India attempts damage control as minority record under scrutiny
India defended its record on religious tolerance and rebuked the US for its own rights issues...
SOME officials in India are ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on people and places of worship in the country, a US official said late on Thursday (2), drawing an angry reaction from New Delhi which called the comments ‘ill-informed’.
The remarks by Rashad Hussain, who leads the US State Department’s efforts to monitor religious freedom around the world, accompanied the department’s annual report on global religious freedom.
The report contained a rare - if indirect – criticism of its emerging ally, documenting incendiary comments by public officials and accounts of discrimination against Muslims and Christians.
It said attacks on members of minority communities, including killings, assaults, and intimidation, occurred throughout last year in India. These included cow vigilantism - assaults on non-Hindus for allegedly slaughtering cows or trading in beef.
Many Hindus, who account for about 80 percent of India’s 1.35 billion people, consider cows sacred. Several states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party have enacted laws or toughened old ones against slaughtering cows.
Some Indian officials were ‘ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on people and places of worship’, Hussain said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the report showed religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities were under threat around the world.
‘For example, in India, the world’s largest democracy and home to a great diversity of faiths, we’ve seen rising attacks on people and places of worship,’ Blinken said.
India’s foreign ministry said the country values religious freedom and human rights, and that it had noted the ‘ill-informed comments by senior US officials’.
Besides defending its record on religious tolerance, the country has also rebuked the US for its own human rights issues.
India hits back at the report
Foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam
Bagchi said senior US officials had made ‘ill-informed’ and ‘biased’ comments coinciding with the report’s release.
‘As a naturally pluralistic society, India values religious freedom and human rights,’ Bagchi on Friday (3) said in a statement.
‘In our discussions with the US, we have regularly highlighted issues of concern there, including racially and ethnically motivated attacks, hate crimes and gun violence.’
Like its neighbor China, India frequently bristles at foreign criticism of its record.
It has routinely denounced the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, an autonomous government panel, which has repeatedly recommended India be put on a blacklist.
The State Department is highly unlikely to take action against India, identified by successive US administrations as a key strategic partner in the face of a rising China.
Modi’s government has championed a series of measures that critics have called discriminatory.