Human Rights Day Special : Hindu Rights Go For A Toss

There is a serious threat to the identity of Hindus in the South-East Asian region where the Islamic radicalisation has been spreading its tentacles over the years

S N Aiyer

The scholars world-over accept and appreciate the enormously positive influence of Hinduism and the prevalence of practising Hindus on the overall socio-political fabric of countries in South-East Asia. Indeed, this contact with the Hindus from India, it has been noted, was a profound impact on their languages/scripts, traditions, literature, calendars, beliefs, arts and every aspect of the region’s cultural development and its history.
Today, there is a danger of this being slowly, deliberately and systematically wiped out. Interests inimical to India’s growing “soft power” in the ASEAN region are suspected to be behind this effort. It is no secret that China is closeby physically and the global Islamic movement too
exercises economic clout here. There are increasing fears of emotionally pressurising and subtly blackmailing the Hindu population to cut its age-old umbilical ties. This is fuelling a worry that Hinduism itself will soon fade away as in Cambodia, which houses the temple of the world famous Angkor Wat, the largest Hindu temple in the world but Hinduism is virtually gone from there.

Then in Indonesia, Hindus are currently said to be barely 3-8% of the total population, whereas right from the 4th century to as far as the16th century, they were the majority of the population. Bali remains the last fortress of the once-upon-a-time Hindu-dominated country.
Observers say that human rights activists do project that religious intolerance is on the upswing in Indonesia. Therefore, it is fast becoming imperative that rights of the Hindus in these countries are protected in earnest, in the face of growing threats.
At the outset, it needs to be borne in mind that such apprehensions/ problems for the rights of Hindu communities are all over the region. In the case of Myanmar, Brunei, Laos and Vietnam, it is difficult to glean much about the Hindus’ plight given the closed nature of these regimes.
Islamic Threat
Predominantly, one can see the Islamic sword dangling over them in Malaysia (where there are over 2 million Hindus), Indonesia (which has the world’s largest number of Muslims), and Thailand, while the large numbers who also reside in Singapore and the Philippines are being “cosmopoilitised”, so to say, to shed their Hindu roots. The latter effectively implies asking the Hindus to shun their Hindu identity giving them instead, either a linguistic one, acceptable to the instigators, with the Hindus being Tamil speaking. The
second alternative is to call them as Dravidian or at best Indian origin/ diaspora, thereby diluting the Hindu tag totally, and the rights associated with it. This is evident even in coverage by reputed international sources like AFP, Wikipedia etc. As a result, the Hindus are soon losing any and every semblance of religious and cultural unity, even if they continue, at least for now to be given the ‘space’ to celebrate their festivals.
One example is “Thaipoosam”, widely celebrated in January annually with fervor by the entire Hindu community. Now, the locals, the media and all and sundry refer to it as a Tamil function, removing the Hindu label totally. So, any effort to ask for Hindu rights is obfuscated too.
One perilous development seriously affecting Hindu rights and now gaining momentum is the Hindu-Muslim tensions, which are regularly reported in the media.
In this regard, Malaysia is the worst persecutor. Hindu rights have been under serious threat since 1957 itself when Malaysia turned Islamic officially. Well-documented claims on Hindu rights show it as having “adopted a discriminatory constitution”, with “increasing reports of persecution” in the so-called “Sharia courts”.
Discriminatory Constitution
There is mention of Hindu temples on private property, built long before Malaysian independence, being demolished by the government too. The main handicap for the Hindus, perhaps, has been that most of the immigrants have been indentured labourers, not having the economic means for a legal battle and also bereft of any political party to take up their cause.
The other important aspect in Malaysia is the systematic withdrawal of the traditional rights enjoyed by the Hindus as part of what scholars have called the “sons of the soil” policies over a period of time. This has resulted in lesser access to educational rights, employment rights and also a reduced ‘space’ for ethnic and cultural rights.
What is interesting is the belief that the Malaysian Constitution forecloses any intercourse on these ‘sensitive’ issues. Apart from the economic discrimination since 1971, a number of sensitive issues relating to demolitions of Hindu temples and Hindu cremation grounds, forced religious conversion, denial of birth certificates and national identity documents and others have come up nowadays, an investigative study recently revealed.
In Indonesia, the Bali-based Hindu rights campaigners are on record stating that “devotees sometimes face obstacles in gaining approval from local authorities to construct temples”. Besides, it has also been reported that Hindus in Indonesia were compelled to “modify” the basic tenets of Hinduism so as “to comply with the Indonesian Ministry of Religion” requirements, which is downright improper and ridiculous.
Gita Overturned
Apparently, the stipulations were that the understanding of “cosmic law”, equivalent of “God” and even contents of sacred texts like the Bhagavad Gita accepted all over the world as divine revelations, were re-phrased and
the devi/devas “explained as corresponding to the angels in Islam”.
Clearly, there is a need for seriously taking up the retrieval of lost status and privileges that the Hindus once enjoyed. However, Prof. K. Manikavasagan, Director of the UGC Centre for South & South East Asian Studies, University of Chennai cautions that the mobilisation of the Hindus as a force could be detrimental to their own long-term interests and existing strong bilateral ties. What, he suggests, as the need of the hour, is to give greater importance to the promotion of languages, cultures and people-to-people contact. This can better the understanding of the locals in those countries of the peace-loving nature of the Indian Hindus and help their assimilation in the mainstream in the long run.  
(The writer is a New Delhi-based freelancer)