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.
The commission documented numerous discriminatory policies, including the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, which fast-tracks citizenship for religious minorities fleeing neighbouring countries but explicitly excludes Muslims, and anti-conversion laws in 12 of India’s 28 states that have resulted in hundreds of arrests of Christians and Muslims.
USCIRF found that 70 per cent of inmates within India’s criminal justice system are under trial or are non-convicts, with a disproportionate share composed of religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Sikhs. The report highlighted the case of Umar Khalid, detained since 2020 for leading peaceful protests against the discriminatory citizenship law, who has spent years in gaol without trial.
In 2024, religious freedom conditions continued to deteriorate, with BJP members including Prime Minister Modi propagating hateful rhetoric and disinformation against Muslims and other religious minorities to gather political support. Such rhetoric, the commission found, fuelled vigilante violence, targeted killings, and demolition of property and places of worship.
The report detailed how authorities facilitated the expropriation and demolition of places of worship, including construction of Hindu temples atop razed mosques. In January 2024, Prime Minister Modi led the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, built on the ruins of the 16th-century Babri Masjid that a Hindu mob demolished in 1992.
Central to USCIRF’s concerns is the relationship between the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), described in the report as a Hindu nationalist organisation that serves as the umbrella for dozens of affiliate groups. The RSS’s primary mission is to build a “Hindu Rastra,” or Hindu state, promoting the notion that India is a Hindu nation whilst excluding Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Parsis, and other religious minorities.
In a significant development, an investigation by US-based news outlet Prism revealed that the RSS has launched its first-ever lobbying campaign in Washington. Squire Patton Boggs, one of the top lobbying firms in the US, registered as a lobbyist on 16 January for the RSS, receiving $330,000 in the first three quarters of 2025 to lobby officials in the US Senate and House of Representatives.
The RSS’s lobbying efforts raise questions among experts on foreign influence operations about how the RSS has been able to conduct its activities without identifying as a foreign entity or without Squire Patton Boggs registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a 1938 law requiring transparency from representatives of foreign interests.
According to lobbying disclosures, Squire Patton Boggs’ work focuses on “US-India bilateral relations”, which experts told Prism strongly suggests the firm’s activities should be registered under FARA rather than under the less stringent Lobbying Disclosure Act.
Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Prism: “Registering under the LDA and not FARA really keeps this influence campaign in the shadows. And so, we really don’t have much idea at all about what [the lobbyists] are doing for the RSS.”
The lobbying campaign appears designed to reshape the RSS’s image amongst US policymakers. Raqib Hameed Naik, founder and executive director of the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate, said the RSS “might have become a mainstream force in Indian politics, but globally, it is still seen as a fascist paramilitary group”.
USCIRF’s report documented that the Indian government has also expanded repressive tactics to target religious minorities abroad, particularly members of the Sikh community. International reporting and intelligence from the Canadian government corroborated allegations linking an official in India’s Research and Analysis Wing and six diplomats to the 2023 assassination attempt of an American Sikh activist in New York.
The commission recommended that the US impose targeted sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing their assets and barring their entry into the United States. It also called for US embassies and consulates to incorporate religious freedom into public statements and speeches.
Congress was urged to reintroduce and pass the Transnational Repression Reporting Act of 2024, conduct reviews of arms sales to India, and prioritise meetings with religious minority communities during congressional delegations.
The RSS spokesperson responded to the Prism investigation by stating on social media: “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh works in Bharat and has not engaged any lobbying firm in United States of America,” using the Hindi word for India. Squire Patton Boggs did not respond to requests for comment.
As of September 2025, the BJP controls 17 of India’s 28 states, with many chief ministers maintaining ties to the RSS. The intertwined relationship between the two organisations, USCIRF concluded, facilitates a climate of discrimination towards religious minority communities despite constitutional protections for freedom of religion or belief.
