Home

Featured Articles

Sep 18, 2026
YagnaSri

The Wake-Up Call: Analysing the BJP's 2024 Lok Sabha Setback in Uttar Pradesh and the Lessons Drawn Part 28

The results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh delivered what the national media greeted with barely concealed delight as a humbling for the BJP and a political resurrection for the Samajwadi Party. The BJP, which had won 62 of UP's 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, fell to 33 in 2024, while the Samajwadi Party surged from 5 seats to 37. The NDA's combined tally, including its allies, stood at 36 seats against the SP-Congress INDIA Alliance's 43. The BJP's vote share in UP fell from 49.6 per cent in 2019 to about 41.4 per cent in 2024 — a decline of eight percentage points that, through the first-past-the-post system's amplification effect, translated into the loss of nearly half its UP Lok Sabha seats. For a party that had swept 71 of 80 UP seats in 2014 and 62 in 2019, the 2024 result was a serious setback that demanded honest introspection rather than defensive rationalisation. The nationalist movement's maturity is measured, in part, by its capacity for exactly this kind of self-examination — and the BJP's response to 2024 in UP has demonstrated that capacity. The Structural Explanation: PDA and the Opposition's Coalition Mathematics The most analytically significant feature of the 2024 UP result was the effectiveness of the SP-led INDIA Alliance's 'PDA' (Pichhadey, Dalit, Alpsankhyak — OBC, Dalit, Minority) coalition strategy. Akhilesh Yadav, having learned from the SP's repeated failure to build beyond its M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) base, systematically courted non-Yadav OBC communities through candidate selection, alliance arrangements with smaller OBC-centric parties, and targeted messaging that positioned the BJP as an upper-caste party engaged in 'Manuvadi' politics. The strategy had specific organisational components. The SP allied with the Rashtriya Lok Dal of Jayant Chaudhary in western UP — an alliance that temporarily brought the Jat community back toward the opposition after its 2014-2019 consolidation behind the BJP, partly reversed by the farm law protests of 2020-21. The Congress's candidate-sharing arrangement with the SP prevented the vote-splitting that had historically helped the BJP in triangular contests. And the BSP's organisational collapse — from 19 seats in 2017 to 1 seat in 2022, Mayawati's party was reduced to near irrelevance — meant the Dalit vote, historically split between the BSP and BJP, shifted more substantially toward the SP-led alliance than in previous elections. The PDA framing was politically effective in 2024 partly because it was tactically sophisticated: it did not primarily appeal to Muslim or Yadav communities (who were already maximally consolidated for the SP) but to the non-Yadav OBC and non-Jatav Dalit communities that the BJP had successfully courted since 2014. The claim that the BJP's reservation policy endangered OBC and Dalit reservations — seeded through the opposition's misrepresentation of a Supreme Court judgment on sub-classification within SC reservations and amplified through social media — created anxiety in precisely the communities whose BJP-ward shift had been the foundation of the party's UP dominance. The Misinformation Campaign: The 'Constitution in Danger' Narrative The single most effective opposition communication strategy in 2024 UP was the claim that the BJP, if returned with a 400-seat majority, would change the Constitution of India and abolish reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and OBCs. This claim had no factual basis — the BJP had explicitly committed to the continuation and protection of reservations, the Prime Minister had repeatedly stated his personal commitment to Ambedkar's constitutional legacy, and the party's record in government included multiple expansions of OBC reservation benefits — but it was communicated through social media, WhatsApp networks, and local-level interpersonal communication with extraordinary effectiveness in UP's SC and OBC communities. The BJP's response to this misinformation campaign was, in retrospect, inadequate. The party's communication strategy relied heavily on its governance record and the Modi brand's personal credibility—both of which had served it effectively in 2017, 2019, and 2022. It did not anticipate the specific nature of the opposition's 2024 attack, which was not a direct challenge to governance performance but an emotional appeal to existential anxiety about constitutional rights. By the time the BJP's communication apparatus recognised how deeply the misinformation had penetrated, particularly in eastern UP's SC-heavy constituencies, the electoral damage was already done. The geographic distribution of the BJP's losses in UP confirms this analysis. The party lost most heavily in constituencies with high concentrations of Scheduled Caste voters — particularly in eastern UP — where the 'Constitution in danger' narrative had been most intensively circulated. In constituencies with different social compositions, the BJP performed more resiliently. The specific pattern of losses points to a communication failure rather than a governance failure: the people who voted against the BJP in 2024 in eastern UP were not, in most cases, expressing dissatisfaction with Yogi Adityanath's governance — they were expressing anxiety about their constitutional rights that the opposition's misinformation campaign had deliberately manufactured. The Candidate Selection Problem: Local Anti-Incumbency and Organisational Complacency Beyond the misinformation campaign, the BJP's 2024 UP losses reflected