'Glaring Omission': Pakistan Slams US for Not Branding India a 'Country of Particular Concern'

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has redesignated Pakistan as a country of particular concern (CPC) under its International Religious Freedom Act for "having engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom". Pakistan rejects the CPC tag, claiming it is a multi-religious and pluralistic society.

Pakistan has slammed the US for "ignoring" India's alleged crimes against its Muslim population. The move comes a day after Islamabad was redesignated a "country of particular concern (CPC)" over purported violations of religious freedoms of its minority population by the Biden administration.

"The glaring omission of India, where the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders openly disregard religious freedom and discriminate against minority communities in an institutional manner, is unfortunate and puts the credibility of the US report into question", Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said during a press briefing on Thursday.

"State-complicity in organised violence against the Muslim minority in India is a matter of record. It is no secret that attacks by cow vigilantes and mob lynchings of Indian Muslims take place regularly and with complete impunity for the perpetrators", the Pakistani official also stated.

RSS is the ideological parent of India's federally-governing BJP.

Both the BJP and the RSS are often accused of promoting a "Hindu nationalist" political worldview, which critics and the opposition say excludes Muslim and other minority communities. Muslims constituted nearly 15 percent of India's population at the time of the last federal census in 2011.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson additionally said that his government was "deeply concerned about the rising trend of violence against minorities, particularly Muslims, in India and the increasing constraints on religious freedoms".

"Pakistan condemns the restrictions imposed on offering Friday prayers, vandalisation of mosques, attacks on Muslims offering prayers, sacrilege of Muslim places of worship, and detention of activists under the draconian laws for raising voices against human rights violations", Ahmad said.

The Imran Khan government in Pakistan has put the blame squarely on the RSS and its Hindu nationalist ideology for several recent incidents involving the alleged persecution of Muslims in India. Last month, Islamabad described the alleged vandalisation of mosques by frenzied Hindu mobs in the state of Tripura as "rephrensible".

"There is little space for minorities and their way of life in today's India", Islamabad said, reacting to complaints by Muslims in the Indian state of Tripura that their homes had been targeted and mosques vandalised in retaliatory attacks against the community for violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.

The Indian police have rejected claims that any mosque was targeted during anti-Bangladesh protests by Hindu organisations in the state. Muslim-majority Bangladesh shares a border with Tripura.

Incidents of Muslims beng killed by Hindu mobs have risen sharply since Prime Minister Modi came to power in 2014. Several Indian news websites, including The Quint, have reported that poor Muslims have been increasingly targeted by Hindu mobs, sometimes fatally, for the mere suspicion of carrying beef. Beef is forbidden in the Hindu religion, although there is no federal ban on its consumption as such.

Besides this, Pakistan's PM has on several occasions accused the Modi government of altering the demography of the predominantly Muslim Jammu and Kashmir region.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its semi-autonomous status by the Modi government in 2019 and bifurcated into two federal territories: Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Pakistan, which also administers part of Jammu and Kashmir, rejected New Delhi's move and downgraded diplomatic ties with India.