Joseph D’Souza

This week, Narendra Modi was sworn in to a second term in office, becoming the first Indian prime minister in over five decades to not only win back-to-back parliamentary elections but to do so while increasing his party’s majority. The BJP, Modi’s party, won a landslide 303 seats in parliament. As expected, Modi’s victory has drawn mixed reactions. In fact, so much so that TIME magazine ran two bewildering articles: one before the election calling the prime minister “Divider-in-Chief” and another afterward titled “Modi Has United India Like No Prime Minister in Decades.” As comical as TIME magazine’s gaffe may be, the truth is India stands at a crossroads. Other media reports have pointed to the rise of Hindu nationalism in the BJP and its threat to religious minorities. Of course, we must keep in context the reality that since independence India has been ruled by Hindu majority parties, regardless of who is in power. Coming into his second term, Prime Minister Modi has the opportunity to shape India for decades to come, but to achieve this he must work toward uniting India by taking these three steps: 1. Reach Out to Indian Muslims Modi’s first order of business should be to reach out to Indian Muslims who have suffered violence from extreme, right-wing elements, some which claim to support him and his party. The prime minister has already stated he wants his government to include and be fair to all sections of society. “We have to carry along everyone for the good of the country,” Modi said in a victory speech shortly after the election. Sadly, many candidates resorted to polarizing language during the election, stoking already existing religious tensions. In a recent example, the day [...]

This week, hundreds of foreign officials, human rights activists and NGO leaders will gather in Washington to discuss what many of us believe is the most pressing issue in the world today: religious liberty. It’s the second annual Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, an initiative the State Department launched last year to address the growing threat against religious liberty across the world. The ministerial is a timely effort: more than seven in 10 people in the world live in countries with high restrictions or hostilities against religion. Having been an advocate for religious liberty for decades, I am encouraged the State Department is prioritizing defending this most basic human right. The ministerial is an opportunity to recalibrate bilateral relations between nations, which for too long have been driven by economic interests at the expense of human rights. For example, despite its long and well-documented history of human rights abuses and curtailment of religious freedom, Saudi Arabia still remains in America’s good graces. I have written before about how the Saudi Kingdom has provided millions of dollars to fund mosques overseas – including in the West – while at the same time denying religious liberty to Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other faith groups who live in the country. The disastrous conflict in Yemen combined with the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident and Washington Post columnist, seems to have finally prodded Congress to put pressure on President Trump to reevaluate America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Yet this doesn’t necessarily mean cutting all diplomatic relations or forsaking one of America’s key allies in the Middle East. A viable solution is including international reciprocal religious freedom laws in bilateral relations. A few years ago Rep. Dave Brat, Va., introduced in Congress the Religious Freedom International Reciprocity [...]