[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 424 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
<DOC>
118th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. RES. 424
Expressing the sense of the Senate that the United States Government
engage the Government of India to seek a swift end to the persecution
of, and violence against, religious minorities and human rights
defenders in India and a reversal of government policies that
discriminate against Muslims and Christians on the basis of their
respective faiths.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
October 24, 2023
Ms. Baldwin submitted the following resolution; which was referred to
the Committee on Foreign Relations
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the Senate that the United States Government
engage the Government of India to seek a swift end to the persecution
of, and violence against, religious minorities and human rights
defenders in India and a reversal of government policies that
discriminate against Muslims and Christians on the basis of their
respective faiths.
Whereas religious freedom is a core human right and a right recognized by
international law and treaties;
Whereas religious freedom is--
(1) a necessary component of United States foreign policy and our
Nation's commitment to defending democracy and freedom globally; and
(2) a vital element of national security, which is critical to ensuring
a more peaceful, prosperous, and stable world;
Whereas India is the world's most populous democracy, which has long, unique,
and important relationship with the United States in promoting common
values and upholding regional stability;
Whereas the strong relationship between the United States and India is
fundamentally premised on both countries'--
(1) cherished common values of liberty, freedom, justice, and equality
before law; and
(2) opposition to every type of discrimination;
Whereas, during a visit to India in July 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken
stated, ``[W]e view Indian democracy as a force for good in defense of a
free and open Indo-Pacific [and] a free and open world'';
Whereas the existence of a truly free and open Indo-Pacific is conditional on
the protection of the freedoms and rights of all civilians;
Whereas, on June 2, 2022, while releasing the Department of State's 2021 Report
on International Religious Freedom, Secretary Blinken commented, ``[I]n
India, the world's largest democracy and home to a great diversity of
faiths, we've seen rising attacks on people and places of worship'';
Whereas, less than 1 year after becoming India's Prime Minister in 2014,
Narendra Modi promised, ``My government will ensure that there is
complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to
retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or
undue influence'';
Whereas India has historically been a strong and pluralistic democracy, being
the birthplace of several of the world's great religions, including
Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism;
Whereas India's 1,300,000,000 people include Hindus, who are the majority at 80
percent, 200,000,000 Muslims, which constitute the world's third largest
Muslim population, 40,000,000 Christians, and millions of Sikhs, Jains,
Baha'is, Jews, Zoroastrians, and people of innumerable animist and
indigenous faiths;
Whereas the preamble to the Constitution of India states, in part, ``We, the
people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a
Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic, and to secure to all
its citizens: Justice, social, economic and political; Liberty of
thought, expression, belief, faith and worship . . .'';
Whereas article 14 of the Constitution of India states, ``The State shall not
deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of
the laws within the territory of India.'';
Whereas article 25 of the Constitution of India states, in part, ``[a]ll persons
are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to
profess, practice and propagate religion.'';
Whereas violence against India's religious minorities, especially Muslims and
Christians, has escalated in the last decade;
Whereas such violence against religious minorities has included--
(1) public lynchings by vigilante groups;
(2) the disruption of prayer services at, and the vandalizing and
demolition of, mosques and churches;
(3) the demolition of homes and businesses of Muslims without due
process by state authorities in retaliation for protesting for their
constitutional rights; and
(4) arrests of Muslim men for marrying Hindu women in the name of the
false theory of ``Love Jihad'';
Whereas India's federal government and various state governments have failed to
prosecute the culprits and bring justice to the victims, which has been
noted in the 2021 Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices and the 2021 Department of State Report on International
Religious Freedom;
Whereas in 2020, 2021, and 2022, the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that the Department of State
designate India as a country of particular concern for ``engaging in and
tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom
violations, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act
(IRFA)'';
Whereas India has failed to act against partisan leaders from the Hindu
religious community for repeatedly calling for a genocide of India's
Muslims, such as Pooja Shakun Pandey, a leader of Hindu Mahasabha, who
stated, in December 2021, in the holy Hindu city of Haridwar in Uttar
Pradesh, ``If 100 of us are ready to kill 2,000,000 [Muslims], then we
will win and make India a Hindu nation'';
Whereas the Indian state of Karnataka has, without cause, banned Muslim female
students from wearing the hijab in schools and colleges, which violates
their fundamental rights guaranteed under article 14 of the Constitution
