Push Back Western Abetted ‘Religiophobia’ Against Hindus

The Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, T.S. Tirumurti, speaking at the International Counter Terrorism Conference by the Global Counter Terrorism Council on January 18^th 2022, spoke against what he called ‘Religiophobia’ against non-Abrahamic religions. Of these, Hinduism is the biggest, with over a billion adherents in the sub-continent alone. The statement has come not a moment too soon.

That it is a renewed attempt at a formal push-back of the routine vilification in noted sections of the left-leaning formal Western media and motivated sections of the social media, is a sign of the times. Every other kind of religious prejudice, against Christians, Jews, Islam, the LGBT community, ethnic racism has been long recognised.

But a non-Abrahamic religion such as Hinduism seems to have had no defenders till now in international fora such as the UN. This is perhaps because India is not a declared Hindu Rashtra as yet, while there are many Christian and Islamic nations, as well as the Jewish State of Israel.

In addition to distortions and uncomprehending prejudice against Hindu religious and cultural practices, there a serious effort afoot to label Hinduism and Hindutva as a form of terrorism against other religions. Where there is no terrorism angle at all to Hinduism, there is a sustained campaign to raise the bogey in order to achieve an equivalence with the nearly 90% incidence of Islamic terrorism globally.

 Ambassador Tirumurti’s opening salvo was followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi echoing similar sentiments at an address to the Hindu sect of Brahma Kumaris. He said, to paraphrase, that the maligning of Hindus and Hindutva was no longer a case of ‘just politics’. And that it should be resisted by civil society, as well as religious organisations like the Brahma Kumaris, in order to set the record straight. The various Indian TV news channels, its print and digital publications as well as the social media have also taken up the entire subject matter for further elucidation and debate since.

It was pointed out, by several academics and scholars who gave their views, that Hinduphobia has deep roots.  It perhaps began with the arrival of the Mughals and other Islamic dynasties who destroyed temples and forced conversions to Islam wherever possible. The subsequent period of British rule also saw simultaneous evangelical efforts to promote Anglican or other Protestant forms of Christianity. Likewise, in Goa, the Portuguese did their best, including use of the infamous Inquisition to establish Roman Catholicism there. But all of this, no doubt infuriating to the conquerors, met with only limited success. Many Hindus, in fact a majority of them, survived all the depredations to continue with their ancient religion. This is historically unlike many countries overrun by both Christianity and Islam, where the vast majority were duly converted.

However, Hinduism was insulted, deliberately maligned and decried to the maximum extent possible over 600 years. The idea was to traumatise those who still decided to stay Hindu as practioners of a mumbo-jumbo religion.

Independent India was not a declared secular republic in 1950 when its constitution was adopted. The term was only surreptitiously inserted in the Preamble in the Seventies during the Emergency. ‘Secular’ along with ‘Socialist’ was added, in fact, after more than two decades since independence.

However, policies favoured the minorities over the majority of 80% right from the start, as India wanted perhaps to distinguish itself from the blatantly Islamic Republic of Pakistan, born out of the self-serving ‘Two-Nation Theory’ that led to enormous suffering, animosity, and bloodshed. The enormous influence of Mahatma Gandhi also cannot be discounted.

This nevertheless pernicious practice of favouring the minorities is now being evened out since 2014, after the first majority BJP/ NDA government.  This, so that the Hindus of India are given a chance to thrive in turn. While this has been a source of satisfaction and pride to those who voted for the BJP through two successive terms, it has angered those who enjoyed out-of-turn privileges under earlier dispensations.

These disgruntled elements, the minorities themselves, along with the political parties that fostered their pre-eminence, have joined hands with forces abroad who do not want to see a Hindu Nationalist government survive over the next term due in 2024, and beyond. Not only is this stretch in the saddle strengthening India as an economic and military power, making it less amenable to manipulation by China and Pakistan, but it is changing the supposedly long-established ground rules.

In the process, the defeated Opposition and its support groups sought and obtained large funds from Chinese, Pakistani, Evangelical Christian and Islamic sources abroad, other secret service funds, Khalistanis, to foment discord and effect destabilisation within the country. These methods include disruption, arson, lynchings, rapes, riots, demonstrations, road blockages, and a massive propaganda outreach.

National and international celebrities have been brought into it to endorse Opposition views via allegedly paid social media insertions. Strong lobbying efforts are on in sympathetic countries such as Great Britain. A strong India, a bigger economy than Britain, is hard to digest for the British even if they don’t say so plainly. But their publications and media outfits do- The Economist, BBC, The Guardian.

Collaborations across the Atlantic include newswires such as Reuters, Bloomberg. In America, the Leftist Islamic-Chinese infiltrated media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, are ever-ready to put out twisted reports on Modi’s India.

What is plain is that the BJP and its supportive diaspora abroad must mount a professional Public Relations and Lobbying campaign to counter the forces ranged against it. To not have paid attention professionally to this battle of perceptions till now, means that it will have to be that much more dynamic.

Political PR and strategizing, outside of that practiced by politicians themselves, is fairly new to India. Prashant Kishor is a notable home-grown example of this breed but he is, currently in terms of his influence, streets ahead of any other pretenders to the mantle. The BJP gave him his start but cast him adrift after the spectacular win in 2014. It did not replace him with anybody suitable, perhaps unable to grasp the utility.

The various BJP spokespersons, uneven in terms of their communication skills,  but thrust into the ecosphere of the television debates, are preoccupied with countering spokespersons of other political parties, mostly in a cacophony of allegations and counter allegations. There is no bandwidth left for the practice of image-building, now crying out for help.

The government’s own Doordarshan and Press Information Bureau (PIB) are clunky anomalies in today’s thrust and parry, good for issuing advertisements and covering the doings of the prime minister on an exclusive feed basis.

Prime Minister Modi has even done away with a Media Advisor from the word go. But now perhaps he is feeling the effect of the well-oiled and funded juggernaut of the Opposition that makes trouble for him and his government at every turn.

It may be better than nothing to call on the public, its ambassador in the UN, and Hindu religious organisations with foreign reach to push back, but is this enough? Are they trained in the idiom of how to influence perception? 

Where is the sophisticated PR called for in a country that will inexorably become a Hindu Rashtra without quite spelling it out, and one headed towards becoming one of the top economies of the world?

International PR and Lobbying firms must be roped in, as they evidently were in the first campaign of 2013-14. When Narendra Modi became prime minister he did not even qualify for a visa to the US because of the international bad press when he was CM Gujarat. And the efforts of the then ruling Congress/UPA. But his new PR teams pre-election, changed perceptions, as did his big win. But afterwards, all the PR was done away with.

Pakistan, for all its shortcomings, has always employed professional PR to influence opinion in  the West, particularly America. China uses it extensively, more so post-pandemic, and spends billions on it, either buying out media outlets, or its professionals, or both. It even has significant stakes in Hollywood and the various American TV/OTT entertainment producers.

India may feel it can’t afford all this, given its many priorities and limited budget.  Fair enough, but then it must live with unfair coverage, untruth based attacks on its sovereignty, dignity, image, and possibilities.

 (1,393 words)

January 21^st 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee