The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has, in its 2026 Annual Report, done something unprecedented – it has named the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s largest and most respected cultural organisation, as a target for U.S. sanctions.

Every now and then the USCIRF publishes a ‘report’ defaming India. The November 2025 report was about “Systematic Religious Persecution in India” which read less as an objective assessment and more as a politically motivated dossier that ignores the foundational wounds of the Hindu community to paint a picture of unidirectional persecution.

In its 2026 ‘report’, they target the 100-year-old volunteer organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

What the Report Claims

The report claims that religious freedom conditions in India deteriorated in 2025, citing legislation, law enforcement practices, and mob violence that it says disproportionately affected religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians. It highlights the expansion and enforcement of anti-conversion laws in several states, which include stricter penalties and broader definitions of religious conversion. The report also discusses the use of laws such as the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and policies connected to citizenship and immigration enforcement, arguing that these measures have been used against minority communities and activists.

According to the report, the year also saw vigilante attacks and communal violence, including incidents involving mobs targeting Muslims and Christians, as well as violence linked to cow protection laws and communal tensions after a terrorist attack in Kashmir. It also raises concerns about detentions, deportations of Rohingya refugees, and expulsions of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam.

The report further discusses government actions affecting religious institutions, including the Waqf legislation and policies affecting religious educational institutions, which it says increased state control over minority religious bodies.

What USCIRF Recommended

The report urges the U.S. government to impose targeted sanctions on both the RSS and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) for their “responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom”. The proposed measures include:

• Asset freezes on the organisations and their affiliates
• Entry bans into the United States for involved individuals
• Pressing India to allow U.S. bodies like USCIRF and the State Department to conduct in-country assessments of religious freedom conditions​
• Linking future U.S. security assistance and bilateral trade with India to improvements in religious freedom​
• Impose targeted sanctions on individuals or entities it believes are responsible for religious freedom violations.
• Restrict arms sales to India under provisions of the Arms Export Control Act.

In addition, it recommends that the U.S. Congress pass legislation requiring reporting on alleged transnational repression targeting religious minorities abroad.

What USCIRF Actually Is

USCIRF is not a neutral human rights body. It is a U.S. government-funded advisory commission with a well-documented track record of bias against non-Christian, non-Western civilisational contexts. Its commissioners have included individuals with documented ties to Islamist lobby groups, Pakistani American activist networks, and Christian evangelical missionary organisations.

Critically, USCIRF cannot impose sanctions. It has no legal authority whatsoever.

The Sources Behind the Report: Follow the Money

USCIRF’s India chapters do not emerge from neutral fact-finding. They are built almost entirely on inputs from a specific ecosystem of organisations:

The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), which openly celebrated this report and has historically advocated for designating the RSS as a terrorist group​

Hindus for Human Rights, a U.S.-based group that consistently amplifies anti-Hindu, anti-India narratives under the cover of “human rights” language​

Church-linked missionary bodies and Kashmiri separatist-adjacent networks

These are not neutral observers. These are organisations with a stated agenda: the delegitimisation of Hindu majoritarian politics in India. USCIRF launders their inputs into official U.S. government-adjacent reports, giving them a veneer of institutional credibility they do not deserve.

India’s Government Was Right to Reject It

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has consistently called USCIRF reports “biased and politically motivated” and “a deliberate agenda rather than a genuine concern for religious freedom”. In 2025, the MEA went further – calling for USCIRF itself to be designated as an “entity of concern”. That is extraordinary diplomatic language, and it is entirely justified.

India has a Constitution that guarantees equal rights to all citizens. India has an independent judiciary. India holds free elections. To compare India’s record to countries that USCIRF also designates as CPCs, countries where people are executed for apostasy, where churches are bulldozed by the state, where minority communities face genocide, is intellectually dishonest and geopolitically motivated.

In the end, the USCIRF report says far more about the ecosystem producing it than about India itself. An advisory body with no enforcement authority has attempted to place a century-old Indian volunteer organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in the crosshairs of sanctions based on inputs from a narrow advocacy network.

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The post Christian-Supremacist USCIRF Targets RSS, R&AW In 2026 Report, Calls for U.S. Sanctions On Them appeared first on The Commune.

