US Lawmaker's FCRA Criticism Draws Sharp Pushback From India

A fresh diplomatic spat has broken out between Washington and New Delhi over India's proposed changes to its foreign funding law, after a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, Riley Moore, publicly criticised the amendments and warned they could hurt India-US relations.

What Triggered the Row

Moore alleged that the proposed changes to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, would give the Indian government greater control over churches and Christian charities that rely on funding from abroad. He went as far as calling the move an attack on Christian institutions and suggested it could become a point of friction in bilateral ties.

The remarks landed just as India's Parliament prepares to take up the FCRA amendments again during the ongoing Monsoon Session, with the bill expected to be debated later this month.

India's Response

New Delhi has pushed back firmly, with officials and commentators arguing that regulating foreign contributions is squarely a sovereign matter for Indian lawmakers to decide, not a subject for a foreign legislator to weigh in on. A commentary carried by the European Times, and picked up widely by Indian wire services on Saturday, argued that Moore's intervention actually strengthens India's case rather than undermining it, since a foreign lawmaker publicly lobbying against a domestic law is itself an example of the kind of external influence the FCRA is designed to guard against.

The commentary also placed India's approach in a global context, pointing out that the European Union is developing its own tools to counter covert foreign influence operations, Australia runs a Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, the United States has enforced its Foreign Agents Registration Act for decades, and the United Kingdom recently stood up its own Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. Seen against that backdrop, India's critics argue the FCRA amendments are less an outlier and more part of a broader global trend toward tighter oversight of cross-border funding.

Scale of the Challenge

Part of what makes India's case unusual, according to the report, is sheer scale. India is home to an estimated 3.3 million to 3.7 million non-governmental organisations, which reportedly accounts for more than half of all NGOs registered across G20 countries combined. By comparison, Italy — often cited as having a robust civil society sector — has roughly 360,000 registered third-sector organisations. Given that scale, supporters of the bill argue that regulating foreign funding flowing into India's NGO ecosystem is less a bureaucratic tweak and more a matter of national security.

What Happens Next

With the FCRA amendments due for debate in the coming days, opposition parties in India have separately demanded that the bill either be withdrawn or referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for closer scrutiny, arguing it could be used to target NGOs and civil society groups selectively. The US lawmaker's comments have now added an external dimension to what was already shaping up as a contentious debate inside Parliament, and are likely to feature in the government's defence of the bill when discussions resume.

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