specific organisational failures that the party's leadership has candidly acknowledged in internal reviews. The most significant was candidate selection: in several constituencies where the BJP lost, the chosen candidate was poorly fitted to the specific social and geographic profile of the seat, with sitting MPs who had been insufficiently attentive to constituent service being renominated despite local anti-incumbency signals that the organisational machinery had either failed to detect or failed to communicate to the central leadership. The problem of sitting MP complacency had been building since 2014. In constituencies where the BJP won with massive margins — as it did in much of UP in 2014 and 2019 — MPs tend to reduce their constituency presence, assuming the Modi wave will deliver re-election regardless of individual performance. The party's booth management system, the organisational foundation of the 2014 breakthrough, had in some constituencies deteriorated from the intensive micro-management Amit Shah had established to a more passive mode of mobilisation that assumed organisational momentum would substitute for active voter engagement. Specific constituency-level analyses illustrate the pattern. In Faizabad (Ayodhya), where the BJP lost despite—or perhaps partly because of—the Ram Mandir consecration having occurred just months before the election, candidate selection did not adequately reflect the specific social composition of SC-heavy seats in rural areas. The SP's candidate, a member of the Awadhiya community with strong local roots, mobilised the constituency's OBC and SC communities on local issues that the BJP's campaign did not adequately address. The loss in the constituency that contains Bhagwan Ram's birthplace was the most symbolically resonant of the BJP's 2024 UP defeats, and its specific causes — local organisational gaps, candidate mismatch, and the 'Constitution in danger' narrative's penetration — were entirely correctable. The Farm Law Legacy: Western UP and the Jat Factor The farm law protests of 2020-21, concentrated in western UP, Haryana, and Punjab, created a reservoir of Jat community grievance against the BJP that the 2022 UP Assembly election had not fully dissipated. The BJP's 2022 state election performance in western UP's Jat-concentrated constituencies had been resilient partly because the farm laws were withdrawn in November 2021, reducing the issue's salience before the state election. But at the Lok Sabha level, where the Haryana-Punjab farm protest was geographically closer and organisationally more connected, the Jat community's partial return to the RLD-SP alliance had more significant consequences. The RLD's decision to ally with the INDIA Alliance in 2024 — reversing its NDA alliance of 2022 after Jayant Chaudhary eventually joined the NDA in early 2024 (too late for many Jat voters' calculations to adjust) — created tactical confusion in western UP that cost the BJP several seats it had held since 2014. The Jat community's political volatility — its capacity to swing between parties based on specific agricultural grievances rather than ideological loyalty — is a structural feature of western UP politics that the BJP's organisational strategy must permanently accommodate rather than assume away. Lessons and Corrections: The BJP's Self-Examination The BJP's response to its 2024 UP performance has been characterised, at least in the party's internal processes, by a candour and a willingness to examine specific failures that distinguish it from the opposition's defensive rationalisation of its own periodic electoral reversals. The party's national leadership acknowledged specific issues: the need for stronger booth-level activism in the intervals between elections rather than the surge mobilisation model that assumes organisational capacity will be rebuilt from scratch before each election; the need for more rigorous candidate selection processes that weight local anti-incumbency signals against the advantages of continuity; the need for faster and more specific communication responses to opposition misinformation, particularly on constitutional and reservation issues where SC and OBC communities are most susceptible to anxiety-based mobilisation. The specific lesson drawn from the 'Constitution in danger' narrative has been the most consequential for the BJP's subsequent communication strategy. The party has invested significantly in proactive communication about its reservation record — the expansion of the OBC list, the implementation of EWS reservation, the appointment of Dalit and OBC figures to constitutional positions, and the specific welfare schemes targeted at SC and OBC communities — to build an evidence base that can be deployed in counter-messaging before misinformation campaigns achieve traction. The 2024 setback was a serious reminder that no electoral coalition, however effectively constructed, maintains itself without continuous organisational investment and vigilant communication. The BJP's historic UP dominance—built through Amit Shah's methodical groundwork and sustained through the Yogi government's governance record—remains the structural reality of UP politics. The 2024 result was a temporary correction, not a structural reversal. But it was a correction that demanded honest analysis and a specific organisational response, and the BJP's willingness to do so is, ultimately, a sign of institutional health rather than weakness. Governance Refined: Yogi Adityanath's Second Term, Cultural Milestones, and the Road to 2027 Part 27 https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/governance-refined-yogi-adityanaths-second-term-cultural-milestones-and-the-road-to-2027-part-27

