India: Freedom of Religion

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, relating to freedom of religion, is being upheld in India.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to highlight concerns over the plight of minority faiths in India. Narendra Modi, leader of the nationalist BJP, won a landslide victory in the May 2015 Indian election, mainly on ostensibly economic issues, but after his election he has given increasing support to the Hindu extremist agenda of those who helped propel him to power. He refers increasingly to restoring dignity and power to the Hindu community. His own credentials were questioned by many in India and abroad. As Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, he failed to stop widespread violence against the Muslim community and for some years was banned from entering the UK or the USA.

Narendra Modi’s election was seen, sadly, as a green light by some Hindu extremists to make India more Hindu and to put India’s large Muslim minority, as well as Christians and Sikhs, firmly in their place. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and other human rights organisations all tell the same story of forced conversions of Muslims and Christians, with brutal rape and killing and the destruction or seizure of property. This has been paralleled, sadly, by a more general crackdown on the right to free speech.

I do not want to take up too much time reciting detailed examples of an increasing disregard of Article 18 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some of these are detailed in the excellent briefing notes prepared by the Library. I will give just a few examples to explain the fear now felt, particularly by Christians and Muslims in India. The highly respected US Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed concern in its 2015 report over the biased application of state anti-discrimination conversion laws, under which Christian preachers have been harassed and arrested, while no action has been taken against those who, by inducement or otherwise, force people to convert to Hinduism. Its report also drew attention to the increasing harassment of Muslims and Christians, particularly those who have converted to Christianity, with physical violence, arson and the desecration of churches and bibles. Although this highly respected US Commission on International Religious Freedom is allowed to function in countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China, it is now banned from entering India.

Muslims in particular are targets of Hindu extremists and are routinely accused of spying for Pakistan, of being terrorists, of forcibly kidnapping and marrying Hindu women and of slaughtering cows. Muslim villages in remote areas, particularly in Bihar, are routinely attacked. Sadly, the police, as with the mass killing of Sikhs in 1984, are either silent spectators or active participants. Discrimination against religious minorities was prevalent, as Sikhs know too well, under successive Congress Governments. Under the BJP Government of Narendra Modi the increasing attacks on minority faiths have become more blatant and are accompanied by a disturbing silence of those in power.

Under Congress, discrimination against Sikhs was direct and brutal. In the run-up to the election that put him in power, Narendra Modi himself pointed out that the Congress Government were responsible for the mass killing of thousands of Sikh men, women, children and infants in 1984. A leaked American embassy document from 1984 revealed that more Sikhs were killed in just three days than the number of people killed in the 13 years of General Pinochet’s despotic rule in Chile. More recently, Prime Minister David Cameron described the organised killing of Sikhs as,

“a stain on the post-independence history of India”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/3/14; col. 348.]

Today, the pressure on Sikhs is more subtle but perhaps even more serious. It is nothing less than an attempt to dilute Sikh identity and absorb the community into the Hindu fold. Independent and forward-looking Sikh teachings on human rights and respect for other faiths were described by the writer George Bruce as a bridge between Hinduism and the Abrahamic faiths.

In India, a continuing attempt to erode Sikh identity began with the writing of India’s constitution in which Sikhs are—without their consent—described as a subset of Hinduism. There are other ways in which independent Sikh identity is under constant attack. In India today, people with Sikh names are increasingly shown in Bollywood films and TV soaps as villains wearing the distinctive Sikh kara—a bracelet of commitment to Sikh ideals. Sikhs are also frequently shown participating in Hindu religious ceremonies involving idol worship, contrary to Sikh teachings. In many ways, this subtle erosion of Sikh identity is more dangerous than the direct discrimination of Congress Governments.

Governments with large majorities have a tendency to develop a degree of arrogance that is dismissive of the views and concerns of others. This has become a real concern in India, with the Government becoming less tolerant of dissent of any sort. This was illustrated by government reaction to students at a New Delhi university who were stopped from demonstrating against the imposition of the death penalty on a Muslim convicted of terrorism. The Union Home Minister’s intolerance of dissent was evident in his comment that:

“If anyone shouts anti-India slogan and challenges nation’s sovereignty and integrity while living in India, they will not be tolerated or spared”.

He added, “I have instructed”—the police—

“to take strong action against the anti-India elements”.

The growing assault on freedom of speech has alarmed many in India from all walks of life. Recently, a number of prominent Indians honoured for their work in arts, science and business returned their awards as a protest against curbs on free speech.

Despite my concerns, I believe that India is a wonderful country that has a lot going for it. It is a country rich in talent with a vast pool of highly educated and qualified people in business, science and the arts. But to achieve its real potential, those in positions of authority should heed the words of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who declared that the care of minorities was more than a duty, it was a sacred trust. India has a lofty constitution with grandiose pledges of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a country that is home to many different faiths, but it cannot fulfil its full potential unless it takes its religious minorities with it. Sadly, there is no sign of this happening. What can, or should, Britain do about the deteriorating attitude to human rights and religious freedom in India?

Recent pronouncements by UK Ministers on human rights are not encouraging. To my disbelief, the government Minister Michael Fallon, in the context of trade with China, actually declared that we should put human rights to one side when discussing trade. Our country rightly pushed for an international, independent inquiry into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, a small trading country, but when I asked if the Government would press for a similar inquiry into the mass killing of Sikhs in India, a larger trading partner, I received the brusque reply that it was a matter for the Indian Government.

I have, as the Minister knows, asked the same question on half a dozen occasions, and got the same unhelpful response. Do the Government agree with the words of the great human rights activist, Dr Andrei Sakharov, that there can be no real peace in the world unless we are even-handed in our attitude to human rights? Britain has led the world in many enlightened ways. Today I appeal to our Government to move from the usual anodyne comment that we take human rights very seriously and be true to Dr Sakharov’s noble sentiment in giving a more robust condemnation to attacks on freedom of worship and human rights abuse, regardless of the country in which it occurs.