Why no Hindu or Buddhist representation?
By Aseem Shukla
February 25, 2010
Co-Founder, Hindu American Foundation Aseem Shukla Associate Professor in
urologic surgery at the University of Minnesota medical school. Co-founder and
board member of Hindu American Foundation.
Q: The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is recommending that the U.S.
government develop a strategy to make religion 'integral' to American foreign
policy. Should U.S. foreign policy get religion?
There is little doubt that U.S. foreign policy apparatchiks have historically
been deaf to religion as a driver of nationalism, foreign policy and eventual
chaotic governmental transitions overseas. Failing to predict the inevitability
of the Shah's overthrow in Iran or unbridled support to the so-called mujahideen
in Pakistan creating our friends, the Talibs (with apologies to the late Charlie
Wilson), are legend in the annals of American overreach, miscalculation and
religious obtuseness. That our foreign policy assets require an education in
global religious literacy is clear and its apparent absence appalling.
This week, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released a report put forth by
a task force it convened to chart a course for engaging religion as a part of
foreign policy. But the recommendations released by the task force are
fundamentally erroneous at several levels: from the makeup of the task force
that authored the report, its basic assumptions, and its potentially dangerous
recommendations. Indeed, the entire effort, ostensibly galvanized by President
Obama's similarly flawed address to the "Muslim World," promotes an Abrahamic
framework that fails factually, theoretically and in its myopic parochialism.
Some of the final recommendations are obvious: government officials should be
trained in the "role of religion in world affairs". Others are stunningly
misguided: that the role of the Establishment Clause mandating a separation of
church and state needs to be "clarified" to encourage relationships between our
government with religious groups overseas that would not pass muster
domestically. And absent entirely is a thorough explanation as to how that
dangerous admixture of religion and politics could safely transpire.
No observer will argue that our government officials and our citizens, for that
matter, must increase their understanding of global religions. But whose version
of religion? Hindus, for example, would be mortified if the eroticized,
sexualized spoof of Hindu theology long promoted by this nation's "preeminent"
scholar of Hinduism at the University of Chicago Divinity School, Prof. Wendy
Doniger, was offered as the expert voice to school foreign policy students. They
would much rather that voice be balanced between practicing Hindus and academics
who seek to understand and recognize the Hindu tradition from the perspective of
the practitioner.
Will the U.S. government promote the radically right-wing version of
Christianity aiming to grace Texas schoolbooks, or the Intelligent Design
dominated iteration championed by Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin and their ilk? These
are difficult questions that will set the tone to our policy wonks' dance with
religion.
Try now to digest the concept of our government modulating the hallowed
Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution already under duress from the
aforementioned Texas State Board of Education cabal. It is completely naive to
conceive of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. domestic policy as two separate
entities with little overlap. Take this excerpt from Page 64 of the full report
in arguing for limitations on the separation of church and state in foreign
affairs:
"For example, at one end of the spectrum is the erroneous view that the
Establishment Clause precludes foreign policy initiatives that advance the
freedom of religious practice and belief in other countries."
Read between the lines and the homily to the freedom of religious practice seems
far more insidious. One benign reading would be that the State Department would
promote freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia or Tibet or Malaysia. But an
entirely different fear could be that a Bush Administration redux--freed from
the limits of the Establishment Clause--could use foreign policy as a tool to
promote Christian evangelism and proselytization. Several global evangelical
groups and megachurches already subsidize education and health care, for
example, to new converts in Asia and Africa. Such partisan excesses have been
covered in detail in the Indian press and here.
And another question: Given the intersection between global and domestic policy,
would selective interaction of our government with particular religious groups
overseas not require closer relations between representatives of those religious
groups that are U.S. based? The danger that one religious tradition would be
privileged over others is very real, and there are very valid reasons that the
Establishment Clause serves as a bulwark against such misadventures.
That same danger of privileging certain religious groups over others is manifest
even in the composition of the Task Force. Of 32 religious leaders, academics
and consultants that made the cut, not a single one belongs to a Dharm tradition
-- Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism or Jainism, let alone many thriving indigenous
traditions. Not one. Hindus and Buddhists comprise a growing portion of our
foreign service establishment, and the current administrator of the U.S. Agency
for International Development, Rajiv Shah, is Hindu. But not one made the cut to
sit on this task force recommending how our country should deal in a world where
more than one in five persons is Hindu or Buddhist. (Tom Wright, the task
force's project director, said "We did reach out to leaders in those religious
communities but they weren't able to participate.")
