IndiaFacts Hindu Human Rights Report launched at New Delhi: A Report

The IndiaFacts Hindu Human Rights Reports documenting persecution of and discrimination against Hindus in India was launched on August 19, 2017 and is now available for purchase.

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Blog | 26-08-2017

IndiaFacts in collaboration with Srijan Foundation launched India’s first ever Hindu Human Rights Report documenting both systematic and episodic violations of human rights, including sanctioned discrimination against Hindus by the State.

The report, published by Garuda Prakashan, focuses largely on incidents from 2015 and 2016 with some other selected incidents added in certain cases for historical context. The report was launched on August 19, 2017 by Ram K Ohri and J P Sharma, who are retired IPS officers and the authors of the book “The Majority Report”. Madhu Kishwar, the ICSSR Maulana Azad National Professor was the Guest Speaker.

The unveiling of the IndiaFacts Hindu Human Rights Report. From L to R: Nithin Sridhar, Madhu Kishwar, J P Sharma, Ram K Ohri, and Sankrant Sanu

The event was attended by around eighty people, including many media professionals and was live-streamed on our Facebook Page. You can watch the Live-Streamed video of the event here. Sankrant Sanu’s talk at the event can be accessed here.

The Front Cover of our report:

Front Cover of IndiaFacts Hindu Human Rights Report

Here are the Key Highlights from our Report:

  • The international norm is to cover human rights violations of all without making any assumptions, but national and international agencies involved in monitoring human rights often fail to track violations against diverse communities across India, simply because they are classified as ‘Hindu’.
  • In fact, Western human rights reports like USCIRF have consistently covered up extreme abuse of Hindus under the rubric of “religious freedom of minorities.”
  • Despite a so-called “Hindu-friendly” central government in India after 2014, abuses against Hindus have only continued to increase. As against 231 incidents of anti-Hindu attacks in 2015, there were 244 incidents in 2016.
  • There is a legalized discrimination of Hindu community and their interests by different branches of the government at the states and the centre: Confiscation of temple assets and government control over temple administration, RTE, discriminatory government schemes targeting particular religious communities are some of the examples.
  • In 2015, confiscation and looting of Hindu temples was among the largest violations of religious freedom in the world, yet not a single report on religious freedom tracked this violation. Successive Karnataka have repeatedly tried to take over administration of Hindu mutts and temples like Sri Kshethra Dharmasthala temple. Similarly, Successive Rajasthan governments have tried to confiscate and auction farms owned by Hindu temples.
  • There is an attempt to skew the level playing field in the private education sector against the Hindu community by the laws like Right to Education (RTE) acts. In the last three years, the government has forced closure of 7659 non-minority (aka Hindu) schools.
  • In the last 3 years, budgeted percentage increase for minorities is far higher compared to other groups like Tribals, Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Caste. Benchmark comparison shows that Ministry of Minority Affairs got Rs. 524.94 crores more, Ministry of Social Justice received Rs. 465.34 crores less.
  • Hindus have been consistently persecuted by various hostile ideologies like Dravidian extremism, Left-wing extremism, Islamist terrorism, and Christian extremism.
  • In Tamil Nadu alone there were 30 incidents of Hindu persecution involving 80 victims during 2015 and 2016. In Kerala, 6 Hindu activists were murdered in 2016 as against 4 murdered in 2015.
  • In 2015, Uttar Pradesh state government’s action forced 800 Hindu Dalits to convert to Islam. In June 2016, there was a mass exodus of Hindu families from Kairana, UP.
  • In the last 24 years, about 4224 Indians have died due to Christian terrorism. In the last 35 years, about 100,053 Indians died due to terrorism. 99.87% of these terror deaths have happened due to attacks by terrorist groups with non-Hindu affiliation.
  • Year 2015 witnessed many religiously motivated attack on Hindu women. About 64 women became victim of murder, rape, abduction and exploitation.
  • There were a total of 231 incidents of violation of religious freedom of Hindus in 2015. In 2016, this number increased to 244 incidents. West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka are states of particular concern. In the last 2 years, these states have witnessed a high level of physical attack on Hindus.
  • Our recommendations to remedy the persecution of and discrimination against Hindus include: plugging constitutional loopholes, repealing or amending draconian laws like RTEs, freeing Hindu temples, ending majority-minority discrimination in government policies, etc.

IndiaFacts has also started a twitter Hashtag “#HinduHumanRights“, wherein people can share links, reports, news items regarding Human Rights violations against Hindus in India and elsewhere. This Hashtag will serve as a documentation of all such incidents, which could be used to retrieve and document various incidents of persecution of Hindus. We request our readers and all those concerned about Hindu Human Rights to make use of this Hashtag.

Ordering a Copy of the report:

The IndiaFacts Human Rights Report is now Available for Purchase. Those who wish to order a copy, please email to [email protected]. The report will be shortly made available on Amazon, both in print and Kindle format.

Some other Snapshots from the launch Event: