Minorities given unprecedented religious accommodations in India: HAF Report

Nagpur, July 30: Religious minorities in India are given ‘unprecedented religious accommodations’ noted Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in its latest report on India titled “India: Democracy in Diversity”.

The report released on Thursday July 27, 2018 in Washington DC, USA, highlighted India’s centuries-old status as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic region, and later nation-state that is both the birthplace of four of the world’s religions, as well as refuge for faith communities fleeing persecution.

The report also stated in detail the ways in which the government of India provided unprecedented religious accommodations to its religious minority population with more than $600m allotted in 2016-17 in various benefit programs; the allowance for faith based law for both Muslims and Christians; and how India has significant minority representation at all levels of government, military and the judiciary.

The policy document of the HAF also pointed to infrequent nature of inter-religious conflict in the country, and explored its varied root causes from economic to political and from historical to religious.

“Though there have not been major riots or attacks targeting religious minorities in India in recent years, there have been reports of individual incidents involving attacks by Hindus on Christians and Muslims,” the report acknowledged. “HAF unequivocally condemns these attacks and believes that any such violence is unacceptable and contravenes Hindu teachings and India’s pluralistic ethos.”

India is a force for stability in the region, the report concludes, recommending the US continue “to strengthen relations with India…in order to bring greater stability to the region and prevent the growth of radical Islamist and Communist/ Maoist terrorism that is impacting the lives of innocent civilians, causing domestic unrest, and forcing large scale migrations of Hindu refugees (and other religious minorities) from Pakistan and Bangladesh into India.”

“This report is both timely and necessary, as its release coincided with the US State Department's inaugural Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom,” said Samir Kalra, Esq., HAF Managing Director. “Overall, it seeks to show the broader story of religious freedom and pluralism in India, which is often not, reflected in the media or US policy circles.”