The Ministry of External Affairs has rejected the US State Department’s 2023 religious freedom report on India, which highlighted issues of hate speech and religious conversions. In a statement on Friday, India described the findings as “deeply biased” and “visibly driven by vote-bank considerations.”
“We have noted the release by the US State Department of its report on International Religious Freedom for 2023. As in the past, we therefore reject it,” said External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal on Friday.
Jaiswal stated, “The report is a mix of imputations, misrepresentations, selective usage of facts, reliance on biased sources, and a one-sided projection of issues. This extends even to the depiction of our constitutional provisions and duly enacted laws of India.”
He added that the report selectively picked incidents to advance a “preconceived narrative” and seemed to challenge the integrity of certain legal judgments pronounced by Indian courts. “In some cases, the very validity of laws and regulations are questioned by the report, as is the right of legislatures to enact them,” Jaiswal said.
Criticizing the US over the report, Jaiswal remarked, “The United States has even more stringent laws and regulations and would surely not prescribe such solutions for itself.”
He also noted that in 2023, India officially raised numerous cases in the US involving hate crimes, racial attacks on Indian nationals and other minorities, vandalization and targeting of places of worship, violence and mistreatment by law enforcement authorities, as well as the political space given to advocates of extremism and terrorism abroad.
“However, such dialogues should not become a license for foreign interference in other polities,” Jaiswal concluded.
