New Delhi: India on Thursday mounted a sharp attack at the United Nations against a UN Special Rapporteur's report on funeral rights, accusing it of bias against the Global South while also delivering a stinging rebuttal to Pakistan over its remarks on religious freedom and Jammu and Kashmir.
Bhavika Mangalanandan, First Secretary in India's Permanent Mission to the UN, spoke during an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, which had presented a report on funeral rights in exceptional circumstances. In unusually blunt language, the Indian diplomat questioned both the methodology of the report and the credibility of Pakistan's interventions in the debate.
Responding to Pakistan, Mangalanandan said it was deeply ironic that a state that did not even accept the bodies of its own soldiers killed in combat during the 1999 Kargil war was now speaking with fervour about faith, religious freedom and burials.
"It is deeply ironic that a state that did not even accept the bodies of its own soldiers who were killed in combat in 1999 in Kargil unabashedly speaks with fervour on faith, religious freedom and burials," Mangalanandan said. "Let me remind them, it was the Indian Army that buried a number of Pakistani soldiers with military honours and in accordance with Islamic rites."
The reference was to one of the most documented episodes of the Kargil conflict of 1999. When Pakistani troops, initially described by Islamabad as militants, were driven out of the heights of Kargil by the Indian Army in Operation Vijay between May and July 1999, Pakistan refused to acknowledge that its regular soldiers had been involved. As a result, Islamabad did not accept the bodies of several of its own soldiers who died in the fighting.
The Indian Army buried them with full military honours and in accordance with Islamic religious rites, a fact India has repeatedly placed on the international record.
By invoking Kargil at the UN, India sought to demolish what it called Pakistan's moral standing to lecture on issues of faith and burial rights. Indian diplomats have used the same episode in past sessions of the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, and Thursday's intervention continued that line of argument.
The Indian representative also turned the tables on Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir. She said Pakistan's deep obsession with what is happening in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir should actually be directed at the developments underway in the parts of Jammu and Kashmir under its illegal occupation, such as Rawalakot. She added that in Pakistan, the number of minorities is shrinking and their rights are regularly abused.
"A state that cannot ensure the safety of its own minorities has no standing to lecture India," Mangalanandan said, echoing a line Indian diplomats have used frequently in recent years in Geneva and New York.
Her remarks come amid renewed concerns raised by Indian officials over religious discrimination and alleged forced conversions of minorities in Pakistan, issues that New Delhi has repeatedly flagged at international forums.
Beyond Pakistan, the Indian diplomat took aim at the Special Rapporteur's report itself. She criticised the report for what she described as bias against the Global South in its account of burials during the Covid-19 pandemic. "As per the report, all discrimination and wrong practices during Covid-19 supposedly took place only in the Global South," she said. "What benefit does the report derive by not mentioning similar tragic situations in the developed world?"
To make her point, Mangalanandan cited the mass graves on Hart Island off New York City, where thousands of bodies of people who died of Covid-19 were buried during the pandemic. There is no mention of such incidents in the report, she noted, arguing that the selective focus undermined the credibility of the exercise.
She also questioned what she described as fervent advocacy in the report for the rights of terrorists, pointing out that those who violate the most sacred right of humans — the right to life — were being discussed with more concern than the victims of terrorism.
"A terrorist not only kills innocent people, but damages the psyche of a nation," she said. "It is a pity that the fervent advocacy for the rights of terrorists, who violate the most sacred right of humans, the right to life, does not similarly extend to the victims of terrorism."
Special Rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. They are not paid directly by the UN and are expected to work independently. India has had a running friction with several rapporteurs in recent years, often accusing them of overstepping their mandates or relying on unverified information.
The interactive dialogue on funeral rights in exceptional circumstances was part of the ongoing session of the General Assembly's Third Committee, which deals with human rights questions. India regularly participates in such dialogues and has used them to articulate its positions on terrorism, minority rights and what it calls the selective treatment of developing countries in UN human rights reports.
For Pakistan, the session was another uncomfortable moment in a familiar pattern. In recent years, India has systematically rebutted Pakistani interventions at the UN, invoking episodes from the Kargil war to the presence of designated terrorists on Pakistani soil.
In the same week, India also reminded the international community that wanted fugitives such as Dawood Ibrahim have lived in Pakistan, continuing a diplomatic campaign to expose what it calls Islamabad's double standards on terrorism and religious freedom.
The larger context of Thursday's exchange is the steady deterioration of India-Pakistan relations, which have remained frozen since the 2019 Pulwama attack and the subsequent Balakot airstrike, followed by India's abrogation of Article 370 later that year. With no bilateral dialogue in sight, multilateral forums like the UN have become the principal stage for the two countries to contest each other's narratives.
For the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the Indian critique adds to a growing list of objections from member states who argue that thematic reports must be balanced and must not ignore the realities of terrorism and the suffering of victims. Whether the final report reflects any of these concerns will be watched closely in New Delhi.
(Reporting based on NDTV and The Economic Times.)