US panel for placing India on red list for violating religious freedom

Tribune News Service

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, April 25

The US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has asked the State Department to designate India in the red list for human rights concerns.

For the third successive year, it recommended that India be designated as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)”.

On the last two occasions, the Trump as well as the Biden Administration had declined to go by the USCIRF’s recommendations to put India on the Red List.

The latest report unveiled on Monday has bracketed India with Afghanistan, Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

The India chapter of the report noted that religious freedom conditions in India “significantly worsened”. During the year, the Indian government escalated its promotion and enforcement of policies—including those promoting a Hindu-nationalist agenda — that negatively affect Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and other religious minorities.

The USCIRF urged the State Department to raise religious freedom issues in the US-India bilateral relationship and highlight concerns through hearings, briefings and letters.

The government continued to systemise its ideological vision of a Hindu state at both the national and state levels through the use of both existing and new laws and structural changes hostile to the country’s religious minorities.

In 2021, it accused the Indian government of repressingcritical voices, especially religious minorities and those reporting on and advocating for them—through harassment, investigation, detention, and prosecution under laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Sedition Law.

“The UAPA and Sedition Law have been invoked to create an increasing climate of intimidation and fear in an effort to silence anyone speaking out against the government,” it said while detailing the cases if the late Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest, who died in custody and of Khurram Parvez, a Muslim human rights advocate.

At the close of 2021, the licences of nearly 6,000 organisations, including religious and humanitarian organisations such as Missionaries of Charity and Oxfam India, were not renewed under the FCRA (after an outcry, Missionaries of Charity’s licence was renewed in January 2022).

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