American Hypocrisy on India
The tragedy of America’s foreign policy is not only its arrogance abroad but its hypocrisy. The United States, whether under Republicans or Democrats, has long practiced the art of destabilization in the name of “human rights” and “religious freedom.” When it comes to India, the world’s largest democracy, this hypocrisy has reached absurd levels. With a straight face, Washington lectures New Delhi on pluralism while underwriting sedition through Dalit fronts, Christian missionary networks, and Muslim organizations that operate less like religious institutions and more like political arms of American power projection.
Both parties in Washington—Republican and Democrat alike—care little about the dignity of Hinduism or the sovereignty of the Republic of India. For them, India is a pawn on the chessboard of geopolitical competition. They will toast Gandhi in their speeches but quietly fund those who disparage Hindu civilization as “oppressive,” “caste-ridden,” and “communal.” The Republican right embraces Christian evangelical outfits that pour millions into Dalit and tribal conversions, insisting that the road to salvation lies in renouncing one’s Hindu past. The Democratic left, meanwhile, wields the language of “human rights” as a club, holding congressional hearings stacked with anti-India witnesses who caricature Hindus as intolerant majoritarians. In both cases, the goal is not compassion but control. Destabilize India internally, and America can dictate terms externally.
The story repeats itself like clockwork. A Dalit activist in Washington testifies about “systemic oppression,” his NGO funded by church networks in Texas. A Muslim organization calls India the new fascist state, its money trail leading back to Gulf donors but with Washington’s wink and nod. A think tank in D.C. hosts panels on “Hindu nationalism,” while conveniently ignoring America’s own bloody wars and systemic racism. Every cry of “persecution” that is amplified in America translates into pressure on India’s government, weakening the Republic and emboldening separatists. This is not solidarity—it is sedition dressed up in the costume of liberal concern.
Make no mistake: America does not care about the lives of ordinary Dalits, Christians, or Muslims in India. If it did, it would begin with its own record at home—systemic police brutality, mass incarceration, the dispossession of Native Americans, the political disenfranchisement of Black voters. Instead, it projects its guilt outward, using Indian minorities as moral leverage. These groups are pawns in a larger imperial game: a way to fracture Hindu confidence and weaken India’s unity, so that America can retain dominance in Asia against the rise of both India and China. Divide and lecture—that is the strategy.
Hinduism, with its pluralism, its staggering diversity of gods, philosophies, and sects, is caricatured by Americans who know nothing of it. To them, “religious freedom” means conversion to their faiths, not the genuine freedom to worship in many ways. They mistake India’s debates and tensions for systemic failure, ignoring that Hindu civilization has endured invasions, colonization, and partition precisely because it cannot be reduced to a single creed. The Republic of India, despite all its flaws, remains the most audacious democratic experiment in human history. Yet for Washington, this is never enough. The more confident India becomes, the more it must be cut down to size.
What is presented as moral concern is in fact political sabotage. Both Republicans and Democrats see advantage in funding NGOs, think tanks, and activists whose rhetoric weakens India’s unity. Both sides benefit from a destabilized India: Republicans through their evangelical crusade, Democrats through their human rights industry. The result is the same: a steady erosion of Hindu self-confidence, a drip-drip of international slander, and a manufactured narrative that India is perpetually on the verge of tyranny. America calls it “freedom”; Indians know it as interference.
The true question is this: why must India, a nation of 1.4 billion, the world’s largest democracy, the inheritor of an ancient civilization, accept lectures from a country that has never looked honestly at its own sins? Why should Hindus accept sermons from politicians who see them only as obstacles to conversion, or as statistics in a congressional hearing? America is not India’s moral guardian. And Hindus, after centuries of surviving every attempt at subjugation, should see through this masquerade for what it is: not compassion, but control.
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