[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 25, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1522-E1524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REPRESSION IN INDIA EXPOSED

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 25, 2006

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, the London Institute of South Asia recently 
published an edition of its Journal. It included many excellent 
articles on the plight of minorities in India. There were articles 
about the Sikhs, Dalits, Muslims, and others. A writer named Tim Phares 
wrote a very comprehensive article on the subject that I would like to 
share with my colleagues.
  He took note of the plight of the Sikhs, the Dalits, the Muslims, the 
Christians, and other minorities in India. He noted that Christians 
have become ``the targets of choice.'' He noted that the Indian 
constitution bans the caste system but it remains in place, a vehicle 
of oppression of minorities. He reported that India's constitution 
denies people their fundamental right of self-determination. That is 
the essence of democracy, Mr. Speaker. I don't know how a country can 
call itself democratic when it denies people such a fundamental 
democratic right.
  The article takes note of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), 
formed in support of the fascist movement, publishing a booklet on how 
to frame Christians and other minorities in fake criminal cases. It 
comments on anti-conversion laws. It details some of the violence that 
has come about due to such laws. Shouldn't a person's religion be a 
fundamental freedom, Mr. Speaker?
  The article notes the studies that have been done on the massacre in 
Chithisinghpora in which at least 35 Sikhs were murdered. It notes that 
they have come to the common conclusion that the Indian government's 
forces carried out this massacre. It notes the government's involvement 
in the Gujarat massacres. The article does an excellent job of 
detailing incident after. incident of repression against minorities in 
India.
  Mr. Speaker, we must do what we can to support freedom throughout the 
world. It is time to stop our aid and trade with India until it stops 
being the repressive regime that it is and starts being the democracy 
that it says it is. We should declare our support for a free and fair 
plebiscite in Khalistan, Kashmir, Nagalim, and everywhere people are 
seeking their freedom in South Asia.

  [From the Journal of the London Institute of South Asia, July 2006]

                          Repression in India

                            (By Tim Phares)

       It is not safe to be a minority in India. As U.S. 
     Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal.) pointed out, if you're 
     a Sikh, Muslim, Christian, or other minority, ``India might 
     as well be Nazi Germany.'' While democratic elections occur, 
     they have little effects on minorities except to change the 
     faces.
       India has committed or allowed to be committed numerous 
     actions against people (men, women and children) within its 
     borders, actions that, if committed against Americans 
     anywhere would be condemned by us as terrorism.
       In India, the overwhelming issues are caste and religion. 
     The caste system defines the rights that people enjoy based 
     on a system of social stratification founded on ancestry and 
     occupation. Unless you are born a Brahmin or other upper-
     caste Hindu, you are a slave in India. The term Brahmin, for 
     all practical purposes. incorporates all the Hindu upper-
     castes of India. The Brahmins claim that they were are the 
     ``chosen people of God.'' Brahmins believe that whatever 
     exists belongs to the Brahmin.
       Under BJP rule, a new term--Hindutva--came into use that 
     bundled all the peoples of India (except those of foreign 
     faiths--Christians Muslims and Parsis) into the fold of 
     Hinduism. A Cabinet member in the previous government led by 
     BJP was open about it. He said that in India, either you must 
     be a Hindu or you are subservient to Hinduism. Despite the 
     fact that India's constitution bans the caste system, it 
     remains the foundation of Hinduism and the Hindu supremacist 
     system.
       India's constitution ignores that India is many nations 
     brought together only under foreign imperial rule and denies 
     its peoples their right to self-determination as recognized 
     under International Law.
       The target of choice these days seems to be the Christians. 
     Indian Christians have faced many hardships. Christians in 
     India report that they or fellow believers have faced 
     threats, physical attacks, and jail time for sharing their 
     faith. Baptisms, in particular, became a significant 
     challenge for local churches. Under the anti-conversion laws, 
     anyone who chose to become baptized was legally obligated to 
     seek permission from the government, as well as provide them 
     with the name of the person performing the baptism. Fearing 
     repercussions, many new Christians did not make this outward 
     profession of faith until after the laws were repealed.
       Human-rights organizations report that more than 300,000 
     Christians in Nagaland have been killed by the Indian 
     government. In addition, tens of thousands of Christians have 
     been killed throughout the country. Priests have been killed, 
     nuns have been raped and forced to drink their own urine, 
     churches have been burned, Christian schools and prayer halls 
     have been attacked. No one is ever punished for these 
     activities.
       In 2002, the Associated Press reported an attack on a 
     Catholic church on the outskirts