Sep 18, 2026
Viren S Doshi

USCIRF: One-Eyed Watchdog, Two Targets—RSS & R&AW

What is USCIRF? The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an “advisory” body of the US Legislature - the US Congress, which is dominated by the minority leftist Democratic Party, though it is projected and portrayed as an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission. It was created by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. For all purposes, it functions as a legislative-branch advisory agency, not an executive-branch body under the State Department or under the President. Its mandate is to monitor the universal right to freedom of religion abroad, assess violations based on international standards (such as Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and make non-binding policy recommendations to Congress, the President and the Secretary of State. USCIRF does not report on religious freedom conditions inside the United States. It is exclusively international. It produces an annual report that recommends designations such as Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs) for governments engaged in or tolerating “systematic, ongoing, egregious” violations, Special Watch List placements, and Entities of Particular Concern. It also holds hearings, issues fact sheets, tracks implementation of its advice, and engages policymakers. Structure, Appointments, Accountability, and Current Appointees USCIRF is accountable to Congress, which has created it, funds it through annual appropriations, and periodically reauthorises it. USCIRF's recommendations are advisory only. The State Department reviews these recommendations and if, found agreeable, makes CPC designations official. The Commission consists of nine voting Commissioners who are U.S. citizens serving as unpaid volunteers for a two-year term which is renewable once. The Congressional leaders from both parties in the Senate and House of Representatives appoint six members to ensure a tilt towards the minority party in the US Congress. The President appoints the remaining three. The Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom serves as a non-voting, ex officio member. A professional non-partisan staff supports the work. No public formal “background check” details (such as security clearances or specific vetting reports) are available in open sources for USCIRF appointments, which are political appointments by congressional leaders rather than Senate-confirmed executive positions requiring extensive public disclosure. The Nine Commissioners elect a Chair and Vice Chair annually. As of September 2026, the nine Commissioners include: Asif Mahmood (Chair), reappointed by House Minority Leader “Hakeem” Jeffries of the leftist Democratic Party. (Sources highlight Asif’s prior advocacy on Kashmir, including involvement in a 2019 U.S. congressional hearing after the abrogation of Article 370, his connections with Pakistani political figures, and his role in USCIRF’s critical reporting and recommendations on India, including CPC recommendations and calls related to the RSS and R&AW. He reportedly urged the Republicans-led US government to consider targeted sanctions against RSS members and Indian officials complicit in “religious freedom violations”, including revoking the visa issued to Dr Mohan Bhagwat and making him ineligible for future entry into the United States. Republicans led US government instead rejected his demands.) CeCe Heil (Vice Chair), appointed by Senate Majority Leader John Thune. David A. Anderson, appointed by House Minority Leader “Hakeem” Jeffries. Gunisha Kaur, appointed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Rachel Laser, reappointed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Gene Mills, appointed by House Speaker Mike Johnson. Andrew Brunson, Robert Barron and Joe Grogan; appointed by President Donald J. Trump in September 2026. (These replaced one of the Biden-appointed Muslim appointees, Mohamed Elsanousi, who was known for his ties with a hardcore Muslim Organisation in US.) It may be noted that Andrew Brunson underwent severe persecution in Turkey and President Trump had to intervene for his release from the Islamic Regime ruled Turkey. Now he has assumed the position of Commissioner in USCIRF and is expected to contribute positively in USCIRF along with the other two Presidential Appointees. Only one so-called namesake Hindu, but essentially a leftist Democrat, Preeta D. Bansal, 2003–2009 has ever served in