of India;
Whereas in August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir, the only Indian state with a majority
Muslim population--
(1) was deprived of its special autonomy without ensuring consultation
or any participation of the people living in Jammu and Kashmir; and
(2) was split into 2 federally governed union territories;
Whereas in December 2019, the Indian Parliament passed the Citizenship
(Amendment) Act, 2019 (referred to in this resolution as the ``CAA''),
which allows expedited citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains,
Parsees, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, but
excludes Muslims, which imposes a religious basis to the bestowal of
citizenship for the first time;
Whereas Indian police have wrongfully arrested hundreds of people throughout
India, most of them Muslims, merely for protesting against the enactment
of the CAA over concerns that this law would be used in conjunction with
a nationwide head count to deny citizenship to Muslims, a concern that
has been repeatedly expressed by the USCIRF;
Whereas the Indian police arrested prominent Muslim activists on charges of
carrying out violence against Muslims in Delhi coinciding with a visit
by then President Donald Trump to the Indian capital, but failed to act
against violent mobs that actually carried out the anti-Muslim violence
as documented by the Delhi Minorities Commission of the Government of
National Capital Territory of Delhi and Amnesty International India;
Whereas, during the widespread protests against the CAA and the National
Register for Citizens (referred to in this resolution as the ``NRC'')
the police, instead of stopping the violence against the protesters,
sometimes joined crowds shouting Hindu nationalist slogans and fired
indiscriminately on peaceful protestors, which killed many of them;
Whereas USCIRF has recommended that the ``United States Government should
consider sanctions against Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah and other
principal leadership'' for the passage of the CAA;
Whereas a headcount for the NRC held in Assam state in 2019 determined that
1,900,000 of the state's 31,000,000 residents do not have sufficient
documents proving that they or their parents lived in Assam from before
1971, and they are now likely to be stripped of their citizenship by
quasi-judicial bodies known as Foreigners Tribunals;
Whereas approximately 500,000 of these 1,900,000 undocumented people are Muslims
and thousands of them have been uprooted from their homes, where they
have lived for generations, and sent to detention centers;
Whereas, according to Human Rights Watch, government operatives in states ruled
by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party have
resorted to summary punishments by demolishing Muslim homes and
businesses without legal authorization;
Whereas, according to Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations,
India's 40,000,000 Christians are increasingly targeted by police and
vigilante mobs throughout India, leading to a steep rise in incidents of
violence against Christians, with 1,198 incidents recorded in 2022,
which represents a staggering increase from the 761 such incidents
reported in 2021;
Whereas International Christian Concern, a United States-based nongovernmental
organization, has reported that anti-blasphemy and anti-forced
conversion laws, which effectively criminalize minority religious
beliefs and freedom of conscience, are becoming increasingly common
throughout India and have led to numerous cases of violence against
religious minorities;
Whereas a culture of impunity for radical Hindu nationalists has led to an
unprecedented level of violence against Christian, Muslims, and other
vulnerable religious minorities: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) recognizes the security challenges faced by the
Government of India and the continuing threat of state-
supported cross-border terrorism;
(2) encourages the Government of India to amend the
discriminatory laws and executive orders based on the love,
jihad conspiracy theory, including the Citizenship (Amendment)
Act, 2019, by treating Muslims the same as other religious
groups, and the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act;
(3) urges the Government of India--
(A) to end the discriminatory and undemocratic NRC
and return citizenship to the estimated 1,900,000
people who declared noncitizens in a wholly dubious
manner;
(B) to immediately release individuals
unnecessarily detained in detention centers, protect
the right to health of such individuals, and ensure
access to healthcare and safe, sanitary conditions for
anyone who remains detained;
(C) to immediately release any unjustly detained
human rights defenders, journalists, and other critics,
many of whom have been held in custody for longer than
1 year without being charge with a crime;
(D) to establish accountability for the brutal
police violence against the anti-CAA protesters by
prosecuting the policemen and others in the chain of
command who are found to be complicit in such violence;
(E) to repeal the anti-conversion and anti-
blasphemy laws that are widely misused against
religious minorities, especially Christians;
(F) to repeal the hijab ban in Karnataka and allow
thousands of Muslim girls and women to attend classes,
as students or teachers, while wearing the hijab;
(G) to end the demolition of homes, businesses, and
places of worship belonging to Muslims and Christians;
and
(H) to allow unrestricted access to Jammu and
Kashmir by independent human rights observers and
international press; and
(4) calls on the Government of India to repeal the
colonial-era sedition law (section 124 of the Indian Penal
Code) that is used to stifle dissent and debate and has been
used against individuals who express their opposition to the
CAA.
<all>