India rejects ‘malicious’ US report on religious freedom

A government commission in Washington has repeated its call for India to be designated a “country of concern”

New Delhi on Thursday condemned a report by a US government body claiming that “religious freedom conditions” in India have “continued to worsen.” 

The document, released on Wednesday by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), suggested that the State Department designate India a “country of particular concern.”

The Indian Foreign Ministry responded by describing the USCIRF as a “biased organization with a political agenda” which “continues to misrepresent facts and peddles a motivated narrative about India,” adding: “We reject this malicious report, which only serves to discredit USCIRF further.”

The ministry also urged the organization to “desist from such agenda driven efforts” and advised it to “utilise its time more productively” on addressing human rights in the US.

The USCIRF report claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government had made a “concerted effort” to implement election promises that “negatively and disproportionately” impact religious minorities. 

The report singled out the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), introduced earlier this year, the inauguration of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, and a proposal to introduce a unified civil code to replace religion-specific personal laws.

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The UNCIRF report also accused India’s political officials of “wielding hate speech and discriminatory rhetoric against Muslims and other religious minorities” in the lead-up to the 2024 election. 

“The Indian government continues to repress and restrict religious communities through the enforcement of discriminatory legislation like anti-conversion laws, cow slaughter laws, and antiterrorism laws,” the document added.

The USCIRF has reiterated its demand to the State Department to designate India as a “country of particular concern” each year since 2020. New Delhi has routinely rejected that view.

The latest rebuke came hours after Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar defended New Delhi’s “right” to respond to US criticism of Indian democracy. 

READ MORE: India hits out at US allegations of ‘human rights abuse’

“You have every right to comment. But I have every right to comment on your comment. So don’t feel bad when I do,” the minister said during an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“It cannot be that one democracy has a right to comment on another and that’s part [of] promoting democracy globally, but when others do that, then it becomes foreign interference,” he added.

In April, the US State Department’s Human Rights report for 2023 claimed that “significant abuses” had occurred in the Indian state of Manipur last year, while attacks on minorities, journalists, and dissenting voices had been recorded elsewhere in the country. New Delhi slammed the document as “very biased” and claimed that it showed a “very poor understanding” of India.