[[Page E1523]]

     of Bangalore in which several people were injured. The 
     assailants threw stones at the church, then broke in, 
     breaking furniture and smashing windows before attacking 
     worshippers. The February 25, 2002 issue of the Washington 
     Times reported another church attack in which 20 people were 
     wounded. Earlier that month, two church workers and a teenage 
     boy were shot at while they prayed. The boy was injured. Two 
     Christian missionaries were beaten with iron rods while they 
     rode their bicycles home. A Christian cemetery in Port Blair 
     was vandalized. Indian police broke up a Christian religious 
     festival with gunfire.
       The Hindu militant Rashtriya Swaysmsewak Sangh (RSS), of 
     which all the leaders of the BJP and its various allies and 
     factions are members (founded in support of the Fascists in 
     Italy), published a booklet on how to file false criminal 
     cases against Christians and other religious minorities.
       The attacks on Christians continue and the oppression of 
     Christians that has been going on since Christmas 1998 is 
     unabated. In fact, the atrocities have been increasing in the 
     past year. According to Rev. Dave Stravers, President of 
     Mission India, ``There is no question that extremists are 
     trying to instill fear in Christians. They want to make 
     Christians afraid to assemble or share their faith.'' 
     These Hindu militants accuse Christians of forcibly 
     concerting people, then they forcibly reconvert them to 
     Hinduism.
       Several Indian states have passed laws forbidding anyone to 
     convert to any religion other than Hinduism. These laws range 
     from requiring a government fee for converting to forcing 
     Dalits to appear before a magistrate and prove a level of 
     education before converting. They often restrict the 
     religious speech of minority believers as those of a certain 
     income or education level are prohibited from discussing 
     religious matters with uneducated, poor Dalits.
       On January 28, 2006, a group of Christians in Madhya 
     Pradesh were engaged in prayer. A mob of Hindu militants 
     stormed the hall, a private facility, and severely beat eight 
     Christians. Five of them are still in the hospital as of this 
     writing. The attack appears to be premeditated. The attackers 
     burst in and knew precisely where to go. They arrived on 
     motorbikes, broke windows, and forced the doors open.
       On December 29, 2005 a landmine was planted in the Lengjen 
     (Ngarichan) Committee Hall in Tamenglong District which is a 
     Naga inhabited area in the state of Manipur. The land mine 
     exploded when the children of the village went and played at 
     the hall. One 12-year-old boy died in the hospital. Another 
     boy's limb was ripped off and several others were seriously 
     injured.
       On November 4, 2005, a Hindu mob attacked Pastor Feroz 
     Masih of the Believers Church of India. He was threatened 
     with death and arson. After beating Pastor Masih, the Hindu 
     militants told him that unless he and his 60 church members 
     took part in a reconversion, they would be burned to death.
       Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young 
     sons, ages 8 and 10, were burned to death while they slept in 
     their jeep by a mob of Hindus chanting ``Victory to 
     Hannuman,'' a Hindu god with the face of a monkey. Staines's 
     widow was expelled from the country, but only one person was 
     ever brought to trial for the Staines murder.
       American missionary Joseph Cooper was beaten so badly that 
     he had to spend a week in an Indian hospital. Then he was 
     expelled from India. No one has ever been brought to justice 
     for Cooper's beating.
       The missionaries are having a good deal of success in 
     converting members of the lower castes, especially Dalits, 
     also known as ``Untouchables.'' This removes the lower-caste 
     people from the stratification of the caste system, which is 
     essential to the Hindu religion and its social structure. 
     Recently, in response to the history of caste and its 
     problems, hundreds of thousands of Indians, Dalits 
     particularly, have turned away from Hinduism to join other 
     religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Sikhism. This 
     practice created a backlash from a sizeable portion of the 
     Indian population.
       Even though they are officially considered Hindus, the 
     Dalits may be the most oppressed people on Earth. The 250 
     million lower castes include 170 million people called the 
     Scheduled Castes (Untouchables) and 70 million people called 
     the Tribals. Both are looked upon by upper-caste Hindus as 
     less than human and to touch a Dalit renders a person himself 
     ``Untouchable.'' They are called impure, they are shunned, 
     they are banned from Hindu temples, and they are considered 
     to be so low on India's social scale that they are outside of 
     the caste system.
       The Untouchable Dalits and Sudras (another low caste) make 
     up 70 percent of the population of India. Most live in very 
     impoverished conditions. At least half the population of 
     India lives below the international poverty line. Forty 
     percent live on less than two dollars per day.
       A few years ago, a Dalit girl was hit across the eyes and 
     blinded by her teacher. Her crime had been to drink from the 
     community water pitcher. A Dalit constable took shelter in a 
     Hindu temple one day, only to be stoned to death by the 
     upper-caste Hindus there. Discrimination against Dalits 
     includes education inequality, economic disenfranchisement, 
     religious discrimination, a poor system of medical care, and 
     targeted violence against women. Dalit students are often 
     denied the opportunity to receive the public education 
     guaranteed by the Indian constitution. Rape is widespread and 
