WASHINGTON: India has struggled to protect minority communities or provide justice to them despite its status as a pluralistic and secular democracy, a US Congressional panel on religious freedom said.
In its latest annual report, the US commission for international religious freedom (USCIRF) rued that the US has enforced its law on visa ban on foreign individuals involved in violation of religious freedom only once on Narendra Modi and as such it urged the State Department to expand such a visa ban.
The USCIRF, noting that International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) bars entry of individuals “responsible for or directly carried out… particularly severe violations of religious freedom”, said that “this provision has been invoked only once: in March 2005, it was used to exclude the chief minister of Gujarat— Narendra Modi due to his complicity in riots in his state in 2002 that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 Muslims.”
The report said that “USCIRF continues to urge the Departments of State and Homeland Security to develop a lookout list of aliens who are inadmissible to the US on this basis, and USCIRF has provided information about several such individuals to the State Department.”
In its report, the USCIRF said that despite India’s status as a pluralistic, secular democracy, the country has struggled to protect minority communities or provide justice when crimes occur due to lack of political will, political corruption, and religious bias by government officials.
