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DOS Report on Religious Freedom in India
January 3, 2004 | Comments Off on DOS Report on Religious Freedom in India
Last month, the US Department of State released its International Religious Freedom Report for 2003. In its India analysis, the report discusses issues such as India’s religious demography, the legal/policy framework, restrictions on religious freedom, forced religious conversions, and societal attitudes. The report also discusses the “gradual but continual institutionalization of “Hindutva,”” discussing the spread of anti-conversion laws, the rewriting of history textbooks, and the distribution of trishuls, among other trends. The DOS report mitigates the role of the state in the Gujarat pogroms, but still warns of impunity for perpetrators of violations of human rights:
[The central Government] sometimes did not act effectively to counter societal attacks against religious minorities and attempts by state and local governments to limit religious freedom. This failure resulted in part from the legal constraints inherent in the country’s federal structure, and in part from the law enforcement and justice systems, which at times were not effective. The ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks on religious minorities could be seen by some extremists as a signal that such violence may be committed with impunity.
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