India slams ‘deeply biased’ U.S. report on religious freedom

India criticizes biased U.S. State Department report on religious freedom, highlighting flaws and defending against allegations.

India on Friday slammed the U.S. State Department’s report on International Religious Freedom for 2023 as “deeply biased” and said it reflected “one-sided projection of issues”.

During the weekly press briefing, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the report questioned the “integrity” of certain legal judgments of the Indian courts and highlighted the United States’s own record in handling domestic hate crimes.

“The exercise itself is a mix of imputations, misrepresentations, selective usage of facts, reliance on biased sources and a one-sided projection of issues. This extends even to the depiction of our Constitutional provisions and duly enacted laws of India. It has selectively picked incidents to advance a pre-conceived narrative as well,” Mr. Jaiswal said.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled the annual report on international religious freedom and pointed at a number of countries for failing to protect religious rights of minority groups and basic human rights. He noted that a wide array of violence against religious minorities were taking place in India and said, “In India, we see a concerning increase in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, demolitions of homes and places of worship for members of minority faith communities. At the same time, people around the world are also working hard to protect religious freedom.”

In nearly 69 pages dedicated to the state of religious freedom in India, the report elaborated on apparent complicity between the law enforcement agencies and the majoritarian groups and flagged a number of factors like the campaign for Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as well as the campaign for creating a “Hindu Rashtra” in India.

Responding to the criticism, Mr. Jaiswal raised the law and order situation in the U.S. and highlighted the crimes committed by racially motivated individuals against Indians and other coloured communities. “In 2023, India has officially taken up numerous cases in the U.S. of hate crimes, racial attacks on Indian nationals and other minorities, vandalisation and targeting of places of worship, violence and mistreatment by law enforcement authorities, as well as the according of political space to advocates of extremism and terrorism abroad,” he said, rejecting the observations in the report regarding India.

Mr. Blinken had focused on Pakistan, India, and other countries that also included the U.S. for growing threat against religious minorities and said, “In India, for example, Christian communities reported that local police aided mobs that disrupted worship services over accusations of conversion activities or stood by while mobs attacked them and then arrested the victims on conversion charges.”