US International Religious Freedom Commission Lists India as a ‘Country of Concern’

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has listed India as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) in its 2020 Annual Report.

This is the first time the USCIRF has included India in this particular list since 2004; it joins several other countries who are known to oppress and violate the religious freedoms of their citizens, including Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

In response to the damning designation, The External Affairs Ministry in India immediately rejected the report’s findings, calling it a “new level of misrepresentation” and lambasting it as “biased.”

According to USCIRF, a CPC is a country in which the government “engages in or tolerates particular ‘severe violations’ of religious freedom.”

“Severe violation” refers to the “systematic, ongoing, [and] egregious violations…, including violations such as torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; prolonged detention without charges; causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction or clandestine detention of those persons; or other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty or the security of person,” according to the report.

Despite the Indian Constitution enshrining protections for the right to religious practice, in reality,…