Human Rights Group Censures Eleven Countries for Abuses Against Hindus

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) has announced the release of its report Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2006. This 200-page report covers Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir.

HAF is one organization that has its act together. I was privileged to part of their delegation for the 2005 Government Outreach Day, when we met with representatives of the Department of State and U.S. Representatives and their staffers.

Unfortunately, there are critics of HAF, such as Vijay Prashad, whose Letter to a Young American Hindu claims:

In the Diaspora, there was some reflection of this change in the Indian political landscape. The far Right moved to consolidate its agenda despite changes within India – closer ties between Indian American lobby groups and pro-Israeli lobby groups, to sharpen the idea that the Indo-Pakistani problems can only be resolved in the Israeli fashion, through force; the creation of the Hindu American Foundation (whose main campaign in 2004-05 was the Diwali resolution, and who was an active leader of the California textbooks campaign); an assault on scholars of India and Hinduism, led this time by the Infinity Foundation. [my italics]

Note that Prashad (willfullly?) does not cite the work that HAF has done in documenting human rights abuses against Hindus and taking its case to the State Department and Congress, often to Congressional representatives and staffers who are hostile to India and Hindus.

On reporting on Godhra and its aftermath

Found in IBN blogs:

The Curse of Being a Hindu in Modern IndiaIn this article, Saurabh Saksena ponders why the media focused only on Muslim victims of the Gujarat riots and not on the victims of the train fire in Godhra.

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After reading a cover story by Rajiv Chandrasekharan (formerly the  National Editor of The Washington Post),  in The Indian American, I hastily sent a letter to the editor about an article that Chandrasekharan wrote about Godhra, in he essentially blamed the victims of the Godhra train fire for their fate. In my letter, I quoted at length commentary by the lat Varsha Bhosle and Rajesh Srinavasan (with attribution, of course) on Charndrasekaran's article.

Imagine how startled I was to see an edited (mangled) version of my letter published in the next issue of The Indian American. Then imagine how overwhelmed I felt when a rejoinder by Chandrasekharan was published in the following issue, in which he told the editor that letters such as mine should not be published. He alternatively praised and blamed Indian media for the coverage of Godhra and its aftermath. He congratulated himself on interviewing many parties, including perpetrators, observers, and officials after the events. He said that Bhosle's and Srinavasan's commentary was written soon after the event, when passions ran high, when in fact, the commentaries were further removed in time, as they were reactions to his reporting.

I mean, how petty!  Rajiv Chandrasekharan was a reporter with the Washington Post.  The 2010 movie Green Zone starring Matt Damon was based on his 2006 book Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone.

Who was I?  Just someone who wrote a letter to the editor.