US Senators worry over Indian religious freedom

Washington

“The situation does raise concern about religious freedom in India,” Colorado Senator Cory Gardner said during a Congressional hearing on India convened by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, while expressing his concern on recent incidents of religious intolerance when artists returned their awards, said he is hoping to raise this issue with Prime Minister Modi when he travels to Washington DC next month. Describing the anti-conversion laws in some states as problematic, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, a Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed concern over religious freedom in India.

Some of the members also raised the issue of denying visas to the members of the US Commission on International  Religious Freedom.

Agreeing with the concerns of the Senators, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said while the Obama Administration has been raising these issues and concerns at the highest level and is having a dialogue with India, it is the vibrant civil society of India which is itself the most robust voice on this.

“There has been fairly vigorous and vociferous debate within India with respect to religious freedom and religious tolerance,” Biswal said, adding that there is no more robust voice than the voice of the Indian people that is taking up these issues with increasing vigour and public debate.

“It is on the headlines of Indian newspapers that you are seeing a very active engagement on this issue. I think, these are issues, these are values that we hold very dear, that we bring into the conversation. But we try to do it in a constructive way to not take away the fact that these are issues that Indian must grapple with and get right for their own country, for their own democracy, for their own society,” Biswal said in response to a question.