America loves to lecture other nations about religious freedom. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) regularly denounces countries like India for allegedly persecuting Christians, demanding they be designated as “Countries of Particular Concern.” Yet here’s the uncomfortable truth: the American government is simultaneously creating task forces to privilege Christianity at home while Hindu Americans face harassment at the highest levels of government. This is not hypocrisy but a calculated use of religious freedom rhetoric as a geopolitical weapon.

The USCIRF: A Tribunal For Thee, But Not For Me

The mechanism for this hypocrisy is official and well-funded. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) acts as a global moral arbiter, annually publishing reports that name and shame other nations for their failures. It recommends designating countries as “Countries of Particular Concern” and lectures the world on the path to tolerance.

Yet, this moral authority rings hollow. How can we credibly condemn the suppression of religious minorities abroad when, domestically, we see a concerted push to impose a majoritarian Christian culture? The same political ecosystem that supports USCIRF’s mission often champions a vision of America where non-Christian faiths are treated as foreign, suspect, or simply in need of conversion.

The Vance Case: A Microcosm Of Assimilation

Look no further than the personal story of JD and Usha Vance. Usha Vance has spoken with clarity about her Hindu upbringing, stating it shaped her parents into “really very good people.” Yet, in the public square, her faith has been systematically erased and targeted.

Her husband, the vice president, did not defend her heritage when it was mocked by trolls in his own political base. Instead, he publicly diminished her religious background and expressed his hope that she would “eventually” embrace Christianity. Vance just made a public statement that signals a disturbing norm: your faith is welcome only as a waystation on the road to ours.

This is the domestic reality of “religious freedom” for many in the US: not the liberty to practice one’s faith in peace, but the pressure to assimilate into the dominant Christian identity to be fully accepted.

The Ramaswamy Test: Conditional Acceptance For A “Model Minority”

The experience of Vivek Ramaswamy further exposes the conditional nature of this acceptance. He ran for president as a staunch Hindu, but to be palatable, he was forced to perform a delicate dance. He constantly framed his Hindu beliefs as an echo of “Judeo-Christian values,” a testament to the unspoken rule that to be legitimate, a faith must be validated through a Christian lens.

Despite his compliance, he still faced naked bigotry. When commentator Ann Coulter told him, “I still would not have voted for you because you’re an Indian,” it laid bare the ultimate barrier. His faith, no matter how he packaged it, and his ethnicity were, for a significant portion of the electorate, disqualifying. His story proves that for non-Christians, acceptance is often provisional and can be revoked at any time by the forces of pure prejudice.

Digital Demonization: When Hindu Gods Become Targets

Beyond policy and politics, the cultural hostility toward Hinduism plays out most visibly in the digital sphere. On social media, a network of ultra-Christian zealots — often based in the U.S. — regularly circulate abusive caricatures of Hindu gods and goddesses, depicting them as “demons,” “false idols,” or “Satanic figures.” Organized evangelical pages and YouTube channels openly call for “breaking the idols of India,” echoing a colonial-era contempt dressed up as modern evangelism.

Platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram are flooded with memes that mock Hindu deities, equating sacred symbols like Om, Shiva, and Durga with devil imagery. These attacks rarely face moderation, even as the same companies swiftly censor perceived “hate speech” against Christianity or Islam. Hindu Americans who call out such bigotry are dismissed as “Hindutva extremists,” while their abusers hide behind the language of “religious freedom” and “free speech.”

Alexander Duncan, a Republican leader from Texas, posted on social media:
“Why are we allowing a false statue of a false Hindu God to be here in Texas? We are a CHRISTIAN nation!”

He was referring to the 90-ft statue of Lord Hanuman at the Sri Ashtalakshmi Temple in Sugar Land, Texas.

The statue continues to face online attacks from MAGA supporters since its unveiling in 2024.

This is not fringe behavior — it reflects a deeper ecosystem that normalizes the vilification of Hinduism while presenting Christianity as the universal moral standard. The irony is stark: the same America that lectures India about tolerance harbors online crusaders who actively dehumanize Hindu belief, often with silent approval from the very institutions claiming to defend religious liberty.

The Great American Sham

This is the great American sham. They cry freedom of religion through USCIRF in other countries, pointing fingers at nations that privilege a state religion or a majority faith. Yet, simultaneously, a powerful movement in their politics seeks to do the very same thing in their country – impose a Christian identity on their laws, their culture, and their national self-concept.

