For the past four years, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has been continuously advising the US administration to designate India as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ although such recommendation has not been accepted since 2020.
In its annual report presented on Monday, May 1, 2023, USCIRF said it had recommended the re-designation of 12 countries as ‘Country of Particular Concern’, including Iran and Pakistan, it included five additional CPCs status for Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, Vietnam and India. In its 2023 report, USCIRF has for the first time proposed to include Sri Lanka in the “special watch list” (SWL).
The USCIRF’s 2023 annual report stated that conditions for religious freedom in India “continued to worsen” in 2022. “Throughout the year, the Indian government at the national, state, and local levels promoted and enforced religiously discriminatory policies, including laws targeting religious conversion, interfaith relationships, the wearing of hijabs, and cow slaughter, which negatively impact Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and Adivasis (indigenous peoples and scheduled tribes)”, said the report.
It noted that the US state department has not designated India, along with Afghanistan, Nigeria or Syria to CPC status “despite USCIRF’s recommendations to do so and its own reporting documenting the nature and extent of the religious freedom violations in those countries”.
Earlier in July 2023, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, chair of the USCIRF said, religious discrimination in India, the world’s largest democracy, has reached a “frightening” level.
In response to media queries regarding comments on India in USCIRF’s annual report, the Official Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, Arindam Bagchi said: “The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) continues to regurgitate biased and motivated comments about India, this time in its 2023 annual report. We reject such misrepresentation of facts, which only serves to discredit USCIRF itself. We would urge USCIRF to desist from such efforts and develop a better understanding of India, its plurality, its democratic ethos and its constitutional mechanisms”.
Being encouraged by the latest USCIRF recommendation, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization infamous for its notoriously anti-Semite, anti-Hindu, pro-Islamist and pro-jihadist agenda issued a statement that said: “Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reiterated its longstanding appeal to the Biden administration, echoing the recent statement by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), urging the immediate designation of India as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC)”.
CAIR statement further said: The government of India was reportedly behind a shocking murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, while an attempted Indian assassination plot in the US aimed to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun was allegedly thwarted by federal law enforcement, underscoring the urgency in addressing rising religious intolerance in India.
The USCIRF statement also highlighted India’s transnational repression of religious minorities and government critics, encompassing intimidation, violence, and coercion by nations against individuals beyond their borders, often targeting activists, journalists, and minority groups. Notably, this repression extends to spyware usage and online harassment targeting journalists and activists advocating for religious minorities. These campaigns followed PM Narendra Modi’s visit and targeted a US journalist questioning religious freedom in India.
It may be mentioned here that, under the presidency of Joe Biden, White House has been filled with large number of Muslim staffers, while some of these Muslims are directly or indirectly connected to Al Qaeda, Islamic State (ISIS), Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist and jihadist outfits, as well as anti-India, anti-Hindu and pro-Pakistan elements. Majority of these staffers are maintaining deeper communications with organizations such as CAIR as well as USCIRF, thus repeatedly influencing them with their biased suggestions, mostly secretly.
Conspiracy against India, especially targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is multifaced. Recently, Vijay Prashad, a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter wrote in the Independent Media Institute (IMI):
On December 18 and 19, 141 members of the two houses of India’s Parliament were suspended, as of December 19, by the Speaker of the lower house, Om Birla. Each of these members belongs to the parties that oppose the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government said that these elected members were suspended for “unruly behavior.” The opposition had shaped itself into the INDIA bloc, which included almost every party not affiliated with the BJP. They responded to this action by calling it the “murder of democracy” and alleging that the BJP government has installed an “extreme level of dictatorship” in India. This act comes after a range of attempts to undermine India’s elected opposition.
Meanwhile, on December 18, the popular Indian news website Newsclick announced that India’s Income Tax (IT) department “has virtually frozen our accounts”. Newsclick can no longer make payments to its employees, which means that this news media portal is now close to being silenced. The editors at Newsclick said that this action by the IT department is “a continuation of the administrative-legal siege” that began with the Enforcement Directorate raids in February 2021, was deepened by the IT department survey in September 2021, and the large-scale raids of October 3, 2023, that resulted in the arrest of Newsclick’s founder Prabir Purkayastha and its administrative officer Amit Chakraborty. Both remain in prison.
In April 2022, The New York Times published a disturbing article titled ‘Under Modi, India’s Press Is Not So Free Anymore’ targeting India.
In September 2023, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the United States, he was given a very grand treatment by the Biden administration, where US President Joe Biden “lauded India’s G20 Presidency for further demonstrating how the G20 as a forum is delivering important outcomes. The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the G20 and expressed confidence that the outcomes of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi will advance the shared goals of accelerating sustainable development, bolstering multilateral cooperation, and building global consensus around inclusive economic policies to address our greatest common challenges, including fundamentally reshaping and scaling up multilateral development banks”.
Giving details of the Joint Statement, White House further said, “Prime Minister Modi and President Biden reaffirmed the importance of the Quad in supporting a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific. Prime Minister Modi looked forward to welcoming President Biden to the next Quad Leaders’ Summit to be hosted by India in 2024. India welcomed the US decision to co-lead the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative Pillar on Trade Connectivity and Maritime Transport, further to the US decision to join IPOI in June 2023”.
But there was a honey-quoted trap in this statement, where it is said: “The leaders applauded the conclusion of a second Master Ship Repair Agreement, with the most recent agreement signed by the US Navy and Mazgaon Dock Shipbuilders, Ltd., in August 2023. Both sides recommitted to advancing India’s emergence as a hub for the maintenance and repair of forward-deployed US Navy assets and other aircraft and vessels. The leaders also welcomed further commitments from US industry to invest more in India’s maintenance, repair, and overhaul capabilities and facilities for aircraft”.
Through this arrangement, Washington actually succeeded in setting its naval base in India under the pretense of establishing a “hub for the maintenance and repair of forward-deployed US Navy assets and other aircraft and vessels”.
The Indian Prime Minister might have signed these agreements considering the Biden administration as a genuine partner of India, without knowing a plain fact, Joe Biden and those bunch of crooks surrounding him are seasoned backstabbers, who would destroy any targeted nation by establishing false romance or relations with honey-quoted poison approach. As India’s upcoming general election approaches – which is scheduled to take place during April and May next year, the Biden administration shall continue to intensify its monkey-business targeting India in multi-dimensional ways and means. Through the same tactics, Biden administration has visibly destroyed Ukraine and now advancing its agenda in Gaza with the nefarious agenda of destabilizing the entire region, thus finally succeeding in forcing wealthy Arab nations, including Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia in placing orders for American military hardware worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Sooner every nation realizes such notorious playbooks of key position holders in the Pentagon, CIA and other key establishments in Washington DC, it would be better. In order to avoid America’s dirty-game, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and key-organs of the government need to take immediate steps in resolving their issues with China and further deepen and strengthen relations with the countries in the Global South.
