious conversations is an impediment to the practices of the minority religions, but also more so because any shred of knowledge of the past would reveal the necessities behind the enactment of these legislations.

Similarly, institutions imparting Hindu religious education saw, to use the words that Mr. Curry did for religious minorities, ‘sophisticated and systematic persecution’. Grants for these institutions were delayed, promised scholarships delayed and funding stopped, until most of these institutions succumbed to financial pressure. However, the religious institutions such as Madrassas continued to prosper with massive state funding. Without touching the subject of its constitutionality, I invite Dr. Varennes to challenge the fact that such institutions have, in the past, and continue to indoctrinate students with unsustainable ideas relating to monotheism and intolerance of other cultures. Videos like those of compulsory offering of Namaz by all students, irrespective of their religion, at some institutions, before education is imparted, or those of young Madrassa-going children being made to chop off the head of a cow-shaped cake can easily be found. In addition to this, Hindu temples are still subject to state control unlike any other religious institutions. However, the ideals that the USCIRF seems to promote are those of appeasement at any cost, as long as it is not in the US.

Dr. Varennes proceeded to touch upon how the revocation of Article 370 meant enhanced persecution of Muslims as their right of political self-determination was taken away from them by bringing them under the direct rule of the Central Government. Notwithstanding the innumerable benefits that have emerged from the revocation, the most notable of them being a decline in the cases of open violence and projection of Anti-Indian agendas from within the state, we would like to state that this is categorically false. The government has testified in the Supreme Court too that it intends on revoking the President’s rule and conducting elections in the Kashmir valley. Finally, on the subject of Citizenship Amendment Act, it was stated that everyone except the Muslims were being given the right to citizenship in India and the exercise of making a National Register of Citizens, especially in Assam, was compared to persecution of the Jews under Nazi rule. This is again misrepresentation of facts on two counts. First, while the population of religious minorities have increased in India since the Indian independence, that of Hindus and the other religions under the larger umbrella of Hindu Dharma, have dramatically decreased. This is not inconsistent with the persecution that they face, in Islamic neighboring countries such as Pakistan, due to belonging to a non-Islamic religion. The need behind granting citizenship to persecuted minorities was, thus, religion and so, the answer too was based in religion i.e. while a Hindu, Sikh, Jain etc. may be entering India due to persecution, such would not be the case with Muslims in Islamic nations; and thus, while the former would be granted citizenships, the latter wouldn’t. The bill does not, contrary to what Dr. Varennes would have you believe, revoke or disturb the citizenship rights of Indian Muslims. Additionally, to clear the air on the Assamese implementation of the law that was used multiple times as an example of minority persecution, initial reports as well as all government claims seem to only point to one direction: that more Hindus, than other religious minorities, have been detained under the act; yet none of this data was presented. The examples of Miran Haider, arrested for alleged pre-meditated roles in causing the Delhi Riots in 2020, and of Rupesh Singh, an alleged Maoist caught with arms in the red corridor of India, were used to show persecution of journalists yet recent examples of Debmalya Bagchi and Mukesh Kumar among others were not even touched upon. More so, deliberately, the conversation, while touching upon apparent constitution drafts, steered clear of the discussion on the Uniform Civil Code or that on draconian acts such as the Waqf Act, 1995.

Among other things, what took the centerstage, was the Manipur issue and yet, one must be surprised that there was no mention of the Meitei casualties, which as of 6^th August were at 65 out of 187 deaths. It would seem that one life counts less than the other when the dead belong to the ‘majority’ community. There were many allusions to the sexual assault video of the two Kuki women, a shame to the dignity every woman that enraged, as it should have, every citizen; yet, sadly, very few know of the two Meitei kids and the father of one of the two kids, who were mercilessly kidnapped and gunned down by the Kuki militants. Dr. Varennes also presented ‘facts’ relating to the burning of more than 250 churches in the state, but perhaps forgot to mention the approximate 393 Meitei temples violated in the state.

