The 2019 re­port of the United States Com­mis­sion on In­ter­na­tional Re­li­gious Free­dom has in­dicted In­dia for its han­dling of re­li­gious free­dom in 2018, which year also wit­nessed the third time that the high-pro­file team of this in­de­pen­dent bi­par­ti­san US body that ad­vises US gov­ern­ment on re­li­gious free­dom is­sues in all coun­tries of the world, was de­nied visas by In­dia.

Very fond of med­dling in af­fairs of other coun­tries, In­dia was on the back-foot when the 20-year old bi­par­ti­san United States Com­mis­sion on In­ter­na­tional Re­li­gious Free­dom, in its ex­ten­sive re­port on Re­li­gious Free­dom in In­dia in 2018 stated that “re­li­gious free­dom con­di­tions in In­dia con­tin­ued a down­ward trend.”

The Com­mis­sion ob­served that, “de­spite two decades of tire­less work to bring an end to re­li­gious-based dis­crim­i­na­tion, vi­o­lence, and per­se­cu­tion, in­nu­mer­able be­liev­ers and non­be­liev­ers across the globe con­tin­ued in 2018 to ex­pe­ri­ence man­i­fold suf­fer­ing due to their be­liefs.”

In the 2019 Re­port, In­dia is on the US­CIRF Tier 2 list of coun­tries for en­gag­ing in or tol­er­at­ing re­li­gious free­dom vi­o­la­tions that are ei­ther “sys­tem­atic, on­go­ing, egre­gious.”  In­dia stands brack­eted as a “coun­try of par­tic­u­lar con­cern,” or CPC, un­der the US In­ter­na­tional Re­li­gious Free­dom Act (IRFA). The new Com­mis­sioner Aniruma Bhar­gava has em­pha­sized that In­dia has placed an iron cur­tain for US­CIRF and hoped that it will al­low the body to visit In­dia. US­CIRF del­e­gates have been re­fused per­mis­sion to visit In­dia in 2001, 2019, 2016 and now in 2018.

Coun­tries Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, In­done­sia, Iraq, Kaza­khstan, Nige­ria, Su­dan, Thai­land and even Saudi Ara­bia al­lowed visit by US­CIRF in 2018, but In­dia held out and de­barred them.  Con­sis­tently, for many years now, In­dia has been deny­ing this op­por­tu­nity to US­CIRF and other hu­man rights bod­ies like Amnesty In­ter­na­tional and Hu­man Rights Watch.  Nev­er­the­less, the Com­mis­sion, in its re­port hoped that they will get an op­por­tu­nity to openly and can­didly en­gage with the gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss shared val­ues and in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing in­ter­na­tional stan­dards of free­dom of re­li­gion or be­lief and re­lated hu­man rights.

US­CIRF del­e­gates have been re­fused per­mis­sion to visit In­dia in 2001, 2019, 2016 and now in 2018.

The re­port adds, “Fur­ther, cow pro­tec­tion mobs en­gaged in vi­o­lence pre­dom­i­nantly tar­get­ing Mus­lims and Dal­its, some of whom have been legally in­volved in the dairy, leather, or beef trades for gen­er­a­tions.”

In 2019, US­CIRF has clas­si­fied these 12 coun­tries as Tier 2 coun­tries as Coun­tries of Par­tic­u­lar con­cern: Afghanistan, Azer­bai­jan, Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, In­dia, In­done­sia, Iraq, Kaza­khstan, Laos, Malaysia and Turkey. In its 13 page re­port on In­dia, the US­CIRF ob­serves that, “Over the last decade, con­di­tions for re­li­gious mi­nori­ties in In­dia have de­te­ri­o­rated. A mul­ti­fac­eted cam­paign by Hindu na­tion­al­ist groups like Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sang (RSS), Sangh Pari­var, and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) to alien­ate non-Hin­dus or lower-caste Hin­dus is a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the rise of re­li­gious vi­o­lence and per­se­cu­tion. Those tar­geted by this cam­paign—in­clud­ing Mus­lims, Chris­tians, Sikhs, Bud­dhists, Jains, and lower-caste Hin­dus—face chal­lenges rang­ing from acts of vi­o­lence or in­tim­i­da­tion, to the loss of po­lit­i­cal power, in­creas­ing feel­ings of dis­en­fran­chise­ment, and lim­its on ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, hous­ing, and em­ploy­ment.”

Not­ing that even the Supreme Court of In­dia has taken no­tice of the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions for re­li­gious free­dom in some In­dian states, the re­ports says that, “Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi sel­dom made state­ments de­cry­ing mob vi­o­lence, and cer­tain mem­bers of his po­lit­i­cal party have af­fil­i­a­tions with Hindu ex­trem­ist groups and used in­flam­ma­tory lan­guage about re­li­gious mi­nori­ties pub­licly.”

In the 2019 Re­port, In­dia is on the US­CIRF Tier 2 list of coun­tries for en­gag­ing in or tol­er­at­ing re­li­gious free­dom vi­o­la­tions that are ei­ther “sys­tem­atic, on­go­ing, egre­gious.”  In­dia stands brack­eted as a “coun­try of par­tic­u­lar con­cern,” or CPC, un­der the US In­ter­na­tional Re­li­gious Free­dom Act (IRFA).

“In 2018, re­li­gious mi­nori­ties re­mained con­cerned with their safety and se­cu­rity. In­de­pen­dent hate crime mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices re­ported that in 2018 there were more than 90 re­li­gious-based hate crimes, caus­ing 30 deaths and far more in­juries.”

The bi­par­ti­san US com­mis­sion noted that var­i­ous na­tion­al­ist groups in In­dia have ex­panded the ide­ol­ogy of Hin­dutva, or “Hin­duness,” which has three pil­lars—com­mon na­tion, race, and cul­ture—and forms the ba­sis of an of­ten­times ex­clu­sion­ary na­tional nar­ra­tive with a sin­gu­lar fo­cus on the rights of Hin­dus.

The re­port fur­ther clar­i­fied that, “While some Hin­dutva groups want greater in­flu­ence of Hindu prin­ci­ples in the state’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing process, more ex­treme el­e­ments have stated they would like to see all non-Hin­dus ex­pelled, killed, or con­verted to Hin­duism. Some mem­bers of the rul­ing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have af­fil­i­a­tions with Hindu ex­trem­ist groups and have used dis­crim­i­na­tory lan­guage about re­li­gious mi­nori­ties. For ex­am­ple, in 2018, state-level BJP mem­ber T. Raja Singh was charged by the po­lice for hate speech af­ter stat­ing that “every Hindu should carry weapons like lathis [clubs] and at­tack other com­mu­ni­ties’ mem­bers if they said any­thing wrong.”

The re­port also notes that in 2018 alone, cow pro­tec­tion lynch mobs killed at least 13 peo­ple and in­jured 57 in 31 in­ci­dents. 

The re­port also notes that in 2018 alone, cow pro­tec­tion lynch mobs killed at least 13 peo­ple and in­jured 57 in 31 in­ci­dents. Hate crimes and in­cite­ment to vi­o­lence di­rected at re­li­gious mi­nor­ity com­mu­ni­ties re­mained a preva­lent threat in 2018 with in­stances of com­mu­nal vi­o­lence against Mus­lims and Chris­tians.

The in­ef­fi­ciency, par­ti­san and overtly dis­crim­i­na­tory work­ing of the Na­tional Reg­is­ter of Cit­i­zens in As­sam has come un­der heavy crit­i­cism in the re­port.

The US­CIR­F’s an­nual re­ports—and US­CIR­F’s man­date more broadly—are dif­fer­ent from, and com­ple­men­tary to, the State De­part­men­t’s An­nual Re­ports on In­ter­na­tional Re­li­gious Free­dom. The US­CIRF re­ports are quite im­pact­ful and it was at their rec­om­men­da­tion that Naren­dra Modi, when Chief Min­is­ter of Gu­jarat was de­clared per­sona non grata and de­nied visa to visit the USA.

In­dia, which is very fond of seek­ing in­ter­na­tional in­ter­ven­tion on is­sues that mat­ter to the coun­try, very craftily en­sures that there is no in­ter­na­tional in­ter­ven­tion when in­ter­na­tional bod­ies ques­tion the record of In­dia –be it a mat­ter of re­li­gious rights or civil and po­lit­i­cal rights or hu­man rights.

Sur­pris­ingly, the US­CIRF made no men­tion of blas­phemy and other in­stances of re­li­gious sac­ri­lege against the Sikhs in the state of Pun­jab and neigh­bour­ing states of Ra­jasthan and Haryana at the be­hest of state-spon­sored, pa­tro­n­ised and pro­tected pseudo-saints and their fol­low­ers and mur­ders of peace­ful Sikh pro­tes­tors by the Pun­jab po­lice. This speaks of US­CIRF lack of in­ter­est in the Pun­jab and the in­abil­ity of the Sikhs in Pun­jab and the Di­as­pora to pre­sent their case to the US­CIRF.

