"Upon closer examination, however, extensive and systematic bias exists in HRW reports on human rights and communal violence in India. The most glaring defect of HRW reports is the lack of concern for the rights and lives of Hindus. Incidents of communal violence in which both the Hindu majority and a particular minority community were involved in and share the blame for are portrayed as one-sided attacks by Hindus against “innocent minorities.” Human rights abuses against Hindus are ignored or downplayed compared to attacks against other religious groups. The 1999 report on attacks on Christians goes a step further as it demonstrates hostility to the Hindu religion itself. Rather than attempting to provide an objective assessment of communal violence and human rights practices in India, HRW's reports are written with the intent of waging political warfare against the BJP government and the Sangh Parivar. It is true that groups like the VHP and Bajrang Dal have been responsible for promoting a disturbing form of religious intolerance that undermines India’s long traditions of religious pluralism and tolerance. But upon reading HRW's reports on communal violence and human rights, one would think that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar are responsible for all that is wrong in India and they are the ones who invented communal violence. HRW's reports on India are frequently filled with many distortions, half-truths, and outright false statements. The nature and the extent of bias are such that it is not the result of mere negligence, but systematic bias that reveals political motives."
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Arvin Bahl, published in Gujarat after Godhra: real violence, selective outrage by Ramesh N. Rao, Koenraad Elst, 2003, Har Anand Publications. Republished in Politics By Other Means: An Analysis of Human Rights Watch Reports on India, 12 January 2004, '
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