The secretary-general lauded the country’s contribution to sustainable development goals. In his words, “India’s recent development journey is characterized by high impact programmes delivered at scale. This includes the world’s largest food-based social protection scheme and the massive expansion of access to clean water and sanitation services.”

Guterres also noted that India is the biggest provider of military and police personnel to UN missions. Importantly, India has provided the first all-women UN police contingent for a peacekeeping mission. More than 200,000 Indian men and women had served in 49 peacekeeping missions since1948.

One False Note

Yet Guterres was not all sweetness and light when it came to India. He gave a speech at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. During his , he gave India some unwanted advice. Guterres said, “As an elected member of the Human Rights Council, India has a responsibility to shape global human rights, and to protect and promote the rights of all individuals, including members of minority communities.” He went on to add, “India’s global role will benefit if concrete actions are taken in support of the rights and freedoms of journalists, human rights activists, students and academics.”

Guterres comes from Portugal. He could do well to remember that his forefathers brought the to India. Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498 to kick off an era of rape, murder and theft by Europeans in Asia. Unlike the British, the Portuguese did not leave in good grace. The largely pacifist Jawaharlal Nehru whom Guterres quoted had to send troops to kick the Portuguese out of Goa in .

Given the historical record, Indians do not take kindly to Europeans, and especially the Portuguese, preaching to them. The trope of India becoming less inclusive and pluralist has been bandied in Western newspapers. In New York, where Guterres resides, The New York Times has poured pure poison about India in its recent articles. The story is simple. It goes something like this. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a Hindu fascist party. It marginalizes minorities, tramples freedoms and weakens the rule of law. Ipso facto, white knights in shining armor have to ride to India’s rescue.

By preaching to India about human rights, Guterres displayed a breathtaking lack of sensitivity. Indians have noted that the likes of Guterres ignore their history of conquest, colonization and continued plunder while merrily preaching to India. India has played its part and is playing more than its part as a force for global good.

Some Key Facts

India conducts elections regularly. The BJP recently lost to the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the sensitive border state of Punjab, which was partitioned in 1947. West Bengal, another border state, is ruled by the Trinamool Congress (TMC). India has been a democracy for much longer than Guterres’s Portugal. Few remember that Portugal only became a democracy in 1975. In India, power changes hands from the BJP to the AAP or the Communists to the TMC peacefully. India is the world’s largest and most diverse democracy.

Modi’s BJP Lost to Mamata’s TMC Because of Bengali DNA

READ MORE

India also has a vibrant legal tradition. Indian courts are slow but they are not dominated by the political elite. Unlike the US where judicial appointments are a game of political football, the Supreme Court Collegium has complete autonomy to appoint judges to India’s highest court. The prime minister or parliament has no say. This is unimaginable in most countries where the political elites appoint judges. Unlike American presidents, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not appointed a single judge. Judges have appointed their fellow judges. Most of them come from elite English-speaking families that historically owe their allegiance to the Congress Party still run by the Nehru dynasty.

India upholds human rights of its citizens resolutely. Are there abuses? Of course. No country with over 1.3 billion with so many religions, ethnicities, languages, castes and communities can avoid some incidents. Yet it is in the US where Guterres resides that one in three black men “today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino boys — compared with one of every 17 white boys.” The also observes that, since 1970, “the number of incarcerated people has increased sevenfold to 2.3 million in jail and prison today, far outpacing population growth and crime.” India does a lot better in protecting rights of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and all other minorities than the US.

The World This Week: Dallas Shines Light on America’s Dark Soul

READ MORE

Importantly, India has made great progress in improving the rights and plight of women. The government banned the practice of triple talaq. Muslim men cannot utter “talaq, talaq, talaq” and get rid of their wives. The human rights of over 80 million Muslim women have improved thanks to this measure. As per , “India is on the greatest toilet-building spree in human history.” In 2018, it reported that, since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over in 2014, his government built an estimated 80 million toilets. By now, the number has crossed over 110 million. This means that women do not have to go out into the fields to defecate or urinate. Their health, welfare and dignity have dramatically improved.

India also vaccinated hundreds of millions against COVID-19 for free. It distributed vaccines to citizens regardless of class, caste, religion, sexuality or any other discriminating factor. It fed the poorest sections of the population during the pandemic too. India even sent of wheat to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan when millions faced hunger and starvation after the US abandoned this tragic country to its grim fate.

India’s humanitarian measure for Afghanistan gives the lie to of The Washington Post calling the BJP government anti-Muslim. If Ayyub’s claims are true, why would a Hindu fascist government feed millions of Muslims living under the Taliban? 

Americans forget that the Taliban gave refuge to of an Indian plane in 1999. This hijacking of a plane from Kathmandu in Nepal to Kandahar in Afghanistan is seared into India’s consciousness. The BJP was in power then and humiliatingly released three terrorists who have killed thousands since. One of the three released was responsible for abducting and killing the American journalist . Another founded Jaish-e-Muhammed that attacked the Indian parliament in 2001 and launched the devastating Mumbai attacks in 2008. The third continues to send jihadis to Kashmir. 

