A US catnip for India amidst conviviality

Vappala Balachandran
Former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

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Historically all our governments in New Delhi have been resisting foreign scrutiny of our management of internal and external policies. This includes sensitive subjects like human rights and religious freedom. We feel that they are interfering into our decision making sovereignty. In this we include UN agencies too although we have no problems in taking up our disputes to them against other countries. We feel that foreign criticism of our policies on human rights, religious freedom and free trade is a neo-colonial strategy to keep developing countries under their pressure. Hence we tell them that they are interfering into our domestic management. 

On the other hand Western nations quote the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine finalised at the 2005 World Summit and UNSC Resolution 1674 to claim that “diplomatic criticism” is more preferable to convey their displeasure rather than coercive measures like sanctions or military intervention. 

Publishing adverse reports is one such R2P strategy. Following the release of US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF- 2018) report which contained adverse remarks against minority protection in India, the CIA listed VHP and Bajrang Dal as “Militant Religious Organisations” for the first time in 2018. This was in its “Field listing” of “Political pressure groups & leaders”. The RSS was named “Nationalist organisation”, which in USCIRF’s lexicon is a militant religious organisation. 

A similar controversy is likely to erupt once we are able to understand the implications of the latest paper by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) on our religious issues’ management. On September 15 our media quoted its contents briefly saying that the rising Hindu nationalism in India, according to US Congress, was “eroding India’s secular nature and leading to new assaults on the country’s religious freedom”.  An erroneous impression was created among some sections in India that this was a riposte to the September 7 address by RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat in Chicago at the World Hindu Congress. It was not so. This well-researched Congressional Research Service (CRS) report was released on August 30, 2018. The motive for releasing this at this juncture is not very clear. 

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a separate wing of the Library of Congress to prepare bipartisan analytical reports for the use of Senators and Representatives. It examines all domestic and global issues affecting US interests and recommends policy options. Its research is joined by the Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office. All these are free from the executive branch control. In course of time the CRS has earned the reputation of being the most reliable bipartisan think tank in America with their timely, balanced and objective reports. In that way its reports are studied by all foreign countries and trade bodies to anticipate Congressional debates and law making. 

Senators’ resentment

Their report “India: Religious Freedom Issues” begins with a preamble that Prime Minister Modi, “a self avowed  Hindu nationalist and lifelong RSS member with a controversial past” was denied a US Visa “under a rarely used law barring entry to foreign government officials found to be complicit in severe violations of religious freedom”. It has flagged certain issues which are causing increased resentment among some sections of Congressional circles against India. They say that this resentment was evident even in June 2016 when the Prime Minister visited Washington DC. The report refers to a May 2016 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “when several on the panel, including Sen. 

Bob Crocker called attention to reported abuses”. It mentions that ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin, had spoken in New Delhi in June 2016 requesting India “to do better” to address issues of “violence against women, government corruption, extra-judicial killings, human trafficking, and outdated anti-conversion laws that are still in use”.  The report says that the 2014 BJP victory appeared to have empowered domestically “extremist groups that can undercut India’s and Modi government’s international standing”. It then quotes the “Time” magazine of November 2, 2015 carrying interviews of “Top Indian business leaders” that religious intolerance would harm the country’s economic interests. 

The report adds that in 2017 a bipartisan group of five senators had written to President Donald Trump to “raise the issue of India’s deteriorating religious freedom” with our Prime Minister during his visit to Washington DC. “It is unclear if the President did so”.  

Bigotry more common

It then concludes that indicators of Hindu chauvinism and bigotry are more common in India after “four years of BJP rule at the federal level and expanded power in state governments since 2014”. It says that perceived abuses “have produced friction in the US-India relationship, including within the Congress”. 

On Indo-US relations it says:  “The earlier optimism of many US policy makers and stake holders about the likelihood of expanding US-India commercial ties has given way to intensifying concerns over existing trade and investment barriers”. 

The report has used strong language against the NDA government’s policies against NGOs and religious discrimination. The report mentions that the Prime Minister has rarely condemned lynching and when he did in 2015, it was “half –heartedly” after an eight-day delay. “The 2017 seating of a hard line Hindu cleric as chief minister of India’s largest state sparked a spate of “cow protection” vigilantism in Uttar Pradesh, and shuttering of dozens of slaughter houses and 50,000 meat-selling shops, reportedly to a 15 per cent drop in India’s multi-billion dollar beef export industry, amongst the world’s largest”.

Why now? 

Our diplomats should enquire why this adverse report was released now when we are euphoric at the “Success” of the 2+2 US-India Strategic Dialogue. They should know that the US Congress and the Executive Branch do not work in tandem. Do they know that 3 Evangelicals (President Trump’s main constituents) have been appointed in May 2018 as new members of the USCIRF? Are these circles trying to sabotage Prime Minister Modi’s invitation to President Trump as the 2019 Republic Day Chief guest?