     massively underreported.
       On August 31, 2005, upper-caste villagers in the village of 
     Gohana burned more than 60 Dalit residences, driving over 
     2,000 Dalit families out of Gohana. In 1998, a judge in 
     Allahabad cleaned the courtroom with blessed water from the 
     Ganges River because it was previously occupied by a judicial 
     officer belonging to a Scheduled Caste.
       When Dalits are walking in the presence of a Brahmin, they 
     can be beaten or killed with impunity. Under strict 
     interpretation of the caste system, Dalits are obligated to 
     perform certain manual duties for upper-caste families 
     without compensation. These duties include cleaning latrines, 
     skinning dead animals, and crafting leather shoes, and other 
     menial tasks.
       The Sikhs are also highly victimized by the Indian 
     government. Over 250,000 Sikhs have been killed since the 
     military attack on the Golden Temple in June 1984, according 
     to the book The Politics of Genocide by Inderjit Singh 
     Jaijee. The figures were compiled by the Punjab State 
     Magistracy, which represents the judiciary of Punjab. A 
     report issued by the Movement Against State Repression (MASR) 
     showed that India admitted to holding 52,268 political 
     prisoners. Amnesty International reports that tens of 
     thousands of other minorities are also being held as 
     political prisoners. How can a democracy hold political 
     prisoners?
       According to many reports, some of these political 
     prisoners have been in custody for almost two decades. 
     Amnesty International reported last year that tens of 
     thousands of minorities are being held as political 
     prisoners. These prisoners continue to be held under a law 
     called the ``Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act'' 
     (TADA), which expired in 1995. It empowered the government to 
     hold people virtually indefinitely for any offence or for no 
     offence at all.
       In June 2005, at the observance of the Indian government's 
     1984 military attack on the Golden Temple, a group of Sikhs 
     marched, then made speeches in support of independence for 
     Khalistan, the Sikh homeland that declared its independence 
     on October 7, 1987, and hoisted the Sikh flag. For this they 
     were arrested. This follows the arrest of 35 Sikhs in January 
     2005, when they made speeches and raised the Khalistani flag 
     at a Republic Day event. Some of the leaders were held for 50 
     days without trial.
       MASR also co-sponsored with the Punjab Human Rights 
     Organization an investigation of the March 2000 massacre of 
     35 Sikhs in the village of Chithisinghpora in Indian Kashmir 
     on the eve of the visit of President Clinton to India. It 
     concluded that Indian forces carried out the massacre. The 
     apparent intent was to make use of the presence of the world 
     press to blame Muslims for massacre and vilify the resistance 
     to the occupation of the state by India. A separate 
     investigation conducted by the International Human Rights 
     Organization came to the same conclusion. So did reporter 
     Barry Bearak of the New York Times magazine.
       Recently in the state of Uttaranchal Pradesh, Sikh farmers 
     were forced out of their farms, which were bulldozed, and 
     they were thrown out of the state. They received no 
     compensation and have nowhere to go to find roof over their 
     heads or livelihood for their families. The truth is that 
     discrimination against and oppression of minority faiths is 
     so widespread that it draws little attention within or 
     outside India. Although outsiders are allowed to buy land in 
     the Punjab, Sikhs cannot buy land in neighbouring Rajasthan 
     and Himachal Pradesh. This discriminatory policy prevents 
     Sikh farmers from making a living. It has impoverished them 
     forcing many to migrate overseas.
       About 50,000 Sikhs were ruthlessly killed by the Punjab 
     Police and their bodies were secretly disposed of to hide the 
     crime. Young Sikhs were abducted, tortured and killed in 
     Police custody. Their bodies were then declared 
     ``unidentified'' and cremated incinerating all proof of the 
     Indian State's barbarity. Countless bodies were consigned to 
     the canals which abound in the Punjab. The secret cremation 
     policy was exposed by human-rights activist Jaswant Singh 
     Khalra who was arrested for publishing his report and was 
     murdered while in police custody.
       Narinder Singh, a spokesman for the Golden Temple, the seat 
     of the Sikh religion, was interviewed in August 1997 by 
     National Public Radio. He told his interviewer, ``The Indian 
     government, all the time they boast that they are secular, 
     that they are democratic. But they have nothing to do with a 
     democracy, nothing to do with secularism. They just kill 
     Sikhs to please the majority,''
       The Indian government has murdered over 300,000 Muslims in 
     Kashmir. They have sent over 700,000 troops to suppress the 
     people of Kashmir.
       On February 27, 2002, a fire on a train in Godhra in 
     Gujarat killed fifty-eight passengers, among them fifteen 
     children. This gave rise to massacres in which 2,000 to 5,000 
     Muslims were murdered. According to a policeman in Gujarat 
     who was quoted in an Indian newspaper, the government pre-
     planned the massacre. In an eerie parallel to the Delhi 
     massacre of Sikhs in November 1984, the police were kept from 
     intervening.
       In a 70-page report on the massacre, Human Rights Watch 
     reported that not a single person has been convicted in these 
     massacres. More than one hundred Muslims have been charged 
     under India's much-criticized Prevention of Terrorism Act 
     (POTA) for their alleged involvement in the train massacre in 
     Godhra. No Hindus have been charged under POTA in connection 
     with the violence against Muslims.

