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Targeting Hindus and India: The Deep State and its Collaborators

Targeting Hindus and India: The Deep State and its Collaborators

Image courtesy of: copticssolidarity.org

Editor’s Note: This report draws on the original report by DisInfo Labs. We offer an introduction, and we have edited the DisInfo Labs report for mechanical errors. We have added, very briefly, and in a very few instances, some of our own commentary. We thank DisInfo Labs for allowing us to re-publish their report in the version below.  

Introduction

The US State Department released its 2022 Report on “International Religious Freedom” on May 15, 2023. The report offers its version of religious freedom and reality in 195 countries and principalities around the world – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The India section, as per the Department’s past inclinations, is full of lies, mischief, falsehoods, unverifiable claims, and exaggerated nonsense. We may wonder how the US State Department can get away with manufacturing these tracts of disinformation, misinformation, mischief, and balderdash, and how much money American taxpayers shell out for this abuse of their intelligence, and about the disinformation campaigns by their government. The State Department’s “Office of International Religious Freedom” (OIFR) is headed by Rashad Hussain, born to Indian-American immigrants, and right now, showcasing the Office’s “international religiosity,” is a video featuring Secretary Blinken — addressing Muslim invitees at a reception to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr, and describing Ambassador Rashad Hussain as a “remarkable” person.

The OIFR “report” on India runs to 49 pages. One cannot download the whole OIFR report covering all 195 countries, and so we cannot surmise the total length of the 2022 annual report. For example, the Afghanistan report runs to 18 pages, and the Zimbabwe report runs to 15 pages. If we can make an intelligent guess and say that the average for each of the 195 countries is 20 pages, the total report will run to about 3,900 pages. Welcome to the great American enterprise of monitoring others, being the world’s policemen, and moral, social, cultural, economic, and political hector, arbiter, scold, and bully.

“Russian interference” the media, politicians, the FBI, the NSA, and others cried, falsely, about the 2016 American elections. That the US regularly, daily, hourly intervenes in the affairs of the rest of the world is not only evident from what we can glean from the disinformation in the massive “religious freedom” report, but in almost everything that the State and Defense Departments do. This ongoing, relentless, disinformation and misinformation campaigns by the American deep state, with the connivance of American academics, media, activists, and NGOs, have their consequences — mostly destabilizing, mostly expensive, and mostly incurable. Geopolitics and Western hegemony at its expensive worst, but the only ones who seem to be able to smack back hard are the Chinese who give two hoots as to what the Americans say and want. So much so that the latest, breaking news is that the US is seeking to mend relations with the Xi Jinping regime worrying that it might have played its hand wrongly and prematurely.

How is it that the US can claim for itself this position of moral superiority and to being the political and cultural arbiter when the country is headed by a 80-year-old, faltering-at-every-few steps, allegedly corrupt president, and when American cities ruled by Democratic Party mayors are falling apart, where crime is rampant, and when authoritarian and corrupt politicians and bureaucrats manage the affairs of the “most powerful country on earth”?

There are many reasons for this, and the story of such snooping, spying, disinformation, and mismanagement of the world and of itself is long and complex. There is the military-industrial complex, there is the academic juggernaut, there is American media and its provincial editors, there are religious groups that move and shake legislators and administrations, and there are activists who earn their wine, cheese, and opportunities to rub shoulders with the mighty and the influential. The unique nature of American society – now made up of immigrants from all over the world – post the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 – also, ironically, allows for hyper-activism and constant meddling with affairs of the rest of the world. With so many interest groups and immigrant jostling to influence policy and policymakers, American meddling in the affairs of other countries is now at its peak.

The India report therefore has to be seen in the context of who influenced the Office of International Religious Freedom and its staff that compiled the report: which activists, which NGOs, which academics, which media reports and analyses, which politicians, and who in India offered Ambassador Rashad Khan and his minions the bilge that makes up for the bulk of the “report”?

That this report was released just five weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives on a state visit to the US goes to show either the power of the mischief-makers at Foggy Bottom, or the expert cluelessness of Ambassador Blinken and his top State Department officials whose left hands do not know what their right hands are doing.

The Indian Government has officially castigated the report as “flawed, motivated, and biased,” but the sheer grandiosity and idiocy of the claims of Secretary Blinken as he released the OIFR report makes for ominous reading: “This report wouldn’t be possible without the contributions of our civil society partners around the globe who help to shine a spotlight on abuses and advocate for victims of religious persecution.  We are grateful for their vital work,” he said, releasing the report. Therefore, these efforts of the US administration, with the help of “civil society partners”/activists in other countries whose bona fides, credentials, agendas, and goals could be suspect, can no doubt spell danger. The Secretary also claims that the report is “fact-based” and “comprehensive”. How do we know if indeed the report contains “facts” and whether it is “comprehensive”? Who supplied them the “facts”? Which American newspapers and magazines or think tanks will analyze the report? Which Congressional Committee will pore through its pages and ask questions?

The world is on edge. American society is deeply divided, and the American economy, stained by the trillions of dollars of excess money printed and doled out over the past four years, is a gargantuan machine whose levers are getting worn out. Russia is at war with Ukraine, and NATO and the US seem to be working on a “regime change” plan for Moscow that could blow up in all our faces. It is at this extremely fraught moment that Prime Minister Modi will be arriving in Washington, DC, and his team better be careful about who gets invited to what events. They better be on the lookout for those intending to do harm to India, and who can play mischief by playing to the anti-India, anti-Hindu media gallery. Who will get close to the Prime Minister and on what occasions? For all their suave, suited, dressed-up exteriors, there are men and women in DC willing to derail the PM’s talks with the American administration, or who are working to destabilize the South Asia region.

Let the Ministry of External Affairs folks use a good lens and look closely at who is on the invitee list for the state dinner, and for any other event covered by the media. There are the Pramila Jayapals and the Ilhan Omars who can and may seek to embarrass the prime minister at public events. There are the senators and congressmen, especially from the Democrat Party, who can throw spanners in the Indo-American cooperation wheel, bringing up the OIFR “report” to the notice of the doddering Mr. Biden.

