ISLAMABAD – India, under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, isundergoing immense rise of religious nationalist vigilante groups andworsening social discrimination, posing grave threat to the religiousfreedom of minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians.
This concern was expressed by the British parliamentarians in a debatesecured by MP Jim Shannon at the Westminster Hall on Thursday, terming as“most worrying and disturbing” the situation in India with regard tominorities, particularly Muslims, Christians and other ethnic groups.
MP Jim Shannon said despite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pledge tocommit to “complete freedom of faith” since his election in 2014, there hadbeen a significant increase in anti-minority rhetoric.
He quoted IndiaSpend’s analysis of Indian Home Ministry data, showing a 28percent rise in communal violence between 2014 and 2017, with 822“incidents” being reported in 2017, which resulted in the deaths of 111people and wounding of 2,384 people.
A recent Pew Research Center report, he said, revealed that India had thehighest level of “social hostility and violence based on religion or beliefof any country in the world”.
He mentioned that COVID-19 pandemic had further exacerbated problems asMuslims were accused of “deliberately spreading the virus” and labelled as“bio-terrorists” and “corona-jihadists”.
Similarly on 25 November 2020, he said, an estimated 100 Christians fromSingavaram village in India’s Chhattisgarh state were attacked as the mobburnt their Bibles and accused their victims of destroying the localculture by following a foreign religion.
He hoped to meet the Indian High Commissioner next week on the issue ofpersecution of minority group in India.
He mentioned that 80 year-old Father Stan Swamy, an advocate for the rightsof the poor and marginalised in India for 50 years, has been unjustly heldcaptive by the National Investigation Agency of India for alleged Maoistlinks.
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Jim Shannon expressed anger at the spread of anti-conversion laws in India,restricting the freedom of individuals to freely convert and deny theirright to freedom of religion or belief.
According to the US Commission on International Freedom of Religion orBelief, the Indian authorities predominantly arrest Muslims and Christiansfor conversion activities, whereas mass conversions to Hinduism often takeplace without any interference from the authorities.
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“They have double standards, powered by the anti-conversion laws and oftenwith the police’s complicity, right-wing groups conduct campaigns ofharassment, social exclusion and violence against Christians, Muslims andother religious minorities across the whole country,” he said.
MP Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) said the Indian government hadundoubtedly set an anti-Christian and anti-Muslim tone with a fact thatviolent intimidation at street level did the most harm.
Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur said, “It is a cause of concern with theChurch because Christians are being killed and beaten…There are much moreattacks than ten years ago. Fundamentalism is a real problem.”
