[Released August 15, 2011]

A brief overview of the 64-year history of independent India clearly reveals that, as the nation was established as a Hindu nation for a Hindu people, India’s minorities will either hang together or be hanged separately. This reality is starkly summarized by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an investigative body of the U.S.’s State Department.

In its 2011 report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated:

“Justice for the victims of large-scale communal violence in Orissa in 2007-2008, in Gujarat in 2002, and against Sikhs in 1984 remains slow and often ineffective. In some regions of India, law enforcement and judicial officials have proven unwilling or unable to seek redress consistently for victims of religiously-motivated violence or to challenge cultures of impunity.” [1]

The 2009 report by the USCIRF was just as dire:

“Several incidents of communal violence have occurred in various parts of the country, resulting in many deaths and mass displacements, particularly of members of the Christian and Muslim minorities, including major incidents against Christian communities within the 2008-2009 reporting period…. Communal violence has continued to occur with disturbing results, and the government’s response, particularly at the state and local levels, has been largely inadequate.” [2]

Considering this summary of the situation presently facing India’s minorities, let us keep it in mind as a backdrop to the following tragic series of historical highlights of Indian state oppression of minorities.

2011 – Bharat. For the third year in a row, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) places India on its “Watch List” of countries whose governments regularly tolerate or engage in extreme violations of religious liberties.

India’s central government proves itself totally incapable of punishing police, soldiers and politicians who blatantly engage in anti-minority massacres. Police and military habitually fail to intervene to stop violence and often passively allow murder, rape and other atrocities to take place before their very eyes. Frequently, they are themselves the perpetrators of violence against non-Hindu and low-caste populations.

2008 – Orissa. Mobs of Hindu extremists rampage across Orissa, attacking local Christians who have escaped the caste system through conversion. On August 25, “a mob of up to 50 men armed with sticks, axes, spades, crowbars, iron rods and sickles” assault Sister Meena Lalita Barwa at a prayer hall, dragging the Catholic nun into the streets. [3] As the mob chants Hindu slogans and pours kerosene on a Catholic priest, Sister Meena is raped and paraded half-naked past a group of 12 police officers, who “ignored her and talked in a ‘very friendly’ manner to her attackers.” [4] In another area of Orissa, supremacists supremacists torch a Christian orphanage, burning alive at least one woman who worked there.

Attacks continue unabated for nearly a month as police do nothing to quell the violence. By late September, the situation has barely calmed as killings slow but tens of thousands remained displaced and apprehensive. Attackers continue using the most brutal tactics imaginable, torturing and raping many who otherwise survive.

Recounting the final damage, All India Christian Council records “640 Christian houses burnt, 54,000 Christians homeless, 70 deaths and another 50 people missing and presumed dead (of these, 6 Protestant pastors and one Catholic priest killed), 18,000 Christians injured, 2 women (including a nun) gang-raped, at least 149 churches destroyed, and 13 Christian schools and colleges damaged.” [5]

2003 – Punjab. Amnesty International reports: “Torture and custodial violence continue to be regularly reported in Punjab, despite the end of the militancy period in the state in the mid-1990s.” Furthermore, in its report on Punjab, the human rights organization reveals: “Virtually none of the police officers responsible for a range of human rights violations – including torture, deaths in custody, extra-judicial executions and ‘disappearances’ during the militancy period – were brought to justice, creating an atmosphere in which state officials appear to believe that they can violate people’s fundamental rights with impunity even today.” [6]

2002 – Gujarat. In Gandhi’s home state, Chief Minister Narendra Modi presides over one of the bloodiest massacres in modern Indian history. Human Rights Watch reports that nearly 2,000 Muslims are massacred by Hindu mobs and over 150,000 are displaced. Armed with the addresses of homes and businesses owned by the city’s Muslim minority, mobs systematically eliminate such people. Modi orders Gujarati police not to halt the bloodshed or even aid the victims. The U.S. State Department later concludes that Modi was implicit in the riots, directly implicating his police force. Nevertheless, Modi faces no charges and is reelected to a third term with a landslide vote.

1995 – Punjab. The Indian government pays police officers cash bounties to murder Sikhs. On the U.S. House floor, Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) states: “The State Department Human Rights Report this year said over 41,000 cash bounties were paid to police in Punjab for extrajudicial killings of Sikhs between 1991 and 1993. That was 41,000 people. Murdered…. This goes beyond just one ethnic group or one religious group. It goes into a lot of them…. This is not me talking. Read Amnesty International. Read the International Red Cross. All these human rights groups say these things.” [7]

1984 – Delhi. Led by Indian Congress MPs who distribute weapons, direct the killers and offer cash bounties, mobs commit a Sikh Genocide in Delhi and many other areas of India. Independent estimates of the dead range from 15,000 to 30,000. The violence lasts for three days.

1950 – Post-Colonial Independent India. Commonly credited with authoring India’s constitution in 1950, beloved Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar said:

“People always keep on saying to me, ‘Oh, you are the maker of the Constitution.’ My answer is I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will…. My friends tell me that I made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody.” [8]

1947 – Punjab. India’s founders abandon secularity by creating independent India as a Hindu nation and independent Pakistan as a Muslim nation. Historical Punjab straddles both new countries and so is torn in two. Over 1.2 million die or are displaced in the ensuing chaos. Meanwhile Gandhi instructs his followers: “It cannot be said that Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are separate religions. All these four faiths and their offshoots are one.” [9]

This history of India’s 64 bloody years of independence has left that country in its current divided state. Since India’s founders formed the country along Hindu supremacist lines, Indian minorities face an increasingly desolate future. The USCRIF explained in its 2009 report:

“Sangh Parivar entities aggressively press for governmental policies to promote their Hindu nationalist agenda, and adhere in varying degrees to an ideology of Hindutva, which holds non-Hindus as foreign to India….. International human rights groups have named the VHP, RSS, BJP, and Bajrang Dal as perpetrators of the violence in Gujarat, as well as other acts of violence against non-Hindus.” [10]

Citations:
1. USCIRF. “United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Annual Report 2011,” May 2011, p. 12.
2. USCIRF. “United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Annual Report 2009,” August 2009, p. 1.
3. Page, Jeremy and Rhys Blakely. “Nun Meena Lalita Barwa tells of brutal rape by Hindu mob in India.” The Times (London). October 25, 2008.
4. “VHP Vandh Turns Violent in Orissa, Churches Attacked.” All India Christian Council. August 25, 2008.
5. “Orissa Anti-Christian attacks 2008.” All India Christian Council. August 27, 2008.
6. Amnesty International. “India: Break the cycle of impunity and torture in Punjab.” January 20, 2003.
7. Representative Burton (IN). Congressional Record 141: 107 (June 28, 1995) p. H6451-H6452.
8. Bazaz, Prem Nath. The Role of Bhagavad Gita in Indian History (Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd; New Delhi, 1975), p. 619.
9. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 97, p. 465.
10. USCIRF. “Annual Report 2009,” p. 2.