WASHINGTON: The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has again urged the US State Department to designate India as a “country of particular concern,” citing what it described as worsening religious freedom conditions across the country.
The issue was discussed during a hearing in Washington, where commissioners, lawmakers, academics and legal experts raised concerns about the treatment of religious minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Dalits, along with allegations of transnational repression targeting critics overseas.
USCIRF Chair Vicky Hartzler said India’s religious freedom situation had continued to deteriorate.
She stated: “Our 2026 Annual Report, USCIRF once again recommended that the State Department designate India as a ‘country of particular concern’ for its ongoing, systematic, and egregious religious freedom conditions.”
Hartzler further said that authorities at different levels of government were enabling religious freedom violations through discriminatory laws, arbitrary detention of religious leaders, and inadequate responses to attacks on minority groups.
She also pointed to anti-conversion laws in several Indian states, saying: “As of 2026, 13 out of 28 Indian states now have and enforce strict anti-conversion laws,” adding that these laws carry severe penalties, including life imprisonment in some cases.
USCIRF Vice Chair Asif Mahmood highlighted what he described as growing transnational repression targeting minorities and activists outside India.
“The Indian government has also targeted religious minorities and advocates beyond its borders, through acts of transnational repression,” he stated, referring to alleged surveillance and assassination attempts against Sikhs in North America.
US Congressman Chris Smith criticised India’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), saying the government had tolerated rights abuses against Christians, Muslims and Sikhs.
He warned that proposed amendments could place Christian churches, schools and charitable institutions at risk of government expropriation.
“The FCRA amendments would permit state takeover of assets of NGOs whose licenses to receive foreign funds lapse, are denied, or are not renewed,” Smith said.
Former US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice Stephen Rapp said violence against minorities had become increasingly normalised over the past decade.
“For 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,” he stated.
Rapp also said perpetrators were rarely held accountable, contributing to a culture of impunity.
Academic Angana Chatterji from the University of California, Berkeley, said religious pluralism in India was under threat under what she termed an authoritarian political environment.
“Under an authoritarian regime, freedom of religion is imperilled for minoritised communities,” she stated.
Raqib Naik, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate, alleged that Muslims and Rohingya refugees had faced forced expulsions and state-led violence.
He claimed Bengali Muslims in Assam and other regions had been forcibly pushed across the Bangladesh border, while Rohingya refugees had allegedly been abandoned at sea by Indian authorities.
Professor Arjun Sethi of Georgetown University Law Centre focused on alleged transnational repression targeting Sikh activists abroad.
He referred to the killing of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and an alleged plot against Sikh American activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York.
Sethi further alleged that Indian authorities routinely discriminate against minority communities, suppress advocacy groups, impose internet shutdowns, and use terrorism-related charges against activists and critics.
