Errors of Omission and Commission on Religious Freedom

On September 18th the U.S. commission on religious freedom held hearings on the status of minorities in Pakistan and India (See Diwanji’s report of September 19th: http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/sep/19akd.htm). Lawrence J. Goodrich, Communications Director, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said that the hearings were held immediately after Vajpayee’s departure to gain the publicity and mileage such strategic juxtapositioning would bring. The Commission’s work has had a little publicity in the Indian press, and a little bit more in some Christian publications.

For example, the Catholic World News Service reported that the Indian churches opposed the congressional hearings (Catholic World News Service, Daily News Briefs, September 14th, 2000). It said that the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) had described as “unwarranted” the hearings. Father Donald d’Souza, CBCI deputy secretary general, is said to have claimed that the “anti-Christian violence at the hands of Hindu extremists” had not crossed the “gross human rights violations situation that calls for interference in the internal affairs of the nation”. When asked why and how John Dayal, the Catholic activist co-ordinating the work of several Christian organisations, was attending the hearing Father d’Souza said that Dayal was attending the hearing in his “individual capacity and not as a representative of the Church”.

Father d’Souza accomplishes by this word play a number of things: he accuses “Hindu extremists” of “anti-Christian” violence; he leaves room for an about-face later if the strategy by church organisations so warrants; he contemplates a situation where there could be gross human rights violations by the “majority” against the “minorities”; he positions the church as a wary observer of religious conflicts in India, and thus as a putative interlocutor with foreign agencies and governments on these matters if it comes to that; ignores the fact that the church has propagated anti-Hindu literature around the country; that the church has an agenda of harvesting souls for Christ; that leaders of the church, including the former Archbishop Alan de Lastic, were active in the anti-BJP/RSS propaganda the past two years.

Goodrich, responding to a request by an Indian-American group for more information on the hearings, said that human rights abuses had reached such proportions in India that the Commission felt it imperative to hold the hearings. He pointed out that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Freedom Act of 1998 to give independent recommendations to the executive branch and the Congress. He said that the State Department, earlier in September, had issued its Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for the year 2000, and that the chapters on both India and Pakistan revealed “grave violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the governments of those two countries -- findings confirmed by information available from other sources, such as non-governmental organisations”. Not only is this a serious charge by the Commission but this is judgement arrived at before the actual hearings.

Goodrich claims that the Commission was so concerned about religious persecution in both countries that on July 28th it wrote to the State Department asking it to keep close watch on the two countries. He also says that “the Commission took great care to ensure representation at our hearing from as many groups and points of view as possible”. In a letter dated September 6th Chairman Elliott Abrams had urged President Clinton to “impress on the Prime Minister (at his meeting on the 15th) that promotion of religious freedom is indispensable to healthy relations between India and the United States.” Abram’s letter claims that

1. Christian converts have been intimidated, churches and schools have been burned, nuns raped, missionaries and priests murdered.
2. Muslims continue to be the targets of vandalism and assault, sometimes under the pretext that they are advocates for Kashmiri separatism or agents of Pakistan.
3. The inaction of local authorities strongly suggests complicity. And Vajpayee’s national government has understated and failed to effectively respond to the violence.
4. All this has apparently convinced the “Sangh Parivar”, India’s grass roots nationalist Hindu organisations closely allied to the BJP, that it can foment antagonism and discrimination against non-Hindus with impunity, even when violence ensues.
5. The BJP should rebuke the intolerant rhetoric of the Sangh Parivar, legally challenge implementation of the state anti-conversion laws, and vigorously investigate and prosecute those responsible for the wave of violence against religious minorities.

But the fact that the Commission made these assertions even before the hearings in a formal letter to the President suggests that the whole process was an eye-wash, and that the Commission has already prejudged the issue without looking at all the available evidence. As to the claim that the Commission had taken “great care” to ensure representation one has to look at the above list to see that there weren’t any VHPA members or members of the Indian-American lobby presenting the “parivar’s” version or the non-parivar Hindu-Indian version. Prof. Arvind Sharma, the mild-mannered professor of Sanskrit from McGill University in Canada cannot be considered as a forceful representative of the non-Christian/Muslim Indian-American groups.

