Vested interest groups that are lobbying across the world to taint the Modi government of India are thinking that they have got a small success when some USA International Report on Religious Tolerance pointed out that India is not very tolerant towards its minorities. We will start by pointing out that the report is till UPA governance period and has nothing to do with Modi government. Even if it were true, the UPA government should be judged. Now, we will come to the main issue here. Does USA have the right to criticize India on tolerance?

We will look at some sections of the society to see if USA is more tolerant than India and we will compare the fields to see who is doing better. As USA does not have AS BIG a religious minority as India, we will look at racial minorities, the black community. They form approximately similar percentage of US population as a race as Muslims do in India as a religious group.

1) Top Movie Celebrities (Hollywood vs. Bollywood)

Who are the most famous male actors in Hollywood? How many of them are black? Let us try to name the 10 most well known LEADING actors in Hollywood.

Leonardo Dicaprio

Robert Downey Jr.

Brad Pitt

Johny Depp

Tom Cruise

Tom Hardy

Matt Damon

Chris Pratt

Daniel Craig

Tom Hanks

As someone from outside USA, these are the top names that come to my mind. How many of them are Black? Or as they say in a “politically correct” way… African American? None. If I put my mind to it, I can name two African American leads. Morgan Freeman and Will Smith. One of them is past his prime and the other rarely plays any role as a lead anymore.

If we look at leading female actors, I can seriously not name even one African American woman who is NOT WHITE and has been a leading actress in any top movie.

Let us now move towards India.

Here are the top Bollywood celebrities in India:

Salman Khan

Amitabh Bacchhan

Shahrukh Khan

Akshay Kumar

Amir Khan

Ranbir Kapoor

Saif Ali Khan

Ranvir Singh

Irfann Khan

John Abraham

If you have a look at the above, you will see that out of 10, 5 are Muslims, 1 is Christian and 4 are Hindus. Hindus are 80% of the population. Muslims are 14% of the population and Christians are 2% of the population of India.

If Hindus hate Muslims, why do we have so many stars from their religion?

2) Politics of the country

How many politicians in the USA are from the minority community? Let’s forget Obama for a moment, who is by the way, the 44th president of the country. Since USA became a federal nation, there have been 43 different people who have been president of the country. But, it was the 43rd time when an African American person could become the president of the United States. And he became the same with the support of nearly all non-whites plus a good support from white females and a small section of white males.

Let us now look at India.

India has had 13 elected presidents till now and 3 acting presidents. Out of these 16, 4 were Muslims and 1 was a Sikh. This means that 31% of all Indian presidents were from the minority. Again, let us point out that Muslim population of India is just 14%.

The MOST LOVED Indian president of all time has undoubtedly been Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, who again, was a Muslim. It is too be noted that he became the president with the help of a political party labeled as a party of Hindus.

Can USA boast of such a track record?

3) Prison Population Percentage of Minorities

We will again start by pointing out that the black population of USA is about 14.3% of the total population.

Here are some other facts:

39.4% of total prison population of USA is Black

Incarceration rate of Blacks is more than 6 times higher than whites with a rate of 4,749 per 100,000 US residents. By comparison, whites have an incarceration rate of about 700 per 100,000 residents.

A 2012 University of Michigan Law School study found that African Americans are given longer federal sentences even when factoring prior criminal records, and that African American jail sentences tend to be roughly 10% longer than white jail sentences for the same crimes. (Source)

Now, let us have a look at India

India had 4.2 lakh people in prison in 2013. About 20% of them were Muslims. Muslim population in India as per 2011 census was 14.23%.

This is just about 1 and a half times their population as a percentage of the population. This is still more but it has many justifiable reasons just as USA has for having more black population in prison. But, can anyone explain why it is 3 times the percentage composition of their total population.

So, who needs to learn tolerance?

4) Racial Discrimination in Admissions in College

Go to any top US college and you will rarely find a good proportion of black population there. But, that is already well known. We will not cover that.

We will now look at the way OTHER groups including WHITES, ASIANS and HISPANICS are selected or rejected based on their race/ethnicity while being admitted to top institutes.

We will simply paste a para from this for your reference. We are sure you will understand what we are trying to say. The link talks about admission to Harvard.

“For Asian-American students to gain admission, they have to have SAT scores 140 points higher than white students, 270 points higher than Hispanic students, and 450 points higher than African-American students.”

While in India, there can be NO discrimination against a person based on his religion, race or ethnicity.

There are many such points that we can highlight but we are sure we have made our point. So, USA, before you point your fingers at us, have a look at yourself. We are not going to listen silently to you anymore. We are not the India under ManMohan Singh. We are from Modi’s India. We reply back. We fight back. So, best of luck in learning tolerance. Maybe you can learn from India’s LONG HISTORY of tolerance.

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