Social media, as per what Dr. Varennes stated, has been weaponized as a tool to sow the seeds of violence and rioting. It was additionally added that there was paralysis in the executive and legal machineries in booking cases against those calling for genocide of religious minorities. While this is not false, it doesn’t show you the larger picture. The machinery is in paralysis, not for certain religions, but as a whole, and even it were more paralyzed in recognizing aggressions towards certain religions, we’d argue that is Hinduism. The first example of this are the recent remarks made by Udayanidhi Stalin, calling for the eradication of everyone under the fold of the Sanatana Dharma, and getting away with it scot-free. Much less filing suo moto cases against him, the top court had not even held the state in contempt of its own order to file suo-moto cases against hate speeches till 22^nd September, the date on which it just issued notices to the Tamil Nadu government. It was said by Dr. Varennes, that India is a CPC (Country of Particular Concern), even more so than Tajikistan. I would agree; where the call for genocide of around 80% of the population is considered normal, there must be concerns. This episode is completely antithetic to that of Nupur Sharma, who was told by a Supreme Court Justice, that she ‘possessed a loose tongue’, for quoting the Islamic Scripture Sahih al-Bukhari 5134 and the Sunan an-Nasa’I 3378. It may be noted that there were case hearings conducted for apparent discriminations in the Sabarimala Temple entry system, the rituals of the Dharmapuram Adheenam Pattina Pravesam, and for the ‘inhumane’ Jalikattu practices or the dangers of Makarsankranti and Diwali celebrations, but none for similar practices in Sedia Gestatoria, Moharram, Christmas and New Year celebrations. The second example of this relates to the media optics of the Nuh violence, which was discussed by the Chairman of USCIRF in the hearing. We have seen every media outlet, and USCIRF, cover the burning of the mosque and the killing of the Imam, both tragic events that must be investigated, but how many times have we heard about Abhishek, 22 and the breadwinner of a family of six, who was shot through with bullets trying to protect pregnant women and whose head was chopped off his body as he lay on the street dying? Or the case of stones being pelted at the VHP rally and their cars being burnt? In fact, this country has normalized stone pelting when it comes to celebrating Ram Navami and Ganesh Chaturthi, the recent events in Surat only adding to the mix.

Recently, Tamil Nadu saw the beating of worshippers in the garbagraha of a temple for assembling to pray in huge numbers. This warranted a lathi-charge by the police that lead to multiple injuries, bloodshed and deaths inside the temple!

Peaceful protests have, since even before the gunning down of hundreds of Hindu pandits and their cows in front of the parliament house in 1966, been rewarded with violence, whether it be for the ban of cow slaughter, justice for Kashmiri Hindu pandits or the Ayodhya temple. To quote Dr. Anand Ranganathan from his book ‘Hindus in Hindu Rashtra’:

“This nation hears complaints through the barrel of a gun, not the ink of a pen. The nation believes inaction is medicine. It believes time heals. It believes wounds do not fester. It believes the exiled never return. This nation waits for death to rid its people of their remembrances. This nation wishes the Kashmiri Hindus all the happiness and joy in the afterlife.”  

The entire hearing was based on exceptions, and these were projected as the norm in India. Again and again, a single side of multi-faceted truths were presented. One has to wonder, in these circumstances, whether the denial to USCIRF for visiting India was not the best thing that could have been done. It is also, to us, ironical that a country with a history of human rights violations relating to gun violence, targeted violence against colored folks and women-autonomy rights, felt the need to lecture this country about the fair treatment of its minorities. Furthermore, given the United States’ history of unilaterally declaring terrorists and organizing extra-judicial killings of the same, it seems unjustified that someone sitting in an armchair in the US feels that they have the right to lecture India on this subject. In the words of Dr. Varennes, ‘India risks becoming world’s one of the greatest generators of instability, atrocities and violence’. However, I invite them to have a look into the western backyard first: the recent violence in France, recurring reports of gun violence against ethnic minorities in the US and the rise of terrorist tendencies in Canada. It is not India, but the US, that seems on the brink of political and financial troubles, and risks generating instability in the world. Selectivity in representation of facts and a hearing of conveniences, that is how the recent hearing of the USCIRF, relating to India, can be summed up.

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