Despite this record, the allegedly Hindu fascist government negotiated with its Taliban counterpart and buried the hatchet. India not only fed millions in Afghanistan but also enabled their . As per , “India invested billions in development projects” in Afghanistan. The BJP government’s humanitarian assistance has saved the lives of millions of Muslims despite the fact that the Taliban government has supported jihad against India.

Less Preaching, More Respect

As a guest in India, Guterres demonstrated subcutaneous racism when preaching to his hosts. He forgot that the institution he represents is frozen in time. The winners of World War II sit in the Security Council, the masters’ table. Others sup at the servants’ table without any veto power. The masters still talk down to nations they perceive as servants.

Guterres is not from one of the five veto-wielding nations in the Security Council. Yet he comes from a country that inaugurated the European imperial age. is still the national epic of Portugal. It is a story of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India. Unlike the , this epic does not mention that “da Gama began a campaign of terror against Muslim shipping off the Malabar Coast.” In 1502, this greatest of Portuguese heroes captured Meri, a ship full of Muslims returning from their Hajj to Mecca. He burnt the 400 men, women and children on board. It took four days for all of them to die. Unlike da Gama, Guterres is not a bloodthirsty imperialist. However, like many Americans and Europeans, he suffers from the . The likes of Guterres rarely give former colonies like India their due.

But as Nobel laureate Bob Dylan sang, The Times They Are A-Changin’. Portugal no longer has an empire. Instead, it is drowning in debt. tells us that Portugal’s debt-to-GDP hit a record 135.2% in May. Other European countries are also facing a debt crisis. To make matters worse, Europe is suffering from double-digit and rising interest rates that make both further borrowing and servicing more expensive. The Russia-Ukraine War has proven to be an unmitigated disaster for this war-scarred continent.

Other dominant powers are not doing too well either. The US stands weakened on the global stage after it abandoned Afghanistan so cavalierly. Saudi Arabia and have thumbed their nose at Uncle Sam and a petroyuan trade is emerging. China is suffering from Xi Jinping’s hubris and a catastrophic zero-COVID policy. The UK has yet another new government after a third world style economic crisis. To balance its , this government is planning big tax rises and spending cuts.

Given such a grim global scenario, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has been very complimentary about India. In her , “India deserves to be called a bright spot on this otherwise dark horizon because it has been a fast-growing economy, even during these difficult times, but most importantly, this growth is underpinned by structural reforms.” India has come a long way from 1991 when it went through a thanks to decades of failed Nehruvian socialist economics.
Now, Guterres’s fellow European Georgieva is praising India for its sound economic management. A projected of 6.8%–7.1%, a robust democracy, magnanimous humanitarian aid even to hostile states, massive contributions to the UN and dynamic multiculturalism make India a force for global good. White saviors must realize that India needs less preaching, more respect. A seat at the UN Security Council would be a good start.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Portuguese UN Chief Preaches to India: Is it White Savior Complex? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Intolerance is not new to humanity. After all, ancient Athens made Socrates drink hemlock. The Catholic Church did better. On 17 February 1600, a great Renaissance mind was hung upside down naked and then burnt at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori. His name was Giordano Bruno who envisioned an infinite universe whose center was everywhere and circumference nowhere, teeming with countless stars. He was also a pantheist who believed in the transmigration of the soul. The Catholic Church saw it fit to dispatch his soul to hell and his ashes to the Tiber.

Like Bruno, Rushdie was condemned to death. Unlike Bruno, he has managed to evade death for a long time after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a calling for his death. Rushdie’s editors, translators and publishers were not spared in this 1989 fatwa, In the West, even as people were celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall and, by extension, of communism, a new menace was emerging to threaten freedom and peace.

What was Rushdie’s great sin?

Well, this Mumbai-born writer authored a book, The Satanic Verses. Apparently, this book demeaned Muhammad whom Muslims consider a prophet. Iran’s supreme religious leader thought that this was reason enough to send Rushdie to hell.

Fast forward to 2022. Rushdie was giving a talk at the Chautauqua Institution. My American friends tell me this is a magical institution. The audience gets to interact with authors. There are no elaborate security checks and people can really get to know each other. This is tragically going to change because of Hadi Matar. 

The reports that this 24-year-old who reportedly attacked Rushdie had read just two pages of The Satanic Verses but believed Rushdie was “someone who attacked Islam” and deserved to die. This is madness. Actually, this is not just madness, it is medieval madness.

Throughout history, a number of the most path breaking ideas have offended someone. Today, scientists and philosophers celebrate Bruno. There is a foundation in Germany by his name. Socrates is considered the father of European philosophy. Among others, the editor-in-chief of this publication is known for using the Socratic method in his instruction. Sane people would agree that the killings of the likes of Socrates and Bruno are the great human tragedies of all time.

