Washington : Religious minorities in India have been subjected to “violent attacks, forced conversions” and ‘Ghar Wapsi’ campaigns by groups like RSS after the Modi government assumed power in 2014, a US Congress instituted panel has said.
In its 2015 annual report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has asked the Obama Administration to press the Indian government to publicly rebuke officials and religious leaders who make derogatory remarks about communities and to boost religious freedom standards in India.
The panel said that despite the country’s 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. Incidents of religiously-motivated and communal violence reportedly have increased for three consecutive years, the panel said in its key findings.
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Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan tend to have the greatest number of religiously-motivated attacks and communal violence incidents.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and religious leaders, including from the Muslim, Christian and Sikh communities, attributed the initial increase to religiously-divisive campaigning in the 2014 general election.
But USCIRF, at whose recommendation the State Department had revoked Modi’s visa in 2005 for his alleged complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots, described, Modi’s statement on religious freedom as a “positive development”. The reference was to Modi’s remarks an event honouring Indian Catholic saints in mid-February.
The USCIRF describes itself as an “independent, bipartisan US federal government commission” which “uses international standards to monitor religious freedom violations globally, and makes policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress.”
