Worsening religious freedom in India: US report wants sanctions on RSS

New York: A US federal government commission has flagged the alleged worsening of religious freedom in India and called for linking Washington's future security assistance and bilateral trade to improvements in New Delhi's record on the issue, PTI reported.

In its report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) also asked that "targeted sanctions" be imposed on individuals and entities, such as the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), for their "responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals' or entities' assets and/or barring their entry into the United States."

The report said that future US security assistance and bilateral trade policies with India be linked to improvements in religious freedom.

The USCIRF report recommended to the US Government that India be designated as a "country of particular concern," or CPC, for "engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations".

The report said that in 2025, religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate as the government introduced and enforced new legislation targeting religious minority communities and their houses of worship.

"Several states undertook efforts to introduce or strengthen anti-conversion laws to include harsher prison sentences. Indian authorities also facilitated widespread detention and illegal expulsion of citizens and religious refugees and tolerated vigilante attacks against religious minority communities," it said.

The report also noted the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack against tourists in Jammu and Kashmir. On the attack, the report said, "three gunmen" attacked a group of "predominantly Hindu tourists in the Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir", killing 26 people.

"The perpetrators reportedly asked the victims to recite the Kalma, an Islamic verse, and killed those who were unable to do so. The attack sparked a five-day conflict between India and Pakistan and intensified anti-Muslim sentiment in India, including targeted attacks," it said.

The terror attack was carried out by the Resistance Front, a front for Pakistan-based terror organisation, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

USCIRF said the US Congress should reintroduce and pass the Transnational Repression Reporting Act of 2024 to "require the annual reporting of acts of transnational repression by the Indian government targeting religious minorities in the United States."