IAMC welcomes USCIRF’s report on RSS, BJP’s “intertwined” objectives in systematic religious persecution in India
Washington, D.C. (November 20, 2025) – The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) today welcomed the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) 2025 Issue Update on systematic religious persecution in India, which names the relationship between the Hindu supremacist paramilitary group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the driving force behind the weaponization of India’s legal framework and criminal justice system against Muslims, Christians, and other minorities.
The report opened with an examination of the links between key BJP officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, and the RSS, which USCIRF labeled as a “Hindu nationalist organization” whose “primary mission” is to turn India into a Hindu state, and has been “involved in acts of extreme violence and intolerance against members of minority groups for decades.”
“While Modi has attempted to publicly distance himself from the RSS, BJP policies reflect the RSS’s Hindutva-oriented objectives, and the two organizations remain intertwined,” the report stated.
These objectives, USCIRF stated, include “eliminating the special status of Kashmir, constructing a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, and establishing a uniform civil code to nullify
existing personal laws for each religious group, all of which the BJP has implemented under Modi’s leadership in addition to other policies that disenfranchise religious minorities.”
The report named the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), the 1967 Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the 2019 Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the 2025 Waqf Bill, the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Bill, anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws, and Article 295A of the Penal Code, which “functions as a blasphemy law,” as “discriminatory laws that target and directly impact religious minority communities.”
Enforcement of these laws, the report added, are left to state governments, “creating a system lacking means of accountability for state-perpetrated violations of human rights,” and resulting in a backlogged criminal justice system in which “a disproportionate share of non-convicts is composed of religious minorities, with a large overrepresentation of Muslims and Sikhs.”
“With a recent investigation by Prism revealing that the RSS is now working with US lobbyists to whitewash its image, USCIRF’s report on this violent supremacist group’s role in destroying protections for religious minorities is more relevant than ever,” said IAMC President Mohammed Jawad. “We reiterate USCIRF’s call for the US State Department to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern and enforce sanctions on individuals and groups responsible for enabling these systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.”
