How US commission’s annual report on religious freedom shows anti-India bias

America and its majority White people, descendants of often impoverished immigrants from Europe, are unable to shed deep prejudices against its black citizens. Blacks, originally from Africa, were brought in as slaves to work the southern plantations. Today, 350 years and more later, the innate racism results in a regular stream of unfair arrests and convictions, horrendous murders of young, often innocent Blacks, owing to police brutality and trigger happiness.

America is still subjected to protests, riots, arsons, lootings, and deaths owing to its divisive ways. But it is not only racist against its Blacks and Hispanic population, but it also nurtures deep religious biases. It is also rabidly anti-Hindu.

Hate crimes against Hindus, both amongst the Indian-American population and visitors, in so-called easy-going California are greater than those directed at Muslims. This violence is highlighted in a recent report by the California Civil Rights Department. Attacks against Hindus are only second to those against Jews. Muslims come third on the list. Presumably Christians, particularly White ones, are exempt. California may not be representative of the whole country but is certainly one of its most prominent states. And it is not south of the Mason-Dixon Line, infamous for the excesses of the ‘Deep South’ against Blacks.

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So every attempt to point fingers at distant India, albeit instigated mostly by people of Pakistani origin or Christian evangelists, falls into the category of brazen and rank hypocrisy. But it doesn’t stop the likes of high officials such as Anthony Blinken, a Jewish Secretary of State himself, from criticising India’s alleged human rights abuses.

Usually, the unfair and mistaken criticism does not come from presidents and secretaries of state but much lower down the ladder. Though ‘liberal’ Democrat President Barack Obama even used a state visit to India to make anti-India remarks, just before he left for the airport at the end of his Delhi visit.

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Most of the criticism comes from fairly obscure lobbies funded by Pakistan’s ISI or China to put out anti-India articles and reports.

The latest report in question, from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), alleged worsening of religious freedom in India and called for it to be designated a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC).

The USCIRF features unknowns and dubious people as commissioners. People such as Mohamed Elsanousi, educated in Pakistan; Maureen Ferguson, a Christian missionary; Susie Gelman, a Jew; another Christian missionary, Vicky Hartzler; Asif Mahmood, a Pakistani national; and so on.

Anthony Blinken is surprisingly quoted as saying, ‘In India we see a concerning increase in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, and demolition of homes and places of worship of members of minority faith communities.'

That he is endorsing the complaints of reduced operating room in India for American Christian evangelists, a powerful group in US politics, seems obvious. Blinken seems to have tacked on the rest of his sweeping statement for ballast. But the impression he gives is that he endorses the report sections on India.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has dismissed the USCIRF report outright. The part criticising India and attempting to spread misinformation was authored by a Muslim senior policy analyst, Sema Hasan. The US government, busy improving its engagement with India on multiple fronts, has so far declined to act on the repeated urgings of the USCIRF to declare it a CPC.

It is doubtful whether Hasan and cohorts have any first-hand knowledge of conditions in India. The effort is clearly to malign, using a barrage of false propaganda disguised as a responsible document.

In the recent UN meetings, Tukiye President Erdogan pointedly dropped his mention of Kashmir. This after mentioning it in highly anti-India terms since 2019. This can’t be pleasing to the Pakistanis and others trying to drum up support against India. Many more countries, previously hostile to India, will change stances as India powers its way towards becoming the third largest economy in the world very soon.

The USCIRF report criticises the Citizen (Amendment) Act (CAA), probably because it excludes Muslim refugees. Of course, Muslims, including Pakistanis, can apply for Indian citizenship by other routes. Singer Adnan Sami did so and is now an Indian citizen.

The criticism from USCIRF does not, however, take into account the dwindling Hindu and other minority populations, their deep persecution, in the Muslim majority countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

It does not write about the fact that the minority populations in India, particularly those of Muslims, have grown substantially over the 75 years since independence. It now accounts for nearly 20 per cent of the overall population of India. Indian Muslims, no second-class citizens, are prominent in various walks of life in India, including the armed forces, the judiciary, the election commission, in government bureaucracies, in the corporate world, in parliament and the state assemblies, in municipalities, the arts, popular entertainment, including films, and the digital streaming platforms.

The US chooses to take a blinkered view, probably to pander to its internal lobbies. The problem is with the anti-India portions of the media, academia, and think tanks that have made a profession of distributing lies. Is it any wonder that the MEA dismisses such reports with the contempt it deserves? America would be better served if it took the mote out of its own eye, as the Bible advises, and used the clearer vision to set its own fractured house in order.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.