Cambridge-Educated, JNU Academic Blasts Barack Obama for Minority Rights Remark

Author and academician Anand Ranganathan has delivered a strong rebuttal to Barack Obama’s comments on religious freedom and human rights in India, pointing to the former US President’s own record on hate crimes.

Referring to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s press conference where she slammed Obama’s statement about minority rights in India, Ranganathan said: “While it is good that finally a minister from this government stood up and countered Barack Obama and tried to expose him for his plethora of lies and propaganda-driven fake narrative, I am afraid just mentioning that Obama bombed six Muslim nations doesn’t make the rebuttal watertight. In fact, all it does is expose Obama’s hypocrisy and bias. And at the worst, it doesn’t address any of his propaganda-driven lies.”

“… During the Obama years, there were 2,17,000 violent hate crimes in 2012 alone. Just one year… Since 2017, there have been more than 200 documented instances of hate crime attacks, lynchings and attempted lynchings by Muslim mobs on Hindus, Dalits and non-Dalits…. None of these instances elicit a response or outrage from the cottage industry of activists and journalists who only highlight incidents where the Muslims are the victims,” he added.

“Once rebutted on their shameless electivity, these Class 4 failures quickly turn to this new trope of mainstreaming of violence. And here they say the ruling dispensation is mainstreaming violence. But here again… these fake activists and usual suspects in the media only highlight the cases electively.”

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Obama reportedly said if India does not protect the rights of “ethnic minorities”, there is a strong possibility at some point that the country starts pulling apart.

In a press meet, Nirmala Sitharaman said the remarks were surprising as six Muslim-majority countries had faced US “bombing” during his tenure. The finance minister alleged that “organised campaigns” were being run to level “baseless” allegations on the treatment meted out to minorities at the behest of the Opposition as it cannot defeat the BJP electorally under Modi.

Later on Monday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, too, slammed the former US president, saying he should first think about how many Muslim-majority countries were attacked during his tenure.