‘No place for minorities in Modi’s India’
Islamabad, August 22 (KMS): World observes International Day for Victims of Acts of Violence based on Religion or Belief on 22 August and it is an occasion to highlight the plight of minorities living in India who are deprived of all fundamental rights and freedoms.
Minorities are being persecuted physically, psychologically and economically and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that India be put on its red list for severe violations of religious freedom, said a report released by the KMS, today.
Moreover, the report said, Mumbai-based Centre for Study of Society and Secularism and UK-based Minority Rights Group International have indicated that minority groups in India are increasingly encountering hate crimes, such as lynching, threats, attacks on places of worship and forced conversion. Modi government is not leaving any stone unturned to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu state), it added.
The report said non-Hindu communities are living in a perpetual state of fear on account of the discriminatory policies of Prime Minister Modi’s administration and tolerance of religious violence by Hindu-supremacists against vulnerable minorities at the state level. Purposefully, it said, anti-Christian vigilantes are sweeping through villages, storming churches, burning Christian literature, attacking schools and assaulting worshipers. The very act of worship has become dangerous despite constitutional protections for freedom of religion, it lamented.
The report said the rising attacks on Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the population, are part of a broader shift in India, in which minorities feel less safe. Though, the storm has not yet settled down regarding blasphemy by senior BJP leaders, RSS goons have flared up the sentiments of Christians by burning the Bible in Chitradurga, Karnataka, it added.
The report said the objective is clear as the plan would translate to isolate and demonize minorities so that the Hindu order is consolidated and a Hindu state is established. Advocacy Director at International Christian Concern Matias Perttula said, “Christians are being suppressed, discriminated against and persecuted at rising levels like never before in India and the attackers run free, every time,” it maintained.
