Mainstream WeeklyJune 1, 2026
Christians in India, some of who were expecting that visiting United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio will carry their appeal for revocation of FCRA cancellations to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government are really disappointed that he only murmured worshipful platitudes at the Grave of Mother Teresa in Kolkata, and said even less at his meetings in Delhi during the day.
We do not know what he told Mr Modi in private at the PMO, but it is unlikely the matter of the Indian government’s treatment of its religious minorities, specially Christians and Muslims may have figured in talks that I dare guess focussed on the situation in Iran and the Gulf of Hormuz, Israel, and India’s strategic and defence trade relations with the United States which are a priority to both nations.
More is the pity because while he was in the national capital, the RSS frontal groups involved with Adivasis in central India were organising a massive rally at the Red Frt demanding delisting of Tribals, some of who may have converted to Christianity 150 years ago, saying have forfeited their right to scheduled tribe reservations. Home minister Amita Shah was giving them a benign hearing.
For the past several years, major international bodies have consistently documented a troubling pattern in India: rising violence against Christians, attacks on churches, and systematic strangling of NGOs through laws like the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom reports, Human Rights Watch, the UN Human Rights Council mechanisms, and EU statements have all raised red flags.
The CPC label is reserved for governments that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom. Despite this repeated, bipartisan warning from an independent federal commission, the State Department has never acted on it though its own reports describe worsening conditions including mob attacks on churches, pastors beaten, paraded and jailed, prayer meetings disrupted, and anti-conversion laws used to target Christians, especially from Dalit and tribal communities.
The 2023 report highlighted the burning of over 250 churches during ethnic violence in Manipur, where Christian Kuki communities were targeted.
It also noted how police sometimes stood by or even arrested victims on conversion charges instead of protecting them.
Yet the White House has largely chosen to look the other way, prioritising strategic partnership, trade deals, and defense cooperation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The US routinely documents incidents of violence against Cristians, Muslims and other communities independently of records kept by the spokesman’s office of the All India Catholic Union, the Evangelical fellowship of India and the United Christian Forum. On Christmas Day last year, 125 cases of violence, including desecration and disruption of prayers and festivities, included attacks of “Santa Claus Father Christmas”.
The New York based Human Rights Watch has been equally blunt, documenting how Hindutva groups, and individuals linked to the ruling ecosystem, have orchestrated campaigns of fear. HRW reports detail church vandalism, assaults on pastors, and the weaponisation of “love jihad” and anti-conversion rhetoric.
HRW slammed the FCRA as a tool to choke civil society. Between 2018 and 2022, India canceled registrations of over 1,800 nonprofits. Christian organizations, including long-established ones, have lost FCRA licenses, crippling their ability to receive foreign donations for humanitarian work, education, and health services. This amounts to the strangling of NGOs that serve the poorest communities — the very work Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity became world-famous for.
Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity momentarily lost their FCRA licence to receive foreign donations, but the permission was restored post haste after an international furore and reportedly a protest from the Vatican.
UN mechanisms and EU statements have added their voices, and in the Universal Periodic Reviews at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, several important countries have urged India to protect religious minorities, repeal discriminatory laws, and ensure accountability for violence.
The EU has repeatedly expressed concerns about shrinking civic space and rising intolerance.
To non one’s surprise, these critiques have had little visible impact on India or on U.S. policy.
India routinely rejects every single such report as based on half truths from Indian NGOs, and a direct interference in the country’s internal affairs, even as ironically it is a major critic of several countries including Pakistan for their human rights record.
In the past the US had invoked its trade pacts to insert in them issues of human rights violations which would invite restrictions.
Rubio’s stop at Mother Teresa’s grave in Kolkata was presented as a gesture of respect for humanitarian service, but it did not amount to anything more than a hollow opportunity, much as his visit to the Taj is not a condemnation of the Sangh’s Islamophobic rants against Mughal era mosques and monuments.
HRW’s tracking of NGO harassment, and UN concerns should be sufficient to explain that the persecution of religious minorities in India runs deeper than isolated incidents.
Anti-conversion laws have shifted the burden of proof onto the accused with pastors by the dozen rotting in jails in Uttar Pradesh as district judges deny them bail and FCRA cancellations also mean that Churches and institutions may now lose even their buildings, ambulances and other things they may have bought with foreign donations.
Indian Christians understand geopolitical realities, and even the most pious Bishop knows India is critical for the US in balancing China in the Indo-Pacific, and now as an ally of Israel in the Gulf. Christians do not expect President Trump to press press too hard on religious freedom in India despite his repopulation in the Indian church as a latter dat crusader for Christ.