A US report on an India-specific issue update claimed that the RSS-backed BJP government has been enacting legislations discriminatory to Muslims and Christians, including anti-conversion laws, cow-slaughter laws and the Citizenship Act, and it linked these measures to the RSS’s declared goal of creating a Hindu Rashtra, while also recalling the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat during which Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then an RSS volunteer and serving chief minister, was accused of failing to act decisively.
The bipartisan US body, which reports to Congress, released an India-specific update stating that the national and state-level legal architecture has increasingly created obstacles for religious minorities, and its observations follow the organisation’s 2025 annual report in March, which the Ministry of External Affairs had dismissed as politically motivated and biased.
The latest update argues that India’s constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion coexist with political structures that, in practice, facilitate discrimination, and it links this situation to what it describes as the intertwined relationship between the BJP and the RSS, the latter functioning as an ideological parent with a nationwide cadre network.
The update states that since the BJP assumed office nationally in 2014, a series of state and central laws have taken shape in a manner that, in its view, disproportionately affects religious minorities, as it highlights measures such as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019, which introduced a fast-track process for certain persecuted religious groups from neighbouring states while excluding Muslim applicants, and it further argues that prohibitions on conversion and cattle slaughter in several regions have been enforced with harsh penalties, lengthy prison terms and alleged misuse by law enforcement agencies.
It notes that these laws operate alongside provisions such as Article 295A of the Penal Code, which penalises actions deemed offensive to religious sentiments and functions, according to the update, in a manner comparable to a blasphemy framework.
The commission maintains that these measures have led to the arrest of hundreds of Christians and Muslims under anti-conversion statutes, and it draws attention to India’s high proportion of undertrial detainees, while asserting that religious minorities remain over-represented in this category.
It cites the detention of activist Umar Khalid, held since 2020 in cases connected to protests opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, as an example of prolonged incarceration without trial under laws often invoked in contexts linked to communal tensions.
The update further examines India’s federal policing structure, noting that state governments retain primary authority over law and order and that the Central Bureau of Investigation cannot probe state-level offences without explicit consent, creating what the commission describes as a gap in accountability when allegations arise against state agencies or when mob violence targets Christian or Muslim communities.