Pluralism Is Both Ancient & Enduring In India

Why the US report on religious intolerance in this country fails the smell test

- Rahul Shivshankar

For the third consecutive year, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has designated India as a “Country of Particular Concern”. It is listed along with 14 dysfunctional states including China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The panel believes that the Indian government has “increasingly emboldened Hindu-nationalist groups … enforced sectarian policies” with the presumed aim of establishing an “overtly Hindu state”. Like in the past the government is likely to call out USCIRF’s “tendentious” reportage and this reiteration won’t be too off the mark.

Failing the simplest fact-check

The report devotes significant space to NDA’s “continued enforcement of anti-conversion laws against non-Hindus”. But a simple fact-check would have revealed that BJP isn’t exclusively obsessed with cracking down on forced conversions. Many Hindus, Mahatma Gandhi no less, have considered the activity the “deadliest poison”. In the 60s and 70s, under Congress governments, several states passed anti-conversion laws. Even the apex court in a landmark judgment in 1977 upheld the anti-conversion laws.

In terms of the recent strengthening of the anti-conversion laws pertaining to marriage, USCIRF misses the fact that these laws are religion-neutral. They don’t punish any single religion and perhaps that’s why they haven’t been instantly stayed by the courts.