Paara

Fokana-Fomaa: Is unity still possible?

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) regrets that visas have not been issued by the Indian government for a USCIRF visit to discuss religious freedom conditions with officials, religious leaders, civil society activists and others in the world’s largest democracy.
As a U.S. government body, visits by the Commission must have official status. USCIRF obtained U.S. State Department support, made travel arrangements, and requested meetings with a variety of officials. Despite this, the Indian government did not issue the USCIRF delegation visas. The Commissioners were to have left the United States on June 12.
The aim of the long-requested trip was to discuss religious freedom conditions in India, home to a multitude of religious communities that have historically co-existed. India has experienced an increase in communal violence against religious communities in recent years and the USCIRF Commissioners sought to discuss the Indian government’s responses to this, and its development of preventive strategies at the local and national levels. According to information before USCIRF, the Indian justice system has prosecuted only a handful of persons responsible for communal violence and related abuses since the mid 1980s.
In 2002, USCIRF recommended India be designated a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) following events in Gujarat that resulted in an estimated 2,000 deaths. Although India was removed from the CPC list in 2005, USCIRF has continued to monitor, report, and comment publicly on events in the country, including last year’s violence in Orissa, attacks in Mumbai, and other events.
The Indian government did not offer alternative dates for a visit. USCIRF first tried to obtain visas for India in 2001. This would have been the Commission’s first visit to India.
“We are particularly disappointed by the new Indian government’s refusal to facilitate an official U.S. delegation to discuss religious freedom issues and government measures to counter communal violence, which has a religious component,” said Commission chair Felice D. Gaer. “Our Commission has visited China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and over 20 other countries. India, a close ally of the United States, has been unique among democracies in delaying and denying USCIRF’s ability to visit. USCIRF has been requesting visits since 2001.”
USCIRF issues its annual report on religious freedom each May and this year’s India section was delayed because of the planned USCIRF trip. “We wanted to hear from all sectors of Indian society, and allow these diverse perspectives to shape our report,” said Gaer. In the absence of in-country travel, USCIRF will release a report on India later this summer.
USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. USCIRF’s principal responsibilities are to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and Congress.

WASHINGTON: The Manmohan Singh government has scuppered a proposed visit to India this week by the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a US Congress-mandated organization that monitors religious rights worldwide and gives independent policy recommendations to the US President and his administration.

A USCIRF team that was to leave for New Dehi on June 12 was not given visas in time, according to an associate at the commission, who said it was done with the obvious intent of blocking the trip. “They knew we
had tickets for June 12 and the visas are yet to be given, so the inference is obvious…they don’t want us to visit,” the associate told ToI.

The Indian Embassy in Washington, the issuing authority for the visa, referred all questions to New Delhi, while acknowledging that the USCIRF team had applied for visas and the applications had been forwarded to
New Delhi as is the standard practice for all such visits.

Sources in the government, without acknowledging that the visas were deliberately withheld, said it was not a proper time for such a visit. “We really don’t care about what they report,” an official who spoke on background said. “But a high profile visit seen as having government sanctions would have raised hackles in India.” The USCIRF has in its reports criticized violence against religious minorities in India.

The official said the visa denial was not linked to the criticism of the proposed visit by the Hindu pontiff, Shankaracharya Jayendra Sarawati, who earlier this week described the USCIRF as an “intrusive mechanism of a foreign government which is interfering with the internal affairs of India,” and said the team must not be allowed to enter the country.

The Obama administration too did not press for the visit, given that US Undersecretary of State William Burns was in New Delhi around the time of the proposed USCIRF visit, preparing ground for the visit to India by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sometime in July. Most “commissioners” and staff of the USCIRF are appointees of the previous Bush administration.

Although the United States acknowledges India’s rich religious and ethnic diversity and plurality, the USCIRF has in its annual reports criticized specific episodes involving violence against religious minority, like the ones in Gujarat and in Orissa.

“We understand India’s sensitivities about being criticized for religious discrimination given its democratic and secular credentials,” a commission associate said Wednesday. “But we are concerned that some of the
judicial processes with regards to the incidents in Gujarat and Orissa are not functioning properly and we only wanted to get them going.”

Indian hardliners, especially those on the extreme right, chafe at the idea that any US body would want to scrutinize the country’s religious freedom, given its secular credentials, when it dares not interfere in fundamentalist countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where minority rights are non-existent. Senior RSS functionaries had specifically inquired repeatedly about the proposed USCIRF visit.

Describing the proposed USCIRF visit to India as “incomprehensible,” the US branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishat said as the “largest functioning democracy in the world with an independent judiciary, a statutorily constituted Human rights Commission, an independent press and other supporting organizations would appear to be quite capable of taking care of the religious freedoms and human rights of its citizens.”

“India not only offers freedom of religion under its constitution, but does not discriminate based on religion. Similar freedoms are not available in its neighboring countries,” the VHP said on a statement.

But the Indian Left and the “secular” brigade in the US, including organizations representing minorities, argue that allowing such foreign bodies to visit India and examine its record and performance enhances the country’s reputation as an open, democratic nation that has nothing to hide or fear.

A Goan couple that went on a tour to Jordan, Egypt and Israel has returned with unpleasant memories of “humiliation” by Israeli soldiers. They allege that the soldiers segregated the wife because they suspected the vermilion mark on her forehead to be “a trigger for a bomb”.
They suspected not only the ‘kumkum’ mark - a symbol for married Hindu women - but also her large hair bun, which she had tied in a typically Goan fashion. They made her untie it and remove the pins.
Shrirang Narvekar, a popular humour playwright, and his wife S.S. Narvekar had gone on the trip in May.
For the couple all was well until May 14 when they reached the Jordan-Israel border. The travel agency escorts had warned the two that they would be questioned as a matter of routine before entering Israel.
“The moment they saw my wife with her large kumkum and a big hair-bun they took her aside for further questioning and made her press the teeka with her thumb. It is a sign of marriage, what else can it be? It was highly insulting,” Narvekar told IANS.
He said his wife was also asked to remove all the hair pins, which kept her traditional hairdo in place, and was then forced to sit through a mug shot photo session of her, “as if she were a criminal”.
Recalling the incident, his wife said: “They (soldiers) thought the kumkum was some kind of a trigger for a bomb. They asked to press it three times to see if it started some kind of trigger mechanism. Once nothing happened, the soldiers with guns started laughing and jeering at me.”
The allegations come close on the heels of a group of 14 Christian pilgrims from Goa who complained that they were subjected to religious profiling by the authorities at the Israeli border in May. In their allegations, endorsed by the state government appointed Non-Resident Indian Commissioner Eduardo Faleiro, the pilgrims said that they were profiled on the basis of the names, some of which had Arabic overtones.
Narvekar said: “There has to be some sort of cultural sensitivity to these security checks.”
“I wanted to write a book on the pilgrimage which many of our Christian brothers in Goa undertake to the holy lands of Egypt, Jordan and Israel. We had no idea we had such humiliation in store for us,” the playwright said.

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