USCIRF. She was close to President Barack Hussein Obama ll. In March 2005, while Bansal was Chair, USCIRF made global headlines by officially requesting that the U.S. State Department deny a diplomatic visa to then-Gujarat Chief Minister Honourable Narendra Modi. The Department acted on this recommendation and rejected the erstwhile Chief Minister Honourable Narendra Modi's diplomatic visa application and, in addition also reportedly revoked his tourist/business visa. No Hindu member sits on the body currently, despite Hindu Dharma being the world’s third-largest religion, if we call it so, and a major U.S. diaspora community. It is clear from above who rules the roost in this advisory congressional body. Not only is it lopsided by default, but it is also almost a conundrum that mocks the freedom of religion, by default, particularly in an open democratic country like India, as of now. Sources of Information and Reporting on Closed Societies USCIRF monitors conditions worldwide, including closed and undemocratic nations such as Communist regime-ruled China, dictatorial regime-ruled North Korea, Jihadi Ayatollah regime- ruled Iran and countries like Eritrea, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. It gathers information from such opaque countries through research, travel where possible, meetings with officials, religious leaders, victims, human rights groups, NGOs, and open sources. In restricted environments, reliance on secondary and diaspora accounts increases. India - Haven of Pluralism and Tolerance USCIRF reports are not infallible and can reflect source selection and framing. India - the Land of Swami Vivekananda, who electrified the World Conference of Religions in Chicago in September 1893 - is a constitutional democracy with free elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and vibrant civil society. It is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations alongside significant Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, Jewish, and other communities. All kinds of sects and sub-sects continue to coexist here openly. Historically, India has provided shelter to persecuted religious groups. Jewish communities (including the Bene Israel) have lived in India for nearly two millennia without facing pogroms or forced conversions. Zoroastrians (Parsis) fleeing Islamic conquest of Persia in the 8th–10th centuries were welcomed by a Hindu king in Gujarat under the famous “sugar in milk” tradition and thrived. Syrian Christians, Tibetan Buddhist refugees, Bahá’ís, Armenians, and others have also found refuge. While large-scale historical settlement of Yazidis is less documented, India’s broader pattern of absorbing persecuted communities remains well-established. Not only were these communities sheltered, but all of them flourished and are further flourishing in India. The Indian Constitution is religion-neutral (secular in the Indian sense of equal respect for all faiths, or sarva dharma sama bhava). Articles 25–28 guarantee freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practice, and propagate religion to all persons, subject to public order, morality, and health. In fact, the minorities enjoy more rights than the majority. Critically, Articles 29 and 30 grant additional cultural and educational rights specifically to religious and linguistic minorities—the right to conserve their distinct language, script, or culture, and to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. These protections go beyond those available to the majority community. Indian and Hindu civilisational culture has long emphasised that all religions contain truth and deserve respect. Hinduism is not a proselytising faith in the manner of Christian and, more noticeably, Islamic Abrahamic traditions; conversion and aggressive missionary activity are not central to its ethos. The ideal of ahimsa (non-violence) is foundational. India as a modern nation-state has not pursued wars of religious conquest or colonial expansion driven by conversion. USCIRF’s India File: Persistent Negativity Toward an Open Democracy Despite this record, for multiple consecutive years USCIRF has recommended designating India a Country of Particular Concern—the same category applied to Intolerant Regimes ruled China, North Korea, Iran, and virtually a terrorist state - Pakistan. Its recent reports have alleged deteriorating conditions for religious minorities. Its reports criticised, without going into detail, state anti-conversion laws, cow-protection