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President Obama took a stab again at religious intolerance in India, this time before an international audience that included the Dalai Lama in a speech that was televised nationally and globally. The last time he addressed the issue was during a his visit as Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day Jan. 26, in a national address where he called for protecting the rights of minority religions in that country.
Some Indians still smarting over those remarks were subjected to another dose at the National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 5 in Washington, D.C. when he admonished India for instances of religious persecution.
While religion was a vehicle for good, he said, it was also twisted, distorted, used as a wedge issue and even as a weapon.
“Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation,” Obama said.
He made similar comments during his last speech in New Delhi Jan. 26, when he said, “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith,” adding, that diversity was the strength of America and India. “And we have to guard against any efforts to divide ourselves along sectarian lines or any other lines.” Even though he qualified his comments with several references to infractions in the U.S. including the massacre of Sikhs at a Wisconsin gurdwara, his comments were interpreted in some quarters as a critique of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its more Hindu chauvinist wing the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, and a pointed reprimand of its recent attempts to convert Christians and Muslims to Hinduism.
The White House denied the President was implying any criticism in his speech in India. “I think that’s been somewhat misconstrued,” Philip Reiner, National Security Council senior director is quoted saying at a briefing for foreign press Feb. 3, adding, “I wouldn’t insinuate that there’s any baggage there at all.”
In fairness, President Obama named several countries at the Feb. 5 National Prayer Breakfast before mentioning India. “From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it,” he said calling ISIL “a brutal, vicious death cult” which was terrorizing religious minorities and subjecting women to rape “claiming the mantle of religious authority.”
He pointed to sectarian wars in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, anti-Semitism in Europe. Humanity, he said, has been grappling with the hijacking of religion including in Europe with the Crusades and in America where slavery was too often justified in the name of Christ, he said.
