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On religious discrimination, India next only to Iraq


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For India, international recognition of its free and pluralistic society has has always been hard to come by and while things are changing, they are clearly changing slowly. A study carried out by Washington-based Pew Research Centre, the highly respected US thinktank, said India is next only to Iraq when it comes to social hostility and religious discrimination perpetrated by individuals and groups. The study titled `Global Restrictions on Religion' took into account the situation in as many as 198 countries, North Korea being the only notable exception, to derive the conclusion. India was just below Iraq and well above countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan when it came to social hostility in the country. Pakistan is at the third place right below India. The study, which claims to cover 99.5% of the world population, deals with restrictions imposed on religion not just by social groups and individuals but also by the government. Even in the case of government induced restrictions, India fares badly with its position in the top 40 countries out of the 198 mentioned. Even though the report says that "the highest overall levels of restrictions are found in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, where both the government and society at large impose numerous limits on religious beliefs and practices'' India is ranked well above them in the social hostility index. While India has fared badly on both, China has done remarkably well when it comes to social hostility even though it has done badly in the government imposed restrictions section. "Vietnam and China, for instance, have high government restrictions on religion but are in the moderate or low range when it comes to social hostilities. Nigeria and Bangladesh follow the opposite pattern: high in social hostilities but moderate in terms of government actions,'' it says. The report clubs India with Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Bangladesh as countries where large segments of the population want to protect the special place of one particular religion. This is how it explains the high social hostility index for these countries. "Many of the restrictions imposed in these countries are driven by groups pressing for the enshrinement of their interpretation of the majority faith, including through Shariah law in Muslim societies and Hindutva movement in India which seeks to define India as a Hindu nation,'' says the report. In preparing this study, states the report, the Pew Forum devised a battery of measures, phrased as questions, to gauge the levels of government and social restrictions on religion in each country. "To answer these questions, Pew Forum researchers combed through 16 widely cited, publicly available sources of information, including reports by the US State Department, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Council of the European Union, the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the Hudson Institute and Amnesty International,'' it states. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/On-religious-discrimination-India-next-only-to-Iraq-US-thinktank/articleshow/5363193.cms :((

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It is crap. We know it. But we need to do a better job of educating the world. Religious freedom is unprecedented in India. There is absolutely no state controlled religious interference. There will always be groups which will try their agenda. Such groups exist even in the US but that doesn't make the country religiously intolerant overall.

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This is a load of bull crap. On the contrary India is well know in the world as the biggest and most successful and most stable democracy. You don't become the most successful democracy in the world with too many communal differences. We are known for our unity in spite of the cultural differences in different part of the world. Don't mistake the cultural and language differences for conflicts. I know that there is a section in the world who love to think that. To them all, I give this-:finger:

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It is crap. We know it. But we need to do a better job of educating the world. Religious freedom is unprecedented in India. There is absolutely no state controlled religious interference. There will always be groups which will try their agenda. Such groups exist even in the US but that doesn't make the country religiously intolerant overall.
Pew Forum researchers combed through 16 widely cited, publicly available sources of information, including reports by the US State Department, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Council of the European Union, the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the Hudson Institute and Amnesty International,'' it states. So many sources cannot be all worng. What our netas do for narrow minded political gains in Mumbai, Gujrat etc, it does give a very bad name to the nation
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Pew Forum researchers combed through 16 widely cited' date= publicly available sources of information, including reports by the US State Department, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Council of the European Union, the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the Hudson Institute and Amnesty International,'' it states. So many sources cannot be all worng. What our netas do for narrow minded political gains in Mumbai, Gujrat etc, it does give a very bad name to the nation
You seriously think we are the second worst in the world in terms of religious freedom?
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how in the world Pakistan can be behind India??? what religious freedom are there? Minorities live like rats in that country....the other day gurudwara land was forcibly taken over
Don`t get me started lol. BTW i don`t give jack about this stuff. The gorah can never understand the culture of this area. For them, everything seems to be forced upon an individual. I give them the:finger:
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"Many of the restrictions imposed in these countries are driven by groups pressing for the enshrinement of their interpretation of the majority faith' date= including through Shariah law in Muslim societies and Hindutva movement in India which seeks to define India as a Hindu nation,'' says the report.
what a ridiculous,uninformed intrepretation. the hindutva movement has acceptance only around 20+% of india and heavily biased towards north india as geography and upper castes as social base. whereas , sharia is a universal winner among muslims anywhere in the world with centuries of tradition acting as a bottleneck on reforms. how can one gang impose so much restrictions on the country? and their only sucessful experiment is gujarat and to a lesser extent karnataka. if they were talkin about gujarat, i would have agreed.
"To answer these questions, Pew Forum researchers combed through 16 widely cited, publicly available sources of information, including reports by the US State Department, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Council of the European Union, the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the Hudson Institute and Amnesty International,''
All improper sources for govt restrictions. indian laws are the primary source here.
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