Opinion | Why US Entities Still Target India Despite Trump
The reports by its intelligence community and committee on religious freedom prove the Deep State in the US is down but not out. Yet
Three incidents highlight how much things remain the same, no matter how much people like Donald Trump try to change them. The first is the current US President praising India’s robust election process, with voter identity cards being biometrically verified. The second is the release of the annual report of the US Commission for International Religious Freedom, which, as usual, has criticised India, selectively citing instances of intimidation of minorities here.
And the third, interestingly, is the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, released this Thursday. Although the main report pinpoints four countries—China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—as the main threats to the US, there are two passing and unsubstantiated references to India as a ‘state actor’ in the report. It thus appears to be cocking a snook at the current US national intelligence boss Tulsi Gabbard and FBI chief Kash Patel.
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The foreword states, “A range of cyber and intelligence actors are targeting our (US) wealth, critical infrastructure, telecom, and media. Nonstate groups are often enabled, both directly and indirectly, by state actors, such as China and India, as sources of precursors and equipment for drug traffickers." Curiously, while the report elaborates on the Chinese government’s direct, overt and covert role in ‘targeting’ the US, there are no further details on how India does so.
And in the section titled ‘Nonstate Transnational Criminals and Terrorists’, it outlines how international drug cartels are making illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids and smuggling them into the US, naming two Mexico-based gangs and also including Colombia and Ecuador as important centres. But then it gratuitously adds, “China remains the primary source country for illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill pressing equipment, followed by India"!
This casual India-bashing is a characteristic of the US Deep State, so it would be facile to link the 2025 USCIRF report to the current Trump dispensation too. It is more like a defiant clenched fist from a now beleaguered Deep State that has hitherto dominated the corridors of power. It is not certain that even someone as determined as Trump will be able to dismantle it or its agendas. The report, thus, sounds in substance not too different from those issued in the past.
Given that USCIRF has two Muslim members (a common occurrence going by the list of commissioners in previous years), including one of Pakistani origin, Asif Mahmood, who is known for his anti-India posts and statements, the 2025 report recommendations are not surprising. It has reiterated its demand that India be designated a “country of particular concern (CPC) for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations".
Not that having nominally “Hindu" or Indian-origin members will automatically ensure a balance either, judging by lawyer Anurima Bhargava, who was appointed during Trump 1.0 in 2018 for three years. And when the US denied Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, a diplomatic visa and cancelled his existing tourist/business visa on the recommendation of the USCIRF in 2005, the committee’s chair was another Indian-origin lawyer, Preeta D Bansal.
The 2025 report’s motivated demands do not end with a CPC tag. Probably at the instance of Mahmood, it has called for “targeted sanctions on individuals and entities, such as Vikash Yadav and RAW for their culpability in severe violations of religious freedom by freezing their assets and/or barring their entry into the US" and “encourage the US Embassy and consulates to incorporate religious freedom into public statements and speeches. Taunt India in India?
The report even asks the US Congress to “reintroduce, pass and enforce the Transnational Repression Reporting Act of 2024" (introduced by the Trump-baiting Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff and cosponsored by 11 others including Ilhan Omar) to “ensure the annual reporting of acts of transnational repression by the Indian government targeting religious minorities in the US". It had been put into cold storage via referral to House committees.
Besides asking for a review of “arms sales to India, such as MQ-9B Drones under Section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act" on the grounds that it may “contribute to or exacerbate religious freedom violations", the 2025 report has demanded “meetings with religious minority communities and faith-based civil society organizations during congressional delegations to India" be requested and prioritised. Imagine if Indian MPs do the same when visiting the US?
The consistently anti-Indian tenor of USCIRF, a federal government agency operating with the blessings of, if not directly under the US State Department, reiterates the belief that various arms of the US government have independent agendas, set long ago and perpetuated irrespective of who sits in the Oval Office. That would explain why, say, Indian-American liberal Bhargava, an Open Society fellow to boot, made it to the USCIRF even during Trump’s first term.
In fact, though she was part of the Department of Justice during the Obama administration and has an avowedly “liberal" track record of activism, she was still appointed to this ‘bi-partisan’ body, and her nomination was even mistakenly lauded by the then chair of USCIRF, the Tibetan academic Tenzin Dorjee, who had consistently recorded his dissent on criticism of India regarding “declining": religious freedom, in the committee’s reports issued during his tenure!
The USCIRF stated in its 2019 report that since 2001, it “has attempted to visit India in order to assess religious freedom conditions on the ground. However, on three different occasions—in 2001, 2009, and 2016—the Government of India refused to grant visas for a USCIRF delegation despite requests being supported by the State Department." As the Congress-led UPA was in power in 2009, refusal most certainly cannot be attributed to any “Hindu nationalist" bias.
The era of Westerners sitting on judgment on the rest of the world is ending, but India’s rising profile does not sit well with many of those used to a very different balance of influence, if not actual power. Hence, the insidious and egregious insertion of India’s name as a state actor in the international illicit drug trade—in a chapter on non-state actors—without any corroborative evidence, and sustained calls by entities like the USCIRF to brand India as religiously intolerant.
The targeting of India in these two official reports issued by arms of the US state structure will embarrass many in Trump’s administration but hopefully he himself will also realise this indicates the continuing malevolent influence of Deep State operatives. It should leave India in no doubt, too, about the difficulty of dislodging old, entrenched interests. They still lurk and machinate not only in the labyrinths of government departments in Washington DC, but also in New Delhi.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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