Inter-religious Domination

The Indian Constitution promises every citizen the right to live with freedom and dignity anywhere in the country. In practice, though, many forms of exclusion and discrimination continue. Three especially stark examples make the point:

• More than 2,700 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi and other parts of the country in 1984; the families of the victims feel that those responsible were never punished.
• Several thousand Hindu Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes in the Kashmir valley, and for more than two decades they have not been able to return.
• More than 1,000 people were killed in the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002, and many of the survivors have never been able to go back to the villages they once lived in.

What these three very different episodes share is that, in each case, members of one community were targeted and victimised specifically because of their religious identity — basic freedoms of a whole set of citizens were denied on that basis. Some would even call these instances of religious persecution, and they illustrate what is meant by inter-religious domination. …