In my view, so is the fatwa against Rushdie and his stabbing. It brings to the fore the challenge Islam faces today in an increasingly questioning, plural and multicultural world. In an article co-authored with the eminent scholar Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed, Singh has argued that “minorities are fleeing Muslim countries and radical Islamists are taking to the sword, raising a critical question about Islam’s ability to secularize.” Their thesis is validated by Matar’s murder attempt, Iranian media calling Matar’s stabbing “” and thousands of both Shia and Sunni Muslims celebrating Rushdie’s stabbing on social media.

Macron Claims Islam Is in “Crisis.” Erdogan Disagrees

READ MORE

A case for sanity, plurality and tolerance

No two people see the world the same way. As Singh often remarks when he speaks about 51�Թ�, all of us view the world through our own prisms. No two apples are exactly the same. Any two tea bushes or any two mango trees are never the same. The same holds true for any two pigeons or any two lions or any two whales. The point I am making is simple: every living or even non-living thing in this universe is unique.

Even factory-made cars, phones, refrigerators and other mass-produced goods have tiny if unobservable differences. We live and have always lived in a heterogeneous world. Yet it is also true that human beings tend to seek homogeneity. Japanese culture imposes its tea rituals, France its laïcité and, even immigrant America, a pledge of allegiance to its flag.

We will never overcome this human instinct to achieve some form of homogeneity. However, we have to accept a base level of heterogeneity. Intolerance of diversity and plurality is insanity in an increasingly globalized world of nearly 8 billion people. It could unleash violence of terrible proportions and the loss of many lives. Even more importantly, it would create a culture of fear, imprisoning minds, dampening creativity and throttling ideas.

As a deeply spiritual Indian steeped in the Upanishadic tradition, I believe in the uniqueness of all living and non-living things. It is for this reason that I go both to the heights of the Himalayas and the shores of the Indian Ocean. My ancestral land has nearly 1.4 billion people, more than 1,600 languages, over 10 religions and hundreds of ethnicities. We have lived in relative peace for centuries. Yes, independence in 1947 was accompanied by partition but there are still more Muslims in India than either Pakistan or Bangladesh, which was East Pakistan until its independence in 1971.

Some argue this is just a historical accident. They view India as a ticking time bomb where everything will blow up in some sort of mob violence if not civil war. I disagree. It is my fundamental belief that Indian philosophy with its continuous, unbroken tradition of thousands of years has extraordinary collective wisdom and valuable lessons for mature societies.

As Singh constantly points out, the Indian Shastrarth tradition is analogous to the Socratic method. India also came up with the example of sages looking within to find insights and even enlightenment. Siddhartha was one such sage who is now known and followed from Sri Lanka to Japan as the Buddha. The essence of this tradition is not adherence to a holy book, one son of god or an infallible prophet. Instead, every being is seen as unique. All of us are drops in the ocean and the ocean itself is nothing but infinite drops coming together.

If every drop of water has the right to be unique, it follows that each of us has the right to think, speak or write what we want. It follows that blasphemy could not exist in such a society because there is no reigning god or authority figure to blaspheme against. Yes, people might get offended but they would have the right to avoid the offending individual. People could agree to disagree.

In such a society, there would be no need to burn the libraries of Nalanda or blow up the statues of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Lest we forget, these were both the work of intolerant jihadis who deemed these intellectual and artistic creations blasphemous to Islam. The Turkish general Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji destroyed Nalanda in the AD and the Taliban destroyed the invaluable 6^th century AD Bamiyan Buddhas in to the cries of Allahu Akbar.

The same intolerance that led to the slaughter of thousands of Buddhist scholars has caused both the 2015 and the 2022 Rushdie stabbing. This intolerance must end. Every individual must have infinite freedom. Freedom of expression has to be unlimited. The likes of Socrates, Bruno and Rushdie must not pay with their lives for their ideas, thoughts and works of art. Neither should anyone else.

In India, we have never had a religious authority like the Pope. There is no one holy book. The ideas of dharma, the essentially individual pursuit of righteousness, and karma, the carrying out of the dharmic action, still form the bedrock of various Indian philosophies. The idea of shishtachara where we set an example by our behavior and our lives instead of fatwa or edict has held strong in this diverse land. Such ideas prizing the individual, which Europe adopted during the Enlightenment, have limited violence in India for centuries.

A case in point are the built between 885 AD and 1000 AD by the Chandela dynasty. has called these temples the “apogee of artistic development” and lauded the ‘fabulous efflorescence of erotic sculpture.” They are one of the one “of the most stunning UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India.” To this day, hardline Islamists see these temples and want to do to them exactly what they did to the Bamiyan Buddhas.

In India, we have long seen things differently. I am an Ayyangar Brahmin from Tamil Nadu. We come from an ascetic, mathematical tradition. Our editor-in-chief is a Rajput with a Chandel grandmother. He comes from a more rambunctious, sensuous tradition. Yet neither of us claims or argues that our version of the dharmic or karmic tradition is what everyone must follow. Each of us is unique like any drop in this ocean of humanity. All of us have to learn to live together as per the ancient Indian idea of the world as one family: vasudhaiva kutumbukam.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post India’s Tradition of Tolerance Offers Lessons in Light of Salman Rushdie’s Stabbing appeared first on 51�Թ�.