While the con­tents of the US­CIRF re­port de­scribe the re­li­gious free­dom sit­u­a­tion in In­dia in a fair man­ner, but the bias in favour of con­ver­sion is ap­par­ent where the re­port says, “The fun­da­men­tal right to free­dom of re­li­gion or be­lief in­cludes the right to change one’s faith to an­other or to no faith at all. This right in­cludes the abil­ity to man­i­fest one’s be­liefs through ex­pres­sion in­tended to per­suade an­other in­di­vid­ual to change his or her re­li­gious be­liefs or af­fil­i­a­tion vol­un­tar­ily.

On the highly sen­si­tive is­sue of pros­e­ly­ti­za­tion and con­ver­sion, World Sikh News will sep­a­rately pre­sent an analy­sis of the 2018 re­port of US­CIRF which was Lim­i­ta­tions of Mi­nori­ties’ Re­li­gious Free­dom in South Asia, which has a com­men­tary on In­di­a’s anti-con­ver­sion laws.

Sur­pris­ingly, the US­CIRF made no men­tion of blas­phemy and other in­stances of re­li­gious sac­ri­lege against the Sikhs in the state of Pun­jab and neigh­bour­ing states of Ra­jasthan and Haryana at the be­hest of state-spon­sored, pa­tro­n­ised and pro­tected pseudo-saints and their fol­low­ers and mur­ders of peace­ful Sikh pro­tes­tors by the Pun­jab po­lice. This speaks of US­CIRF lack of in­ter­est in the Pun­jab and the in­abil­ity of the Sikhs in Pun­jab and the Di­as­pora to pre­sent their case to the US­CIRF.

The Com­mis­sion has boldly ad­mit­ted that in the in the course of bi­lat­eral re­la­tions be­tween In­dia and the United States, “Though the eco­nomic and se­cu­rity con­cerns and is­sues have been em­pha­sised in ties be­tween the two coun­tries, “Hu­man rights and re­li­gious free­dom, how­ever, have not been em­pha­sized.”

It is iron­i­cal that the chair of the Com­mis­sion, Ten­zin Dor­jee -a for­mer Ti­betan Refugee in In­dia and now a Ti­betan Amer­i­can has taken a clear pro-In­dia standby ad­vanc­ing the same logic that In­dia does and has dis­sented from the ob­ser­va­tion that the con­di­tion of re­li­gious free­dom has wors­ened in 2018. He sings the same tune of In­dia be­ing a land of peace and how it has given refuge to the Ti­betans and how there is broth­er­hood among com­mu­ni­ties. It is sur­pris­ing that he has dis­tanced from the stark re­al­i­ties that un­folded in 2018.

The US­CIRF has rec­om­mended that it pro­poses to strengthen the train­ing and ca­pac­ity of state and cen­tral po­lice to pre­vent and pun­ish cases of re­li­gious vi­o­lence, while also pro­tect­ing vic­tims, wit­nesses, and houses of wor­ship and other holy sites. This sounds very good and this kind of ad­vo­cacy has hardly hap­pened in In­dia, but how does US­CIRF or its em­bassy in In­dia pro­pose to do this will re­main a mat­ter of in­ter­est.

“Though the eco­nomic and se­cu­rity con­cerns and is­sues have been em­pha­sised in ties be­tween the two coun­tries, “Hu­man rights and re­li­gious free­dom, how­ever, have not been em­pha­sized.”

The US­CIRF has en­cour­aged the pas­sages of the Pro­tec­tion of Hu­man Rights (Amend­ment) Bill, 2018 to es­tab­lish na­tional and state hu­man rights com­mis­sions and hu­man rights courts. In­dia does have tooth­less hu­man rights com­mis­sions and it would a long wait till we can get hu­man rights courts.

In a sig­nif­i­cant fo­cus, the US­CIRF has sought more in­ter­ven­tion by the US em­bassy in ar­eas of re­li­gious and hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions and more in­ter­ac­tion with re­spec­tive com­mu­nity lead­ers. The ear­lier this hap­pens, the bet­ter for in­creas­ing aware­ness and in­still­ing some fear of in­ter­na­tional op­pro­brium amongst the lower and high ranks of the lead­er­ship in In­dia.

Not very long ago, In­dia was verge of clas­si­fi­ca­tion in the cat­e­gory of Watch List coun­tries by the US­CIRF. The next five years will be cru­cial to see if In­dia goes into that pit, as all in­di­ca­tors are that it is fully likely to tread into that.