ICC Note:

In a private meeting between the leaders of India and Nepal, India’s newly elected prime minister, Narendra Modi, invited Nepal to respect religious minorities. Later, the Secretary of India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that Modi has a “deep respect for all religions.” These statement provide a glimmer of hope for the future of religious freedom in India. Christians and other religious minorities in India fear Modi because of his Hindu nationalist ideology and history regarding incidents of religious violence. Do these statements mean that Hindu nationalism and sectarian violence are a thing of Modi’s past?  

5/28/2014 India (Asia News) – Narendra Modi, the newly elected prime minister of India, has invited Nepal to respect religious minorities in the country. This was one of the points discussed yesterday – in a private meeting – between the Prime Minister and his counterpart in Kathmandu, Shushil Koirala. In briefing reporters the meeting between the two leaders, Sujata Singh, secretary of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained that “our new Prime Minister of India is Hindu, but has a deep respect for all religions of the country.”

Quoting Modi, Singh added that “it’s been more than six years that Nepal became secular. So, India can’t decide anything. India may only help Nepal’s development. Nepal should respect all faiths and freedom to practice their faiths”. In 2008, after a bitter civil war, the Hindu monarchy fell and Kathmandu became the capital of a secular republic.

Modi also added that Nepal and India share mutual concerns about security, because they share an open border. Finally, the Indian Prime Minister has expressed interest in the development of hydropower projects.

Narendra Modi won the election with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) , the right-wing ultra-nationalist Hindu party affiliated to fundamentalist groups such as the Sangh Parivar responsible for violence, persecution and attacks against ethnic and religious minorities in India. Among these organizations the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) stands out, a paramilitary group of which Modi himself was a member, since the age of eight.

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