Absolutely unacceptable

US funding NGOs to fight ‘religiously-motivated violence’ is a sham

To be charitable to our American friends, perhaps their country’s history of alliances with tin-pot dictators, theocratic states and their own homegrown evangelist bigots has led Washington to believe that the sheer gall of the US State Department’s announcement allocating approximately USD 500,000 to Indian NGOs and/or advocacy groups who would work to "reduce religiously-motivated violence and discrimination in India" would pass uncontested. Well, they have another think coming. The Ministry of External Affairs has already sought details of the announcement from the Indian Embassy in Washington and made it clear, prime facie, that any such funding/aid has to be routed through proper channels and will have to conform to the law of the land.  That, however, is only the first step to nip in the bud this frankly mischievous move that its roots in an unholy alliance between East Coast liberals and Christian evangelist groups in the USA to promote an Abrahamic religion contextualised and liberal theory generated majority-minority discourse worldwide, supported strongly by simpatico elements of the Indian and other post-colonial states’ unthinking secularist establishment. New Delhi must bluntly tell Washington, at the diplomatic and political levels, that such a move is absolutely unacceptable. The message can be driven home behind closed doors and without rupturing the Indo-US alliance, but delivered it must be, and emphatically. India must not blink on this issue whatever the cost; for, the very notion of an Indian exceptionalism is at stake.

This is not to say that India does not need to do much, much more in clamping down on violence in the name of Religion, Culture, Tradition, Marxism/Maoism and sundry other triggers that have devalued human life on the sub-continent. But picking one sort of violence over another as less or more dangerous in a country that exists simultaneously in many different worlds which intersect with explosive violence at times only illustrates how little the American establishment knows about India. Whether it is the killings/vigilante violence over the beef issue and cow trafficking by so called Hindutva proponents, the left-wing carnage perpetuated by Maoists, the communal violence initiated by radical Muslim terror groups or communal riots in this country where every community has participated, all need to be tackled with a firm hand. As a mature, multicultural democracy seeped in the Indic liberal tradition, India has often failed herself on this front. And the loudest voices of condemnation and most genuine efforts to rectify these lapses have come from within, as they should. The Indian State apparatus is fully aware, if not fully equipped yet, to deal with this challenge which is a work in progress and has been so for over 70 years regardless of the ruling party. Springing USD 500,000 for NGOs and other single-issue advocacy groups will not help equip the Indian state to deal with religious/communal violence, it will only amplify the campaign of calumny against India launched by those whose careers have been made and inter-generational privilege secured by public displays of self-loathing before a loaded West.