We at IndiaFacts do not have the wherewithal to conduct our own careful, thorough, detailed content analysis of the OIRF “report”. However, we have access to the analyses of the smart and indefatigable workers at “Disinfo Lab” who have quickly unpacked the 2022 report. Below is their report, and we are therefore offering it with our own minor edits, and which we are publishing with their permission:

The Disinfo Labs Report (edited): “Documenting Christian Atrocities in India: An Evangelist-Islamist Enterprise in Fiction & Fabrication”

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has been flagging India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ consecutively for the last three years. In our previous report, ‘USCIRF: An organization of Particular Concern’, we uncovered how the move was an outcome of the influence and infiltration by Islamist elements constituting the Jamaat nexus in the US. One of the key individuals behind anti-India propaganda from USCIRF was Nadine Maenza, who has now moved to the International Religious Freedom Secretariat as its President, an organization duly promoted by the US State Department IRF.

In the past few months, we have also been observing efforts of the narrative building of persecution and atrocities of Christians in India. Based on that, we have also observed protests breaking out in several places in India. These protests are an outcome of a fabricated narrative and some reports that go beyond logic with the following traits:

  1. Fabricated or sometimes no data.
  2. Lots of conjectures.
  3. Exaggerated numbers.
  4. Fabricated & unverifiable stories.
  5. The intent to play victim via cross-referencing and tall claims.

However, what stood out of all of this is the involvement of the same set of players, but via different organizations. The objective is to portray India as an oppressor of its Christian minorities and has become a tyrannical state for them. However, what remains hidden from plain sight is the driving force behind this narrative.

USCIRF- as exposed by Disinfolab in its previous reports, has been knee-deep in water with the Islamist circle that has targeted India via lobbying and engaging directly with the USCIRF officials in the past. These forces are evangelist organizations working in cahoots with the US-based Jamaat-e-Islami fronts and anti-India lobbying groups, who are circulating these reports targeting India.

The current report by the US State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, which is based on unverified and many fabricated reports of the “Evangelists-Islamists Front,” is the most absurd exercise in narrative building. It appears to be part of a larger effort — all with the help of fabricated reports with either no data, no verifiable facts, and using exaggerated numbers.

Part I: US State Department – Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF) Report of 2022
Chapter 1: The Documentation and the Documenters

The IRF report published on May 15, 2023 mentions certain organizations, whose reports/ documentation have been taken as a source for information on “atrocities” on minorities in India. These organizations/entities include the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC_, Open Door, and the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations (FIACONA). IAMC has been thoroughly exposed for its fabrication of data as well as for engaging paid lobbyists to target India while collecting money in the name of helping the Muslim community. The other two organizations — Open Door and FIACONA — are both Christian Evangelist organizations.

Open Doors USA

Open Doors describes itself as follows: “Open Doors empowers persecuted Christians by supplying Bibles and Christian literature, training Christian leaders, facilitating social/economic projects and uniting believers in the West in prayer for Christians, who are the most persecuted religious group in the world and are oppressed in at least 70 countries.”

Open Doors USA works closely with IRF and other organizations to promote religious freedom and address issues related to religious persecution. It is led by David Curry. David Curry holds a bachelor’s degree from Northwest University in Seattle and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Faith Evangelical College and Seminary in Tacoma, Washington. He is the President and CEO of the US wing of Open Doors International, a global membership organization with 25 national bases that advocates for persecuted Christians worldwide.

Curry was also appointed to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in May 2022. Curry has also attended congressional briefings organized by the IAMC and Justice For All (JFA) on the issue of “Christian persecution” in India . Besides, David Curry is a contributor to Christianity Today, The Christian Post, among other Christian propaganda outlets. Open Doors USA ended its affiliation with Open Doors International (ODI) on January 1, 2023, and transformed into Global Christian Relief, with David Curry as its CEO.

Open Doors International Report

Open Doors releases a World Watch List every year in which it lists the top 50 countries in the world leading indulging in “Christian persecution”. It has been listing India among countries with extreme levels of persecution of Christians. It is worth noting that Open Doors uses a distorted map of India in its report and consistently labels India as a country of “special concern”.

Methodology:
  • The methodology used by Open Doors involves labeling persecution in two categories, “squeeze” and “smash,” and six subcategories: private life, family life, community life, national life, church life, and violence.
  • Data is gathered through a 100-question survey answered by Open Doors’ partners in each country, which is cross-checked by external experts and independently audited. Each question is scored out of 16 points based on factors such as the number of categories of Christians affected, the proportion of the general population affected, intensity, and frequency.
  • The final score is calculated out of 100 and is used to determine the level of persecution in a country, with the rankings being “extreme,” “very high,” and “high”.
Discrepancies in the documentation of World Watch List of Open Doors, 2023
Compilation of Main Documents

The data compilation and ranking methodology of the World Watch List of Open Doors has its own set of discrepancies. For instance, according to their analytic report of 2023, the total Christian population of India is 69,494,000 against the total population of 1,406,632,000 (data given in the report until April 2022 taken from the World Christian Database). Going by their data, it makes the total percentage of the Christian population in India as 4.94 percent.

But what do the facts say? According to the Indian census of 2011, the population of Christians in India was 2.3 percent. Now, as per population data of India until the first quarter of 2011, the total population of the country was 1210.19 million. This means that the Christian population then was approximately 27,834,370. If we consider that this population rose by 50 percent by 2022, the total number still could be no more than 41,751,555. The total population of the country had not risen even by 20 percent (it rose 16.23 percent between March 2011 and April 2022), let alone that of a single community. (Editor’s note: It is possible, however, that the World Watch List report uses a higher figure for Christians which may include those who have been called “crypto-Christians” — those who have converted but who still claim to be Hindus so that they can claim whatever government benefits are offered for the “Scheduled Castes” or the “Other Backward Castes” of Hindus. Swarajya magazine has reported on the large-scale conversions of Hindus to Christianity in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu — here, here, here, and here.)

But the document shows many other discrepancies in the methodology of their ranking of countries, even for the ones ranked among the top three.

For starters, the scores given to countries based on which they are ranked in the Open Doors list do not match with each other. In other words, if a country is ranked higher, its allotted score is much lower to justify its ranking. This means that some countries with more atrocities are ranked lower than the ones with fewer cases of atrocities. To put this point into perspective, we divided the countries based on higher, medium, and lower rankings, and based on this, let us consider the examples of Pakistan and Sudan.