If the ostensible goal of the task force was to eschew the imperialistic
ham-handedness of our previous foreign policy folly, why create a real
credibility dilemma for this panel comprised only of Christians, Muslims and
Jews. And the very co-chair of the panel, Richard Cizik, is the President of the
New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, whose Web site's home page
speaks of their "calling to proclaim the Gospel to all the world." So a task
force headed by Cizik recommends that the Obama Administration "clarify the
applicability of the Establishment Clause"--how's that for spectacular gumption!
This task force recommends not only engaging the Organization of Islamic
Conference (OIC), but actually asks that our nation name an Ambassador level
envoy to this group. Notwithstanding that the OIC's record is dubious at best: a
well-known platform for anti-Semitic outbursts; pushing through the dangerous UN
Resolution against defamation of religion that actually was an international
anti-blasphemy measure meant to suppress free speech and other human rights; and
repeated attacks on the territorial integrity of India's state of Jammu and
Kashmir. The OIC limits membership to a set group of only Islamic countries--the
Muslim world, so to speak, that President Obama has such a penchant for
addressing.
The U.S. has an Ambassador to the Vatican and Israel, and perhaps, soon, the
Muslim world. So we reward those that profess a state religion, persecute
infidels in their midsts and laugh off secularism as an irrelevant relic, and we
relegate the 1.5 billion adherents of pluralistic, non-proselytizing Dharma
religions to no voice at all? Can we reconcile this appeasement to the Muslim
world while we deny the agency of religious ambassadorship to India and
Thailand, that despite their respective Hindu and Buddhist majorities, maintain
democratic and secular governance?
Seek another example of the task force cowtowing to Islamism? Take this excerpt
from the Executive Summary recommending that we engage Islamist political
parties that may hate us:
"Indeed, no Islamist party elected to national parliament has sought to put
greater emphasis on Sharia laws as the source of legislation, despite
pre-election rhetoric to the contrary. Instead, they often become mired in the
day-to-day necessities of ruling, which include making good on commitments to
tackle corruption and provide much-needed public services in order to build a
record of practical accomplishment."
To the contrary, the Hindu American Foundation's annual human rights reports, as
well as the State Department documented thousands of atrocities against Hindus,
Christians and other minorities in Bangladesh immediately after the Bangladesh
National Party-Jamaat Islami combine of parties promoted imposition of Sharia
laws between 2001-2006. The task force condones Islamist parties as actually
untrue to Sharia based on this reading, but are actually do-gooders tackling
corruption and crime! At least they keep the trains running on time, it is as if
we are asked to accept. Of course our government must engage with a multitude of
partners--Hindu nationalists in India and Christian nationalists in our
country--but spare us the paean to Islamism.
In the end, as with too many such task forces or commissions comprised of voices
that fail to reflect a nation they profess to advise, and are steered by clear
ideological preference, this effort terribly overreaches. And such failures can
be miserable. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
(USCIRF), chaired by the head of the conservative Federalist Society and
similarly bereft of Hindus or Buddhists, stirred controversy and a diplomatic
firestorm when it recommended that the State Department place India on a watch
list reserved for the likes of Iran and Syria.
There is no argument that religious literacy must be improved and our foreign
policy be flexible enough to deal with the shifting sands of religious
nationalism and extremism. But let us never compromise the core values of our
Bill of Rights and Constitution--indeed we must, as we always have, uphold them
as a paradigm for others. We were not attacked on 9/11 because we failed to
flatter the Islamists and extremists enough, it is because our attackers were
nurtured in environs that had no Constitution as free as ours. And, finally, let
us privilege the voices of the pluralists, the pragmatics and those that are
religious to the core but secular in governance--for those will be our true
allies as we meet the challenges of a changing world.
Views expressed here are the personal views of Dr. Aseem Shukla, and do not
necessarily represent those of the University of Minnesota or Hindu American
Foundation.
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