Bhubanswar/ New Delhi: India’s ambassador to the United Nations TS Tirumurti has urged the world body to recognise ‘Hinduphobia’ along with religious hatred against Buddhism and Sikhism in the global fight against terrorism. Tirumurti said the United Nations’ latest Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) adopted last year was flawed and selective.
Tirumurti was referring to the seventh review of the GCTS passed by the UN General Assembly in June 2021. He said only religious phobias against Islam, Christianity and Judaism found place in the global terror strategy. Tirumurti said the UNSC should be “guard against new terminologies and false priorities that can dilute our focus”.
He said, “Terrorists are terrorists. There are no good and bad ones. Those who propagate this distinction have an agenda and are just as culpable.” This is not the first time that India has flagged ‘Hinduphobia’ urging the UN to take note of such religious hatred. In October 2021, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan told the UNSC, “We are witnessing how member-states are facing newer form of religious phobias.
The shattering of the iconic Bamiyan Buddha by fundamentalists, the terrorist bombing of the Sikh gurudwara in Afghanistan and the destruction of Hindu and Buddhist temples and minority cleansing of these religions, calls for condemning such acts against these religions also. But the current member-states refuse to speak of these religions in the same breath as the first three ‘Abrahamic’ religions.
