Surveillance on (Minority) Religions: An Indian Scenario
The following is a blog post from Jijo James Indiparambil, whose article “Does Surveillance Intersect with Religious Freedom?” appears in the latest issue of Surveillance & Society.
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The current state of human rights of the people of India is seriously debated due to its constant violations across the nation. Especially, unchecked attacks on Religious Minorities highlight the headlines in India these days. It is frightening to experience, over a couple of decades, how political parties contribute to human rights violations and impose dreaded control over minority religions through organizational activities that promote fundamentally racists ideologies and indulge in actions that violate human rights.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is an organization that broadcasts only Hindu supremacy across all realms of society. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political wing of RSS, seems to cover all atrocities done against minority religions and organizations. Their motto is to turn India into a Hindu nation where non-Hindus, consisting of 20 percent of Indian population, should have no rights or fewer rights than Hindus politically and federally. Similarly, the practices and incidents of Hindu fundamentalism, overlooked by the present Hindu dominated Indian government, have posed a grave menace to India as a country with a secularist heritage of unity in diversity.
The government gnawingly and miserably failed to stop or credibly investigate vigilante attacks against minority religious communities during these years. Communal and religious violence, for instance, has remained at consistently high levels in the past few years and goes against the principle of secularism and the noble heritages of India’s diversity in culture, language, creed, food habits, faith practices, religion, etc. The religious minorities, such as the Muslims, the Christians, the Sikhs, etc. have all fallen prey to Hindutva, the manipulated ideology of Hindu supremacy and ultra-nationalism, at the expense of citizens’ fundamental rights. These increasing communal riots are examples to prove the alarming effects of these Hindu extremist philosophies and the consequent publicly promoted operational strategies, which are being pursued by RSS and BJP.
There is in fact a disparity between the constitutionally guaranteed secularism and the reality that happens today through the practices of such human rights violations. The mantra of equality and justice is almost forgotten. Currently, issues of proselytism (conversion) and the movement of “Ghar Wapsi” or homecoming (reconversion) increasingly endanger the peaceful coexistence of India’s population.
This article investigates how religious minorities are surveilled, monitored, and controlled by these extremist groups with self-created, manipulative ideologies and with perverted behaviours and its alarming impacts on minority groups in India. This paper argues that minority religious communities in India are key targets of surveillance and subject to manipulative (political and religious) interests that go against Indian religious tolerance, secularism, and liberalism.
