3. Situation of Buddhists and Hindus

Hindus don't have the concept of commandments.

Increase from 1971 to 1991 Hindus Muslims

28. Apart from these problematical questions, it would seem that the situation of Hindus and their relations with non Hindus are in general positive.

You know the Hindus are killing us Muslims. Be careful.

You know the Hindus are killing us Muslims. Be careful.

In other words, good Hindus and good Jews don't act this way.

The Hindus say, Nada brahma, one translation of which is, The world is sound.

There are 765,135 Catholics, 30,538 Protestants, 24,938 Muslims, 5,500 Hindus and 2,787 Buddhists.48

The rest of the population comprises Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Atheists (see table 8).

Concerning the clashes between Christians and Hindus in Bombay, the police had made arrests, although no charges had been made for forced conversions to Christianity. It had, however, been alleged that financial assistance had been given to destitute Hindus in order to influence their conversion to Christianity.

It includes Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and people with other spiritual background who work together to overcome violence and division in the human family.

27. The Jammu and Kashmir conflict has also, owing to anti Hindu extremism, resulted in the expulsion of Hindus and their settlement in refugee camps.

66. In recent years, there has been a large increase in the number of Buddhists and Hindus in Australia and their communities are now being structured.

86. The observer for the National Minorities Council of India stated that, in India, the manipulation of the media often aggravated tensions between Muslims and Hindus.

But what would you think was the second largest group, convincingly outnumbering Jews with 2.8 million, Muslims at 1.1 million, and Hindus, Buddhists and all other religions put together?

Even in Europe, the numbers confessing to a belief in God remain high. And, of course there are hundreds of millions of Hindus and still solid numbers of Sikhs and Jews.

Today s crisis calls for every thinking Pakistani to ask serious questions of themselves What should be the idea of Pakistan? Are you Pakistanis who happen to be Muslims, Christians, or Hindus?

24. On the subject of untouchability, it is clear that the iniquitous system of castes, legally abolished but maintained in practice, gives rise to intolerance of this large category of Hindus.

58. According to the information received, Buddhists and Hindus may freely carry out their religious activities, including religious services and traditions and the management of the business of their religious institutions.

Think of all those who don t like to write or say Happy Christmas, lest they offend those who are not Christians. This self censorship is rather insulting to Jews, Hindus, and Muslims.

That happened in India in 1947, when the British left, Pakistan broke away, and roughly a million Hindus and Muslims died in mutual slaughter. But does this really mean that the British Raj should have lasted longer?

And this is not only about Islamic extremism. There are extremist acts perpetrated against Muslims because of their religion, and today there are fanatical Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists who disfigure the true nature of their faith.

They claim that Western countries object to whaling because, for them, whales are a special kind of animal, as cows are for Hindus. Western nations, the Japanese say, should not try to impose their cultural beliefs on them.

22. The Special Rapporteur has, on the other hand, analysed the situation of the Hindus, who account for the majority of India apos s population, through his examination of Muslim, Christian and Sikh minorities and their relations with the State and society.

I am a vegetarian myself, but I have never considered it my business what others eat. Where beef was legally available, it was consumed not just by Muslims and other minorities, but also by many poorer Hindus, who could not afford other kinds of meat.

The galloping chauvinism has known no bounds. Modi himself made the embarrassing declaration in a speech at a new hospital, no less that the figure of the Hindu god Ganesh, with its elephant s head on a human body, attested to the ancient Hindus knowledge of plastic surgery.

That composition changed dramatically with the partition of the new states of India and Pakistan in 1947, when 14 million people moved across the newly drawn border. Eight million Muslim refugees fled India and entered Pakistan, and six million Hindus and Sikhs moved in the opposite direction.

46. Yet the Special Rapporteur is concerned about the possible repetition of such incidents at places of worship that are disputed by Muslims and Hindus, and in particular at the Matura mosque that is claimed by ultra nationalist Hindu parties as being the birthplace of Krishna.

It is entirely fitting that the Indian team has been led by captains from each of its major faiths Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Christians, and a colorful Sikh. A land divided by caste, creed, color, culture, cuisine, custom, and costume is united in consensus around a great conviction cricket.

God, Bokh, whatever name you want to call him with, Allah, Ram, Om, whatever the name might be through which you name or access the presence of divinity, it is the locus of absolute being, absolute love and mercy and compassion, and absolute knowledge and wisdom, what Hindus call satchidananda.

A Muslim man was beaten to death by a mob in a small town an hour from New Delhi in response to rumors that he had slaughtered and eaten a cow, sacred to Hindus. Another man died after being attacked by villagers who believed he was involved in cattle smuggling.

Further, under the Indian Constitution, the concept of caste is solely and exclusively related to Hindus and Sikhs alone and persons professing any other religion do not have a caste classification, although there are variations in practice, which only goes to show that caste merely denotes a social or class distinction.

(d) In Georgia and in Singapore, Jehovah apos s Witness literature has allegedly been confiscated. In Uzbekistan, the authorities are said to have confiscated Bibles. In Nepal, Christian religious material has apparently been destroyed by Hindus. In Singapore, Jehovah apos s Witnesses have allegedly been penalized for possession of their banned literature.

Like a happy and secure childhood, Confucian civilization bestowed upon its practitioners the self confidence to meet the challenge of the West. Since Confucianism was essentially an agnostic ideology, concerned with the management of the visible world, the post Confucians experienced little of the spiritual angst that afflicted Hindus, Muslims, and Christians in their collision with the materialism of industrial society.

To hear Modi tell it, India would have been better off with Patel who forged national unity, defended the country s Hindus during the horrors of Partition, and stood firm on issues like Kashmir instead of the allegedly pussyfooting Jawaharlal Nehru, as its first prime minister. The implication is clear a vote for Modi is a vote for a latter day Patel.

The NGO Taskforce against Torture has documented over 500 cases of torture and intimidation by radical Islamists, who also have murdered supporters of the Communist Party, such as Abdul Kayyam Badshah. Indeed, Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists have been targeted as well, and religious extremists more recently have attacked Sufi shrines deemed to be idolatrous, and even Bengali cultural events that unite all religions in a common identity.

The background of these events and of the controversy surrounding this religious site which is a bone of contention between Muslims, who venerated it as a mosque, and Hindus who were trying to build a temple on what is said to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram, were the subject of several communications addressed by the Special Rapporteur to the Indian authorities communication of 10 November 1993 (E CN.4 1994 79) and communication of 5 September 1994 (E CN.4 1995 91) .