Until America extends genuine religious freedom protection to its own minorities, until it stops lecturing other nations, until a Vice President can’t publicly hope his wife converts, until Hindu candidates aren’t subjected to religious tests for office, American preaching about global religious freedom will remain what it truly is: cynical geopolitical theatre masquerading as principle. The hypocrisy isn’t incidental. It’s the entire point.

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The post Convert, Confirm Or Be Cancelled: Religious Freedom In US Is A Sham, A Country That Preaches Freedom Abroad But Practices Intolerance At Home appeared first on The Commune.

According to a very troubling revelation made by a top US diplomat for religious freedom, Ambassador-at-Large Samuel Brownback, Hindu and Christian women in Pakistan are being ‘marketed’ as ‘concubines’ under the pretext of marrying them to wealthy Chinese men.

Brownback told reporters on Tuesday (December 10) that Pakistan is selling girls who belong to the religious minorities as “forced brides” for Chinese men. Christians and Hindus are a minority in Pakistan and often targets of majority Sunni Muslims and Hindu and Christian girls are an easy target to be sold as concubines or as brides into China.

Hindu and Christian women from poor and marginalized communities in Pakistan are vulnerable to traffickers falsely promising marriage to wealthy Chinese men. Once married in China, these women are often isolated, neglected, abused and, at times, sold as prostitutes.

— US Ambassador at Large for Int'l Religious Freedom (@IRF_Ambassador) December 8, 2020

Due to years of the one-child policy imposed by China, there is an acute imbalance in the sex ratio and given the cultural preference for a male child, many Chinese couples would either have undergone abortion or simply abandoned the girl child after giving birth.

This skewed sex ration has led to Chinese men importing women from other countries as brides, mistresses and labourers. As per Brownback, “Once married in China, these women are often isolated, neglected, abused and, at times, sold as prostitutes.”

According to Brownback, this was happening “because there’s not effective support and there’s discrimination against religious minorities that make them more vulnerable.

In November of this year, Ambassador-at-Large Brownback also spoke about the plight of Ahmadi Muslims and raised concern on Pakistan “because of the harshness of the persecution atmosphere and the number of people getting killed or the inability for the Ahmadi Muslims to function in the country, because they – the Pakistanis won’t let them register as Muslims.”

And it is not just Hindus or Christians, even poor Muslim woman in Pakistan are lured in to the Chinese trap.

The New York Times in November 2019 had covered a story of one Rabia Kanwal who was married to a Chinese man. Rabia was married to Zhang Shuchen who she thought was a wealthy farmer in China. He had paid $14,500 to a Chinese broker in the hopes of bringing home a Pakistani bride. He had told Rabia’s family that he was Muslim and used Chinese-Urdu dictionary to communicate and strike a bond with the family. After the marriage, Zhang had taken her to China. His house was located in the Henan province. The girl upon reaching was shocked to find that the man turned out to be duck farmer with not even a toilet at his home. The report notes that at least 150 women were brought to China as brides under false pretenses and in some cases were forced into prostitution.

He mentioned this as one of the reasons for designating Pakistan as a country of particular concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) had also recommended placing India also on the CPC, citing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected the recommendation to designate India as a violator of freedom of religion on Monday (December 7).

Brownback, however, said that Washington was watching the Indian situation closely and “these issues have been raised in private discussions at the government, high government level, and they will continue to get raised”.

The main issue of contention is that CAA expedites citizenship for Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs fleeing religious persecution in neighbouring Islamic or Muslim majority countries. However, the laws also do not prevent Muslims from getting citizenship after following the usual procedures.

Brownback reservations are in fact quite unfounded as the US has a legal provision similar to the CAA which is known as the Specter Amendment. This law allows individuals to get asylum and there is a sizeable budget tucked into this bill to help non-Muslim minorities from Iran and other no Christian countries, while pointedly excluding Muslim.

When he was asked why Pakistan is on the CPC list and if there is a double standard in Pompeo giving not giving the same designation to India, Brownback said, “Pakistan has half of the world’s people that are locked up for apostasy or blasphemy,”.

The countries that are on CPC in addition to Pakistan are China, Myanmar Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

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