Those who were invited to present on the panel included: Ainslie Embree Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, Arvind Sharma Professor, McGill University, Mumtaz Ali Khan, Sociologist, John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council, Ghulam Nabi Fai, Kashmir American Council, and Vijay Sazawal of the Indo-American Kashmir Forum. Except for Dayal and Mumtaz Ali Khan, the others are either residents or citizens of the U.S. and Canada. Ghulam Nabi Fai’s statement did not contain anything new. He did his usual “Muslims are being persecuted in Kashmir, and the Indian Army is running rampant” routine. Mumtaz Ali Khan is described as a sociologist in the press release. He writes regularly for the Bangalore based Islamic Voice. He is a member of the Indian Association of Muslim Social Scientists. His presentation to the Commission is not available is not available at the time of writing this commentary. Nor is Embree’s. The person whose “deposition” seemed to fit the Chairman’s agenda was John Dayal.

Swami Agnivesh, who was also invited to present his views before the Commission opined that “The attempt on the part of U.S. to police freedom in other countries... amounts to violation of the sovereignty of other nations. While it is understandable that the U.S. would want to undertake exercise of this kind, citizens of other nations cannot aid and abet this process without compromising their national pride and patriotism”. Dayal had no such qualms.

Goodrich does not divulge in his letter how the Commission chose the presenters. For example, on what basis was John Dayal chosen? Did the Commission consider inviting a member of the Christian church hierarchy for the hearing? The Commission’s press release dated September 14th indicates that Dayal is the Secretary General of All India Christian Council. This “council” is a relatively new one, a front organisation to legitimise Dayal’s “leadership” of yet another Christian organisation. Dayal is at present the National Vice-President of the All India Catholic Union. Prior to this he was the National Secretary of the same organisation.

Why was he not invited as an office bearer of those organisations? In the copy of the written submission made by Dayal he asserts that he is making his presentation on an individual capacity, and not as a representative of the Christian community or any organization of Christians, as has been mentioned in the press release. Is it normal for the Commission to accept change in status of the members that it has invited to depose before it? Dayal’s presentation was titled “India’s Plural Culture, Secular Democracy -- Challenge and Opportunity: 100 cases of hate crimes and physical violence against Christians, January - September 2000.”

That Dayal was handpicked by the Commission for his “propaganda value” now seems to be clear. Dayal, in his presentation claimed that “The words Hindutva and Sangh Parivar will appear in my presentation. I make a sharp distinction between Hinduism the religion and Hindutva the political philosophy of the Sangh parivar, as I make a distinction between the government of the day and its political masters on the one hand, and the people of India on the other. The Hindus are a great people”.

Dayal tires to accomplish two things: to castigate the RSS and its affiliates, including the ruling BJP government, and to claim that Hindus are a “great people” to show he is a “good Christian. Dayal has not only fine-tuned his talk on minority-bashing, but his versions of it have been assiduously propagated by large sections of the Church organisations. The Religious Commission was the latest recipient of his chicanery.

Dayal presented a version of his “truth” before the Commission. He claimed that one of the reasons he was appearing before the Commission was that “some organisations of the Sangh parivar such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad are seeking recognition in the bodies of the United Nations. Such recognition will clothe these fountainheads of hate and malice in a cloak of respectability. The international community must learn of the truth behind their masks”. He goes on to say that “The Christian community is a mere 2.3 per cent, down from 2.9 per cent from when India became independent in 1947. Since 52 AD (sic) when St. Thomas first brought the Liberating Good News of Our Lord to the shore of my homeland, we have lived in peace and in a dialogue of life with our neighbours, most of them devout and God-fearing Hindus”.

Strangely or not so strangely, there isn’t one mention of an act of violence, perfidy, or terrorism in India by Christian organizations or groups or individuals. We don’t have to go back to the days of the Inquisition and the brutality of the Portuguese in Goa, like some of the “parivar” organisations did when the Pope visited India last Novermber, to challenge Dayal’s version of the Christian presence in India. Even a simple report in the media will suffice to show that there are a variety of Christian groups, both Indian and foreign, inciting conflict in India. For example, a BBC report titled “Church backing Tripura rebels” (April 18th, 2000) said: “The government in India’s north-eastern state of Tripura says it has evidence that the state’s Baptist Church is involved in backing separatist rebels.... Nagmanlal Halam, secretary of the Noapara Baptist Church in Tripura, was arrested late on Monday with a large quantity of explosives”. The Chief Minister told the BBC that Halam was found in possession of more than 50 gelatine sticks, 5kg of potassium and 2kg of sulphur and other ingredients for making explosives, and that two junior members of the same church, arrested the previous week, had tipped the police off about the explosives which were meant for the NLFT rebels. The NLFT is accused of forcing Tripura’s indigenous tribes to become Christians and give up Hindu forms of worship in areas under their control. In 1999 they issued a ban on the Hindu festivals of Durga Puja and Saraswati Puja, and their manifesto proclaims that they want to expand what they describe as the kingdom of God and Christ in Tripura.

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