A two hour-long debate on how Muslims and Christians are treated in India fired up MPs... in the British parliament.
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00:00If you want to be a Christian, you have a right to be a Christian.
00:03If you want to be a Muslim, that's your choice.
00:05If you want to be a Hindu, that's your choice.
00:07Dare I say that nobody needs to feel under threat from Islam or Christianity in India.
00:15Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
00:21The question is that this house has considered the matter of persecution of Muslims, Christians and minority groups in India.
00:29I also call on the minister, who I believe is a minister who wants to help
00:37and this response I believe will reflect that,
00:41to include robust human rights provisions in any future trade and investment agreements with India.
00:47As a country with a rich and unparalleled history of religious plurality and coexistence
00:52and we've always had a good relationship near the kingdom with India.
00:55Even today, hundreds of millions of people from different religions and backgrounds live together peacefully in modern day India.
01:02However, the reason for this debate is quite clear.
01:05India is not perfect in terms of freedom of religion or belief.
01:10And there's been a concerning trend when it comes to four violations of freedom of religious belief over the past several years.
01:17This of course is not unique to India.
01:21Even in the UK, we have recently seen record highs for incidents of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and discrimination against Sikhs and other minority groups.
01:30And still the scale and trajectory of the persecution currently being experienced in India by non-Hindus is very worrying and very disturbing.
01:38I point honourable members to the words of Amit Shah, the Indian Home Minister,
01:44who in 2019 described people considered to be illegal immigrants as termites
01:49and said that a BJP government will pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal.
01:57If that's not inflamed rhetoric, if that doesn't inflame the situation, if that doesn't, Mr Chairman,
02:04hate crime by the very words of a person in power.
02:08Hinduism is the most wonderful religion.
02:11When you go to India, as I've been, you realise that it's absolutely part of the DNA of the country.
02:19And I don't condone Hindu nationalism in any way, but I do think we need to understand it.
02:26That Hindus feel that theirs is the religion of India.
02:30But although Hindus are still the overwhelming part of the population, their proportion of the population has been declining.
02:38And no doubt this engenders a feeling of threat which, dare I say it, I mean I'm not here to lecture anybody else's country,
02:47but dare I say that nobody needs to feel under threat from Islam or Christianity in India.
02:54In June 2017, in response to the growing violence of Hindu mobs known as cow vigilantes,
03:01it was the current Hindu nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who spoke out against this violence
03:09and proclaimed that killing people in the name of protecting cows was criminal, illogical and unacceptable.
03:18The state acted. It did not sanction the atrocities.
03:24Are there atrocities in India? Yes, they are.
03:28Are they often perpetrated against religious minorities? Yes, they are.
03:33Do they represent persecution by the state? No, they do not.
03:40But I would argue that India's record on minority faith stands up to scrutiny.
03:47I do not accept that there's evidence of systemic or state-sponsored persecution of religious minorities.
03:55And when it comes to protection of freedom of religion and belief,
04:00I think the more important focus of this House should be on places like Pakistan,
04:05where forced marriage and forced conversion of young Hindu and Christian women is a very serious problem.
04:12And from where Azia Bibi had to flee for her life after years of imprisonment.
04:18With Trump 2-0 in charge in India, in the form of Narendra Modi,
04:22we are witnessing before our eyes the scaling down of secular liberal rights that the Indian democracy once hailed itself for.
04:29Power politics has an interesting link with the legitimacy of an individual,
04:33and especially in the case of Narendra Modi,
04:35a man once barred from the US because of his alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat massacre
04:41that saw over 2,000 Muslims murdered and gave him the title of being the butcher of Gujarat in some newspapers.
04:49India is a great ally of the UK.
04:52However, as an ally, constructive criticism amongst friends should and must be possible.
04:59But true friendship requires not turning a blind eye to each other's faults.
05:05Imagine that there had been debates in the Indian Parliament all through the Troubles in Northern Ireland,
05:11accusing the British government of persecuting the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.
05:19I say this, Chair, not to minimise the subject which honourable members have brought for debate in this chamber today.
05:26Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
05:33But I say it to give ourselves a sense of humility and a little perspective
05:40about how we might feel as parliamentarians
05:44if legislators in India were to pronounce on our institutions from afar.
05:50Add to that fact that the UK is a former colonial power
05:56whose influence in what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
06:02was not entirely beneficent and certainly not above pitting one religious and ethnic group against the other.
06:12In this light, it is not beyond ordinary powers of imagination
06:18to conceive that people in India might not regard our intervention as either wholly welcome or appropriate.