USCIRF, led by Pakistani Islamists, seeks sanctions on RSS and RAW: Here is how their report makes false claims and peddles the Islamo-Leftist agenda

It has become ritualistic for the United States to sermonise, concoct sinister narratives, and meddle in the internal affairs of partners and adversaries alike. This practice has continued regardless of which political party holds power in the US. In its latest instalment of anti-India propaganda, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has published its annual report for the year 2026, wherein it recommended that the US government impose sanctions on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W). In the report, the USCIRF continues to advocate for designating India as a “Country of Particular Concern”, over what it calls “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations.” The USCIRF report peddles the same old ‘Hindu nationalists targeting Muslim and Christian minorities’ bogey to argue that somehow religious freedom conditions in India worsened in 2025. To back its claims, the report cherry-picked incidents of violence, arrests, and demolition drives that allegedly affected Muslims and Christians. Furthermore, the USCIRF cried hoarse over what it claims the Modi government’s usage of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and National Register of Citizens (NRC) to “target minorities”. ‘Islamophobia’ after Pahalgam Islamic terror attack is a bigger concern for USCIRF than killing of Hindus for being Hindus Making its anti-Hindu mindset clear at the very onset of the report, the USCIRF not only villainised Hindus by cherrypicking incidents of violence, while completely neglecting Muslim mob violence, but also insinuated that Hindus being shot dead by Muslims for being Hindus, is not as big a problem as subsequent ‘Islamophobia’. “In April, three gunmen attacked a group of predominantly Hindu tourists in the Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir, killing 26 people. The perpetrators reportedly asked the victims to recite the Kalma, an Islamic verse, and killed those who were unable to do so. The attack sparked a five-day conflict between India and Pakistan and intensified anti-Muslim sentiment in India, including targeted attacks,” the USCIRF report reads. In April 2025, 26 people, mostly Hindu men, were singled out by Pakistani Islamic terrorists linked to LeT offshoot The Resistance Front (TRF), checked for circumcision and asked to recite Kalma, to confirm their religious identity before shooting them dead. Hindus were targeted and killed for not being Muslims, and yet, the USCIRF is more concerned about a natural reactionary disdain for Islamists, indicating that the Commission is an Islamic terror apologist that shields Jihadis and their unarmed sympathisers.   The USCIRF also expressed dismay over the Modi government’s crackdown on Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators and went on to suggest that those expelled in ‘inhumane’ fashion were often Bengali-speaking Indian citizens. The report, of course, provided no credible source to back its claim. No wonder the report made no mention of how these illegal infiltrators use illegal means to enter India, obtain fake documents, indulge in criminal activities, and systematically alter the religious demography of strategically picked locations, particularly, tribal areas. USCIRF claims the Centre’s Waqf Bill was a tool to “target” Muslim houses of worship to “bring them under state control” In May 2025, the Modi government passed the Waqf Amendment Bill, which aimed to overhaul the management of Waqf properties across India. The USCIRF dubbed the legislation democratically passed by an elected government as an attempt to “target houses of worship to bring them under state control.” The USCIRF mentioned the death of three people during the anti-Waqf ‘protests’ in West Bengal last year. While framing the incident as ‘targeting of Muslims’, the report did not mention that among the three killed were 70-year-old Hargobind Das and his son Chandan Das (40), who were hacked to death at Dhulian in Shamsherganj by a Muslim mob. In December 2025, 13 Muslim men were convicted for the brutal killing of the Hindu father-son duo. Withholding the names of the Hindu victims of the Muslim mob protesting against the Waqf Bill only shows that the USCIRF has no qualms in using Hindus killed by Muslim mobs as numbers to push an idea of false Muslim victimhood and vilify Hindus. The USCIRF tried to paint Muslims and Waqf Boards as victims of a Hindu nationalist government, while making no mention of the fact that Waqf Boards in India are the third-largest landowners, despite allegedly perpetually oppressed, suppressed, repressed and whatnot. The Waqf Boards have also been involved in corruption, scams, and illegal land grabbing. In addition to corruption within Waqf Boards, the unchecked powers handed to them by the Congress government in 1995 have also emboldened Waqf Boards to arbitrarily claim ownership of lands, houses, villages, colleges and nearly anything under the sun. The Waqf Bill intended to end this menace. The bill also discontinued the draconian Section 40 of the Waqf Act 1995, which allowed the Waqf Board to claim properties overnight, including Hindu villages, temples, etc. Yet the USCIRF framed the inclusion of non-Muslims on Waqf Boards as unfair, even as Waqf Boards and properties are not religious institutions. It is pertinent to recall the case