Facing growing persecution at the hands of Hindu extremists, India Muslims and Christians have shared hopes that the US President Barack Obama would raise the issue with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his ongoing visit to India.
Share It :
“The minorities are feeling threatened and insecure now more than ever before,” Fr Dominic Emmanuel, director of New Delhi-based Sadbhavana- Institute for Communication and Inter-religious Dialogue, told OnIslam.net.
“Obama must impress upon Indian Prime Minister that of late the rising aggression of the right wing Hindu groups are putting the lives of the minorities in serious jeopardy,” Fr Emmanuel, who also edits The Word Among Us (India), added.
Obama arrived in New Delhi on Sunday night on a 3-day visit to the country to showcase what many see as a deepening relationship between the US and India.
He is the first US leader to be selected as the Guest of Honour at India’s Republic Day celebrations on January 26 Before Obama landed in India, Christian and Muslim communities urged him to convey the communities’ concerns to Modi.
In the US, Indian American Christian activists created an online petition on the White House website, urging Obama to ask Modi intervene to help “preserve and promote the religious freedom” of the religious minorities who, the petition said, felt threatened with the rise of the Hindu extremism in India.
The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), the largest advocacy group of Indian American Muslims, has also wrote a detailed letter warning that since Modi-led Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed the national government, “militant Hindu nationalist” forces turned more aggressive and many “deeply disturbing developments” in India left a “profoundly negative impact on millions of religious minorities in India, including Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Parsis.”
The IAMC letter said that “forced conversions of Muslims and Christians” were being undertaken by “Hindu supremacist organizations, of which the ruling BJP is the political wing”.
“In your discussions with Prime Minister Modi and other Indian officials, express concern over the rapidly deteriorating situation of Christians, Sikhs, Muslims and other minorities in India,” the letter urged Obama.
“A reference to their plight during your speech would go a long way in highlighting the international community's cognizance of the ground realities in India.”
Emmanuel says he supported the petition as well as the IAMC letter “to put it firmly on record during Obama’s meeting with Modi, that a democracy like India cannot allow the repression of religious minorities- particularly the Muslims and the Christians”.
“No country, be it the USA or India, can walk on the road to progress, if it cannot take its minorities along,” he said.
History of Abuse
Founded in 1925, right wing Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Hindu religious group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which was born in 1964, have both been working in the interest of the Hindu community for many decades.
Over the years, RSS, the ideological wing of the BJP, and VHP gave birth to many of their offshoots to take care of many of their agendas, and along with their parent organizations they are collectively known as Sangh Parivar or Hindutva Brigade.
Sangh Parivar has been working for the Hindu cause aggressively for many decades.
The danger of Hindu fanaticism appeared in 1992 when a mob of tens of thousands of Sangh Parivar activists demolished the historic 16th century Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya in northern India.
Later in 1999, some of the militant Hindu members burnt to death Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two little children in Odisha.
After the killing of Staines and his children, Sangh Parivar began a high pitch campaign that thousands of missionaries were engaged in “forcible conversion of Hindus” across the country and that its activists would continue action to stall all conversions to Christianity.
Apparently enraged by the claimed “forcible conversions” by the church, Sangh Parivar activists attacked missionaries and other church workers in hundreds of cases, across India, over the past 15 years.
Many Christians have been wounded, raped and killed, and their properties, including many churches, have been vandalized.
Manmohan Vaidya, spokesperson of the right wing Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) says, churches have long been tricking Hindus- specifically the tribal groups, into changing their religion.
“Hindus- mostly members of different tribes, were weak and gullible. The Christian missionaries converted them fraudulently. Now those tribal Christians have come back to their senses and they want to go back to their original culture or way of life,” Vaidya said to OnIslam.
“We are helping them return to their roots (through Gharwapsis).”
The claims have been denied as “ridiculous” by John Dayal, former national president of All India Catholic Union.
“A pastor is often alone in an area where the police, the magistrate, the politicians and other powerful people are from majority Hindu community. How can he exercise any force or fraud on anyone being a member of the small minority community? He would be lynched, if he tries to convert anyone to Christianity that way,” Dayal, a New Delhi-based member of National Integration Council, told OnIslam.net.
“The charge by the Sangh Parivar is just ridiculous. Hundreds of such charges against the church have been found to be bogus in courts of law.”
Modi Factor
After the appointment of Modi-led BJP government, Sangh Parivar activists have increased the pace of aggressive attacks against Muslims and Christians all over the country.
“Modi’s is the government of the Sangh Parivar and it does not at all interfere in the activities of the Hindu groups howsoever illegal their activities may be,” Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, president of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, a New Delhi-based umbrella body of Indian Muslims organizations, told OnIslam.net.
“The Modi government has even used the Gharwapsi programs and propaganda to send a clear message inside and outside the Parliament that if you don’t like such programs, you should support a national law banning the conversions, while Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of practice of religion, including the freedom of its preaching,” New Delhi-based Muslim community leader added.
Mohammad Salim Engineer, National Secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind said that Modi would never take any strong deterrent action against any of the Hindu activists.
"The Hindutva activists know that since they had played a key role behind the victory of Modi's BJP in last general elections, no action will be taken against them, even if they break any law of the country,” Engineer told OnIslam.net.
“So, the Hindu fascist leaders and even some BJP MPs are freely giving hate speeches against the Muslims and Christians, and their militant supporters are increasingly indulging in hate attacks against the minorities.
“Modi knows that to stay on in power he needs hid Hindutva foot-soldiers and so, he has not bothered to take any action against them."
New Delhi-based author Javed Jamil said Obama would not be able to help India’s Muslims or Christians any way.
“With corporate and Hindutva forces being hand in glove in India, the country is again on the verge of communal frenzy, and ultimately Muslims and even Christians are likely to end up as the poor victims,” Jamil said to OnIslam.net.
“Being the representative of similar forces in America, Obama cannot be expected to build up enough pressure on Modi to get him rein in the Hindutva brigade.
“At best, he will succeed to pay only a lip service to the cause of secularism and communal amity.”