According to the table, the violence rate in Pakistan is 0.01 percent while in Sudan it is 0.012

percent. The violence rate in Sudan is more than in Pakistan, yet Sudan is ranked lower at the

tenth spot and Pakistan is ranked as seventh. Another example to demonstrate this point better is in the case of Syria and Myanmar. The violence rate of Syria is 0.058 percent whereas that of Myanmar is 2.54 percent. The percentage of Myanmar is way higher than Syria and it still is ranked lower in terms of Christian persecution. The rank of Syria is 12 and Myanmar is 14. This clearly shows how flawed the methodology of data collection and ranking of WWL is as their calculations do not match up.

Another case of vague data representation, which does not justify their ranking is the use of “NN”. Stating security reasons, the WWL document has grouped five  countries — Afghanistan, Maldives, North Korea, Somalia, and Yemen — together and indicated them with “NN”. It claims that while they have presented the data on violence in these countries, they have not revealed them individually. Notably, three of these countries, namely North Korea, Somalia, and Yemen are ranked 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in their list respectively, while Afghanistan and Maldives are ranked 9th and 15th, respectively.

What is the problem with this representation? While the total pressure score of these countries has been mentioned in their final scoring, there is no way to know how these countries have been scored individually and how many cases of atrocities are found in these regions, and their total scores according to the number of atrocities. Moreover, NN has been repeated 2-4 times in each table but there is no way to verify which number of violence belongs to which of these countries, and one must guess whether the NN in that particular table is Somalia or Yemen. Hence, there is no way to verify the basis of their ranking.

Moreover, if we calculate the total number of cases of violence in these NN countries, the cumulative figure is 4,495. Against countries where cases of violence exceed 10,000 the combined total does not justify their ranking in the top three or even the top ten.

Whether the calculations or criteria match up with their rankings or not, whether transparent data of every country ranked is provided or not, WWL has given its verdict. And the reader simply must believe it since the report says so.

Some Key Features of the ODI Report:

While some cases of violence are backed by references, many cases mentioned in their reports are based on conjectures and case studies with no references to prove the authenticity of the accusation. For instance, in its report titled “Destructive Lies,” there are eight case studies mentioned but none are backed by any evidence.

For the past four years, Open Doors has been consecutively ranking India as No. 10 in the World Watch List (2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022). India has been ranked No. 11 in their World Watch List of 2023. And to justify its rating for India, the ODI report cited proof of only a few instances of violence against Christians.

Open Doors has been collaborating with various Islamist and Jamaat fronts including Justice for All (JFA) and Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) in the US. Open Doors International (ODI) was the co-organizer of the webinar on “Reversing The Trend: Minority Rights in India,” which was held on October 3, 2022. Their partners in this webinar included Hindus for Human Rights, World Evangelical Alliance, Justice for All, and the International Commission for Dalit Rights.

Moreover, Isaac Six, Advocacy Director of Open Door USA, was a speaker at IAMC’s Congressional briefing on “Persecution of Christians in India” on 28 July, 2021. It is to be noted that Isaac Six has also been invited by the USCIRF to give inputs on Christian persecution around the world.

It is important to note that Open Door’s data is also used by USCIRF to rank countries, meaning the CEO of Open Door, as USCIRF Commissioner, decides on how the data is used.

Validation of Evangelism

ODI report’s validation is done by another evangelical organization. One of the methodologies of the Open Doors report was its auditing by another organization — the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF).

Founded in 2007, IIRF claims to be a network of “researchers and academics that aims to advance religious freedom for all religions through an academic lens”. Moreover, “IIRF also aims to become a reputable source of information on issues related to religious freedom”. They claim to provide “credible and impartial data on religious freedom, going beyond mere anecdotal evidence, to support academic research and guide policymaking at various levels”.

The organization that validates Open Doors’ reports is itself loaded with active evangelists who claim that Christians in other countries, including India, are persecuted. How do they do it? By approving the former’s reports, raising doubts about how impartial IIRF’s auditing could be.As shown in the illustration below, some of IIRF’s members have evangelical backgrounds.

How Credible are the Open Doors Reports and IIRF’s auditing of the Reports?

Open Doors’ report drew on a variety of sources, including reports from multiple organizations and news articles. How credible is the report by Open Doors? We looked at the key sources of their information. Apart from their methodology of analyzing data, the ODI report refers to a number of their sources: one of those referred to was the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI). EFI is connected to the global evangelical network, while its founder is the head of the Open Doors’ branch in India!

Chapter 2: Evangelical Fellowship of India

The previous section discussed how the Open Doors’ report which had no data was a compilation of various reports and sources from across the globe. It has been enjoying legitimacy by providing arbitrary data presentation, or even no data. And one such organization referred to by ODI is the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI).

Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) claims to be an umbrella organization of more than 65,000 churches in the Indian subcontinent. It is also a charter member of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). The EFI was established in 1951 and claims to promote cooperation and fellowship among evangelical Christians in India and advance the gospel message.

Open Doors India

The Secretary General of EFI is Rev Vijayesh Lal, who has been associated with “Church and Religious Freedom” in the Indian subcontinent for over two decades. As per his own blog, Vijayesh Lal was the institutor of Open Doors International (ODI) in India in 1999. He was the key representative of ODI in India and was serving as its Executive Director till December 2013. To summarize, ODI had been functioning in India since 1999 via Rev Vijayesh Lal, who currently runs one of the largest Christian groups in India that documents “atrocities on Christians in India”. This also explains why EFI finds a mention in the annual reports of Open Doors as illustrated earlier. EFI has been a key source for seemingly all major global reports that document atrocities of Christians in India. However, the case of EFI gets trickier and more unreliable as we study and analyze their reports.

EFI 2021 Report — Inflated Numbers & Skewed Methodology

EFI reports serve as the source of many other reports that documents “Christian persecution in India”. Studying its report, we found not one but a number of fundamental flaws: whether they don’t understand the basics of drafting reports, or whether they are driven by their proselytizing agenda is for anyone to guess.

