India is one of the only two regions of the world where a great human civilization took birth several millennia ago and has survived more or less uninterrupted to this day. Geographically, India is not as vast as China; India has been always a land of great multitudes^1. Religious minorities in India, particularly Christians and Muslims, suffer religious persecution daily, even despite nominal protection granted under India’s Constitution. Belying any constitutional claim of religious freedom, both federal and state legislation include “anti-conversion” laws which work to the detriment of religious minorities only; reconversion to Hinduism escapes regulation. Moreover, law enforcement consistently fails to grant protection for religious minorities, even where the laws seemingly grant a scintilla of religious freedom. In many cases, reports indicate that law enforcement has been obviously complicit in the persecution.

Since the days of the Indus Valley Civilization, Indian culture has been the product of a synthesis of diverse cultures and religions that came into contact with the enormous Indian sub-continent over a very long stretch of time. As Jawaharlal Nehru writes, there is "an unbroken continuity between the mosi: modern and the most ancient phases of Hindu thought extending over- three thousand years."' The rights of man have been the concern of all civilizations from time immemorial. "The concept of the rights of man and other fundamental rights was not unknown to the people of earlier periods."' The Babylonian Laws and the Assyrian laws in the Middle East, the "Dharma" of the Vedic period in India and the jurisprudence of Lao-Tze and Confucius in China, have championed human rights throughout the history of human civilization.