The United Nations clearly seems to be taking sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict. One is seeing quite a strong reaction from the international body in response to Israel’s retaliatory air strikes and ground offensive in Gaza. The UN Human Rights Office has said that Israel’s air strikes on Gaza’s refugee camp “could amount to war crimes”.
The UN seems to be in an overdrive mode since Israel responded to the brutal Hamas attacks on its soil by declaring war. First, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the Hamas October 7 attacks on Israel “did not happen in a vacuum”. Then the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution on the Israel-Palestine conflict that called for a sustained humanitarian truce leading to cessation of hostilities. The resolution however did not name Hamas, let alone condemn the violence inflicted by the terrorist organization claiming to represent Palestine. Thus, 45 countries including Bharat abstained from voting on the resolution, and 14 including the US and Israel voted against it.
What is stark though is that the UN seems to be demonizing Israel while staying silent on the Hamas attack on Israel that led to everything in the first place. It’s also hesitant to declare Hamas a terrorist organization. Does this mean that the international body has been completely hijacked by Islamists? Well, it certainly seems like. For an international body that is supposed to impartially condemn all sorts of hatred and prejudice against different communities, the UN is indeed tight-lipped on the waves of antisemitism sweeping the world and the painful historical backdrop of holocaust and genocide because of which Jews were forced to look for land ad create their own country.
If the UN can overlook the issues of Jews in its Islamic appeasement, what hope do Hindus have? You’d be surprised to know that for all the talk on combating terrorism, the UN’s latest Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy doesn’t even recognize Hindus as the victims of terrorism. The strategy, passed in 2021, recognizes religious phobias only against Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Bharat’s Ambassador to the UN TS Tirumurti raised this issue last year as he urged the UN to recognize Hinduphobia alongside phobias against other non-Abrahamic religions such as Buddhism and Sikhism.
The UN also designated March 15 as the “International day to Combat Islamophobia” last year. Now, the word Islamophobia is rather open-ended. Even if you are condemning terrorism being carried out in the name of Jehad, you could be called an Islamophobe. If you call Hamas a terrorist, organization, you could be called an Islamophobe. The Islamist lobby is so powerful that it’s constantly strategizing to proactively silence any spaces of dissent against Islamic terrorism. The logic is: play the victim card so much that you can do anything and get away with it, and if anyone dares to criticize your action, just play the victim card again.
It’s incredible that the Hindus, the most peaceful community in the world, with zero history of violence and aggression, have no right to call themselves victims even when they have been victimized. The imagined horrors of “Hindutva” and so-called” Saffron terrorism” have had so much hard selling that there seems to be no scope for the UN to recognize violence against Hindus, let alone condemn it.
There have been so many UN resolutions sponsored by China and Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir and the supposed ill-treatment of Kashmiri Muslims, but have you ever heard of any UN resolution condemning the historical injustices meted out to Kashmiri Pundits or any resolution to protect the rights of Hindu minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh? Unfortunately, Hindus are low on both numbers and will. Apart from Nepal, and Bharat, there is no other country that can be called a Hindu-majority nation. But when it comes to Islamists, there is a huge lobby of Islamic nations relentlessly lobbying at the highest levels to proactively silence any criticism and manipulate the narrative.
We also lack documentation and research when it comes to violence against Hindus. One can see so many instances of hate crimes against Hindus in the west but there has been no systematic effort to document all this information and create some sort of figures regarding the atrocities inflicted on Hindus. Unless we have an authoritative database meticulously documenting hate crimes against Hindus all over the world in terms of statistics, we wouldn’t have much ground to argue our case.
The leftist Islamist lobby works relentlessly to create the “’minority mistreatment” narrative against Bharat at international forums like the United Nations. Bharat is relentlessly condemned by n number of UN officials on accounts of religious freedom and human rights. Fernand de Varennes, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, lamented the deteriorating “rights” situation in Bharat last month as “massive, systematic and dangerous. He basically parroted the propaganda narrative that India is becoming a dangerous place for minorities like Christians, Muslims, etc.
We cannot stop this propaganda, but the government needs to counter it more proactively. We need to throw statistics in the face of these so-called UN officials and talk about the atrocities inflicted on Hindus in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Bharatiya mainstream media needs to be more pro in showcasing stories of violence and discrimination suffered by Hindus worldwide. Unless and until we have more widespread coverage of Hindu issues by our media and think tanks, we cannot expect the UN to shed off its Hinduphobia.
We also need to be more careful in defining the word “Hinduphobia”. Any definition must clearly include “Hindu hatred” that goes way beyond phobia. Hinduphobia isn’t just about stereotyping Hindus, mocking their beliefs, practices, rituals, etc but it’s about perpetrating violence against Hindus, considering them inhumane, and finally wishing for their annihilation.
Therefore, any lobbying to recognize Hinduphobia by the UN must emphasize that the international body takes cognizance of the systematic violence and hatred Hindus have been subjected to for centuries.