However, what the EFI report manages to achieve is selling well-written fiction with unverifiable pictures, along with a number of graphs, tables, and data with no reference/source whatsoever. For example, we picked its yearly report 2021 titled: “Hate and Targeted Violence Against Christians In India” which had these problems:

  • The report offers graphs, charts, and statistics; however, it cites no reference for that data, nor offer any methodology as to how the data were gathered and analyzed. In lieu of evidence, they offer information about a help-line number provided by the United Christians Forum (UCF). This connection will be discussed in a subsequent section.
  • Further, the report uses a collage of several images. However, not a single image is connected to any specific incident with not even the time and date stamp denoting its origin. This simply means that the pictures are offered to stir emotions, not provide information.
  • The entire report is replete with cases and stories but none of them refer to any source of the news and incident. We cannot conclude all the cases presented in the EFI reports are false, but not one of them are linked to any source/ reference. We also found that many cases listed in the EFI report could not be verified online.

Furthermore, in 2022, based on the EFI report, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed by Rev. Peter Machado of the National Solidarity Forum, and Rev. Vijayesh Lal, in the Supreme Court of India alleging violence against Christians in India. However, the Government of India disputed those claims, which it said were part of creating a false picture based on fake data. The government offered data records of eight states including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh to counter the false claims of Machado and Lal. The government counsel argued that the incidents quoted in the report were either false or deliberately exaggerated and uncorroborated, and that the organization was reporting false and self-serving documents.

In April 2023, the cases mentioned in the report referred to in the PIL were proven as false after the crime data against Christians were tallied between the states and the compliance affidavit of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The cases tallied with states included land disputes, family disputes, superstitious practices, violation of Covid-19 guidelines, and other trivial issues. Most of the so-called cases of violence against Christians were resolved by both parties amicably.

In another instance, in November 2022, EFI Chairman Dr. Ajai Lall was named an accused in the forced conversion of a couple in Madhya Pradesh, later flagged by the National Commission of Women chairperson Rekha Sharma.

One can say that while the EFI has been the central resource for most Christian persecution reports, it does not have reliable data. Its report, however, led us to several organizations that have been engaged in a similar practice of offering false, exaggerated data, and who are now pushing those narratives around the world, including the US.

Part II: Atrocity Reports and the Game of Credits
Chapter 3: EFI 2021 Report and its Application of Messy Data

The EFI report has served as the global base for the documentation of “atrocities against Christians” in India. The EFI report’s ambit is not limited to just Open Doors International. EFI is referred by other global Christian advocacy groups including the International Christian Concern (ICC), as well as Persecution.org, which, without any shame or self-reflection labels its “ICC Newsroom” as “Your leading source for persecution news”! That the same Christian organizations join hands with the IAMC and other Muslim organizations in the US while listing and describing Muslim-Christian clashes in Africa goes to show the nature of these “persecuted bedfellows”.

International Christian Concern/Council (ICC)

ICC is a non-profit organization based in the United States that advocates for the rights of Christians around the world who are facing persecution for their faith. ICC was founded in 1995 with the mission of raising awareness about Christian persecution and providing support and advocacy for those affected by it.

It is important to understand that ICC and USCIRF work closely and the former’s reports and claims are used as a basis to evaluate and rank countries on human rights and religious freedom in their annual reports. Likewise, the same ICC reports and publications are used by the USCIRF to broadcast their critical evaluations of India and the life of Christians living in the country.

However, there is a catch. The ICC in turn makes use of the EFI reports and its studies that (as we have shown) have no data and no news sources offered as reference. ICC has referred to the EFI a number of times, including in 2020 and 2021. From Open Doors to the ICC, EFI has remained their key supplier of unverifiable data which then is used by the USCIRF to evaluate countries including India – all based on flawed and unsubstantiated numbers. This echo chamber of suspect sources and religious propaganda agencies are the fount of the USCIRF and US State Department reports. This nexus and collusion by private Christian agencies and the US Government goes to show how deep and nefarious this relationship is.

While the EFI has had so much influence and authority, it has been providing the same services to another Christian advocacy organization and lobbying group — the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA). FIACONA, just like all the other Christian advocacy groups, publishes its report every year, and of late, it has been able to set the tone and further hype the same narrative of Christian persecution in India via its reports. The next chapter discusses the role of FIACONA and how deeply it is wedded to the EFI studies for peddling its narrative of “Christian persecution” in India.

Chapter 4: Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations (FIACONA)

Apart from the false claims and fake data in the EFI reports, what is intriguing is the involvement of organizations and people behind the compilation and circulation of the EFI reports. The “Acknowledgement” section of the EFI report thanks a number of individuals who facilitated their “field research”.

At least two entities engaged in offering help in compiling the EFI 2021 Report led us to two key organizations:

  1. John Dayal and United Christian Forum (UCF)
  2. Persecution Relief

John Dayal and the two entities can be tracked back to the US-based FIACONA. John Dayal is a Christian activist, journalist, and author. He is the editor and CEO of the afternoon newspaper Delhi Mid-Day and has been the treasurer of the Editor’s Guild of India. He is also the national convener of the UCF. John Dayal was once on the advisory board of the US-based FIACONA.

Persecution Relief, a non-profit organization, claims to work “to assist and advocate for persecuted Christians in India”. The organization was founded by an Indian Christian activist, Shibu Thomas in 2016. He had also been associated with FIACONA from 2016 to 2021.

FIACONA is a non-profit organization based in the United States that represents the interests of Indian American Christians and their organizations. It was formally launched in 2000 to provide “a platform for Indian American Christians to work together on issues related to their faith and their community”. The organization claims that it  “advocates for the rights of Christians in India, particularly those who face persecution and discrimination due to their faith”.

EFI’s reports are full of “human interest” stories but with no documentation and no references or data to support them – no FIRs lodged, no newspaper reports authenticating these stories, and no third-party verification. EFI has also been a key resource, while its members including Vijayesh Lal have been suppliers of such “atrocity literature” to many more organizations including FIACONA. As noted earlier, EFI reports have been some of the key sources for Open Doors reports. So, we investigated and found that EFI’s ambit is far beyond the circle of Christian “atrocity literature”. So, before investigating the antecedents of FIACONA leaders/members, we first studied and analyzed the reports of FIACONA. We picked up their latest report, the 2022 Annual Report.

FIACONA’s 2022 Annual Report

FIACONA published its 2022 annual report on July 3, 2022. The 156-page report looked more like a cleaned-up and more professional version of the EFI report, with a mix of colorful graphs and data depiction. The 2022 report was edited by a number of individuals including the EFI Secretary General, Vijayesh Lal, and UCF, as well as FIACONA member John Dayal, and the Hindu-baiter for all seasons and all comers, Pieter Friedrich.

