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Updated April 24, 2024
India: Human Rights Assessments
Overyew
India is a multiparty, federal, parliamentary democracy. As
reported by the State Department's 2023 Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices (Human Rights Reports or
HRRs), India is the site of numerous human rights abuses,
many of them serious, some seen to be perpetrated by state
and federal governments or their agents. According to the
2023 HRR, India's government took minimal credible
steps or action to identify and punish officials who may
have committed human rights abuses. The United Nations,
other intergovernmental organizations, and numerous
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have conveyed
similar concerns. 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.
Numerous assessments 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 Freedom House has redesignated India as Partly
Free, contending that Modi and his party are tragically
driving India itself toward authoritarianism. India's
government issued a rebuttal of the Freedom House
conclusions, calling them misleading, incorrect, and
misplaced.
The 2023 HRR for the first time includes a section on
India's transnational repression against individuals in
another country, noting reports the government engaged in
transnational repression against journalists, members of
diaspora populations, civil society activists, and human
rights defenders. The following sections describe further
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 stated [We'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 2023 HRR identifies serious restrictions on freedom
of expression and media freedom, including violence or
threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or
prosecutions of journalists, censorship, 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 2023 HRR, violations of online freedoms
in 2023 included serious restrictions on internet access,
censorship of online content, and frequent government
monitoring of digital media users. 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. 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, India has
escalated pressure on U.S.-based tech platforms including
Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and WhatsApp over the
companies' reluctance to comply with data and takedown
requests, and it scrutinizes 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/govepou0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)