SPEAKING
FREELY The
sinicization of EU-Indian
ties By Emanuele Scimia
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Aggressions against
Christians in India are not on the European
agenda. During the latest EU-India strategic
summit, indeed, talks focused only on trade and
economy. The same scene occurred few days later
between Brussels and Beijing, but with some
(token) differences.
Approaches are quite
different but the final landfall is the same. In
its relations with India and China, the European
Union (EU) continues to use a double standard
regarding human rights and
religious freedom:
silence in the case of the Indian Elephant and a
rhetorical - almost bureaucratic - whisper as
regards the Chinese Dragon. This is how clearly
emerged from the strategic summits that the EU
held with New Delhi on February 10 and four days
later with Beijing.
Apart from official
wording, the sovereign debt crisis in the Old
Continent is increasingly marked by the
"sinicization" of the EU's attitude toward the
emerging powers, in which human rights and freedom
of religion are shelved in favor of
economy-related issues. It's business as usual,
and this also goes for EU's interests in the
Indian sub-continent.
In the words of the
joint press communiqu้ after the Euro-Indian
meeting, EU-India long-standing strategic
partnership is "based on common shared values,
relating to democracy, rule of law, civil
liberties, fundamental freedoms and respect for
human rights". But, in reality, nothing was
officially said in New Delhi by European officials
(the European Council President Herman Van Rompuy
and the European Commission President Jose Manuel
Durao Barroso) about an ever more evident scar
impressed on the Indian democratic body: the
spread of interreligious violence, especially
against Christian worshippers and missionaries
(the most vexed along with Muslims believers),
stirred by Hindu ultra-nationalist groups.
The supporters of Hindutva (the Hindu
nationalism) have often blamed Christians for
forcibly converting people, not least Dalits
(untouchables under the Hindu caste system) and
Adivasis (indigenous tribals) in financial
difficulties. According to several observers,
especially within the Christian organizations in
India, converted from Hinduism to other religions
purportedly escape discrimination as many Hindu
Dalits and Adivasis continue to cope with barriers
to social advancement.
The Bangalore-based
Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) has
recently published a report shedding light on the
attacks against Christian missionaries and
churches across India in 2011. The study documents
170 incidents of this kind, particularly in the
states of Karnataka, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and
Kerala. Reported crimes include murder, maiming,
manhandling, beatings, destruction of property,
displacing and attacks on churches. And widespread
brutality is going on in 2012, as the Times of
India commented on February 10.
The
bloodiest aggression against Christians,
orchestrated by Hindu extremists, occurred in 2008
in the eastern state of Orissa, where over 100
Christian inhabitants were killed and some 5,600
displaced. Christian communities in the
sub-continent accuse Indian security forces of
tolerating and covering in many cases persecutions
against them. Persecutions that very often would
remain unpunished.
In this regard, for
instance, the latest episode under the spotlight
is the arrest of a Christian tribal leader in the
district of Kandhamal (Orissa), who has been
accused of having ties with the Naxalites, the
Maoist militants being rampant in several states
of the Indian Federation. As reported in the
AsiaNews website, over the past years Junesh
Pradhan has been a target of Hindu
ultra-nationalists for his campaigns against
anti-Christian pogroms of 2007 and 2008.
Interreligious infighting is perceived to
be an explosive matter threatening the Indian
socio-political stability, and Christian
representatives are pressing the Indian government
to approve a bill intended to curb communal
violence.
Most of attacks against
Christians in India are caused by Sangh Parivar's
militants. Sangh Parivar is the Hindu
ultra-nationalist umbrella organization gathering
several extremist groups, among which the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD). All
this formations, which are organized with their
own paramilitary branches, would be supported by
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian
right-leaning political force in opposition to the
Congress Party-led national government.
In
its Report on International Religious Freedom,
published in September 2011, the US State
Department puts violence against Christians in
India down to the shortcomings of the Indian law
and security system: the fracture between the
constitutional recognition of the freedom of
religion and the "anti-conversion" laws by which
some Indian states limit religious minorities'
national rights and fuel anti-Christian
persecution at the hands of Hindu extremists.
In some respects, communal rage is the
plastic portrayal of the persistent difficulties
within the Indian society in metabolize the
abolition of discriminations based on the caste
system. Anti-conversion laws are currently
enforced in states where Hindutva's influence is
still strong: Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh,
Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh. Apart from
Orissa, all these states are governed by the BJP.
Promotion and protection of human rights
should be the core value of the EU, EU high
representative for foreign affairs Catherine
Ashton underscored early this year. But in
cash-strapped Europe, human rights seems to come
one step behind economy and trade. The EU is
India's first partner in terms of trade and
investment: the overall bilateral trade amounted
to US$114 billion in 2010 and EU exported about
$61.6 billion worth of goods and services to the
Indian sub-continent.
The EU and India are
negotiating the signing of a free trade agreement
(FTA), whose conclusion would represent the single
biggest trade deal in the world, benefiting 1.7
billion people. The finalization of the agreement
is expected to be this fall, according to Barroso.
The aim is to double bilateral trade by the end of
2013. In a Joint Communication to European
institutions, Ashton explained that the EU's
approach about human rights is tailored to each
specific country. In China, for example, the
freedom of religion is denied. Catholics can
practice their cult only under the official
Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, while the
Christian underground community - which is in
"communion" with the pope - is oppressed by the
Chinese government rule. But the EU-China human
rights dialogue - set up in 1995 - has so far
failed to change this dynamic.
Thanks to
its status of biggest democracy of the world
(demographically speaking) and a clean criminal
record (namely, without the burden of a
Tiananmen-style massacre on its shoulder), India
can spare itself the pain of facing a fleeting
human rights dialogue with the EU. After all,
condemning either violence against religious
minorities in Pakistan or the Pakistani law on
blasphemy is far cheaper than faulting New Delhi's
record on religious freedom.
Emanuele Scimia is a journalist
and geopolitical analyst based in Rome.
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