Simply put, FIACONA referred to the EFI 2021 Report in its 2022 annual report that, as we have repeatedly pointed out, has no verifiable data, no third-party corroboration, no news reports, no date and time stamps. In many instances the report simply states that the “atrocity” is recorded as witness testimony or recorded by EFI.

And with some appealing and slick presentation, the FIACONA report manages to garner traction and endorsement from several media portals helping push the narrative of “Christian persecution” in India.

What might have drawn the media interest in the FIACONA report? We know that the mainstream media in the West is anti-Hindu, anti-BJP, and they are colluders with the persecution peddlers. The FIACONA “report,” is once again chock-full of the following:

  • The sources of the case reports are themselves from unverifiable reports like the EFI and ICC reports.
  • The duplicity of purported cases (the more the merrier).
  • Discrepancies in numbers.

While these factors make up the entirety of the FIACONA report, they also contribute to the manufacturing of emotional appeals, making the readers flinch at the number and variety of “atrocities” committed on “persecuted Christians” in India. If a lay person reads the FIACONA report, they will conclude that Christians are being terribly persecuted in India.

Chapter 5: FIACONA’s Documentation of Atrocities against Christians

In simple words, the so-called documentation by FIACONA of atrocities against Christians, which started in 2022 (documenting the atrocities of 2021), is full of duplication, fabrications, and in some cases, outright imagination. What we can glean from the cases they list and describe is that Christians in India should be above not only the law of the land but somehow, they should be immune from the law of nature! Their belief in miracles is incurable, odious, and cunning.

What they have not allowed themselves to be bothered about is the basic practices of documentation of data including validity of data, the structure of data, editing, and basic math. In more than half the “documented cases,” the reference is missing. While it is expected that a few mistakes are possible in such large documentation exercises, more than 25 percent of duplication does not generate confidence. It is obvious that those entrusted with the documentation were poorly paid, as they have replicated the same incidence just one after another, not in one place but in multiple places and contexts. Were these “field researchers” paid by the case for their efforts? The Christian efforts at manufacturing evidence is nothing new. It goes back to their claims of their founding “prophet,” the “son of God,” does it not? Based on this train wreck of a report, FIACONA’s Chairman John Prabhudoss concludes that the “increasing atrocity of Christians is a grave threat to US National Security interest” (sic)! Well, fellow Christian manufacturers of make-believe at the USCIRF and the State Department seem to have bought this tale hook, line, and sinker, is that not?

What is the level and increase of attacks on Christians in India? FIACONA’s 2023 report will light our path.

As per the report, the atrocities increased from 1198+ hundred (or 119,800) (page 8) to 1198+ thousand (or 1,198,000) (page 9) to 30 million (page 19). All this in a single report! Talk about data inflation!

To better understand the FIACONA report, we will look into their preceding two reports of 2022 and 2023 in detail.

The 2022 report (page 22) offered 761 documented reports from a state-wise table. Actual cases as per the table are 759. This is only the first of the simple mistakes in the report. The report has 29 percent of incident reports with no reference/support. Another 71 percent of incident reports are attributed to the EFI-RLC report. The EFI, as we have pointed out before, is the Evangelical Fellowship of India, which manufactures its report, and we use the term “manufacture” deliberately. The EFI report that FIACONA refers to itself offers no references/support for their incident reports.

FIACONA decided to do away with references altogether in its second and latest report of 2023 “documenting” the atrocities committed in India in 2022. They present their “data” and expect the readers to take them at face value. But it is difficult to believe a report that has duplicated entries more than 100 times in about 1,000 instances. This means that at least 25 percent of the report is a case of duplicate entries, inflating the numbers, deliberately or mistakenly.

For example, the FIACONA 2023 report declares Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh as states with some of the highest number of atrocities recorded against Christians. However, if one investigates the report, single cases have been reported multiple times. An arrest of the pastor (Azamgarh) for violating the state law against conversion has been reported in 10 different incidences. Likewise, any disruptions to the congregations have been repeated 4-5 times (Lakhimpur, Roorkee, Amethi, etc.) Similar repetitions have been reported across Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and elsewhere.

Similarly, if an incidence of an atrocity has been reported by three newspapers it has been counted as three atrocities! Following the pattern, every news related to Uttarakhand Anti-conversion Bill has been recorded as an instance of atrocity against Christians. The only variation is that once it is recorded as witness testimony and another time it references to EFI with a little bit of tweaking.

Here is a look at the repeated entries (with some tweaking) of cases of violence against Christians in India as reported by FIACONA in their 2022 Report:

S.No

Case

Repeated

Comment

1.

Pastor Ram Chandra

Azamgarh (UP)

3

Same story from multiple sources. Even the Court denied the Bail is considered an additional atrocity

2.

Pastor Shyamnand

Azamgarh (UP)

2

Same story from multiple sources

3.

Pastor Biswambar West

Bengal

3

Same story from same source (EFI Report 2021) is mentioned thrice.

4.

Case of Ms. KanniBarse,

Chattisgarh

2

Same Story from different sources.

5.

Case in Temachi/Themachi,

Madhya Pradesh

2

The same story is repeated twice from the same source

6.

Suresh and Pastor Lithus,

Belsonda, Mahasamud,

Chattisgarh

2

Same Story from different sources.

7.

Pastor Prasad Barely Uttar

Pradesh

2

Same Story from the same source.

8.

Bajrang Dal members threatened a Christian community in Madhya

Pradesh

2

Same story from the same source.

9.

Case of ‘Hindu nationalists’

Attacking Church in Hassan

District, Karnataka

2

Same story from different sources

10.

Pastor Marandi Orissa

2

Same Story from the same source.

 

Worth highlighting is that the one thing they still did not rectify is their sloppy arithmetic work in the 2023 report. Starting with the basic calculation of all the cases mentioned state wise, the total is again mentioned incorrectly. The report states 1,198 in total, while the number in their state-wise table adds up to 1,218.

Second, some statistics mentioned in both of their reports do not even tally with each other. For instance, as per the 2022 report, the total number of cases of atrocities in Uttar Pradesh were 161, while in the 2023 edition, the data for the same has been given as 180!

“Animistic Tribals”!

