Violent Canadians beat up Indians in Brampton. India has a right to speak up

Canadian Hindus protesting against the attack on Hindu Sabha Temple in Brampton | Tag TV Canada | Via ANI

Should India speak up for Hindus who are being persecuted in other countries? Should we allow persecuted Hindus to come to India and offer them shelter and residency, if not citizenship?

At an intuitive level, I imagine that most Indian Hindus – and perhaps not just Hindus alone – would want to say yes. Most other global religions are no longer identified with any one country. Despite Islam‘s Arab origins, there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any Gulf nation. There are Christians all over the world; the religion’s Middle Eastern roots have been more or less forgotten by its Western adherents.

Not so with Hinduism. The overwhelming majority of the world’s Hindus come from the Indian subcontinent including Nepal (there are a few small Hindu pockets in places such as Bali but they do not amount to a significant number). So Hinduism is an Indian religion. And if Hindus face discrimination in the countries where they live, who else will they turn to if not to India?

Sadly, it’s not that simple.

There are several factors to be considered.

First of all, we may be a Hindu majority nation but we are not a Hindu state. Our Constitution gives every religion equal status. So, can the Government of India really discriminate between various religions and give preferential treatment to one? If we feel responsible for Hindus who live in other countries, then should we also feel responsible for Christians and Muslims who face discrimination in neighbouring countries – the Rohingyas, for example?

Second, Indians don’t deny that many Indian Muslims face discrimination within our country. But we take the line that this is our problem. We will sort it out ourselves. No other country, especially Pakistan, has any business telling us what to do. Once we start commenting on how other countries treat their citizens, we begin doing what we won’t let Pakistan do to us.

Third, there is the domestic dimension. We have needlessly complicated our relations with our neighbours by terming their citizens infiltrators or even termites. Our line is that we will not allow them into India, especially if they are Muslims. With a policy like that, propounded for domestic political advantage, it is hard to make any special distinctions between people from neighbouring countries without further communalising the situation.

Speak up or stay mum?

As life gets more difficult for Hindus in Bangladesh, we will have to take a call about how India will react. Do we speak up for the oppressed Hindus? Or do we abandon them to their own fate?

What about Canada? Hindus in Canada are not there because of an accident of history (like Bangladeshi Hindus). They are people who chose to leave India and make their lives in Canada. Should we still speak up for them? And do we have the right to do so?

These are complicated questions. But if you look at the historical parallels, you will find that this is not the first time we have faced such a situation.

In 1971, when the Pakistan Army launched a reign of terror in what is now Bangladesh, Hindus were a particular target. India took a deliberate decision to strongly oppose what was almost a genocide without ever openly admitting that the majority of those who came across as refugees were Hindus. Indira Gandhi’s government treated the situation as a human tragedy, not a communal issue.

But equally, there is no denying that all Indian governments of every party have always made distinctions based on religion when it comes to accepting people from neighbouring countries. When the Civil War in Sri Lanka exploded, lakhs of Tamil refugees, nearly all Hindu, fled to India. And there was never any question of not letting them in.

Moreover, the Congress government of the 1980s actively interfered in Sri Lankan affairs to help the Tamils. We trained them in guerilla warfare, we funded them and eventually, we sent in a peacekeeping force with unhappy consequences.

For the people who want to come to India for employment, a clear double standard also applies. When Bangladeshis come looking for jobs, they have to enter illegally. After all, they are the subject of political attacks and are called names by India’s top leaders.

But when Nepalis want to come, the same people welcome them. A unique arrangement allows them more or less free entry into India and the right to seek employment.

Is it a coincidence that the Bangladeshis are mostly Muslim while the Nepalis are Hindu?

Religion decides everything

Though our official position is that we do not make decisions based on religion, the truth is that we do and have always done. Sometimes politicians are wise and mature like Indira Gandhi, who refused to communalise the Bangladesh situation in 1971. But most of the time they are not.

Writing about this debate over a decade ago, I had suggested that India should abandon concealed communal distinctions and use a simple transparent test. If people of Indian origin (including those with origins in undivided India) can demonstrate that they are part of a persecuted minority in their countries of residence, then India should consider accepting them as refugees.

It would be unfair to not offer shelter to Pakistani Hindus and the Hindus and Sikhs still left in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Even when applied retrospectively, the principle holds up: the Tamils were an oppressed minority in Sri Lanka.

If we accept that basic principle, then it provides a moral and legal basis for offering Bangladeshi Hindus, who are clearly becoming a persecuted minority in Bangladesh, shelter in India. Considering Bangladeshi Muslims are not an oppressed minority but only jobseekers, this principle would exclude them from qualifying.

But that still leaves us with the question of whether we should speak up for people of Indian origin living abroad. Once upon a time, we would have seen the attack by Khalistan separatists on Hindu temples in Canada as a battle between two rival expatriate Indian-origin groups. But the extremists are clear: not only are they not Indians, they also want to break India up.

So what happened in Canada was essentially an attack on people of Indian origin by violent Canadians. In this circumstance, we have every right to speak up and I am pleased that we did.

As for Bangladesh, I am less certain about how helpful public statements from New Delhi would be. Bangladesh would have every right to treat anything India says about the conditions of Hindus there as interference in its internal affairs. It would react the same way as we do when Pakistan comments on Indian Muslims. Far better, in this case, to use quiet diplomacy and offer a new home in India to the Bangladeshi Hindus who want it.

We should be wary of interfering in the internal affairs of neighbouring countries. But as the great power in the region, it is our duty to offer shelter to people of Indian origin when they are an oppressed minority in the countries where they live.

Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)