Melbourne

Contrary to what is being fed in international media about India, the freedom of religion is alive and well in India, writes Salvatore Babones, an associate professor at the University of Sydney in Quadrant Online.

He cracked open the conspiracy by the West to manufacture the impression that democratic India has become a kind of Hindu Rashtra (nation).

Recently, in January this year, BBC released the documentary film titled 'India: The Modi Question," which features the Gujarat riots of 2002. The film caused controversy for alluding to the leadership of Modi as chief minister during the riots while disregarding the clean chit given by the Supreme Court.

Targeting the UK, Babones cited the example of an arrested 45-year-old woman in Birmingham on December 6, 2022 for praying silently, while in India, people of many different religions regularly pray in public, often very loudly.

"In a country where most elections are decided on razor-thin margins, people with complaints about religious discrimination or harassment don't have to turn to the US State Department for help. The ballot box offers a surer, swifter, more immediate redress," said Babones.

"If any country could be suspected of harbouring a social hostility to religion, it might be today's largely atheistic United Kingdom," he added.

India is the world's largest democracy, accounting for roughly half of the world's people who are able to voice their opinions in free and fair elections, said Babones.

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Neither Hindutva nor Zionism has anything in common with the fascism described by Benito Mussolini in his Doctrine of Fascism or the Nazism described by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. Those who oppose Hindutva, like those who oppose Zionism, tend to use these morally-weighted terms not as precise descriptions of political philosophies, but as generic political insults, said Babones.