of the Hindu-majority Thiruchenthurai village near Trichy, Tamil Nadu, which has been designated as a waqf property by the Tamil Nadu Waqf Board. The Tamil Nadu Waqf Board also claimed ownership of 7 such Hindu villages in the state. The villagers alleged that the Waqf Board had also claimed that the 1500-year-old Sundareswarar Temple belongs to them. From Gurudwara in Haryana, Surat Municipal Corporation headquarters in Gujarat, Taj Mahal and Kashi Vishwanath Mandir in Uttar Pradesh, two islands in Gujarat’s Bet Dwarka to Andhra Pradesh Waqf Board’s claim on 1,654.32 acres of Manikonda village, the list is endless and so is the menace of Waqf Board’s land-grabbing game, which neither the Indian ‘religious freedom’ advocates nor the USCIRF dares to talk about, since doing so does not align with their anti-Hindu agenda. While the USCIRF lamented Arunachal Pradesh’s push for the implementation of the “decades-dormant” anti-conversion law, it did not care to delve into what necessitated the revival of this “dormant” law. The USCIRF also dubbed the Uttarakhand State Authority for Minority Education (USAME) Act as somehow a step towards curbing the religious freedom of ‘minorities, even as the report itself states that the Act “dissolves the Madrasa Board and brings madrasas and other educational institutions for Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians under state control.” The question of targeting any particular community would have arisen if only madarsas or Christian educational institutions were targeted. Anti-conversion laws: USCIRF continues to term laws protecting people from coercive and fraudulent religious conversion as prohibition of voluntary change in faith The USCIRF report dedicated a portion to condemning the enforcement of religious freedom-related laws in various Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled states. “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,” the report reads. Arunachal Pradesh is home to various indigenous tribes and religions like Donyi Polo, Hinduism, Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism. In October 2025, thousands of people from 27 districts, 26 major tribes, and 100 sub-tribes took to the streets to demand a strict implementation of a 46-year-old anti-conversion law,  Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act  (APFRA), 1978. The demand stemmed from rapidly shifting religious demographics in the state and the erosion of native faiths and cultures. OpIndia reported earlier how there has been a significant increase in the Christian population and conversion activities in the state over the years. The Christian population in Arunachal Pradesh went up from 0.79% in the 1971 Census to 30.26% in the 2011 Census. The share of the Hindu population in 1971 was 22%, and in 2011 it was 29.04%. The Buddhist population in the 1971 census comprised around 13%, but in 2011, the share dwindled to 11.77%. Meanwhile, Muslims have gone from 0.18% in 1971 to 1.95% in the 2011 census. It is obvious that those with the agenda of altering the religious demographics of Arunachal Pradesh would rise in opposition to the implementation of a law that would essentially curb, if not put a stop to, their conversion activities. This does not mean the state government is attacking the religious freedom of Christians, but only attempting to bar the unlawful exploitation of the freedom accorded to them. In Uttarakhand as well, the need to impose strict anti-conversion laws arose from the deliberate attempts at changing the religious demography of the state through forceful or fraudulent conversion of poor and vulnerable Hindus to Islam or Christianity. In 2024, the Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code panel report made alarming revelations about how the population of Muslims and Christians in the state have expanded by more than twice as much as that of Hindus and Sikhs. These dynamics pertaining to religious demography are not always organic and illegal conversion activities are significant contributors to it. Local Hindu organisations have consistently raised alarms that the population of Muslims has witnessed a sudden increase in some hill districts like Dehradun, Haridwar, Nainital, Pauri Garhwal and Tehri Garhwal. In recent years, there were communal tensions in some hilly areas like Purola town of Uttarkashi, Dharchula and the Nandanagar area of ​​Chamoli. Moving ahead, the USCIRF further mentioned announcements by the BJP governments in Assam, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra to strengthen anti-conversion laws and impose stricter jail terms and fiscal penalties on those involved in forced and/or fraudulent religious conversions. “In July, Maharashtra state announced plans to introduce in December a tougher law to prevent religious conversions. Similarly, Chhattisgarh state announced in October that a proposed new anti-conversion law would target faith healing meetings,” the report claims. The USCIRF report does not shed light on what happens in the “faith healing meetings” it wants the American government to believe are simple prayer meetings meant for Christians. These Changai Sabhas often feature missionaries and Pentecostal pastors who claim to possess miraculous healing powers so much so that they boast of curing critical illnesses like cancer, paralysis, and even raising the dead. While the USCIRF may not want to see the obvious, the issue of Christian pastors using ridiculous tactics that