State Department Urged by Advocates to Dismiss USCIRF Report, Says Diaspora Group

May 6 :
Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS), a leading think tank in the Indian diaspora, has vehemently opposed the US Commission on International Religious Freedom's (USCIRF) latest annual report and urged the US State Department to disregard its suggestions.

The US government's worldwide religious freedom monitor, USCIRF, has urged the State Department to label India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) due to the country's involvement in or acceptance of "particularly severe" breaches of religious freedom in the aforementioned report.

In its criticism of the USCIRF report, FIIDS said that it was prejudiced, contained incomplete data, and reached incorrect conclusions.

The USCIRF report, according to Khanderao Kand, chief of policy and strategy at FIIDS, involves "omission and commission of facts, utilising partial data, hiding the full context, generalising isolated incidents and questioning the implementation of the law of the land."

India is home to over 1.4 billion people and is the biggest democracy in the world. However, Kand claimed that the report unfairly labels the country without taking into account its complicated historical context and recent good trends.

FIIDS raised concerns about the classification of India as a "Country of Particular Concern (CPC)" and the report's assessment of India under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), highlighting the fact that India faces its own terrorist threats.

Differences in the portrayal of episodes were brought to light by the think tank's thorough examination of the USCIRF study. For example, the Manipur riots were shown as inter-tribal, yet Christians were unfairly singled out. The USCIRF report, according to FIIDS analyst Mohan Sonti, ignored India's constitutional protection of religious freedom and slammed the government for trying to stop fraudulent and forceful conversions. While there were no large-scale Hindu-Muslim riots in India in 2023, FIIDS pointed out that the USCIRF focused on individual occurrences rather than the country's religious minorities living in harmony with one another.

Given these points, FIIDS emphasised the significance of robust US-India relations and encouraged the US Department of State to reject the USCIRF's recommendations after careful evaluation. Implying that the USCIRF's conclusions could potentially damage this crucial relationship, it emphasised the importance of India as the third-largest economy and a major ally of the US.