US religious freedom commission recommends sanctioning RSS, designating India a ‘Country of Concern’
USCIRF's report recommends asset freezes, entry bans on RSS and RAW officials, citing mob violence, expulsions, and anti-minority legislation
WASHINGTON (MNTV) – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended that India be designated a Country of Particular Concern and that targeted sanctions be imposed on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and India’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), over what it describes as systematic and egregious violations of religious freedom.
The RSS, or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is a transnational Hindu nationalist paramilitary-style organization founded in 1925 that serves as the ideological parent body of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The recommendations are contained in USCIRF’s 2026 Annual Report, released in March, which assessed religious freedom conditions across 29 countries during calendar year 2025.
The bipartisan advisory body, created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, makes independent recommendations to the U.S. president, secretary of state, and Congress.
While USCIRF’s recommendations are not automatically binding on U.S. policy, they carry significant weight in shaping international scrutiny and policy conversations around religious freedom.
India has not been previously designated as a Country of Particular Concern by the U.S. State Department, which makes its own independent designations and is not bound by USCIRF’s findings.
The Indian government has historically rejected the commission’s conclusions on India as biased and an interference in internal affairs. The State Department had not released its own 2024 International Religious Freedom Report as of the end of 2025, the USCIRF report noted.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a lifelong member of the RSS, having joined the organization as a child.
Violence, expulsions, and weaponization of law
According to the report, religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate throughout 2025 as the government introduced and enforced new legislation targeting religious minority communities while tolerating widespread vigilante violence with near-total impunity.
Several states moved to strengthen anti-conversion laws during the year, with some proposing life imprisonment as punishment for conducting religious conversions.
The state of Uttarakhand passed a law criminalizing digital speech about religion and raised the jail term for illegal conversions from 10 to 14 years. Rajasthan adopted legislation requiring individuals to give the government two months’ notice before voluntarily changing their faith.
In Arunachal Pradesh, the revival of a decades-dormant anti-conversion law triggered protests by hundreds of thousands of Christians.
The report documented a pattern of mob violence by Hindu nationalist groups against Muslims and Christians across multiple states. In March, riots erupted in Maharashtra after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for the removal of the tomb of a Mughal-era ruler, injuring dozens and prompting a curfew.
In June, a Hindu nationalist mob attacked 20 Christian families in Odisha after they refused to convert to Hinduism, leaving eight hospitalized and drawing no police intervention.
Following the April attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir that killed 26 people, Muslims were reportedly killed in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh in alleged hate crimes, with self-professed members of a Hindu nationalist group claiming to avenge those killed in the attack.
The government’s treatment of religious minorities extended beyond mob violence.
In May, Indian authorities detained 40 Rohingya refugees including 15 Christians, transported them into international waters near the coast of Burma, and forced them to swim ashore with nothing but life vests.
In July, hundreds of Bengali-speaking Muslim citizens were expelled from Assam to Bangladesh, with ruling Bharatiya Janata Party officials labeling them Muslim “infiltrators” threatening India’s national identity.
Authorities also moved to bring religious institutions under state control. Parliament passed the Waqf Amendment Bill, adding non-Muslims to boards managing Muslim religious endowments including mosques, seminaries, and graveyards — triggering deadly protests in West Bengal.
Uttarakhand’s legislature passed the USAME Act, dissolving the Madrasa Board and bringing religious educational institutions for Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians under state oversight.
What USCIRF is asking Washington to do
On the basis of these findings, USCIRF put forward a set of concrete recommendations to both the administration and Congress.
It urged the U.S. government to formally designate India as a Country of Particular Concern, impose targeted sanctions — including asset freezes and entry bans into the United States — on individuals and entities such as the RSS and RAW for their responsibility and tolerance of severe religious freedom violations, and press India to allow U.S. government bodies including USCIRF and the State Department to conduct in-country assessments of religious freedom conditions.
The commission also recommended linking future U.S. security assistance and bilateral trade policies with India to improvements in religious freedom, and enforcing Section 6 of the Arms Export Control Act to halt arms sales to India based on continued acts of intimidation and harassment against U.S. citizens and religious minorities.
For Congress, USCIRF called for the reintroduction and passage of the Transnational Repression Reporting Act, which would require annual reporting on acts by the Indian government targeting religious minorities in the United States.
The report noted that during a February 2025 state visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington, religious freedom was absent from public discussion.
A subsequent visit by Vice President JD Vance to India in April, which coincided with the Kashmir attack, similarly made no public mention of minority rights or religious freedom conditions.
Following the attack, President Trump posted on social media affirming full U.S. support for India, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged both India and Pakistan to maintain peace.
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