Human Rights Situation in India

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for this debate. It is always a great pleasure to listen to my dear friend the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, and the wise way that he lays out India and its citizens.

Over the last seven or eight years, the current Indian Government have visibly gone to great lengths to remove deep-bedded cultural beliefs and traditions that prevent all people from progressing. Ensuring access to education, particularly for girls, has been at the centre of this Government’s mission through their first and second terms. The fact that they have pushed hard to enable women from the Muslim faith to get protections in the triple talaq legislation is a testament to ensuring that, regardless of their faith, women have access to their rights. This is a Government who, in the past eight years, have pushed hard for pensions and for the poorest in India’s communities to have access to bank accounts so that they can have pensions directly put into their accounts.

Of course, India is a huge country of 1.3 billion to 1.4 billion people. The birth rate is at a pace that is not keeping up with the needs of the people of India and it is right and proper that while we question the injustices and discrimination that people face, we need to do it in the context of the economy, social progress and economic progress, and of making sure that the barriers that prevent people being able to access and fulfil their potential are removed. We sit on the outside lobbing charges into India without contextualising all the progress that has taken place over the past eight or nine years.

I am one of those people who are incredibly critical of discriminatory policies of any kind, whether in India or here. I am a proud person who was born in India but has spent her whole life in the UK fighting discriminatory policies and barriers. We need to be incredibly mindful that, when we start pointing fingers, we first and foremost look at our own institutional discriminatory barriers.

When the Minister responds, will he remind us all that we have long-embedded relationships with India and other countries in the region and that all countries in the region are facing challenges? I am not going to start another debate today, but I ask the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, to look at minority communities in other countries in the region and see how they are faring and what is happening to them, so that we can have a wider debate on barriers to all communities and see how we as British parliamentarians and good friends of all those in the region can help cement cohesive internal growth.

I have often listened to some of the commentary that comes from your Lordships’ House and I ask one thing—that when comments are made, they are made on the basis of proper evidenced reporting because we do not want to add to the inflammatory discussions that take place across the waters where we have no say.

Citizenship legislation has been alluded to. If a country is to know the needs of its citizens, it needs to know who they are, where they are and what the population looks like to be able to service them properly. I have run out of time. This is a much bigger debate. I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for raising it.