[[Page E1524]]

       In Lunawade village in Panchmahal district of Kashmir, 
     during the last week of December 2005, a mass grave was 
     discovered. It contained the bodies of at least 26 victims of 
     the Indian government's pogrom against the Muslims. Their 
     crime? The Kashmiri people were promised a referendum on 
     their status in 1948, but that vote has never been held. In 
     1989, when all hope of that promise being fulfilled had 
     evaporated, violent resistance began that is being ruthlessly 
     crushed resorting to pogroms and genocide that has led to 
     100,000 resistance fighters being killed by the Indian 
     military.
       The Sikhs were promised their own sovereign state by the 
     leaders of the Congress Party (which rules India today) in 
     exchange for their active support to the freedom movement led 
     by it. The Sikhs have continued to press that the promise be 
     kept. Their representatives did not sign and endorse the 
     Indian constitution for it did not fulfill that promise. 
     Instead of respecting ``the glow of freedom'' that Nehru and 
     Patel promised to the Sikhs, the government declared them a 
     ``criminal class'' as soon as the ink was dry on the 
     constitution. It is because of betrayal of such promises that 
     currently there are 17 freedom movements going on within 
     India's borders.
       Some Members of the U.S. Congress have called for sanctions 
     against India and for an end to American aid. Some have also 
     endorsed self-determination for the peoples seeking freedom 
     from India through a plebiscite on independence. The Indian 
     government's negotiations with the freedom fighters in 
     predominantly Christian Nagaland have taken a turn for the 
     worse lately, as the ceasefire there has been called off. 
     Former Home Minister L.K. Advani said that once Kashmir 
     achieves freedom. it will cause India to break apart. The 
     truth is India can only survive if it conceded the right of 
     self-determination to those areas where peoples have been 
     betrayed. India must fulfill its promises to the people of 
     Punjab, Khalistan (the Sikh homeland), predominantly 
     Christian Nagaland, predominatly Muslim Kashmir, and the 
     tribal peoples of Assam.
       India clearly has a problem with its untouchables who are a 
     majority in many states of India. It has failed to assimilate 
     or integrate them. Since they do not belong to a single race, 
     caste or religion, they are increasingly drawn towards 
     Christian egalitarianism to throw off the yoke of slavery 
     imposed by the caste system. I believe that those who ignore 
     the oppression of the low castes and foreign faiths in India 
     and declare India a `natural ally' and the friendship of the 
     `biggest democracy' a state objective of the U.S., do not 
     understand India at all. They help perpetuate systematic 
     oppression and humiliation of a vast segment of humanity--700 
     million people--who have nothing, not even hope for anything. 
     Even if India continues to make rapid economic rise as it is 
     doing, this segment of humanity would be completely bypassed.

                          ____________________