http://emalayalee.com/USKeralaNewsDetails.aspx?ID=14048
Washington, D.C. (April 28, 2011) - The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) strongly criticized the listing of India, the world’s largest secular democracy, with the likes of Russia, Afghanistan, and Cuba, on a U.S. State Department advisory group’s “watch list” of violators of religious freedom. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) announced its censure of India for the third consecutive year at a news conference held at the National Press Club earlier today.

India’s inclusion came despite spirited testimony by HAF in support of India’s track record on religious freedom. Although USCIRF reported that measures to improve religious freedom are ongoing in India, it argued India should be kept on the watch list “because justice for past communal violence continues to be slow and ineffective and because of concerns about the state ‘Freedom of Religion Act(s).’”

The USCIRF decision, however, was not unanimous. Commissioners Felice Gaer and William Shaw dissented, describing the listing of India on the watch list as “ill-advised” and “inappropriate.”

HAF was the only organization invited to testify by USCIRF that demanded India’s removal from the watch list, and its arguments were echoed by the two commissioners in their public dissent. Prof. Ramesh Rao, the author of HAF’s annual Hindu human rights report, and Suhag Shukla, Esq., HAF’s Managing Director and Legal Counsel, testified before the USCIRF Commissioners in Washington, D.C. last month, arguing that India did not belong on the watch list due to its robust human rights mechanisms and independent judiciary that comprehensively probed incidents of inter-religious violence. They insisted that the “predatory proselytizing” supported by many American churches vitiates inter-religious harmony in India as well as other countries and must be considered in any comprehensive analysis of international religious freedom.

In extensive opening statements and testimony, the HAF team responded to a host of questions posed by Commissioners that focused particularly on what USCIRF labeled as “anti-conversion” laws in some Indian states, the deadly riots in Gujarat after a mob burned a train full of Hindu pilgrims in 2002, and the Orissa riots of 2007 after a Hindu spiritual leader was murdered. Over the course of the year, HAF also submitted evidence of anti-Hindu discrimination in Malaysia and Bangladesh that Rao said required Malaysia’s inclusion on any watch list and Bangladesh’s designation as a country of particular concern.

“USCIRF’s decision to club India in with a dozen or so of the worst violators of religious freedom in the world, while overlooking others, again raises questions of bias and flawed methodology there,” said Rao hours after the announcement. “The Commission’s censure of India in 2011, despite that country’s celebrated pluralism and absence of any significant recent religious discord --despite provocative terror attacks-- seems based more on a disagreement over some states’ efforts to monitor coercive and forced conversions.”

Shukla and Rao offered evidence of the Constitutional and legal accommodations provided to India’s minorities, including the existence of separate personal and family laws for Muslims and Christians, governmental subsidies for the annual Hajj pilgrimage for Muslims, and the right of all religious communities, except Hindu, to independently control their respective places of worship free from government interference. They also highlighted India’s affirmative action policies and reservations in government and educational institutions, intended to afford economic and social advantages to religious minorities.

“We are disappointed that the compelling evidence we presented did not move the majority of commissioners away from their deeply flawed assumptions about India ,” added Shukla. “But continuing to call out bias within quasi-government bodies, such as USCIRF, that lack Hindu, Buddhist, or Sikh representation, and bringing to light the damaging role that predatory proselytization plays in inter-religious relations around the globe are guiding principles and imperative for HAF