NEW DELHI: India has firmly rejected the report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which accused the ruling BJP of "reinforcing discriminatory nationalist policies".
Ministry of external affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal dismissed the organisation as "biased" and driven by a "political agenda", stating that the USCIRF's report is nothing more than "propaganda masquerading as part of an annual report".
Jaiswal emphasised that India has no expectations from the USCIRF to comprehend the country's "diverse, pluralistic and democratic ethos".
He firmly asserted that any attempts by the organisation to interfere in India's electoral process, the largest in the world, will be futile.
The USCIRF, established by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, is a U.S. federal government commission with commissioners appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
In its recent report, the USCIRF alleged that in 2023, the Indian government, led by the BJP, failed to address communal violence that disproportionately affected various religious minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, Jews, and Adivasis.
The report further claimed that the enforcement of various laws, such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws, led to the arbitrary detention, monitoring, and targeting of religious minorities and their advocates.
It also mentioned instances of strict monitoring of news media and NGOs reporting on religious minorities under FCRA regulations, citing the suspension of the Centre for Policy Research's FCRA license and raids on the offices and homes of NewsClick journalists, including Teesta Setalvad, for her reporting on anti-Muslim violence during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