A special mention needs to be made of the situation in Chhattisgarh, where a significant number of cases have been recorded. However, most of these cases are from the tribal areas of the state, thereby indicating tension between the tribal groups and Christian missionaries. Most of the cases in the FIACONA document are from Bastar (70 percent); Kondagaon (71 percent); Dantewada (71 percent); Narayanpur (60 percent); and Kanker (55 percent). Every instance, where the “animistic tribals” (as they are labeled by FIACONA) have objected to a family member converting, has been recorded as an atrocity on Christians, showing scant regard to indigenous practices, where the tribal communities demand equal participation and contribution. The atrocity included tribals punishing a member (converted to Christianity) for not contributing to their social practices.

What Constitutes an Atrocity: Internalized Privilege or Perceived Persecution?

The most interesting part of the report is the nature of “crimes against Christianity,” which gives an insight into how Christian evangelists and missionaries think of themselves in Indian society and portray their victimhood mentality. A Christian woman was fired from her job by a private company because she was proselytizing during working hours (Nagpur, Maharashtra). There are dozens of cases where a case has been filed against a pastor for child sex abuse, including that of a pastor who was running a children’s orphanage (Maharashtra), but these are all considered atrocities against Christians!

More than 50 of the documented cases are of family disputes in all parts of the country, where the family members object to the conversion of a family member. However, these incidents are also recorded as targeted at Christianity. In one instance (Bhilai, Chhattisgarh), a husband had gone to the police, complaining that his wife, under the influence of Christian missionaries, was forcing him to convert. It was a matter pertaining to a personal dispute between family members. But somehow, this is documented as a case of atrocity against Christians!

Scores of cases of property disputes have also been recorded as cases of atrocity against Christians, implying that the rule of law should not be applicable to Christians. Even the cases where the civic authorities took action against unlawful/ illegal encroachment by Christian missionaries/pastors (Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu) have been recorded as religious persecution.

There are multiple cases where pastors started religious preaching/congregation with 20-30 people in a rented house. If the landlord/house owner objected, it is recorded as an atrocity. There are cases where foreigners (Germans, Swedes, and Brazilians in three different instances) came on tourist visas but were found engaged in proselytizing and booked for violation of visa rules. Yes, these cases too have been recorded as atrocities against Christians!

A pastor in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, was accused by a woman of forceful religious conversion by alluring and trying to seduce her. Yes, this too is considered a case of an atrocity against a Christian.

Whether they are forcefully converting people, praying in a Church, or simply existing as

Christians, they are all victims of atrocities! The report has labeled people following the Christian faith as victims.

While some cases are offered some context, others are randomly stated without any reference or context. A pastor in Virudhanagar was arrested on false charges, it is claimed. A Christian woman beaten by her brother for converting to Christianity, or a family expelled from a village for being Christians are claimed as cases of atrocities against Christians.

In Summary:

One must appreciate the offering of these documents by these Christian rights groups as they provide an insight into the psychology of conversions and the converted, even if they provide little or no clue about the status of minority religions in India. The framing of cases is an indicator that those who got converted to Christianity perceive themselves as superior to others in society. There is an inherent expectation among the converted that they are special, they are the chosen few. It is likely not a case of fabrication that the family dispute over conversion is accounted as an atrocity, completely ignoring the social milieu where some level of domestic violence is present. Simply by becoming Christian, the converted think that those realities of society don’t apply to them.

The Curious Case of Hindu Nationalists

The report is replete with reference to “Hindu Nationalists”. Whoever has crossed the path of Christians – whether he is a criminal who stole from a Christian, a neighbor who has a property dispute with a Christian, a woman who has accused a pastor of “luring” her, a family who objects to a family member’s conversion, or a landlord who objects to the tenant using the rented house for evangelical activities – all of them are “Hindu Nationalists” of “Mr. Modi’s Party”. But the most illustrative example of such “Hindu Nationalist” atrocities is the following:

All in All:
  1. EFI has no credible methodology, and neither does it use offer any support that can be verified online for its authenticity.
  2. EFI acts as a supplier of data and cases of Christian persecution documentation in India by Open Doors International (ODI), International Christian Concern (ICC), and even FIACONA.
  3. All of this fake, false, exaggerated, manufactured data are used by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which then becomes the source for the US State Department’s Report on International Religious Freedom!
Chapter 6: The Luminaries Of FIACONA

The intricate loop of the report publishing fronts all referring to EFI reports which itself is tainted by false reporting and self-serving documentation. While FIACONA’s report in its entirety is flawed, we also checked out who were the people behind manufacturing and peddling such reports. Some of FIACONA’s luminaries have interesting backgrounds:

John Prabhudoss

aka P.D. John aka J.P. Doss, is a Washington-based lobbyist, who serves as the Chairman of FIACONA. As per B. Raman, the former Additional Secretary of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of India, John Prabhudoss wore two hats which he chooses to sport depending on the occasion. He went by the name P.D. John when he visited Gujarat after the 2002 riots, and uses another alias, J.P. Doss. Besides, he has been part of several organizations apart from serving in FIACONA.

Prabhudoss became president of FIACONA in March 2014 and later assumed the position of chairman in 2019. Through FIACONA, Prabhudoss “focuses on lobbying in Washington

DC on the issue of the violations of religious minorities’ rights and the limitations on

Christians’ ability to spread the gospel in India”.

Before FIACONA, Prabhudoss had been active since the early 2000s via another Christian organization – the Policy Institute for Religion and State (PIFRAS) – which supported the George W. Bush administration’s initiative to advance democracy and responsible government, particularly in the Islamic world. However, besides his Christian and human rights advocacy, John Prabhudoss has been engaged with IAMC since its inception and has been part of its annual conventions. He was one of the speakers at the IMC-USA third annual convention. Prabhudoss is currently one of the key partners of IAMC via FIACONA, and together they have created a group that lobbies and tries to influence US policies against India on the grounds of human rights and religious freedom in India.

Rev. Peter Cook

Peter Cook is one of the members of the Advisory Board of FIACONA. He is the Executive Director of the New York State Council of Churches, an evangelist entity that is an ally of Justice for All (JFA) and the IAMC. He is a frequent attendee at IAMC events and his organization is regularly involved in pushing IAMC’s agenda to get sanctions imposed on India.

