A US government panel has called for India to be put on a religious freedom blacklist over a “drastic” downturn under the prime minister, Narendra Modi, triggering a sharp response from New Delhi. The US commission on international religious freedom recommends but does not set policy, and there is virtually no chance the state department will follow its lead on India, an increasingly close US ally.
In an annual report, the bipartisan panel said that India should join the ranks of “countries of particular concern” that would be subject to sanctions if they do not improve their records.
“In 2019, religious freedom conditions in India experienced a drastic turn downward, with religious minorities under increasing assault,” the report said.
It called on the US to impose punitive measures, including visa bans, on Indian officials believed responsible and grant funding to civil society groups that monitor hate speech.
The commission said that Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, which won a convincing election victory last year, “allowed violence against minorities and their houses of worship to continue with impunity, and also engaged in and tolerated hate speech and incitement to violence”.
The commission recommended that the State Department designate India as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, said Nadine Maenza, its vice chair, because it “tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.” The most “startling and disturbing,” she said, was India’s passage of a citizenship amendment act that fast-tracks citizenship for newcomers who belong to six religions but excludes Muslims.
India last received a similar rating from the watchdog in 2004, also a period of heightened concern over a Hindu nationalist government’s treatment of religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians. In 2002, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in three days of riots in the state of Gujarat.
It also highlighted the abrogation of article 370, which was India’s only Muslim-majority state, and allegations that Delhi police turned a blind eye to mobs who attacked Muslim neighborhoods in February this year.
The Indian government, which has long been irritated by the commission’s comments, quickly rejected the report. “Its biased and tendentious comments against India are not new. But on this new occasion, its misrepresentation has reached new levels,” a foreign ministry spokesman, Anurag Srivastava, said.
Featured photo: Sreekanth Sivadasan
(With the inputs from AFP)
