Witnesses called for US intervention to end the ongoing persecution of religious minorities in India, including Christians, at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. “Religious freedom in India is abysmal. Religious minority communities and their places of worship remain particularly vulnerable to discriminatory legislation, surveillance and harassment,” said Asif Mahmood, vice chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF, an independent US government body that monitors violations of religious freedom around the world), during a hearing held on May 7. “Members of the clergy are also routinely arrested and released on charges of carrying out forced conversions.”
Vicky Hartzler, President of USCIRF, also highlighted persecution in India at the national, state and local levels through discriminatory legislation, arbitrary detention of religious leaders, failure to intervene in attacks against religious minorities, anti-conversion laws in 13 of 28 states, anti-terrorism laws targeting minorities and citizenship laws. She described religious freedom in India as continuing on a “downward trajectory”.
The hearing comes as the commission warns of escalating attacks against Christians in India, including mob violence and destruction of property. The Catholic population in India is around 23 million, approximately 1.6% of the country’s population, according to the Vatican.
Raqib Naik, founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, called on the State Department to designate India as a country of particular concern (CPC, a classification given by the US government to nations that systematically violate religious freedom). “I believe recognizing the problem is the first step,” Naik said. “I think the US should designate India as a CPC. I think that should be the first step because you can’t have a solution without acknowledging the problem.” Naik also called for sanctions and greater awareness of transnational repression, which he said poses a “threat to national security.”
Stephen Rapp, former US ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice, called for “powerful methods” to pressure the Indian government to end religious persecution in the country. Rapp encouraged more detailed reporting on religious freedom violators to “build cases” against them so that it would be possible to prosecute them internationally in the future. “Maybe many of the perpetrators never travel, but basically you send a signal that if you commit crimes like these there will be no rest in this life,” Rapp said. “It’s not enough, but it’s something.”
Religious freedom advocate David Curry called on the State Department to require its international partners to defend religious freedom as a preliminary requirement in all negotiations. “The international religious freedom infrastructure within the State Department should be part of every discussion and negotiation,” Curry said. “Human rights and international religious freedom should be part of these discussions.” Indian anthropologist Angana Chatterji echoed Curry, urging the US “to seriously examine the impossibility of economic benefit and profit from relations with India under current extreme conditions.”
Arjun Sethi, a law professor at Georgetown University, noted that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was banned by the George W. Bush administration from entering the United States from 2005 to 2014. “And now he is being courted by this country,” he said. “I think we should have a much deeper understanding of who he is, what he stands for and what he’s about,” Sethi said.
©2026 Catholic News Agency. Published with permission. Original in English: India’s religious liberty on ‘downward trajectory,’ commission says https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/india-s-religious-liberty-on-downward-trajectory-commission-says