02/15/2020 India (International Christian Concern) – On February 24 and 25, U.S. President Donald Trump will be making his first state visit to India. Earlier this week, four U.S. lawmakers have called on President Trump and the U.S. State Department to prioritize assessing India’s deteriorating religious freedom as a part of this visit.

In a bipartisan letter, signed by Senators Chris Van Hollen, Todd Young, Richard J. Durbin, and Lindsey Graham, President Trump was called to prioritize assessing human right and religious freedom during his upcoming state visit to India. Specifically, the Senators highlighted the human rights situation surrounding the Jammu and Kashmir region and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act.

In recent years, religious intolerance and attacks on religious minority communities have increased across India. Many observers blame these increases on the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to and their promotion of a Hindu nationalist political platform.

In 2019, the Alliance Defending Freedom India documented 328 violent attacks on India’s Christian community, the country’s second largest religious minority group. This represented a dramatic increase in attacks on Indian Christians when compared to the 147 attacks documented in 2014, the year the BJP came to power.

Will President Trump prioritize the issue of religious freedom during his upcoming state visit to India? That remains to be seen.

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