American criticism of India

Since 2015, according to a database maintained meticulously by The Washington Post, every year around 1,000 people are shot by police officers in the US. Though around 50% of the people shot by cops are white, the rate of the fatalities of black persons is disproportionally high — they comprise less than 13% of the population of the country and are killed by the police at a rate that is double that of white Americans. The data shows that Hispanics, too, are killed by cops at a rate disproportionate to their population. There could be complex sociological and economic reasons behind the shockingly high fatalities of black and Hispanic persons at the hands of the police, but racism is undeniably a very significant factor, too. Overall, black people are four times more likely to be killed by a gun than the general population in the US — and 12 times more likely than a white person.

You would imagine, then, that a country such as the US, with an unequal present and an unrivalled record of fomenting trouble across the world, would desist from projecting itself as the world’s moral beacon and pointing fingers at others. Yet, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, releasing a State Department report on international religious freedom, observed that religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities were under threat around the world, noting: ‘For example, in India, the world’s largest democracy and home to a great diversity of faiths, we’ve seen rising attacks on people and places of worship.’

To stamp out bigotry, suggestions that are collaborative and well-meaning must be welcomed, but criticism from a self-appointed global cop will prove counter-productive, especially if it has a terrible, ongoing record of prejudice and violence against its own people — apart from supporting and arming undemocratic regimes worldwide. India, as Blinken notes, is home to a great diversity of people, many of whom are carrying on with historical grievances which, regrettably, often result in violence. The situation is made complex by inimical neighbours in a volatile region, part of it caused by the colonial project to manage communism after World War II. Comparing human tragedies is odious, but the US would do well to focus within, for there is much work to be done there, instead of pointing fingers at the rest of the world. 

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