create a façade of magical healing in the minds of gullible people who ultimately fall victim to these theatrics and convert to Christianity is a serious threat to India’s demography and religious balance. Many Christian missionaries and fraudulent pastors rely on a blend of spectacle, emotional manipulation, and exploitation of the desperation and vulnerabilities of common people. The purpose of these ‘Changai Sabhas’ has been to target vulnerable people poor, sick, desperate and disillusioned people promising them instant relief where medicine or resources fail. The idea is to subtly push conversion to Christianity as the path to ‘salvation’ and relief from all worldly problems. All this is done to harvest souls for Christianity, just as ‘Mother’ Teresa used to do. These pastors and missionaries are often foreign-funded, involved in unlawful activities, and involved in disparaging Hindu religious beliefs. From the Ghaziabad conversion racket, the Meerut Changai Sabha racket of 2022, the 2024 Bharatpur Christian conversion racket, to countless cases of love jihad and Islamic conversion rackets like those operated by Chhangur Baba, Hindus and other non-Christian and non-Muslim communities are facing two-sided attacks on their religious freedom, but the USCIRF does not consider the Hindu community significant enough have document their plight. It is not a hidden secret that Christian missionaries and Islamists have, over the years, turned tribal areas in Assam, Chhattisgarh, and the non-BJP-ruled Jharkhand into battlegrounds of religious conversions and demographic dominance. While Christian missionaries use financial inducements, miraculous healings, brainwashing, promises of jobs, education and medical treatments, and other such tactics to lure tribals and Hindus into the fold of Christianity, Islamists, both local and Bangladeshi infiltrators, employ Love Jihad and land-grabbing tactics to expand dominance. Islamists often lure tribal women for marriage in tribal areas to exploit local land-related laws like the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act (CNT Act and the Santhal Parganas Tenancy (SPT) Act in Jharkhand. Interestingly, this pattern of using a foothold to seize control and execute nefarious agendas is not confined to Islamists alone. Many Christian missionaries, out with the mission of luring non-Christians to Christianity using myriad tactics, also do the same. In February 2025, it was reported in Gomti Nagar Extension area of Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow, that local Hindus staged a protest against Christian prayer meetings in a residential house in Chhota Bharwara, after it was found to be operated as an unregistered church. This illegal house-turned-church was hosting up to 200 people weekly, and conversion activities were taking place there. The Christian missionaries were found to be purchasing properties in the area at inflated rates to establish influence and create a Christian-dominated locality. It was reported that if the Hindus refused to convert, the Christian missionaries put pressure on the locals to sell their houses. The local Hindus were being instigated to convert to Christianity. The house in question was a church-like structure with no explicit religious symbols. In many tribal areas. Christian missionaries have earlier been reported to have encroached on Hindu temple lands in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. Be it Muslim immigrants or Christian missionaries, outsiders infiltrate tribal areas, establish residence, and engage in conversion activities to alter local demography, often beginning with innocuous prayer meetings or gatherings or benign private worship, but eventually resulting in land grabs, encroachments, and even religious conversion attempts. The USCIRF also mentioned the Modi government’s denial of visa to American evangelist Franklin Graham, inadvertently explaining the reason behind apparent disdain for Hindus and limerence for Christian missionaries and Islamists. In November 2025, Franklin Graham from the United States, who was scheduled to visit Kohima in Nagaland on 30th November for a Christian event, was denied a visa. As reported earlier, Graham’s organisation, Samaritan’s Purse, has been involved in conversion-oriented activities in the country, using aid, food distribution, and other material assistance as a tool for evangelism. In 2010, during an interview with USA Today, Franklin Graham had mocked Hinduism for its many manifestations of God and said “No elephant with 100 arms can do anything for me. None of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation. Graham even used the Covid pandemic as a tool for his sinister agenda of Christian conversion in India. USCIRF calls love jihad a ‘derogatory’ term for religious conversions in interfaith marriages, and links denial of visa to American Christian evangelist, Franklin Graham to restriction of religious freedom Dishonest to its own stated objective of documenting the status of religious freedom in various countries, the USCIRF does not care to document the deliberate attempts at eradicating the religious freedom of Hindus in India. This dishonesty is reflected in the tone and deliberate downplaying of real issues as conspiracy theories. Take love jihad for example. Regardless of the Islamo-leftist propaganda that love jihad is a BJP-peddled hoax or conspiracy theory, it is established through countless cases reported every year wherein Muslim