Justice For All Statement on USCIRF’s 2025 Report on India

March 27, 2025

Justice For All applauds the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), for its recommendation that India be designated a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). USCIRF’s newly released 2025 report reflects its principled and consistent stance on India. Due to India’s escalating violations of religious freedoms, USCIRF once again confirms what human rights advocates and India’s marginalized religious communities have long known: the situation is worsening.

The USCIRF report, released on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, notes that religious freedoms continue to deteriorate in the country. The report highlights the hateful rhetoric used during the 2024 national elections, the ongoing demolition of Muslim homes and the government’s renewed push to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—a law that, especially when coupled with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), risks rendering millions of Muslims stateless and without legal protection.

Beyond the CPC designation, the report recommends specific U.S. actions: integrating religious freedom into U.S. Embassy communications, imposing sanctions on Vikash Yadav and India’s intelligence agency (RAW), and urging the U.S. Congress to reintroduce and pass the Transnational Repression Reporting Act in light of the attempted assassination of a Sikh-American activist.

USCIRF has been recommending the CPC designation for India since 2020, but in each of the past years, the U.S. Department of State has failed to act upon that recommendation. While the State Department’s reports on human rights, as well as on religious freedom, have noted that India is in a state of deterioration on both fronts, it still has not made the designation. This failure undermines regional stability and U.S. strategic interests in South Asia. As India continues to marginalize India’s non-Hindu religious communities and fuel nationalist extremism, the risks of internal unrest, cross-border tensions and radicalization grow—threatening not just India’s democracy, but the long-term stability of a region critical to American economic and security interests.

Justice For All urges the State Department to act without further delay. The facts are clear, the violations are ongoing and the cost of inaction is immense. We call for the immediate designation of India as a Country of Particular Concern and a reorientation of U.S. diplomatic engagement to place religious freedom at the forefront—both in public and private interactions.