)
India on Friday rejected the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF’s) annual report that ranked India poorly in terms of religious freedom, especially for minority communities. The report was released on Thursday.
“It appears to be based on limited understanding of India, its Constitution and society. We take no cognizance of this report,” Vikas Swarup, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said in response to a question on the USCIRF report.
The annual report, covering the period from January 31, 2014, to January 31, 2015, reviews 33 countries on the basis of religious freedom.
In the India chapter, the report says that despite its status as “a pluralistic, secular democracy, India has long struggled to protect minority religious communities or provide justice when crimes occur, which perpetuates a climate of impunity”. According to it, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan are the states where the greatest number of religiously motivated attacks and communal violence incidents happen.
Squarely blaming the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre, it says “since the (last Lok Sabha) election, religious minority communities have been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by Hindu nationalist groups, such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP).”
It says many “non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and religious leaders, including from the Muslim, Christian, and Sikh communities, attributed the initial increase to religiously divisive campaigning in advance of the country’s 2014 general election”.
USCIRF has placed India on its Tier-II list of countries since 2009. While reaffirming this position for India, it said: “Christian NGOs and leaders report that their community is particularly at risk in states that have adopted “Freedom of Religion Act(s)”, commonly referred to as anti-conversion laws. Based on these concerns, USCIRF again places India on its Tier-II list of countries...”
The report also says India’s anti-conversion laws are “one-sided, only concerned about conversions away from Hinduism but not towards Hinduism”.
Some of its recommendations are controversial: For one, it calls for integrating “concern for religious freedom into bilateral contacts with India, including the framework of future strategic dialogues, at both the federal and provincial level.
Another recommendation is to “increase the US embassy’s attention to issues of religious freedom and related human rights, including through visits by the Ambassador and other officials to areas where communal and religiously motivated violence has occurred...”
Strangely, it also says the US ambassador in India should visit places, where violence is “likely to occur”, besides holding meetings with religious communities, local governmental leaders, and police.
USCIRF also reiterated its demand to evoke visa ban on Modi. “There is significant evidence linking him (Modi) to the violence and the terrible events that took place in Gujarat and for this reason, a visa would not be appropriate,” The Press Trust of India quoted USCIRF’s chairperson Katrina Lantos Swett as telling reporters.
