India on Tuesday called out the failure of the global community to recognise emergence of more virulent forms of religious phobias, including anti-Hindu, anti-Buddhist and anti-Sikh.
Addressing the United Nations Security Council High Level Open Debate on ‘Peacebuilding and sustaining peace: Diversity, state building and the search for peace’, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan asserted that being "selective" about criticising such phobias is "at our own peril.”
The minister highlighted violation of gurudwara premises and glorification of breaking of idols in temples in India's "neighbourhood".
"As regards religious identities, we are witnessing how member-states are facing newer form of religious phobias. While we have condemned anti-semitism, Islamophobia and Christianophobia, we fail to recognise that there are more virulent forms of religious phobias emerging and taking roots, including anti- Hindu, anti-Buddhist and anti-Sikh phobias,” he said.
Muraleedharan said, "we have seen in our own neighbourhood and elsewhere the destruction of temples, glorification of breaking of idols in temples, violation of gurudwara premises, massacre of Sikh pilgrims in gurudwaras, destruction of Bamyan Buddhas and other religious iconic sites.
"Our inability to even acknowledge these atrocities and phobias only gives those forces encouragement that phobias against some religions are more acceptable than those against others. If we chose to be selective about criticising such phobias or ignoring them, we do so at our own peril."
In August this year, hundreds of people, carrying sticks, stones and bricks had attacked a temple at Bhong city of Rahim Yar Khan district in Pakistan, some 590 kms from Lahore, burning parts of it and damaging idols. The attackers had damaged the idols, walls, doors and electric fittings while desecrating the temple.
India had summoned the Pakistani charge d'affaires in New Delhi and lodged a firm protest, expressing grave concerns at this reprehensible incident and the continued attacks on the freedom of religion of the minority communities and their places of religious worship in Pakistan.
Last year in March, heavily armed gunmen and suicide bombers had attacked a Sikh gurdwara in the Shor Bazar area in the heart of Afghanistan's capital of Kabul, killing at least 25 worshippers and wounding 8 others, in one of the deadliest attacks on the minority community in the country.
Authorities said 80 people, including women and children, were rescued from the gurdwara. Head of ISIL-K Pakistani national Aslam Farooqi was the mastermind behind the deadly terror attack on the prominent gurudwara.
(PTI inputs)
