United States Religious Freedom Panel Urges Sanctions on RSS Members During Its Chief's American Visit

The chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Asif Mahmood, called on the American government to consider targeted sanctions against members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Indian officials it accuses of complicity in religious freedom violations, The Hindu reported. He also called for revoking the visa issued to the organisation's chief, Mohan Bhagwat, who is visiting the United States. The RSS is the ideological parent organisation of India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as Dawn notes, and rejects characterisations of it as a source of religious persecution.

The commission is an advisory body. It makes recommendations to the State Department and Congress and cannot impose sanctions itself, and successive American administrations have declined to act on its recommendations concerning India.

The visit has produced a sharply divided reaction among Indians in the United States and in India itself. BBC Hindi reports that the RSS national publicity chief, Sunil Ambekar, responded to criticism from New York's mayor, Zohran Mamdani, without naming him, and that the exchange has polarised opinion within the Indian diaspora.

The dispute arrives while New Delhi and Washington are already at odds over tariffs. India has spent the past two years deepening trade settlement in local currencies and expanding purchases from suppliers outside the Western bloc, and each political irritant of this kind gives that policy additional domestic support.