The continued institutionalized oppression of Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists through constitutional and legal measures in India even after 65 years of its independence is a gross violation of human rights and has been embedded in Indian History. Shameful as it is, using racist slurs as butchers for followers of other religions is just the tip of the iceberg of racism that exists amongst the majority Hindu population against other religions or those who convert to other religions.
Involvement of Indian politicians and governmental institutions in planned atrocities and terror acts and fake encounters has been proven and some of the Indian media has now started openly discussing this.
I would like to quote from an article to open your eyes to the realities as they exist. These articles talk about atrocities against Buddhists which also have a historical perspective.
[Extracts] Hope for India's 'broken' Buddhists
By Kalinga Seneviratne
We were converted into Buddhists in 1956, but we still face a lot of discrimination, injustice and violence.
In contemporary India, while attacks by Hindu militant groups on the minority Muslim and Christian communities have drawn the attention of the Indian and international media, atrocities on Buddhists go unreported, mostly because they fall into the lowest rungs of the caste ladder.
In September 2006, a family of Buddhist Dalits - 45-year-old Surekha Bhotmange, her 18-year-old daughter Priyanka, sons Roshan and Sudhir - was lynched by an upper caste mob in Khairlanji about 30 kilometers from here.
On October 24, 2008, eight people were convicted for the massacre and six of them given the death sentence. But Ghodeshwar says that was a rare instance of justice catching up on such atrocities perpetrated by upper caste Hindu fanatics.
One problem for the Buddhists is that the Hindu establishment does not accept the fact of their conversions or even that Buddhism is a separate faith system. Officially, less than 1% of 1 billion Indians are listed as Buddhist, but most people agree that the majority of the 200 million Dalits of India follow the Buddhist faith.
"We have converted but still the Hindus aren't accepting that we have been converted and they don't understand that we belong to a separate group now. They refer to the Buddha as the ninth incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu and do not see Buddhism as a separate religion,'' said Ghodeshwar.
"We are seen as part and parcel of Hinduism and this is also linked to our oppression and discrimination as Dalits,''Ghodeshwar added.
Sulekhatai Kumbhare, a former minister in the state government of Maharashtra and a Buddhist leader here, argues that the number of Buddhists in India is not large enough to affect political changes. ''We need to get the support of other communities. But Hindus think that because we left their religion we cannot be friends,'' she says.
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan
The discrimination against Buddhists is not a recent phenomenon and has historical roots.
[Excerpts] Why did Buddhism disappear from South Asia? Brahmin atrocities that destroyed Buddhism in the Subcontinent
. Dr. Dr MS Jayaprakash, professor of history at Kollam throw some deep insights into the dark history of India when Buddhism was systematically eliminated by Brahminical forces who control Hinduism, then and now.
Hundreds of Buddhist statues, stupas and viharas have been destroyed in India between 830 and 966 AD in the name of Hindu revivalism. Both literary and archaeological sources within and outside India speak volumes about the havoc done to Buddhism by Hindu fanatics. Spiritual leaders like Sankaracharya and many Hindu kings and rulers took pride in demolishing Buddhist images aiming at the total eradication of Buddhist culture.
After all, in places such as Bengal and Sind, which were ruled by Brahminical dynasties but had Buddhist majorities, Buddhists are said to have welcomed the Muslims as saviours who had freed them from the tyranny of upper caste rule. This explains why most of the lower-caste people in Eastern Bengal and Sind embraced Islam. Few, if any, among the upper castes of these regions did the same.
LankaWeb Why did Buddhism disappear from South Asia? Brahmin atrocities that destroyed Buddhism in the Subcontinent
I hope that the Indian members wake up to the realities regarding majority Hindu discrimination against minorities as it existed in history and as these exist now.
