A United States government panel has recommended that the administration of Donald Trump consider targeted sanctions against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) over alleged involvement in and tolerance of violations of religious freedom in India.
“The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh should face targeted sanctions for its responsibility for and tolerance of violations of religious freedom in India,” the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said in its 2026 annual report. It added that the sanctions could include freezing the organisation’s assets and barring entry to the United States.
The RSS is widely regarded as the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the federal government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The recommendation was included in the USCIRF’s 2026 annual report released earlier this month. The commission is an independent US government agency that monitors religious freedom worldwide and provides policy recommendations to the White House, though its proposals are not binding.
In an India-specific update issued in November, the panel had said that the “interconnected relationship between the RSS and BJP allows for the creation and enforcement of several discriminatory pieces of legislation, including citizenship, anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws”.
The commission also recommended that the US government designate India as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in and tolerating what it described as systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom. It is the seventh time the USCIRF has made such a recommendation regarding India.
The Indian government has not yet responded to the latest report. However, in March 2025, the Ministry of External Affairs said the commission had a “pattern of issuing biased and politically motivated assessments”.
India was among 18 countries that the panel recommended for designation as countries of particular concern, alongside Afghanistan, Myanmar, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.
In the report, the commission said that in 2025 “religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate as the government introduced and enforced new legislation targeting religious minority communities and their houses of worship”.
“Indian authorities also facilitated widespread detention and illegal expulsion of citizens and religious refugees and tolerated vigilante attacks against religious minority communities,” it said.
The report also said the federal government continued to invoke anti-terrorism laws to detain members of religious minorities and activists advocating for them.
It noted that activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, among others involved in the 2020 protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, remained in prison for a fifth year without trial.
“Throughout the year, Hindu nationalist mobs across several states harassed, incited, and instigated violence against Muslims and Christians with impunity,” the report said. “Throughout 2025, violent mobs attacked Muslims under the guise of protecting state-level cow slaughter laws.”
The report also noted that 12 Indian states have anti-conversion laws. Several state governments either strengthened existing provisions or introduced new legislation in 2025 with broader definitions of “religious conversion” and stricter penalties, it added.