The RSS affiliate said the commission had been maligning India and Hindu organisations for long, but it was the first time they had mentioned the RSS by name.
RSS
Day after Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) junked the 2026 report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which urged the American government to impose targeted sanctions against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) said it had “put the report where it belonged-the dustbin”.
The RSS affiliate said the commission had been maligning India and Hindu organisations for long, but it was the first time they had mentioned the RSS by name. The USCIRF report has also recommended that India be designated as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC “for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations…”
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“This report carries no reliability even with the people of America. There is no point taking this report seriously. Its anti-India agenda is clearly visible on the very surface, you don’t even have to scratch a bit. It is a propaganda report,” VHP’s joint general secretary Surendra Jain told The Statesman.
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“Who can believe their allegations against RSS! While they have always attacked Hindu organisations, they have mentioned RSS for the first time, and this shows their frustration and desperation to drive an anti-India agenda when the nation is forging ahead on all fronts. Naming RSS is actually targeting Hindus. By extension India is the real target. They know if RSS is undermined, Hindus will be weakened and so, India will be weakened,” Jain lashed out at the report.
Jain pointed to the gross violation of the human rights of the black Americans on a daily basis. “Why don’t they look inside their own house and clean it first. Black Americans are killed just on suspicion on a daily basis. Have they forgotten that they have built their palaces on the graves of Red Indians,” Jain added.
Alarmingly, in its unencumbered anti-India stance, the report presented terror launch pads hit by India under the aegis of Operation Sindoor in the aftermath of Pak-sponsored Pahalgam attack as “seminaries”, lamenting they were closed during the exchange of hostilities with Pakistan.
What does the USCIRF Report 2026 say?
· “The Indian government enforces numerous discriminatory laws targeting religious minorities, including the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), the 1967 Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the 2019 Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the 2025 Waqf Bill, and the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Bill.
· Article 295A of the Penal Code functions as a blasphemy law by criminalizing actions deemed to “outrage religious feelings.”
· Additionally, 12 out of 28 states maintain anti-conversion laws. In 2025, several state governments strengthened or introduced new laws to include harsher penalties and broader definitions of “religious conversion.” In March, Arunachal Pradesh began pushing for the implementation of a decades-dormant anti-conversion law. This was met with widespread protests by hundreds of thousands of Christians.”
· …religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate as the government introduced and enforced new legislation targeting religious minority communities and their houses of worship.”
· Several states undertook efforts to introduce or strengthen anti-conversion laws to include harsher prison sentences. Indian authorities also facilitated widespread detention and illegal expulsion of citizens and religious refugees and tolerated vigilante attacks against religious minority communities.
· Throughout the year, Hindu nationalist mobs across several states harassed, incited, and instigated violence against Muslims and Christians with impunity.
· USCIRF report also accused India of targeting Muslims in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. “The Indian government also seized the aftermath of the attack to justify deportations of religious minorities it considers “illegal” migrants.”
· To further facilitate the crackdown in alleged “illegal migration,” the government passed a new set of rules and orders for the Foreigners Act in September. The order expands the authority of Foreigner Tribunals to issue arrest warrants and send those suspected of being “foreigners” to holding centers without due process.
· Throughout the year, the government also continued to target houses of worship to bring them under state control. In May, India’s Parliament passed the Waqf Bill, which adds non-Muslims to the boards that manage Waqf land endowments that are traditionally staffed by Muslims. These endowments include religious sites, such as mosques, seminaries, and graveyards.
USCIRF Recommendations
· Designate India as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)”
· Impose targeted sanctions on individuals and entities, such as India’s Research and Analysis Wing and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), for their responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ or entities’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States;
India’s response to USCIRF Report:
The commission was established in 1998 by an act of the US Congress. Although it says it functions independently, its commissioners are appointed by the US President and senior US Congress leaders.
India has always taken a tough stand on these reports. Earlier, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had dubbed USCIRF itself as “entity of concern” for what New Delhi considers persistent peddling of bias and anti-India agenda.
“We have taken note of the latest report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). We categorically reject its motivated and biased characterisation of India,” Jaiswal said in a statement Monday. He added that repeated misrepresentations by the commission undermine its own credibility since it presented a “distorted and selective picture” of India.
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