WASHINGTON(National Times)- The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has once again urged the US State Department to declare India a \u201ccountry of particular concern,\u201d citing its 2026 assessment and hearing over \u201congoing, systematic, and egregious religious freedom conditions\u201d in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue was examined during an in-person hearing in Washington on Thursday, where commissioners, lawmakers, scholars, and legal experts shared their views on conditions faced by religious minorities in India, including Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Dalits, as well as allegations of growing transnational repression targeting critics abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
USCIRF Chair Vicky Hartzler said India\u2019s trajectory on religious freedom had continued to decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She stated: \u201cOur 2026 Annual Report, USCIRF once again recommended that the State Department designate India as a \u2018country of particular concern\u2019 for its ongoing, systematic, and egregious religious freedom conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hartzler added that under the current political environment, \u201cThe Indian government, at both the national, state and local levels, continues to facilitate and tolerate religious freedom violations through the use of discriminatory legislation, arbitrary detention of religious leaders, and failure to intervene in attacks against religious minority communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also highlighted the legal framework affecting conversions and security laws, saying: \u201cAs of 2026, 13 out of 28 Indian states now have and enforce strict anti-conversion laws,\u201d noting, \u201cThese laws also include harsh punishments\u2014in some cases, life imprisonment\u2014for those deemed to have facilitated or conducted religious conversions from Hinduism to another religion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
USCIRF Vice Chair Asif Mahmood, in his written observation, focused on what he described as growing transnational repression and pressure on religious communities and their institutions beyond India\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Indian government has also targeted religious minorities and advocates beyond its borders, through acts of transnational repression,\u201d he stated, adding that this included \u201csurveillance and monitoring of advocates, and at the most extreme end, assassination attempts predominantly of Sikhs in North America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US House of Representatives member Chris Smith focused his intervention on India\u2019s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and its implications for civil society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe government of India has long tolerated and, at times, facilitated serious rights violations against religious minorities, especially Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He warned of proposed legal amendments, stating: \u201cThe vast majority of these are Christian churches and charitable institutions, such as hospitals and schools. In effect, if the amendments to the FCRA are enacted, the total property of entire Christian organisations and dioceses, as well as health-care systems and schools, could soon be vulnerable to expropriation by the government of India.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smith added that the proposed changes would significantly expand state powers: \u201cThe FCRA amendments would permit state takeover of assets of NGOs whose licenses to receive foreign funds lapse, are denied, or are not renewed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephen Rapp, former ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, described what he called a deterioration in patterns of violence and accountability. He stated: \u201cFor the past decade, atrocities against minorities are showing signs of becoming less episodic, more normalised, where everyday violence and open calls to violence have become routine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThroughout this grim history, it is seldom that perpetrators have been held to account, and justice done \u2013 deeply entrenching impunity,\u201d he maintained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rapp also noted India\u2019s ranking in global risk assessments: \u201cIndia consistently ranks among high-risk countries for mass killings and atrocities in the Early Warning Project\u2019s Statistical Risk Assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scholar Angana Chatterji of the University of California, Berkeley, described what she termed a structural transformation of religious and political life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUnder an authoritarian regime, freedom of religion is imperilled for minoritised communities,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She further wrote: \u201cThis maelstrom of religionisation has progressively polarised \u2018majority\u2019 against \u2018minority,\u2019 neighbour against neighbour, endangering religious pluralism.\u201d She also described \u201cthe racialised and violent subordination of religious minority communities using state power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raqib Naik, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate, alleged large-scale abuses against Muslims and refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cState-led violence and dispossession against Muslims have reached an unprecedented scale,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He referred to \u201cdocumented cases of Bengali Muslims, in Assam and other states, being forcibly taken to the border with Bangladesh and thrown across, sometimes gagged and at gunpoint, into a country they have never lived in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Rohingya refugees, Naik added: \u201cMembers of the Rohingya refugee community in India have been subjected to similar treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also alleged that in 2025, \u201cthe Indian Navy forcibly expelled around 40 Rohingya refugees by ferrying them out into the Andaman Sea, handing them life jackets, casting them into the water, and ordering them to swim toward the Myanmar coast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Professor Arjun Sethi of Georgetown University Law Centre focused on alleged transnational repression targeting diaspora activists. He stated: \u201cIndian authorities are assassinating activists in North America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He referred to the 2023 killing of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, saying that, \u201cPrime Minister Justin Trudeau later informed the world that the Indian government authorised the assassination and was engaged in \u2018clandestine information gathering techniques, coercive behaviour targeting South Asian Canadians, and involvement in over a dozen threatening and violent acts, including murder.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n