Written By B D Narayankar
Q: What are the reasons for President Obama's statement voicing concern over allegedly growing religious intolerance in India?
#SocraticNarayankar: The Pope's visit to India is still as fresh lingering in my mind. I have not forgotten his words fully endorsing conversions to be a right, in contrast to the bloated expectations of the Indians that he would advise evangelists to stop conversions.
With this statement, Obama has shown himself to be a part of the Vatican's agenda in India. And also shown he is more a Christian figure than statesman.
However, the loud clamour for a central law against conversion has disturbed the Indian missionaries - disturbed because the law will check them from wooing Hindus as part of their demographic project.
In this backdrop, Obama's statement appears to be under the spell of anti-India propaganda by a powerful network of the Christian lobby alleging that minorities face existential challenges.
The US President is pushing the Vatican agenda of stalling the anti-conversion law by pressurising Narendra Modi's government, and this should not only be flayed but opposed as it amounts to encouraging neo-imperialists to intervene in our domestic affairs.
Q: Should India learn religious tolerance and secularism from Obama and European countries?
#SocraticNarayankar: Why should we? Just look at how the US and Europe's approach have been in handling terrorism, which has boiled down to anti-Islamic rhetoric. Moreover, most European countries have officially announced a departure from multi-culturism, a case in point Italy's culture minister Dario Franceschini terming burqa a ‘mobile prison’ and Switzerland banning construction of minarets.
I don't see Obama lecturing Italy and Swirzerland, and also France which banned the hijab, which compels us to ask again and again why Obama doesn't? In my understanding it is very simple - they are not the nations boasting of Hindus as majority community.
Q: Is there any truth in Obama's statement that minorities face existential challenges in India.?
#SocraticNarayankar: There must be a diagnosis of disproportionate propaganda and pattern of such incidents. There has been a propaganda against the Modi government, which also was unleashed during Vajpayee's NDA government. There were incidents of a few churches being damaged; incidents of rapes on nuns were cited to claim that a Sangh-influenced government had been “encouraging fringe elements”.
The St. Anne’s Church in Gulbarga was attacked on June 8, 2000 along with another, St. Peter Paul Church, in Bengaluru, and literature threatening Christians was distributed. But investigation revealed the real culprits and intentions. It was the handiwork of Deendar Anjuman, an outfit backed by Pakistan’s ISI.
Such incidents are an eye-opener.
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