men feign love to trap Hindu, Sikh, and in several cases, Christian girls to sexually exploit them, and eventually force them into conversion to Islam and Nikah. Yet, the USCIRF report calls love jihad a “derogatory term for conversions occurring in the context of interfaith marriages.” The USCIRF expressed no overt discomfort over interfaith marriages requiring religious conversion, almost always of the Hindu partner, let alone differentiating between legal interfaith marriages and fraudulent, predatory, and unlawful abuse and conversions via love jihad. Unsurprisingly, the USCIRF also dubs the strict enforcement of anti-cow slaughter rules as the BJP’s restriction on religious freedom of ‘minorities’, even if it comes at the expense of the religious sentiments of the Hindu majority. The USCIRF’s criticism of cow protection laws reflects a deliberate unwillingness to acknowledge religious-cultural context. The cow holds both civilisational and constitutional significance in India, with the Constitution’s Directive Principles calling for its protection. Akin to how Western societies regulate or forbid the consumption of culturally sensitive animals, whether horses, dogs, or whales, India’s cow protection laws are a reflection of long-standing societal ethos. However, the USCIRF’s ideological lens does not permit such nuance. The USCIRF, driven by its own anti-Hindu agenda, mechanically classifies the cow protection laws as expressions of Hindu majoritarian oppression, revealing more about its cultural incomprehension than about India. USCIRF passes off arrest of Christian missionaries, Islamist rioters and anti-India elements as ‘imprisonment of religious minorities’ In the “Imprisonment of Religious Minorities” section, the USCIRF cited the October 2025 arrest of James Watson (58), an American citizen currently staying in Thane’s Hiranandani Estate; and Manoj Govind Kolha (35), who lives in Bhuishet, Chimbipada, for converting people to Christianity, to argue that religious minorities are imprisoned in India for practising their religion. Despite mentioning that the accused persons were charged with “hurting religious sentiment” and for violating the state’s anti-black magic law, luring individuals to convert by promising “miracle cures” and prosperity, the USCIRF dubbed it a case of religious persecution as if these people were arrested for simply being Christians and not for the illegal activities they indulged in. Apparently, using fraudulent tactics to lure Hindus into Christianity is not even problematic for the USCIRF, let alone being unlawful. Predictably, the USCIRF continues to cry for Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and other Islamists involved in the 2020 anti-CAA protests and the anti-Hindu Delhi riots. Contrary to the false narrative amplified by the USCIRF, Umar Khalid, OpIndia has reported earlier that out of the 14 adjournments in 2023 and 2024, 7 delays and adjournments were sought by Umar Khalid himself. It therefore becomes evident that the withdrawal was certainly not because of the famed “delay” in hearing. While the Islamo-leftist ecosystem continues to cry ‘injustice’, it is the alleged failed forum shopping attempts of the accused’s lawyer that have Khalid rotting in jail for so long. Former Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, had also said earlier this year that the real problem lies in the mindset of some lawyers and political groups who want their cases heard only by certain judges. Highlighting what OpIndia has reported multiple times, the former CJI said that court records showed that Khalid’s legal team, led by Sibal, had sought at least seven adjournments before finally withdrawing the bail plea in February 2024, citing “a change in circumstances.” The USCIRF also extended support to Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a professor at Haryana’s Ashoka University, and said, “In May, authorities arrested a Muslim university professor, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (India’s Criminal Code) for his comments on social media about Kashmir and subsequent attacks against Muslims in India.” Contrary to what the USCIRF claimed, Mahmudabad was arrested for making derogatory remarks against women officers in the armed forces and for promoting communal disharmony. Later, the Supreme Court granted him bail but did not halt the investigation. It ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to continue the probe. Furthermore, the USCIRF framed the arrest of murder accused Jagtar Singh Johal, alias Jaggi, as the Modi government’s imprisonment of religious minorities. Jagtar Singh Johal, alias Jaggi, is a British resident from Glasgow, Scotland. In 2017, he was visiting India to attend a wedding. During his stay, the Punjab Police arrested him as a suspect in several cases. He was arrested based on the statement of one Taljit Singh Jimmy. He had confessed to his involvement in several crimes during interrogation. However, his supporters claim that the investigation agencies ‘forced’ a confession out of him using third-degree torture during interrogation. Johal was behind the outfit ‘Never Forget 84’. Jaggi is reported to be a staunch Khalistani supporter. He is facing several murder and attempted murder cases. According to National Investigation Agency’s charge sheets, he has been named in the murder cases of Hindu Takht leader Amit Sharma, RSS leader Brig. (Retd.) Jagdish Kumar Gagneja, RSS leader Ravinder Gosain, Shiv