India has denied visas to the members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), who had sought to visit India to review the country’s religious freedom, stating that they had no standing to assess the constitutional rights of Indians.
‘We have denied visas to USCIRF teams that have sought to visit India in connection with issues related to religious freedom,’ External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in a letter to a BJP lawmaker on June 1.
According to a Reuters report, the letter was written to Nishikant Dubey, MP in the lower house, who had raised the issue of the panel’s report in parliament.
The US government panel released its 2019 Religious Freedom Report in April, which documented major instances of the violation of religious freedom across the world, and marked India as a ‘country of particular concern’, after China, Russia, Iran and Syria.
Jaishankar said the government firmly repudiated the surveys of the USCIRF, which had little knowledge of the rights of Indian citizens, describing it as biased and prejudiced.
He said that the step has been taken, after observing that such foreign agencies had no grounds to pronounce on the state of Indian citizens’ constitutional rights, adding that India would not accept any foreign interference or judgement on matters related to its sovereignty.
In response, the USCIRF spokesperson Danielle Saroyan Ashbahian said that the team was looking forward to a constructive dialogue with the government.
‘As a pluralistic, non-sectarian, and democratic state, and a close partner of the United States, India should have the confidence to allow our visit, which would give it the opportunity to convey its views directly to USCIRF in a constructive dialogue,’ Ashbahian as quoted.
Meanwhile, Ambassador-At-Large for International Religious Freedom, Samuel Brownback, released a new 2019 International Religious Freedom report on Wednesday in Washington, DC, in which he raised major concerns over the religious tensions and treatment of the minorities prevailing in India.
The panel also suggested the country to initiate interfaith dialogues at a very high level, specifically identifying problems mentioned in the report.
