Concerns over intolerance

 US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has urged India to stand with the US in speaking out religious freedom, while hailing India as birthplace of four major world religions. In his address at India International Centre on arrival in New Delhi, he called on India to “speak out strongly together in favour of those rights for whenever we do compromise those rights, the world is worse off.” It may also be recalled that then US president Barack Obama during his visit in 2015, had said that India would succeed as long as it was not splintered along religious lines, while addressing students and invitees as the end of his visit to India. Obama was lucid with his message for religious tolerance with a pointed reference to Article 25 of the Indian constitution. Obama drew many similarities between India and the U.S., saying he was optimistic about their shared future because, “We vote in free elections, reach for similar heights, respect human rights.” He said the U.S. wanted to be “first in line” to build India’s infrastructure, including “roads, ports, bridges and airports.” Mike Pompeo’s indirect hint on the issue of religious tolerance which was earlier voiced with concern by then US president Barack Obama is something which the government of India ought to be concerned with. The spike in lynching, cow vigilante and violence unleashed by right wing extremists have not gone unnoticed in the international fora. Whether under Democrats of Republicans, the US has been vocal against any form of religious intolerance in any part of the globe. It may also be recalled that in 2018, a US federal commission, had voiced concern that religious freedom conditions continued a “downward trend” in India during 2018 as fringe nationalist groups resorted to violence, intimidation, and harassment of non-Hindus and Hindu Dalits. The US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2018 report named the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Sangh Parivar, and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) as those groups that were alienating non-Hindus or lower-caste Hindus including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, as well as Dalit Hindus, who belong to the lowest rung in the Hindu caste system. While noting India’s known history as a multicultural and multi religious society , the commission said that approximately one-third of state governments enforced anti-conversion and/or anti-cow slaughter laws against non-Hindus, while fringe mobs engaged in violence against Muslims or Dalits whose families have been engaged in the dairy, leather, or beef trades for generations, and against Christians for proselytizing, it said. The U.N has expressed concern about the targeting of minorities in India and has warned Indian officials of the consequences of their “divisive policies.” Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. human rights chief, said this in her annual report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in March 2019. Some experts charge that BJP’s alleged lack of action could translate to its support of these actions. Much has been said about the rising trend of communal violence unleashed by extreme right wing elements in India since 2014 through blatant hate speeches and rise in hypernationalism. Now that BJP has come to stay and even if one wondered for how long, the undeniable fact is that fear pervades the polity and this has to be addressed by all freedom loving Indian citizens.