Justice For All Commends USCIRF’s India Country Update and Urges US Action

Justice For All Commends USCIRF’s India Country Update and Urges US Action

Justice For All commends the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom for its Oct. 2, 2024, release of the India country update. This update provides a thorough and well-researched examination of the continued deterioration of religious freedoms for minorities in India, particularly Muslims and Christians. It highlights troubling issues such as the introduction of discriminatory laws like the new Waqf bill, as well as the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Additionally, the report addresses the rise in laws prohibiting religious conversion and cow-slaughter, the demolition of property belonging to minorities, hate-speech, attacks and the crackdown on civil society.

USCIRF’s update serves as an important extension to its previous full report on India and underscores the urgent need for U.S. intervention. For five consecutive years, USCIRF has  recommended that the U.S. State Department designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).

Such a designation would empower the U.S. to take meaningful steps, including sanctions, to encourage India to return to the path of communal harmony and uphold the principles of secularism enshrined in its constitution. The designation would also send a message to India’s government that the United States does not accept its divisive laws.

To date, the State Department has ignored USCIRF’s recommendations. This inaction only emboldens Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party in their pursuit of exclusionary policies. Justice For All has long drawn attention to the Modi government’s alignment with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — a group that seeks to transform India into a Hindu-majoritarian state where minorities, especially those of Abrahamic faiths, are treated as second-class citizens. We urge the State Department to take this latest USCIRF update seriously. The State Department must immediately reconsider India’s trajectory towards majoritarian autocracy and designate India as a Country of Particular Concern.

Justice For All

Save India From Fascism team

DOWNLOAD the USCIRF India 2024 update here