measures, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, and Hindu nationalist groups like RSS. In 2026, the Commission recommended targeted sanctions against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). The Government of India has consistently rejected these one-sided one-eyed “assessments” as “biased,” “motivated,” “distorted,” and based on “questionable sources and ideological narratives.” Officials have stated that the reports misrepresent India’s pluralistic democracy and constitutional mechanisms and serve only to discredit USCIRF itself. Communal incidents of intolerance do occur in India occasionally, as in many diverse societies. Many such episodes stem from intolerance or aggressive actions by certain Islamic or, at times, Christian missionary groups, followed by reactive responses, rather than systematic state-sponsored persecution by the Hindu majority. India’s openness allows free reporting, litigation, political opposition, and judicial scrutiny of such incidents — conditions absent in many of the closed societies USCIRF correctly criticises. USCIRF - An Unnecessary Irritant in the U.S.-India Relationship USCIRF’s recommendations carry no legal force, and successive U.S. administrations have generally declined to designate India a CPC or impose related sanctions. Nevertheless, the annual ritual of negative reports, hearings, and suggestions of linking trade or security cooperation to religious-freedom benchmarks generates predictable friction. In a bilateral relationship that has deepened dramatically on defence, technology, energy, and strategic alignment, this recurring public criticism from a U.S. Congress-created body is widely viewed in New Delhi—and by many American supporters of the partnership—as an unwarranted, highly provocative irritation. The Way Ahead Public formal “background check” details (such as security clearances or specific vetting reports) must be made available in open sources for USCIRF political appointments on the lines of Senate-confirmed executive positions requiring extensive public disclosure. A more balanced approach would recognise genuine concerns about communal violence or local excesses and the broader reality of India’s democratic openness, its constitutional protections that favour minorities, its civilisational tradition of sheltering the persecuted, its non-proselytising culture, and the comparative frequency in percentage of population and severity of violations elsewhere. Greater religious and demographic diversity among Commissioners — particularly inclusion of real Hindu, or better, pro-Hindu voices familiar with India’s civilisational context — would strengthen the Commission’s credibility. Greater methodological transparency about source weighting would help as well. USCIRF was established with a noble purpose: elevating freedom of religion or belief as a priority in U.S. foreign policy. That purpose is best served when its work is perceived as rigorous, even-handed, and free of selective advocacy. On India, a course correction by USCIRF is overdue. The strategic partnership between the world’s oldest and largest democracies deserves better than an annual, one-sided skewed and at times malicious “sermonising” from an advisory commission that itself has yet to fully reflect the diversity of the communities it claims to defend.

Why The Revolutionaries Redefines Historical Storytelling

Governance Refined: Yogi Adityanath's Second Term, Cultural Milestones, and the Road to 2027 Part 27

India’s BRICS Diplomacy: Acumen, Foresight and Strategic Resilience

Featured Articles

The Wake-Up Call: Analysing the BJP's 2024 Lok Sabha Setback in Uttar Pradesh and the Lessons Drawn Part 28

USCIRF: One-Eyed Watchdog, Two Targets—RSS & R&AW

Reports View All

EC allots new names, election symbols to rival TMC factions, Mamata’s Nandigram pick withdraws from contest

'PNS Hunain violated maritime norms': India rejects Pakistan's 'usual prevarication' over naval vessels collision

US approves $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 aircraft to Saudi Arabia

India, Bhutan sign Rs 4,000 crore line of credit for energy projects during EAM Jaishankar’s visit

MDL to develop greenfield shipyard with ₹15,000-crore investment in Andhra Pradesh

Mahua Moitra approaches UN over alleged exclusion of Muslim officers during Amit Shah’s Bengal visits

Search

Top Authors

Archives

Featured Articles

Reports View All

Search

Podcast / Videos

Popular Posts

Top Authors

Archives