India: The Biggest Hypocrisy in the World

by S. Hewage

(October 18, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) During the last few weeks, hundreds of Christians were killed and more than a thousand were wounded. According to the latest news, tens of thousands of Christians have fled their villages and are hiding in the jungle to save their lives, while the authorities have turned a blind eye to the carnage and gross abuse taking place in the country by the hands of Hindu fundamentalists.

What crimes have these hapless people committed to be treated in such a manner? They were simply Christians, and it seems that “secular” India does not tolerate religious minorities!

While Indian politicians preaching Gandhian philosophy of non-violence to the outside world, they have done precious little to prevent gross human rights abuses and violence against their own religious minorities. This has been the pattern of India’s domestic policy over the last 50 years that has been designed to maintain Hindu hegemony while repressing the impoverished low caste citizens to prevent them moving up on the social ladder by leaving Hinduism and converting to Christianity, Islam, or even to Buddhism where their caste is immaterial.

According to the news reports, over the last few weeks, more than one hundred village churches have been burnt and razed to the ground in Orissa and Karnataka. Christians have been forced to ask clemency from Hindu gang leaders who carried out these atrocities by burning their bibles and other religious materials in bonfires. Among some of the horrendous acts of violence, Christian nuns have been gang-raped and burnt to death. A number of priests have been killed and attacked with iron rods, clubs, swords, and country-made guns by Hindu fundamentalists, who allegedly are responsible for this brutal carnage in a supposedly secular India.

India has a history of being an intolerant society towards religious minorities, and in many occasions, such acts of violence have been reportedly carried out by the instigations of powerful national political leaders. One of the well-known cases is the destruction of a Mosque in Ayodya, where leaders of a radical Hindu political party, the Barathiya Janatha Party (BJP), reportedly participated in the attack.

In these latest atrocities against Christians, it has been reported that they did not even spare women and children. Women were humiliated by being forced to walk along the road half-naked. They had been told not return to their villages unless they convert back to Hinduism.

The irony is that all this carnage took place while the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was signing a nuclear deal with the French government.

Is India stable enough to possess such highly lethal military materials? Many analysts have expressed displeasure about the way that Western governments have so eagerly rewarded India with a nuclear deal without adequate oversights. India is profoundly an unstable society with a dozen or more separatist movements engaged in violent campaigns against Indian armed forces at any given time. Most importantly, Indian political leaders have not shown maturity in maintaining even-handed policies when dealing with the country’s religious minorities. Above all, the Indian political establishment has been consistently interfering with their neighbors in order to destabilize the region. In such a volatile environment, is it wise to bring nuclear materials to India?

An equally important question is how the Indian media and political pundits have conducted themselves during these violent acts against its own people. India’s so-called liberal media and political analysts are very quick to condemn violence, even against the ruthless terrorist groups by the legitimate armed forces in neighboring countries to please India’s own local political audiences, but they are surprisingly mute when their own people commit brutal acts against religious minorities. Rarely do India’s intellectuals and the middle class show solidarity with their impoverished fellow Indians. They do not demand or advocate social and economic programs to uplift the economic conditions of these powerless Indians who are predominantly low caste Hindus. The elite Indians benefit from these low caste members of the society as they provide the cheap menial labor for the rich and powerful. They exploit these people without any remorse day in and day out. Under these conditions, when these downtrodden people seek to escape from their daily miseries, often by converting to Christianity or Islam, the Hindu extremists resents these conversions, and carryout brutal attacks against them. As long as India’s unsolved domestic problems remain ignored, no amount of hypocrisy of Indian politicians on the international stage can whitewash their own failures. - Sri Lanka Guardian