Peter Cook was an attendee at the Congressional Briefing on IAMC’s platform on July 28, 2021. The New York State Council of Churches was one of the 22 organizations along with ICNA, FIACONA, JFA, and IAMC among others, that wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State on December 9, 2021, urging him to designate India as a “country of particular concern” (CPC). On 23 February 2022, NYSCC co-hosted a Congressional Briefing on “India Attacks Muslim

Women’s Right to Wear the Hijab,” along with 16 organizations including FIACONA, Amnesty International USA, Genocide Watch, 21Wilberforce, Hindus for Human Rights, and IAMC.

The key takeaway from Peter Cook’s background is how individuals like him are essentially linked to the same nexus, starting numerous auxiliary organizations collaborating and pursuing the same agenda. The more the number of these fake organizations, the more support they can claim for their fake data.

Shibu Thomas — A Serial Mischief-maker

Shibu Thomas is a businessman from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, who has been associated with FIACONA as one of the Members at Large between 2016-2021. But he is more prominently known as the founder of “Persecution Relief,” an organization based in India that claims to bring to light the cases of persecution of Christians in India. As per Persecution Relief’s Twitter profile, they are an “interdenominational initiative, to help the persecuted Church in India. Goal: To freely worship Jesus Christ in India”.

Persecution Relief Debacle

The organization has been accused of carrying out anti-national activities and sharing dubious reports on India with US-based human rights entities, including the USCIRF. In 2020, the Legal Rights Protection Forum, a Hyderabad-based legal activist group, filed a case against Persecution Relief for defaming India by giving communal color to cases of crime and murder in the country. Following this, the Jabalpur High Court issued notice to the Government of Madhya Pradesh and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR).

Shibu Thomas is also the president of an orphanage in India called Abundant Life, an entity that has been linked to child abuse cases.

All these players of FIACONA have laid their ground in India to fuel the narrative of Christian persecution, not just through their reports and online events, but also through rallies and protests. A protest by members of the Christian community was held at Jantar Mantar on 19 February 2023. Participants at the protest included Dr. Michael William, president of the United Christian Forum, and John Dayal. From FIACONA’s report, we identified A.C. Michael, who had contributed to compiling the FIACONA Report of 2022. Upon a cursory look at his Twitter handle, we found the blueprint/ the plans for the protest organized at Jantar Mantar.

Persecution or no Persecution?

While there are cries of Christian persecution emanating from these evangelical organizations, we came across a webinar video of FIACONA and Persecution Relief while looking for the antecedents of Shibu Thomas, and which tells a completely different story.

The video reposted by the Legal Rights Protection Forum indicates a bigger agenda of these organizations than simply peddling this fabricated narrative against India. The video in question is of a webinar titled “FIACONA Webinar November 2020” held on November 17, 2020, and hosted  by FIACONA members including its President Koshy George, John Prabhudoss, and Shibu Thomas. The video was deleted by them after they realized the discussion in the video does not align with the narrative they are trying to peddle. In the video, the attendees stated their actual motive is to “fulfill the Great Commission” and also claimed that “the supreme task of the church is to fulfill the Great Commission which is to proclaim Jesus Christ and to disciple all people”. A declaration is done by one Mr. Valson Abraham, who gave the opening remarks.

Interestingly, and contrary to their claims that persecution of Christians is on the rise in India, Valson Abraham brags about how Christians have seen a 600 percent increase in their population in one of the northern states of India in the last 10 years. The discussion further reveals the nefarious intent of these players and the modus operandi of these missionaries to boost conversions in India as it is a fertile ground for their activities. Furthermore, the members also applauded each other, particularly FIACONA for its constant efforts of getting India blacklisted on religious grounds.

Revelations like these are alarming, given the impunity with which these organizations make such serious claims of crimes against humanity leveled against an entire nation, and more dire, the willing collusion of state actors and agencies in the United States in these efforts.

Chapter 7: The Concert Master — John Dayal

Another important name associated with FIACONA is that of John Dayal — a Christian activist, journalist, and author. John Dayal is the Editor and CEO of the afternoon newspaper Delhi Mid-Day and has been the Treasurer of the Editor’s Guild of India.

He was on the advisory board of FIACONA and continues to serve the organization as a curator of their reports.  He is also the Co-founder and Secretary-General of the All Indian Christian Council (AICC), a nationwide alliance of Christian organizations, institutions, and federations formed in 1998.

AICC also has a US arm in the form of Dalit Freedom Network (DFN) which grew out of the former to expand its work for the Dalit cause in the US. AICC has been able to interact with and influence the former US Congressman of the Republican Party, Joseph Russell Pitts, who has spoken against India on anti-conversion laws and the situation of Dalits and minorities in India.

As noted in previous sections, John Dayal was the common agent behind the curation of both EFI and FIACONA’s reports. Dayal remains a key figure behind all these reports that pop up periodically and with unsubstantiated claims of atrocities against Christians in India.

More importantly, the EFI report curation was facilitated by a helpline number provided by a New Delhi-based NGO, the United Christian Forum for Human Rights (UCFHR). It is to be noted that Dayal was also behind the formation of UCFHR and currently serves as its National Convener.

Dalitstan, UCFHR, and Breaking India

UCFHR is a coalition of Christian organizations in India that claims to promote and protect the rights of religious minorities, particularly Christians. UCFHR was formed in 1998 and is based in New Delhi. It was founded by Alan Basil de Lastic, the former Archbishop of Delhi. As recorded by Disinfolab earlier, UCFHR was one of the websites promoted by a dubious-sounding website Dalitstan. Incidentally, Dalitstan was launched by US-based individuals, who advocated for the balkanization of India into several separate nations including a Dalit homeland. The founders of Dalitstan were all Church-going whites from the US including Kermit Northcutt, Debra Schwartz, George Schwartz, Helen Eklund, and Andy Moore.

It is important to note that Dalitstan was one such project started by US-based missionaries, aimed at the balkanization of India in the name of advocating for religious minorities and ethnic groups. The website for the Dalitstan project was registered by Helen Eklund — one of the co-founders of Dalitstan. Additionally, Dalitstan’s President, Kermit Northcutt, is a devout Christian. He is a member of Antioch Christian Academy and an active member. Antioch Christian Academy is part of the Antioch Network, which was founded in 1987 as an international multicultural fellowship that spans the globe and runs its missionary in the US. Antioch Christian Academy is a ministry of the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of Lucedale, MS. ACA is a private Christian school and was established on June 14, 2008.

