<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Whether India likes it or not, it cannot ignore serious concerns expressed on numerous occasions by visiting US officials or human rights organisations in America, over the issue of human rights. As two of the world’s most powerful and largest democracies, the US (the most powerful democracy) and India (the largest democracy) share a common thread which reaffirms equality and freedom of religion to their citizens. The American first amendment guarantees freedom, equality and religious tolerance while Article 25 of the Indian constitution also guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess and practise and propagate each one’s religion. As both the USA and India are giants of democracy, it matters how the two nations conduct their internal affairs within because the world looks at them. It may be noted that US concerns over human rights issue in India came since the Modi government came to power in 2014. Previous US president Barack Obama had also been vocal about the issue. During his second visit to India in 2015,then US president Barack Obama, before departure had warned India not to stray from its constitutional commitment to allow people to freely “profess, practice and propagate” religion. Obama told a gathering at Siri fort auditorium in Delhi, that India will succeed so long it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith but remains united as a nation. On his third and private visit to India in 2017, Obama said he met with prime minister Narendra Modi and told him that country shouldn’t be divided on sectarian lines”. Obama also told Modi that “People see the differences between each other much too vividly and miss the commonalities.” Obama’s successor, president Donald Trump on the other hand, never raised the issue.On the other hand, Trump even downplayed the violence during anti-CAA protests across Delhi while he was on a two-day official visit. After Joe Biden took over as US president, his administration has been clear on the issue. Visiting US defence secretary General (Retd.) Lloyd James Austin III told a select group of American and Indian media outlets, that he raised the issue of violation of human rights of the Muslims in Assam with the Indian side with other members of the Modi Cabinet. Austin’s concern came after Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has specially asked the Defence Secretary to raise the issue of human rights with Indian leaders during his visit. Also, more than 40 lawyers of south Asian descent had written an open letter to US President Joseph Biden, asking him to take note of the farmers’ protests and the methods of repressing it taken up by the Centre. In the previous decades, India was acknowledged and respected as a crusader of human rights across the world. It is the land of Mahatma Gandhi trying to live up to his teachings. Therefore, concerns over alleged human rights violations in India will only bracket it with countries like China, Pakistan, North Korea or Sharia-ruled Muslim countries. Recently, even India’s status as a free country has changed to “partly free”, according to an annual report on global political rights and liberties. Such matters over human rights issue, does no credit to India while it seeks to become among the world’s top economic super powers. <\/p>\n
India\u2019s changing image<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}