Ignore US report on religious freedom in India
India has done well to just dismiss a US parliamentary panel report criticising its religious freedom record. The United States Commission of International Religious Freedom is a toothless American busybody that, for the most part, is not even taken seriously within the US Government. It serves two main purposes: It appeases the evangelical industry at home, and occasionally doubles as a stick for the State Department to beat up uncooperative or unfriendly nations. Both factors are applicable to India, which explains why this country has been on the USCIRF list since 2009. In the first case, it is well known that ‘soul-harvesters', whose businesses thrive amidst poverty, grief and hunger, have for long been trying to make in-roads into the lucrative Indian market.
They have succeeded to some extent but there's still much untapped potential, which seems increasingly attractive as church attendance in the traditionally-Christian West continues to fall. However, the evangelicals fear that the Modi Government may put a spanner in their works. The second case can be best explained through the love-hate relationship that the US State Department has with India. While the bilateral relationship has improved significantly, there are still some thorny areas where, the State Department believes, the USCIRF stick may come in handy.
The USCIRF report is a blatantly political tool that has little to with actual religious freedom and tolerance. Its case against India also stands on slippery ground. The USCIRF highlights two issues for 2014-2015 — attacks on minority institutions and the ghar wapsi programme. Both are faulty. While some churches were ‘attacked' in recent months and an elderly nun raped in West Bengal, subsequent investigations have shown that none of these incidents were motivated by religion.
As far as the ghar wapsi programme is concerned, let there be no doubt that the freedom to convert and re-convert is an integral part of religious freedom. It is when such conversions happen through force or unfair inducements that they become problematic — and this is a double-edged sword that cuts into the evangelical conversion pie as well. This is not to either justify or criticise the ghar wapsi programme but to underline that a black-and-white view of religious conversions in India is flawed, mischievous, and dangerous.
To further underscore the pointlessness of the USCIRF report, one need only look at the other countries that have been listed and how the US Government has handled its diplomatic relations with them. Seventeen countries, considered to be the worst offenders, are in Tier 1. Nine of these are repeat offenders, including Saudi Arabia, the root of global jihadi terror but also America's closest ally in West Asia, and China, one of America's biggest trade partners. Ironically, Pakistan, which been persecuting its minorities since inception, has only been added to the top tier this year.
India features in the second tier along with Afghanistan, where a Muslim woman was recently burnt alive for allegedly a burning a copy of the Quran, and increasingly intolerant countries like Indonesia and Turkey. In the third tier are countries like Bangladesh (where Hindu minorities are so threatened that some of them are now requesting the Government to take away their voting rights, so that they are not harassed during election season, when Hindus are violently targeted) and Bahrain (where there are constitutional limits on religious freedom). Notably, the report neither lists any Western European countries (where anti-semitism has been on the rise) nor does it mention religious attacks against Hindus and Sikhs in the US.