Rebuttal of USCIRF India Entry and Issue Update on Alleged Religious Persecution

Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies (CIHS) has released a comprehensive legal rebuttal of the USCIRF Annual Report 2026 and its accompanying Issue Update on India. The rebuttal finds that USCIRF’s recommendation to designate India a Country of Particular Concern rests on methodological failures, unsourced assertions, and recommendations disconnected from the document’s own findings. Most strikingly, the report proposes sanctioning Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the world’s largest voluntary service organisation and India’s Research and Analysis Wing without a single evidentiary basis anywhere in its text. CIHS concludes that documents of this kind, issued under the authority of a U.S. government commission, do not serve the cause of religious freedom. They damage the mutual respect on which one of the world’s most consequential democratic partnerships depends.