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WASHINGTON D.C., U.S.A., May 24, 2003: Persistent lobbying by Hindu-Americans, especially after last year’s violence in Gujarat, to have an Indian-American on the US statutory commission which oversees religious freedom worldwide has paid off. Preeta Bansal, who was earlier solicitor-general of New York and a White House counsel in the Clinton administration, was last night nominated to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), sources on Capitol Hill said. She will be the nominee of Senator Tom Daschle, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. The USCIRF is made up of nominees by the US President, the speaker of the House of Representatives and leaders of both the Democrats and the Republicans in the House and the Senate.



The Commission has carried on a virulent campaign against India after last year’s violence in Gujarat, blatantly colluding, in the opinion of many Hindu observers, with right-wing Christian organizations in America to hold hearings on Gujarat and put immense pressure on the US state department to declare India a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for its record in upholding religious freedom and minority religious rights. It is the same category assigned to totalitarian states such as Iran and hardly applicable to a country with India’s thousands of years of religious freedom. CPCs in religious terms are the equivalent in terrorist terms of the list of “other terrorist groups” prepared by the state department annually before such organizations are listed formally as “foreign terrorist organizations” and penalized.



The USCIRF has no powers of its own, but it advises both the White House and the Congress on the state of global religious freedom. Even though its recommendations are regularly ignored by the State Department, it has a lot of nuisance value and can be a tool for propaganda, as it happened after the Gujarat violence. Hindu-Americans have always questioned the commission’s credibility since it has never had an Indian or a Hindu among its members. American Sikhs have also been critical of the body. Its members so far have included representatives of Jews, Baha’is, Muslims and various Christian denominations.



Bansal, an highly respected expert on constitutional law, was born in Roorkee and arrived in the U.S. with her parents at the age of three. She is a graduate of the Harvard Law School. Last night, Indian Christian organizations in the U.S. were guarded in their reaction to Bansal’s appointment. Jayachand Pallakonda, president of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA) said: “I am very impressed with Ms Bansal’s law background… I hope Ms Bansal also has a good understanding of the religious issues confronting South Asia especially India.”



As New York Solicitor General, Ms. Bansal oversaw a staff of six hundred lawyers in the Department of Law, and directly supervised forty-five lawyers in the Solicitor General’s Office who handle appeals for the State of New York and its agencies in state and federal courts. She argued regularly in the U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate courts on behalf of New York State.



She graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard-Radcliffe College, and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. She was Supervising Editor of the Harvard Law Review. She served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court (1990-1991) and to Chief Judge James L. Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (1989-1990). Prior to her appointment as New York Solicitor General, Ms. Bansal practiced law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York City (1996-1999), and previously with Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. She also served in the Clinton Administration (1993-1996) as counselor to Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein in the United States Department of Justice (Antitrust Division), and as Special Counsel in the Office of the White House Counsel. She is broadly interested in empowering South Asian Americans to serve their local communities in a variety of ways throughout the United States.

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