British Police and Government Supporting A Hindu Fundamentalist Agenda?

AWAAZ - SOUTH ASIA WATCH STATEMENT

4 MARCH 2007

BRITISH POLICE AND GOVERNMENT SUPPORTING A HINDU FUNDAMENTALIST AGENDA?

Why are the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and a government minister giving credence to dubious Hindu fundamentalist claims?


AWAAZ - SOUTH ASIA WATCH condemns what it believes to be an attempt by London’s Metropolitan Police to lend authority to dubious claims being made by Hindu fundamentalist groups in Britain. These claims mainly centre around the allegation that Muslim students on university campuses are engaging in ‘aggressive conversions’ or ‘forcible conversions’ of Hindu and Sikh girls.
On 21 February 2007, the Hindu Forum of Britain and National Hindu Students Forum (NHSF) held a ‘Hindu Security Conference’ at the London School of Economics. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, was a keynote speaker and a number of senior policemen, including officers from Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad and Diversity Directorate, were present. Tony McNulty, the Minister for Policing and Security, was also a keynote speaker. The audience was mainly composed of about 120 students.

THE ‘AGGRESSIVE CONVERSIONS’ CLAIM

At a conference workshop on the subject of ‘campus security’, chaired by a police officer from the Met’s Diversity Directorate, NHSF students related accounts of what they described as aggressive conversions. These were the worst examples they presented: one Hindu male student described how a Muslim friend has suggested he come to a lecture on the meaning of Islam. In another case, a group of Muslim students allegedly told a Hindu male student that he should convert to Islam and predicted that, by the end of the university term, he would do so—a statement which this student felt carried an element of menace. Both these were defined as examples of ‘aggressive conversions’. Mention was made of leaflets, alleged to have been produced by Islamic organisations and distributed on campuses, in which instructions were given on how to convert Hindu and Sikh girls by getting them drunk. Such leaflets have long been used by groups on all sides wanting to stir up trouble in British Asian communities. Police officers, in the past, have generally dismissed them as a hoax.

WHY ONLY MUSLIMS?

The poster for the Hindu Security conference advertised ‘radicalisation and violent extremism’ as one of the topics under discussion. But, in fact, the only extremism under discussion was of the Islamist kind. At the conference, a representative of the Union of Jewish Students described what he regarded as a special relationship between Hindus and Jews, explaining that what Israel faces in Palestine is the same as what India faces in Kashmir. Islamic societies on campuses were being singled out as the sole guilty parties on conversions. When one attendee at the workshop pointed out that many evangelical religious organisations, including Christian ones, attempt to convert students, the police officer chairing the workshop said they were only interested in Muslim attempts at converting people. At one point in the conference, an officer from Scotland Yard’s SO15 Counter Terrorist Command showed an al-Qaida propaganda video, explaining that it was important for the audience to know what Muslim students were being exposed to. Awaaz believes that this is a reprehensible attempt to link violent terrorist organisations and acts with the separate issue of alleged forcible conversions in the UK.

WHAT THE PAPERS REPORTED

The day after the Hindu Security event, a number of articles on ‘aggressive conversions’ appeared in the press. The Metro wrote of ‘Muslim extremists who try to force teenage Hindu girls to convert’ and spoke of a ‘new police crackdown’ (22 February 2007). Ian Blair was quoted as saying ‘There is a feeling in the Hindu community that we have not given them as much attention as other groups.’ In the Daily Mail (22 February 2007), Blair also spoke of the need to clamp down on ‘aggressive conversions’ by ‘extremist Muslims’. Both newspaper articles reported uncritically the Hindu Forum of Britain’s allegations that ‘hundreds of mostly Sikh and Hindu girls’ are being ‘terrorised’ into converting.

AWAAZ’S VIEW

Neither at the conference nor in subsequent newspaper reports was there any
solid evidence of coercion. Awaaz strongly condemns any attempt to intimidate or threaten students into religious conversion or religious conformity and believes that this must be tackled by university authorities. We condemn, for example, some reported incidents of Islamist groups trying to coerce Muslim women into wearing the hijab. But we believe that the National Hindu Students Forum is grossly exaggerating the issue of ‘aggressive conversions’ as part of its own political agenda. It is indulging in dangerous and divisive scare-mongering. The organisation itself, and the claims it is making, are being given undue credibility by the police and the government. The National Hindu Student’s Forum is an organisation closely allied to Indian Hindu supremacist groups, such as the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). The RSS, once banned in India because of its fascist and violent history, has a virulent anti-Muslim agenda and pursues this effectively through its sister organisations abroad. Indian groups with links to the RSS are often also anti-Christian (more information on these groups is available on our website: www.awaazsaw.org). Neither the British organisations nor the Indian ones represent the majority of Hindus in either country. Awaaz believes that the NHSF in Britain is trying to turn any kind of conversion—whether coercive or not—into a matter involving the police and criminal justice system. This agenda has been imported directly from Hindu supremacist groups in India, such as the violent Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an organisation that the Hindu Forum of Britain has defended. A number of anti-conversion laws have been introduced in some Indian states after successful lobbying by these groups. These are part of an anti-Muslim and anti-Christian communal politics which has led to restrictions on religious freedom in India.

Hindu supremacist organisations in Britain have long targeted campuses in order to promote their divisive ideology. What is new is the overt collusion of the police in a political agenda that is itself a serious threat to community cohesion.
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