Between Trump’s America, Brexit Britain and the global wave of right-wing nationalist party politics across parts of Europe and Asia, it is a tough time to be a refugee or an immigrant. Stricter border controls, hostile visa regimes, dwindling refugee acceptance rates and swelling detention centres are just some symptoms of the global anti-immigrant epidemic. This, of course, is further vilified when political leaders do not refrain from routinely dehumanising refugees and immigrants. Trump has not hesitated in referring to refugees as ‘animals’. The popular referral of Calais as ‘the Jungle’ reiterates the same imagery. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán remarked, “We don’t see these people as Muslim refugees. We see them as Muslim invaders.” Closer to home, at a recent political rally, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah openly referred to Bangladeshis as “termites eating away at India.”
The politics of othering and prejudice so as to win votes, stir fear and reiterate nation-first ideologies is not entirely new, but this concoction of ‘old-wine in new bottle’ in contemporary politics is nonetheless toxic and tangibly damaging. Zooming in on India, the revival of the contentious National Register of Citizens, an attempt to document and deport illegal Bangladeshis in Assam by the BJP-led government, does not appear procedural or apolitical. With a historical background of virulent anti-foreigner sentiment and a porous border in Assam’s riverine region, this is a pertinent issue for Bengali Muslims in the state. The names of almost four million residents were missing in the final draft of the national register that released on July 30 this year. While India assures Bangladesh that the NRC will not affect diplomatic ties, the fundamental question that emerges then is, why bother weeding out these ‘illegal Bangladeshis’ if they are not meant to return to Bangladesh? Where are these four million Bengali Muslims meant to go?
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In Dhubri, a small border town in Assam, Bengali Muslims have come under the spotlight owing to their growing visibility and assertions of identity through everyday practices of wearing skull caps and hijabs. This growing visibility is seen as an infiltration and a takeover that allegedly threatens the ‘Hindu-ness’ of Assam. Much like global narratives of Islamophobia, the Indian state relies on the narrative of terrorist and security threat. This was the premise for India’s disdainful repatriation, on October 7, of seven Rohingya-Muslim refugees.
The question of religious identity and citizenship rights in India goes even further. Over one third of India’s states now have anti-conversion laws and/or anti-cow slaughtering laws, apart from the practice of forced conversion of non-Hindus through ‘ghar wapsi’ or homecoming ceremonies. The motivation behind these events seems to explain the wider rationale behind the intertwining of religion and citizenship. The ceremonies are often based on the view that all Indians are Hindu by default, even if their families have practiced another religion for generations. It’s as if either Indians are Hindus and therefore full-fledged citizens, or their citizenship is questionable.
However, it would be disingenuous of us to wish this away as simply being an Indian problem. When we consider the sinister behaviour of the NRC towards Bengali Muslims and the wider experience of India’s religious minority communities, it is important to take an international perspective. The international community has for far too long misunderstood the role of religion in international politics and under-valued Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB).
This misunderstanding is found in a long-held belief that the world has secularised, and that while religious actors are involved in political conflicts, there is no fundamental need to understand the religious dimensions of these events or circumstances. Running parallel to this misunderstanding has been a significant drop in the religious literacy of political elites and bureaucrats. Religious literacy cannot easily be taught through a textbook and hence a lack of religious experience in the West has led to a disconnect between the West’s political engagement and much of the world’s citizens and political actors.
This disconnect has also shown its face in the way some European states treat their own religious minorities. For instance, in 2017, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) noted that the registering and monitoring of disfavoured religious groups, restrictions on forms of religious expression (such as places of worship, dress, visible symbols and parents’ rights) and the impact of counter-extremism policies on certain religious communities in Western Europe was encouraging a “societal atmosphere of intolerance against…targeted religious groups.”
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It is this disconnect which has led to the downgrading of Article 18 (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), leading the UK parliament’s All Party Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief to designate it an ‘orphaned right’. That is, within the wider family of human rights, Article 18 has been banished to the margins and is not taken seriously.
With the Pew Forum identifying restrictions on religion – whether from the government, private individuals or organisations – as ‘high’ or ‘very high’ in 83 countries around the world (this figure has increased from 59 countries in 2007), and with anti-persecution charity Open Doors reporting that over 200 million Christians worldwide are at risk of ‘high’, ‘very high’ or ‘extreme’ levels of persecution, this is certainly a serious problem.
There is no denying that freedom of religion or belief really is one of the key issues of our time as its violations are found beneath the surface of conflicts and abuses worldwide. Understanding the role of identity, whether it be religious or ethnic, is the challenge of global politics today. Francis Fukuyama recently argued that the triumph of identity politics can be used to explain both Trump and Brexit. However, this seems somewhat naïve and limited. The role of identity politics is not a mere recognition of movements like #BlackLivesMatter or #MeToo. As the accounts in this article highlight, the role of identity in politics runs deep.
The rise of identity politics should move us beyond a superficial engagement with religion, to an understanding that it widely influences worldviews and politics the world over. It is on this basis that the international community should not shy away from calling out the marginalisation of religious and ethnic minorities but should build real capacity to engage with the issue constructively and authentically.
Prithvi Hirani was recently awarded a PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. Her thesis is titled ‘The Border, City, Diaspora: The Physical and Imagined Borders of South Asia’.
Matthew D. Rees has a PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. He works for Open Doors UK, an organisation which works with vulnerable minority Christian communities in over 60 countries from the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa to South East Asia and campaigns on the international right to freedom of religion or belief for everyone.