With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to meet with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, religious freedom advocates are urging the president to press Modi about the ongoing violence and human rights violations occurring against Christians and other religious minorities in the world’s most populous country.

Reports suggest that Modi and Trump’s two-day summit will focus on increasing trade and negotiating tariffs, as well as immigration issues, with little mention of religious freedom issues. But since Modi assumed office in 2014, his ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has exhibited a pattern of tolerating and even encouraging the persecution of religious minorities, particularly Christians and Muslims. A recent United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report on India described how “individuals have been killed, beaten, and lynched by vigilante groups, religious leaders have been arbitrarily arrested, and homes and places of worship have been demolished.”

The report also pointed out how India’s government is complicit in religious persecution by spreading “misinformation and disinformation, including hate speech” in order to “incite violent attacks against religious minorities and their places of worship.” It also detailed how “changes to and enforcement of India’s legal framework” are used to “target and disenfranchise religious minorities, including the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and several state-level anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws.”

In 2023 alone, USCIRF noted that “NGOs reported 687 incidents of violence against Christians, who continued to be detained under various state-level anti-conversion laws.” In June of that year, “more than 500 churches and two synagogues were destroyed and over 70,000 people displaced during clashes in Manipur State.”

On Monday, Isaac Six, co-founder and CEO of The Six Group, a human rights advocacy organization, joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to discuss the opportunities that Trump has to negotiate for the rights of religious minorities in India.

“I think the president has an incredible opportunity to make a deal here with the prime minister,” he observed. “I think in the past they’ve had a good relationship, and this is an issue the president has made clear is at the top of his foreign policy agenda. He made that clear last week during the National Prayer Breakfast. He made it clear with the creation of the White House Faith Office, and the vice president made it clear at the International Religious Freedom Summit. So they have an opportunity here to make an arrangement … [to address] the amount of persecution that’s happening in some parts of India.”

Six went on to point out that Trump can leverage the U.S.’s economic ties to India in order to press for religious freedom.

“The business relationship is huge,” he noted. “You’re talking about almost upwards of $200 billion in trade between India and the United States on an annual basis, and this issue actually has direct overlap when you’re talking about religious freedom. India now has 12 states that have these anti-conversion laws, and they’re often misleadingly called ‘religious freedom laws.’ But these laws make it almost impossible to legally change your religion. And there have been hundreds of Christians over the last few years in these 12 states who have been arrested or charged with criminal penalties for basic things like praying for the sick or attending a church service.”

Six continued, “I’ve met with these Christians. I’ve been in their homes, seen the bruises from the beatings they’ve taken for it. Ironically, often they’re beaten and then arrested by the local police. So I think the president has a chance to bring those cases up. India … need[s] to drop all charges against these individuals. But we’re talking about 12 states — that means 700 million Indian citizens in those states who are not free to simply choose and change their religion as their conscience dictates. So that’s a big issue, and that directly impacts business in the country. It directly impacts our business with India.”

Six concluded by arguing that Trump should specifically pressure Modi to end anti-conversion laws that target Christians and other religious minorities at the local level.

“[A]t the local and the state level is where we need to see change,” he explained. “That’s where Christians are getting arrested. Pastors are being arrested for holding church services, and the police are not giving them an opportunity to state their case. The judges are biased against them. That’s where at the federal level … Prime Minister Modi can really weigh in here. … [I]f the president could just ask the prime minister about those who have been charged with crimes under anti-conversion laws, that would be a win in and of itself.”