The key highlight of the whole project was the control of narratives in the hands of missionaries in the early 2000s. John Dayal’s UCFHR was the only Christian organization endorsed by the Dalitstan website while its objective remained the same — the balkanization of India.

Today, the evangelists work with and in bed with the Islamist fronts like IAMC, JFA, and HfHR prepare reports about atrocities against Christians in India, which is then promoted further to influence the likes of USCIRF and the US State Department to sanction India.

Part III: Evangelists & Islamists Together
Chapter 8: The Same Core: IAMC-FIACONA-HfHR

Why are so many of these advocacy, activist, and religious groups concerned about human rights and religious freedom in India? That this concern is mostly generated and manufactured by US-based entities should not come as a surprise as they have been exposed for their lobbying activities against India in Disinfolab reports numerous times.

The Jamaat nexus comprising Justice For All (JFA), Burma Task Force (BTF), along with Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA)-slapped IAMC have worked in conjunction for years now. This is not the first time that FIACONA has worked into this equation of voicing Christian concerns. As noted in Chapter 6, FIACONA lobbies US Congressmen and US agencies and even engages with them directly to influence policymaking and report writing. The same method was applied by Islamist fronts to influence USCIRF and the Office of International Religious Freedom to get India blacklisted. These groups now have collaborated to offer a combined front: for Christians, they have FIACONA; for Hindus, they have the so-called “Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR)”; and for Muslims they have the IAMC and a plethora of Islamist organizations under the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) umbrella. They all sing, dance, and pray from the same hymnal sheet. Joining them on the sidelines are the Khalistanis and various “South Asian” and Left/Marxist groups, and intent on breaking India, marginalizing if not eliminating Hindus from all public spaces.

It is worth noting that these groups have been working together since the early 2000s and were part of the Coalition Against Genocide (CAG), an umbrella organization cofounded by Dr. Shaik Ubaid of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)/ IAMC and Angana Chatterji (the close aide of convicted Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) puppet, Ghulam Nabi Fai).

Shaik Ubaid himself is the pivot of most of the prominent Islamist organizations operating in the US including the IAMC and BTF, and was Secretary General of the ICNA. More about him is available in the Disinfolab report “Operation Tupac – Decoding The Longest War.”

FIACONA and IAMC

Prabhudoss’ Policy Institute for Religion and State (PIFRAS) as well as FIACONA were both members of the Coalition against Genocide (CAG) which had been working with the USCIRF closely ever since its inception. Prabhudoss has been the coordinator and moderator of IAMC events and a participant in congressional briefings. In return, IAMC helped launch FIACONA’s reports that claim to monitor violence against Christians in India. On April 6, 2022, IAMC co-organized a congressional briefing to launch the 2022 Annual Report of FIACONA. Several guests attended the event including Bryan Nerren (the pastor who was arrested and jailed in India for three months), Peter Cook (director of the New York State Council of Churches), HfHR’s Policy Director Ria Chakrabarty, Koshy George, Pieter Friedrich, and John Prabhudoss himself.

India Working Group (IRF Round Table)

At present, HfHR, IAMC, and FIACONA members comprise the India Working Group (IWG), which is one of the 12 constituents of the IRF Roundtable. IRF Roundtable is an independent, non-governmental organization where NGOs, individuals, and government officials from all faiths who work together to influence the US State Department ahead of its annual reports. IRF has many working groups including those for the Middle East, Justice & Accountability, Iran, China, Africa, Central Asia, etc. The IWG is chaired by the IAMC Advocacy Director, Ajit Sahi, John Prabhudoss (Indian American Christian Organization), and Nikhil Mandalaparthy (Deputy Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights).

The influence of these groups is such that they can be found in almost every place that has a role in USCIRF’s annual reports. In another such instance, Open Doors works with the USCIRF while its reports are used by the latter in evaluating countries including India. Open Doors in turn is also influenced by this Islamist and CAG members’ nexus including IAMC, HfHR, and JFA.

IRF Secretariat and IRF Summit 2023

The IRF Roundtable also organizes the IRF Secretariat which in turn is an NGO and a social convener of the global network of roundtables which is the “premier space for practical policy discussions and inclusive coordination of actions between faith communities, civil society and governments”.

We now see how these individuals, groups, and interests are all interconnected and form the full circle of peddlers of monopolist and supremacist faiths and their lies and falsehoods!

Former USCIRF Chair and IAMC ally Nadine Maenza is President of the IRF Secretariat since June 2022. Nadine’s tenure with USCIRF culminated in 2022. She now bridges the gap between these advocacy groups and the US State Department and in turn shapes and controls the narrative on “freedom of religion”.

These groups organize summits and events together and engage with the US State Department officials, US federal commission officials, including USCIRF officials, IRF officials, journalists, and human rights activists. The IRF Summit 2023 was held January 31-February 1, 2023. The speakers’ list included Nadine Maenza, IRF Ambassador-At-Large Rashad Hussain, journalist Raqib Hamid Naik, Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s Gregory Stanton, among other huckster-luminaries.

This is where all these groups and the US State Department meet and greet and produce reports on all the countries including India.

Conclusion

This is no longer a farce. These are ominous developments. It is increasingly difficult to identify whether the US government agencies are incompetent or are colluders. The OIRF report says that they cannot independently verify the reports of these organizations they rely on for their data. But this is a sham. One look at the atrocity documentation will give away how the data has been fabricated. Does it mean that the OIRF and even the State Department is not examining the data but are too eager to use their many collaborators in India to castigate India? Should we be even asking this question? This collusion and collaboration are evident. In this context, we should not forget to mention the role of the media — in the US, in India, and around the world. The US-based Christian organizations and their Indian affiliates offer these fabricated reports to build a narrative of atrocities on minorities – which is then used by the US Government to target India, which in turn is again picked up as evidence of such atrocities.

We can expect the same narrative to continue. What will give? These purveyors of fake data are not just peddlers of lies but purveyors of doomsday scenarios. They revel in stories of “end times” – which for India and Hindus mean the end of India and the end of Hindus. We better beware!

IndiaFacts Staff

IndiaFacts Staff articles, reports and guest pieces