The big question we must ask ourselves when we discuss President Barack Obama’s Siri Fort speech today (27 January) is this: did we all hear the same speech? Or did we dissect it according to our individual biases? If one were to take a look at the buzz on social media, the traditional Modi-baiters saw in Obama’s speech, and especially his message of religious tolerance and diversity, as an oblique criticism of the government and its Parivar backers. Thin-skinned Modi-bhakts were upset that Obama gave us a lecture on secularism when America is far from being a just society.Those who believe that Obama had the Sangh Parivar in mind when he talked about “freedom of conscience and….. right to freely profess and practice and propagate religion” should also ponder another sentence: “In both our countries, in all countries…freedom of religion is the utmost responsibility of the government but also the responsibility of every person.”On the other hand, the internet Hindus on twitter seemed to recoil with a guilty conscience on his call for religious freedom. One wonders why. “Ghar wapsi” is nothing if not an effort to reconvert people who left the Hindu faith, and surely freedom of religion applies as much here as in the reverse. Surely, Obama could not have meant a one-way freedom of conscience and religion. He may not back “ghar wapsi”, but it is logically implied when he said article 25 of the Indian constitution guarantees “the right to freely profess and practise and propagate religion.”Obama said this: “Every person has a right to practice the faith that they choose and to practice no faith at all and to do so free of persecution, fear or discrimination.” What is objectionable in this? There are, arguably, more critics of atheism in god-fearing America than in India. Heading towards Saudi Arabia from India, Obama could have been referring to that kingdom’s complete absence of freedom of religion and the death sentence for apostasy. Obama said “our diversity is our strength and cautioned both India and the US to guard against sectarianism.He is essentially saying that both US and India are great countries only “if” they can retain their diversity and keep sectarian differences at bay. Religion and the narrowness of religious beliefs is as much a problem in America as in India.The moral of the story is simple: what we got was a heart-felt message from the US president, but we read it as a condemnation of Modi or the Sangh parivar. It goes to prove a basic human truth: there is a gap between what is said and what we choose to hear.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 15:26:35 +0000
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