By NRI Affairs Special Correspondent
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has intensified its criticism of India’s treatment of religious minorities, releasing a comprehensive report detailing what it describes as systematic persecution whilst revealing that India’s largest Hindu nationalist organisation has launched a major lobbying campaign targeting US lawmakers.
In its November 2025 issue update, USCIRF documented severe restrictions on religious freedom across India despite constitutional protections, recommending that the US Department of State designate India as a “Country of Particular Concern” for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations.
This marks the sixth consecutive year that USCIRF has made this recommendation, having first called for India’s CPC designation in 2020. However, the US Department of State has not formally acted to designate India as a CPC during this period, despite the independent bipartisan commission’s repeated warnings about deteriorating conditions for religious minorities.
The commission found that since 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has enforced policies closely aligned with Hindutva ideology—a Hindu nationalist philosophy—that discriminate against and disenfranchise religious minority communities including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and others.
“While India’s constitution provides protections for religious minorities, the implementation of national and state-level laws create severe restrictions on religious freedom across the country,” the report states.
This story was originally published in nriaffairs.com. Read the full story here.