Sena leader Durga Dass Gupta, Pastor Sultan Masih, and Dera Sacha Sauda followers Satpal Sharma and his son Ramesh Sharma. Jaggi was also accused of paying Rs. 27 lakh to the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) chief Harminder Singh Mintoo (deceased) in France in 2013 to assassinate RSS leader Ravinder Gosain. His name also appeared in the attempt to murder Shiv Sena activist Amit Arora and firing at RSS Shakha in Kidwai Nagar in Ludhiana in 2016. However, merely because the court acquitted Johal in one out of the nine criminal cases he faces, the USCIRF deemed it a case of oppression of religious minorities by the ‘Hindu nationalist’ Modi government. Sanction RSS, allow in-country assessments, link bilateral ties with religious freedom in India, and pass Transnational Repression Act: USCIRF recommendations to the US government is seeped in entitlement and delusion rooted in outright lies and propaganda The recommendations part of the USCIRF report on religious freedom in India is not particularly very refreshing. Rather, it is the same old agenda offered with a slightly blunter rhetoric. The Commission urged the US government to “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).” The Commission had made similar recommendations in its report last year. Lost in its own sense of entitlement, the USCIRF asked the US government to “press India to allow government entities such as USCIRF and the U.S. Department of State to conduct in-country assessments of religious freedom conditions.” The Commission, however, failed to explain what locus standi it has to even think they can conduct any assessment of religious freedom in a foreign country, that too, the world’s largest democracy, India. The US needs to come out of the mindset of assumed superiority and self-imposed imperative to sermonise and teach foreign governments how to run their countries and ensure religious freedom. If the US thinks it wants to export its suicidal empathy for Islamists who kill Jews on American soil for sport, to India in the name of religious freedom, India would simply say, No, thanks! Further exposing its retardation, the USCIRF recommended the American government impose sanctions on individuals and entities linked to the Research and Analysis Wing, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS, which is often called the ideological parent body of the ruling BJP, has been involved in humanitarian and social service activities for decades. Despite its ideological core being the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra, the organisation has never advocated for killings or the ouster of non-Hindu Indian citizens. Ironically, even the traditional supporters of the RSS are miffed with the organisation for its newly-conceived ideological softness and flexibility. Yet, the organisation continues to attract foreign attacks and propaganda campaigns like those from the USCIRF. “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,” the USCIRF stated. RA&W is India’s premier external intelligence agency, though not explicitly a regime toppler like CIA, it is the CIA-equivalent of India, to even think that the US government should sanction RA&W or related entities and individuals, that too over “violations of religious freedoms” is absurd. Imagine the absurdity if an Indian government entity recommends sanctions on the CIA for its regime change and other covert operations involving human rights violations. Clearly, the USCIRF’s recommendation to sanction RA&W is a quixotic gesture from an anti-India panel which has been pushing an Islamo-leftist ideological agenda as its top priority instead of unbiased assessment and diplomatic pragmatism. USCIRF’s call to sanction RA&W alongside the RSS, conflating religious freedom with national security, stretches the Commission’s mandate to absurd lengths. The continued rejection of its recommendations by the US administrations suggests that this time as well, the USCIRF-produced garbage will be relegated to the veritable dustbin. The Commission further suggested to the US government to “link future U.S. security assistance and bilateral trade policies with India to improvements in religious freedom; and “enforce 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 the US Congress, the USCIRF recommended reintroduction of the Transnational Repression Reporting Act of 2024 “to require the annual reporting of acts of transnational repression by the Indian government targeting religious minorities in the United States.” If India also starts linking trade and defence ties with the US to improvements in religious freedom, the straining of relations between the two countries would not need a narcissistic, loudmouth and intransigent Trump, given the frequent attacks, both violent and ideological, on Hindus and their temples, and the wider Indian diaspora in the US in recent years. Congress and the extended anti-BJP cabal rejoice over USCIRF recommending sanctions on RSS Predictably, the anti-BJP/RSS ideological system has turned its celebratory mode on as once again, a foreign government entity churned out propaganda report to meddle in India’s internal affairs and attack the Modi government. As it has always been, the Congress party and the extended Islamo-leftist cabal is amplifying the USCIRF propaganda as universal truth to score political points against the BJP-RSS. In this vein, Congress leader Supriya Srinate, shared the USCIRF report’s recommendations on X and wrote, “R