INTERNATIONAL

A new law criminalizing inter-religious marriages in India’s Uttar Pradesh state on grounds of “unlawful religious conversions” is discriminatory and impacts religious freedom, an official with the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has said. “It often results in violence and [abets] efforts to prohibit interfaith marriages using the false narrative of false conversions,” Niala Mohammad, Senior Policy Analyst, USCIRF, said at a Congressional Briefing at Washington, D.C., this week. The law was “particularly concerning not just for its discriminatory purpose but also because of its vague and potentially wide reaching impacts on religious freedoms in the state.” Hindu nationalists had launched “inflammatory campaigns decrying interfaith relationships o...