Download Fillable PDF

Date: ___________________

As a resident of the state of _______________________, I commend President Bush for his second inaugural promise to “free the oppressed.”

However, I am appalled to learn that the United States gives credence to India’s self-proclamation that it is the “WORLD’S LARGEST DEMOCRACY.” How can a country where daily realities are driven by the Hindu caste system – a socially engineered form of APARTHEID – legitimately use our western version of the word “democracy?” The very nature of a caste system is diametrically opposes the concept of democracy (see United Nations report, April 2005 on Caste-based Discrimination). Some modern Indian laws may appear to address the situation, but racism is borne in the heart, and it is extremely difficult to change a culture and religion overnight.

The United States must be wary of forming a strategic alliance with or blindly giving humanitarian aid to any country that enacts and enforces laws that perpetuate human rights abuses. India, a country with a history of persecution against 40 million Christians and 300 million “Dalits” – the dark skinned “blacks” and “untouchables” of the country – today enforces the inhumane Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives the Indian army extraordinary power, including the right to shoot-to-kill, with full legal immunity. The Indian government has been able to cover up the massacre of over 300,000 Nagas since 1947 through this outrageous law. This act is ironically derived from a British colonial ordinance designed to suppress Indians’ legitimate resistance to colonial rule. In 1958, the Indians hypocritically adopted the same law, and to this day still enforces it to legally kill and oppress the Naga people. Naga challenges to the law within the Indian legal system failed when the Indian Supreme Court upheld this barbaric law. Since India gained independence from Britain in 1947, their army of more than 250,000, has been forcibly occupying Nagaland.

It is unconscionable to me as a resident of ______________, _______________ (INSERT AREA CODE ____________), that India, which so proudly touts itself the “WORLD’S LARGEST DEMOCRACY,” can get away with such blatant hypocrisy for so long. How could such an antiquated form of oppression still be practiced in the year 2006? The United States and the rest of the International Community must not stand by while India upholds grotesque human rights violations.

SIGNED BY PETITIONERS,

Name: _______________________________________

Address: _____________________________________

Comments: ___________________________________________________________________