The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh should face targeted sanctions for its responsibility for and tolerance of violations of religious freedom in India, a US panel has recommended to the Donald Trump administration. The sanctions could include freezing the organisation’s assets and barring entry to the US.
The RSS is the parent organisation of the Narendra-Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party government in India.
The recommendation was made in the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2026 annual report, released earlier this month.
The commission is an independent American government agency that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion and makes policy suggestions to the White House. These suggestions are not binding.
In an India-specific issue update released in November, the commission had noted 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”.
In the 2026 annual report, the commission also recommended that India’s Research and Analysis Wing be among the individuals and entities facing sanctions for their tolerance of religious freedom violations. The Research and Analysis Wing is the country’s foreign intelligence agency.
In 2025 as well, the commission had recommended sanctions against the agency over its alleged involvement in assassination plots against Sikh separatists, Reuters reported.
Among the commission’s other recommendations was that the Trump administration designate India as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom. This is the seventh time the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has made this recommendation.
India has not responded to the latest report. However, in March 2025, the Ministry of External Affairs had said that the commission has a “pattern of issuing biased and politically motivated assessments”.
India is among the 18 countries that the commission recommended for designation as “countries of particular concern”, along with Afghanistan, Myanmar, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.
‘Religious freedom continues to deteriorate’
In the latest annual report, the commission noted 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,” the report said.
The Union government continued to use anti-terrorism laws to imprison religious minorities and those advocating on their behalf, it added.
The report noted that activists “Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam and several others involved in the 2020 [Citizenship Amendment Act] protests remained in prison for the fifth year without trials”.
“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.”
It also noted that 12 of India’s states have anti-conversion laws, and that several state governments strengthened or introduced new legislation in 2025 with broader definitions of “religious conversion” and harsher penalties.
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