India will not accept any external interference or pronouncement on matters related to our sovereignty, says EAM Dr Jaishankar as India denies Visa to Hinduphobic USCIRF officials

The infamous and Hinduphobic USCIRF has been shown its place by the Government of India as it denied Visa to its officials. This was confirmed by External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar in his letter to BJP MP Nishikant Dubey. It can be recalled that in December 2019, Nishikant Dubey had raised the anti-India observations made by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in Lok Sabha.

In response to Dubey’s questions, Dr Jaishankar has written a letter on June 1st highlighting the MEA’s response in the USCIRF matter. India has rejected the US organisations observations as inaccurate and unwarranted and also mentioned that USCIRF had chosen to be guided only by its prejudices and biases on a matter on which it has little knowledge and no locus standi.

EAM says that USCIRF has been known to make prejudiced, inaccurate, and misleading observations regarding the state of religious freedom in India.”We do not take cognizance of these pronouncements and have repudiated such attempts to misrepresent information related to India”, says EAM’s letter to Dubey.

Further confirming the denial of Visas to USCIRF officials, EAM’s letter states “We have also denied visa to USCIRF teams that have sought to visit India in connection with issues related to religious freedom, as we do not see the locus standi of a foreign entity like USCIRF to pronounce on the state of Indian citizens’ constitutionally protected rights.”

Dr Jaishankar reiterates India’s stand on external intervention of internal matters and says “I would once again like to assure you that we will not accept any external interference or pronouncement on matters related to our sovereignty and the fundamental rights of our citizens that are guaranteed by the Constitution.”

BJP MP Nishikant Dubey who posed the questions on USCIRF, posted the letter on social media and said that “India is a secular and sovereign country and any attempts to malign India’s reputation by falsifying the extent of religious freedom in our country won’t be tolerated.”

In April, the USCIRF had recommended to the US administration that India be designated a “country of particular concern”. In reponse, the Ministry of External Affairs in a press release slammed the US body for its “biased and tendentious” observations on India.

In a statement, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson, Anurag Srivastava, said the commission has reached new levels of “misrepresentation”. “We reject the observations on India in the USCIRF Annual Report. Its biased and tendentious comments against India are not new. But on this occasion, its misrepresentation has reached new levels. It has not been able to carry its own Commissioners in its endeavour. We regard it as an organization of particular concern and will treat it accordingly,” the statement said.

The USCIRF had tried to meddle in India’s affairs in December 2019 too when the CAB was passed into an Act. It had issued a statement saying that the agency is ‘deeply troubled’ by the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) in the Lok Sabha. The agency accused that CAB provides citizenship for immigrants excluding Muslims. The MEA then has called out the USCIRF for it’s inaccurate and unwarranted comments on CAB. The MEA statement said that the agency has chosen to be guided by their prejudices and biases on which they have little knowledge and no locus standi.