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Updated October 26, 2023
India: Human Rights Assessments
Overview
As reported by the State Department's 2022 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices (Human Rights
Reports or HRRs), India is a multiparty, federal,
parliamentary democracy. States and union territories have
primary responsibility for maintaining law and order, and
the central government provides policy oversight. 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 state and
federal governments. The reported scope and scale of
abuses has increased under the leadership of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party, particularly since their 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 2023, it called India one of the worst
autocratizers in the last 10 years. Since 2021, U.S.-based
nonprofit Freedom House has redesignated India as Partly
Free, contending that Modi and his party are tragically
driving India itself toward authoritarianism. 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, 14% are Muslim, just
over 2% are Christian, and just under 2% are Sikh. The
State Department's 2022 Report on International Religious
Freedom (IRF) asserts that, Attacks on members of
religious minority communities, including killings, assaults,
and intimidation, occurred in various states throughout the
year in India. It notes cow vigilantism against non-
Hindus based on allegations of cow slaughter or trade in
beef (cows are considered sacred animals in the Hindu
religion), reported violent attacks against Christians
averaging about 11 per week, and adoption of laws
restricting religious conversions in 13 Indian states. In
2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted [W]e've
seen rising attacks on people and places of worship in
India, and the U.S. Ambassador at Large for IRF added that
some [Indian] officials are ignoring or even supporting
such attacks. The Indian government's response noted what
it called ill-informed comments by senior U.S. officials
and suggested 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.
Press Freedom
The 2022 HRR states that, while the Indian government
generally respected press freedom in 2022, 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 freedom of
expression and media, including violence or threats of
violence, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists,
and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws
to limit expression. France-based Reporters Without
Borders' (RSF) 2023 Press Freedom Index ranks India
161st of 180 countries, down from 150th in 2022 and
continuing a seven-year downward trend. RSF says press
freedom is in crisis in India., which it calls one of the
world's most dangerous countries for the media. RSF 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 2022 HRR, violations of online freedoms
in 2022 included restrictions on internet access, disruptions
of internet access, censorship of online content, and
occasional government monitoring of users of digital
media, as well as threating to enforce criminal libel laws to
limit expression. 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 fifth consecutive year for blacking out the
internet at least 84 times in 2022. The group reports India
accounted for more than half of all documented shutdowns
globally since 2016, and in 2022 declared that, Free
expression is not safe in India. Freedom House finds that,
in India, Academic freedom has significantly weakened in
recent years, as professors, students, and institutions have
faced intimidation over political and religious issues.
Meanwhile, the Indian government has escalated pressure
on U.S.-based tech platforms including Facebook, Twitter,
and WhatsApp over the companies' reluctance to comply
with data and takedown requests, and scrutinizing video
streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon for content
deemed controversial by Hindu nationalists and their allies
in the Indian government.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/govenhm0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)