USCIRF’s report recommends asset freezes, entry bans for RSS and RAW officials, citing mob violence, expulsions, and anti-minority legislation
NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended targeted sanctions on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and India’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), regarding what it describes as systematic and egregious violations of religious freedom. The commission has also recommended that India be designated as a ‘Country of Particular Concern.’
The RSS is a transnational Hindu nationalist paramilitary-style organisation promoting hardcore Hindutva philosophy. It was founded in 1925 and serves as the ideological parent body of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The USCIRF’s recommendations are contained in its 2026 annual report, released this month. It assessed religious freedom conditions across 29 countries during the 2025 calendar year, media reports said on Sunday.
The bipartisan advisory body, created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, makes independent recommendations to the US President, Secretary of State, and Congress.
While the panel’s recommendations are not automatically binding on US policy, they carry significant weight in shaping international scrutiny and policy conversations around religious freedom.
India has not been previously designated as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ by the US State Department, which makes its own independent designations and is not bound by USCIRF’s findings.
New Delhi has historically rejected the commission’s conclusions on India as biased and an interference in internal affairs. The State Department had not released its own 2024 International Religious Freedom Report as of the end of 2025, the USCIRF report noted.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a lifelong member of the RSS, having joined the organisation in his childhood.
According to the report, religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate throughout 2025 as the government introduced and enforced new legislation targeting religious minority communities while tolerating widespread vigilante violence with almost complete impunity.
Several states moved to strengthen anti-conversion laws during the year, with some proposing life imprisonment as punishment for religious conversions.
The state of Uttarakhand passed a law criminalising digital speech about religion and raised the jail term for illegal conversions from 10 to 14 years. Rajasthan adopted legislation requiring individuals to give the government two months’ notice before voluntarily changing their faith.
In Arunachal Pradesh, the revival of a decades-dormant anti-conversion law triggered protests by hundreds of thousands of Christians.
The report documented a pattern of mob violence by Hindu groups against Muslims and Christians across multiple states. In March, riots erupted in Maharashtra after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for the removal of the tomb of a Mughal-era ruler, injuring dozens and prompting a curfew.
In June, a Hindu mob attacked 20 Christian families in Odisha after they refused to convert to Hinduism, leaving eight hospitalised and drawing no police intervention.
Following the April attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 people, Muslims were killed in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh in alleged hate crimes, with self-professed members of a Hindu group claiming to avenge those killed in the attack.
The government’s treatment of religious minorities extended beyond mob violence.
In May, Indian authorities detained 40 Rohingya refugees, including 15 Christians, transported them into international waters near the coast of Burma, and forced them to swim ashore with nothing but life vests.
In July, hundreds of Bengali-speaking Muslim citizens were expelled from Assam to Bangladesh, with ruling Bharatiya Janata Party officials labelling them Muslim “infiltrators”, threatening India’s national identity.
Authorities also moved to bring religious institutions under state control. Parliament passed the Waqf Amendment Bill, adding non-Muslims to boards managing Muslim religious endowments, including mosques, seminaries, and graveyards — triggering deadly protests in West Bengal.
Uttarakhand’s legislature passed the USAME Act, dissolving the Madrasa Board and bringing religious educational institutions for Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians under state oversight.
On the basis of these findings, USCIRF put forward a set of concrete recommendations to both the administration and Congress.
It urged the US government to formally designate India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’, impose targeted sanctions — including asset freezes and entry bans into the United States — on individuals and entities such as the RSS and RAW for their responsibility and tolerance of severe religious freedom violations, and press India to allow US government bodies including USCIRF and the State Department to conduct in-country assessments of religious freedom conditions.
The commission also recommended linking future US security assistance and bilateral trade policies with India to improvements in religious freedom, and enforcing Section 6 of the Arms Export Control Act to halt arms sales to India based on continued acts of intimidation and harassment against American citizens and religious minorities.
The report noted that during a February 2025 state visit by Prime Minister Modi to Washington, religious freedom was absent from public discussion.
A subsequent visit by Vice President JD Vance to India in April, which coincided with the Kashmir attack, similarly made no public mention of minority rights or religious freedom conditions.
