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Washington, DC
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an organization India has strongly criticized in the past, has again raised ‘concerns’ over religious freedoms, citing the alleged rise in ‘hate speech’, demolitions and anti-conversion laws.
“In India, we see a concerning increase in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, demolitions of homes and places of worship for members of minority faith communities,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at an event in Washington on Monday.
USCIRF report annually surveys religious freedoms around the world and aims to provide a “fact-based, comprehensive view of the state of religious freedom” in nearly 200 countries and territories.
The findings come a few weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his third term in office and India and the United States agreed to strengthen cooperation in high technology areas during a visit by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to New Delhi.
The US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Rashad Hussain also expressed concerns about the situation in India.
“In India, Christian communities reported that local police aided mobs that disrupted worship services over accusations of conversion activities or stood by while mobs attacked them and then arrested the victims on conversion charges,” he said.
Earlier in May, India rejected a similar report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom that accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of “reinforcing discriminatory nationalist policies” and termed the organization “biased” with “political agenda.”
The USCIRF had then alleged that the Indian government “failed to address” communal violence disproportionately affecting Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, Jews, and Adivasis (indigenous peoples) in 2023.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also noted that in the United States, hate crimes against both Muslims and Jews “have gone up dramatically.”
