US body recommends designating India over religious freedom violations

A US Congress-constituted quasi-judicial body on Monday recommended to the Biden administration to designate India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and 11 other nations as 'country of particular concern' in the context of status of religious freedom. India has in the past said that the American body on international religious freedom has chosen to be guided only by its biases on a matter on which it has no locus standi. The recommendations of the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) are not binding on the US government.

Other countries recommended for this designation by the USCIRF in its annual report are Burma, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam. The USCRF had made a similar recommendation to the US government last year which was not accepted by the Biden Administration.

India has previously rejected the reports by USCIRF. “Our principled position remains that we see no locus standi for a foreign entity to pronounce on the state of our citizens' constitutionally protected rights,” the Ministry of External Affairs had said in the past. “We have a robust public discourse in India and constitutionally mandated institutions that guarantee protection of religious freedom and rule of law,” the MEA had said.

“In 2021, 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 affected Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and other religious minorities,” USCIRF said. “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,” it added.

USCIRF 'anti-India', says Disinfo report

Key officials of the USCIRF have been seen on the platforms of IAMC, an Islamist group, and Jamaat-linked organisations which have been peddling the anti-India narratives in the US, says a report by Disinfo Lab. Disinfo lab, an independent OSINT-based research organisation, saod that it was from 2013-14 that USCIRF has been under the targeted lobbying influence of the Islamist group Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), whose founder Shaik Ubaid was once enjoying a leading role at the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which is the off-shoot organisation of Jamaat-e-Islami (Pakistan) in the US.

IAMC had been in the Indian news cycle not once but on numerous occasions. In December 2021, it was slapped with the UAPA for spreading fake news and instigating communal disharmony during the Tripura violence, and also time and again reinforced the narrative of oppression of minorities in India.