| Publication |
Jan 2005.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998 was founded in order to address the global problem of religious persecution. While this is undoubtedly a worthy goal, any nation’s unilateral action dealing with religious persecution is bound to be undermined by its own particular cultural biases. It is therefore interesting to examine the IRFA as it has been applied to a country such as India, for such an analysis reveals the following: those charged with the implementation of the IRFA proceed from specific ideological motivations that, at certain times and in certain contexts, result in the privileging of particular religious groups over others. This article thus has two goals: first, to explore the IRFA and the cultural assumptions which guided its formation and continue to govern its implementation; second, to analyze the problematic as well as the potentially beneficial aspects of the IRFA as it enters into a religio-political landscape very different from that in which it was conceived.
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