India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has urged the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to refrain from making biased and unfounded accusations about the South Asian nation.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is a commission under the federal government of the United States that aims to promote freedom of religion as a "principle of US foreign policy."
"The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) continues to regurgitate biased and motivated comments about India, this time in its 2023 annual report," India's MEA spokesman Arindam Bagchi tweeted. "India rejects such misrepresentation of facts, which only serves to discredit the USCIRF itself."
"We would urge USCIRF to desist from such efforts and develop a better understanding of India, its plurality, its democratic ethos and its constitutional mechanisms," Bagchi added.
Apart from recommending to "freeze assets" of Indian government bodies, the USCIRF also called on the US Congress to raise the issue of religious freedom during bilateral US-India meetings and hold hearings on the matter.
It's not the first such call: the SCIRF has been actively issuing those recommendations since 2020, drawing a straw in the India-US relationship.