‘Deeply biased, lacks understanding of India’s social fabric’: India on US religious freedom report

Tribune News Service

Ajay Banerjee 

New Delhi, June 28

In a sharp retort to the US State Department’s report on International Religious Freedom for 2023, India on Friday said like the past, the report is “deeply biased” as it lacks understanding of India’s social fabric and is “visibly driven” by vote-bank considerations and a prescriptive outlook. 

“We reject it,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said today.

Jaiswal said, “The exercise itself is a mix of imputations, misrepresentations, selective usage of facts, reliance on biased sources and a one-sided projection of issues”.

“This (bias) extends even to the depiction of our Constitutional provisions and duly enacted laws of India”, the MEA spokesperson said. 

The report has selectively picked incidents to advance a pre-conceived narrative as well, he said.

In some cases, the very validity of laws and regulations are questioned by the report, as are the right of legislatures to enact them. The report also appears to challenge the integrity of certain judgments given by Indian courts, Jaiswal said 

In a statement, the MEA said: “The report has targeted regulations that monitor misuse of financial flows into India. Suggesting that the burden of compliance is unreasonable, it seeks to question the need for such measures.”

The MEA statement said that “the US has even more stringent laws and regulations (on financial compliance) and would surely not prescribe such solutions for itself”.   

Human rights and respect for diversity have been and remain a legitimate subject of discussion between India and the United States.

India, the statement said, has officially taken up numerous cases in the US of hate crimes, racial attacks on Indian nationals and other minorities, vandalisation and targeting of places of worship, violence and mistreatment by law enforcement authorities, as well as the according of political space to advocates of extremism and terrorism abroad. 

“However, such dialogues should not become a licence for foreign interference in other polities,” it added. 

Yesterday the US Secretary of State Antony Blinkin unveiled the report that highlighted a “concerning increase” in hate speech, anti-conversion laws, and the demolition of homes and places of worship affecting minority groups in India.

Separately, Jaiswal, while taking questions from the media on Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and how the US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell mentioned some changes being done in India as follow-up to US concerns, said, “We have constituted high-level committee. We will take appropriate action in that direction as and when the report is out”.

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