The American habit of issuing unsolicited advice based on hubristic self-certified reports on the internal functioning of sovereign nation-states continues unabated. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued remonstrations to India over its latest International Religious Freedom Report, Indian observers were quick to point out that such remarks were politically motivated by the Indian prime minister’s likely visit to Moscow next month.
This follows an old pattern of American haranguing of international partners in violation of the requirements for recognition of national sovereignty. However, it continues to go unchallenged materially, save for a few counter remarks by international diplomats, such as the Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who has been vocal about such unwarranted certifications. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has referred to the US’s coercive tactics less euphemistically, calling their interference a means of regime change.
In view of ongoing affairs, how does such a report affect relations between the nations judged and the one doing all the judging? As things stand, nothing changes. Following the pattern would mean an MEA spokesperson calls this biased and uncalled for, as in preceding years, before retreating and never offering a neutral counter-study with a global outlook.
The Indian government continues to remain eager to diversify its weapons dependency from Russia, while pursuing friendly relations with the Western sphere of influence led by the US. The American dispensation begrudges its dependency on an economically significant but geopolitically necessary hedge against China. It showcases its displeasure with occasional press conferences, similar to the one on religious freedom, with untrue statistics that deliberately hide the number of anti-Hindu violence and mob events that have plagued the nation for centuries, while pursuing formally friendly talks with actual geopolitical implications.
The Democrat government under Biden has been especially vitriolic against India’s rise, and seems to be content with the confused approaches it undertakes, such as calling out an apparent lack of religious freedom in India while sending Michael McCaul and Nancy Pelosi, amongst others, to the country to meet with the Dalai Lama.
American confusion seems to be a hallmark as the “report”, essentially another document of commentary bereft of facts or analysis, highlights “some of these states also impose penalties specifically against forced religious conversions for the purpose of marriage,” as a bad thing or religious freedom, as if the religion of the forcefully converted is undeserving of protection. It touts that “In February, a crowd of 20,000 Christians gathered in New Delhi to protest increasing violence against them and request greater protections for the Christian community.” A regular Indian aware of the scale of usual protests would balk at such a large organised protest by Christians in a single Indian city that does not lie within Kerala.
For reference, the Christian population is almost 3 per cent of the entire population of the country, with a majority residing out of Delhi. The report, however, speaks to the uninformed and already prejudiced by somehow taking the number of 2,000 protestors, as reported by Crux and magnifying it tenfold. Unsurprisingly for Indian observers, this has precedence that can be cited by the official report; several Christian sites without oversight listed the number as between 15,000 to 22,000, which was picked up by the State Department “analysts”.
The 69-page report goes on to uncreatively reiterate its opposition to Indian laws, a continued attack on independent, constitutionally valid Indian lawmaking, repeating tropes about a Uniform Civil Code that is applicable to every citizen within the US as well. It goes on to sympathise specifically with Muslim men seeking to marry non-Muslim women to convert them to Islam.
For those studying Indian news through Indian publications rather than State Department mouthpieces, this is especially abhorrent considering the number of acid attacks and murders on Hindu women by Muslim men, including the stabbing and subsequent death of the daughter of an Indian Opposition politician from Karnataka last year. Purportedly neutral, the report refuses to examine the validity of the claims that non-Muslim women are specifically targeted for the sake of conversion and instead transcribes Opposition talking points. Moreover, it continues to portray India’s second-largest majority that carved out two land masses out of the Indian subcontinent in living memory as an oppressed minority.
The barrage of verbose information focusing on perceived problems faced by Muslims specifically allows the authors and readers to ignore problems faced by actual Indian minorities such as Parsis and Jains with little political representation or will for street violence. That the report is one of the responsibilities of the Office of International Religious Freedom whose Ambassador at large, Rashad Hussain, an American of Muslim-Indian origin, served as the Islamic Envoy under Barack Obama’s government, exemplifies why this cannot be understood to be a neutral study. His prior defence of a terrorist two decades ago has not merely been forgiven and is not to be constituted as bias, but must apparently certify him as the best arbiter for the values of religious freedom.
The barrage of misinformation in annual reports by the US State Department as well as by the USCIRF, an organisation declared as a player of political propaganda by the Indian government, finds no counter. The USCIRF has been designated as an organisation of particular concern by Disinfo Labs in a lengthy reveal, where it outlines the network of donors such as the omnipresent Open Society as well as contributors who are part of missionary as well as jihadist networks. Despite the open affiliations of the staff with faiths in the global majority, these remain the only organisations collating global open-source information with regard to the practice of religious freedom. Were they to not affect international relations as well as banking systems, it would be unlikely to cause much flurry in the countries they tend to berate.
Considering a much more interconnected world with information loops playing a major role in establishing people-to-people relations along with affecting trade and tourism, it is time that a more intellectually coherent study was platformed for serious consideration before every indigenous faith finds itself shield-less against intellectual cover for genocide, much as the Yazidis and Baloch find themselves.
Sagorika Sinha is a columnist at several Indian publications such as NDTV, FirstPost and CNN-News18 and also hosts a podcast on geopolitics and culture. She writes about international relations, public policy and history, and posts on X on her handle @sagorika_s. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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