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![handle is hein.crs/goveioz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research Service
informing the IegsIlative debate since 1914
India: Human Rights Assessments
0
August 23, 2022
Overv ew
India is identified by U.S. government agencies, the United
Nations, and some nongovernmental organizations as the
site of numerous human rights abuses, many of them
significant, some seen as perpetrated by agents of both state
and federal governments. The scope and scale of such
abuses reportedly has increased under the leadership of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party, particularly since their convincing
national reelection in 2019.
Many analyses also warn of democratic backsliding in
India. For example, since 2019, the Sweden-based Varieties
of Democracies project has classified India as an electoral
autocracy. In 2021, U.S.-based nonprofit Freedom House
re-designated India as Partly Free, contending that Modi
and his party are tragically driving India itself toward
authoritarianism, with negative implications for global
democratic trends. The New Delhi government issued a
rebuttal of the Freedom House conclusions, calling them
misleading, incorrect, and misplaced. The following
sections describe selected areas of human rights concerns.
Religious Freedom
About 80% of Indians are Hindu and roughly 14% are
Muslim. The State Department's 2021 Report on
International Religious Freedom (IRF) asserts that,
Attacks on members of religious minority communities,
including killings, assaults, and intimidation, occurred
throughout the year in India. It notes cow vigilantism
against non-Hindus based on allegations of cow slaughter
or trade in beef, the near-doubling of the number of
reported violent attacks against Christians to an average of
more than nine per week, and adoption of laws restricting
religious conversions in ten Indian states. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken has asserted, [W]e've seen rising attacks
on people and places of worship in India, and the U.S.
Ambassador at Large for IRF added, [I]n India some
officials are ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on
people and places of worship. The Indian government's
response noted what it called ill-informed comments by
senior U.S. officials and suggested that the IRF report was
based on motivated inputs and biased views.
Since 2020, the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom has recommended that the Secretary of
State designate India as a Country of Particular of Concern
(CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act due
to the Indian government's promotion of Hindu
nationalism, and engagement and facilitation of systematic,
ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.
In March 2022, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights (HCHR) expressed concern about recent statements
and actions expressing hatred and violence against religious
minority communities in India, in particular two incidents
in late 2021, when Hindu nationalist leaders called for the
murder of Muslims, in a context purporting to make India a
Hindu nation. She also decried problematic religious
conversion bans that may foster hatred or even violence.
Press Freedom
The State Department's 2021 Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices (Human Rights Reports or HRRs) states
that, while the Indian government generally respected press
freedom in 2021, there were instances in which the
government or actors considered close to the government
allegedly pressured or harassed media outlets critical of the
government, including through online trolling. It notes
restrictions on free expression and media, including
violence, threats of violence, or unjustified arrests or
prosecutions against journalists. Paris-based Reporters
Without Borders' (RSF) 2022 Press Freedom Index ranks
India 150th of 180 countries (just below Turkey; the United
States is 42d), down from 142 in 2021 and continuing a
six-year downward trend. RSF sees press freedom in
crisis in India, which it calls one of the world's most
dangerous countries for the media. It finds charges of
defamation, sedition, contempt of court and endangering
national security are increasingly used against journalists
critical of the government, who are branded as 'anti-
national.' According to Freedom House, attacks on press
freedom have escalated dramatically under the Modi
government, with Indian authorities using various laws to
quiet critical voices in the media.
Freedom of Expression
According to the 2021 HRR, violations of online freedoms
in 2021 included restrictions on access to the internet,
disruptions of access to the internet, censorship of online
content, and reports the government occasionally monitored
users of digital media, as well as use of criminal libel laws
to prosecute social media speech. Access Now, a global
digital rights group that calls internet shutdowns
dangerous acts of digital authoritarianism, named India
the world's largest offender for the fourth consecutive
year for blacking out the internet at least 106 times in 2021.
In 2022, the group declared that, Free expression is not
safe in India. Freedom House finds that, in India,
Academic freedom has significantly weakened in recent
years, as intimidation of professors, students, and
institutions over political and religious issues has
increased. Meanwhile, U.S.-based tech platforms
including Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp face escalating
pressure from the Indian government over the companies'
reluctance to comply with data and takedown requests, and
video streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon have
come under scrutiny for content deemed controversial by
Hindu nationalists and their allies in the Indian government.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/goveioz0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)