What about anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh phobias, asks India at UN meet on Islamophobia


(MENAFN- Trend News Agency)

The UN General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a resolution to declare March 15 as International Day to Combat Islamophobia, with India expressing concern at the elevation of the phobia against one religion to such a level while excluding others.

The resolution was adopted by consensus. It was backed by 57 members of OIC and eight other countries, including China and Russia.

Explaining India's position on the resolution, TS Tirumurti, the country's permanent representative to the UN, expressed deep concern at the rise in instances of discrimination, intolerance and violence against members of many religious communities in different parts of the world.

“Let me also state that we condemn all acts motivated by anti-Semitism, Christianophobia or Islamophobia. However, such phobias are not restricted to Abrahamic religions only,” he said.

Tirumurti noted that Hinduism has more than 1.2 billion followers, Buddhism more than 535 million and Sikhism more than 30 million, and said the time had come to acknowledge the“prevalence of religiophobia, rather than single out just one”.

He added,“It is in this context that we are concerned about elevating the phobia against one religion to the level of an international day, to the exclusion of all the others. Celebration of a religion is one thing but to commemorate the combating of hatred against one religion is quite another.”

Tirumurti also argued the resolution“may well end up downplaying the seriousness of phobias against all other religions”.

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Trend News Agency

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