The Narendra Modi government frequently posits India as a ‘Vishwaguru’ or world leader. How the world sees India is often lost in this branding exercise.Outside India, global voices are monitoring and critiquing human rights violations in India and the rise of Hindutva. We present here fortnightly highlights of what a range of actors – from UN experts and civil society groups to international media and parliamentarians of many countries – are saying about the state of India’s democracy.Read the roundup for March 1-31, 2025.International media reportsBBC News India, March 1Ishadrita Lahiri’s investigative video highlights the impact of cow protection laws on India’s dairy industry, the largest in the world. Focusing on those who breed, farm, sell, and transport cows for dairy across the country, it emerges that these laws are harming the industry. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have made laws against cow slaughter stricter since coming to power in 2014, having made the cow “a visible symbol of its politics”. Police harassment and demands of bribes for transportation of cows, especially in the state of Uttar Pradesh, is routine. A local journalist reveals that it is mainly drivers, labourers, and farmers who are falsely charged with “cow smuggling” by the police, while “cow smuggling kingpins” are rarely caught. Drivers are scared at the very prospect of having to transport cows, and if their vehicles are confiscated, their livelihood is cut off. In these situations, the cows themselves are deprived of food and veterinary services, and if they suffer stress, this can be fatal. In 2020, the Allahabad High Court said the anti-cow slaughter law was “being misused by the state police against innocents”. Himal Southasian, Sri Lanka, and Pulitzer Centre, US, March 5Vidya Krishnan and Arshu John investigate the impact of India’s “poorly regulated pharmaceutical industry, and how this imperils the health and the lives of people in much of the poor world”. Krishnan and John highlight toxic Indian-manufactured cough syrups which led to the deaths of “more than a hundred” children in the Gambia, Uzbekistan, and Cameroon, and point to the detection of other contaminated Indian-produced pharmaceuticals in other poor nations. This is occurring while India is the “world’s third largest pharmaceutical producer and the single largest producer of generic drugs”, supplying half of the generic drugs in Africa. More than two years after the children’s deaths, Indian or global health authorities have taken no “comprehensive action”. Krishnan and John write this situation reveals the “shocking inequality of standards” in drug safety for rich and poor countries, “exposing profound racial fault-lines within the global health order”. The Economist, UK, March 6The Economist calls attention to the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024 which is likely to be passed by Parliament in April. If so, under this new law, waqf properties will come under the control of the Indian government. Waqf property refers to “land or buildings given as endowments by Muslims for religious or charitable use, often as mosques or graveyards”. India has the most waqf properties across the world “worth $14bn”. The Bill’s critics see it as an “epic land grab” by the government and its attempts to “take away Muslim properties”. These could include prominent national monuments. It is also seen by many as the next step by the Modi government in its promotion of the Hindu nationalist movement.The Guardian, UK, March 9An editorial highlights the growing concerns about the Modi government’s push to “redraw India’s electoral map” through reviving the delimitation process, which would distribute parliamentary seats by population strength. Delimitation could lead to strengthening of the populous northern states and “economic and political marginalisation” of the southern states. Southern India’s political leadership is pushing back. The Guardian concludes that “if delimitation proceeds before 2029 it could reshape India’s political landscape to the BJP’s advantage – but at the cost of a growing north-south rift that threatens to fracture the Indian union.”BBC, UK, March 10N. Ram, veteran journalist and director of The Hindu group, speaks with BBC’s Stephen Sackur on the wide-ranging challenges facing India’s media, on March 10. These include the increasing impact of corporate ownership on press freedom, growing surveillance and intimidation of journalists critical of the Modi government, and the state of independent journalism in the country. N. Ram points to the “incremental authoritarianism vis a vis the press, attempts to curb, restrain, to make them fall in line” exercised under Prime Minister Modi “specifically from 2014 when his party won big with a majority”. While he reflects on the “diversity and pluralism in the Indian media ecosystem and that reflects the diversities and pluralism of India”, N. Ram says the Modi government “overall have a strategy to make the media fall in line”.Washington Post, US, March 10Karishma Mehrotra and Anant Gupta examine the impact of economic disparities on rural women, “left behind to farm” as men leave to find work in urban areas. The latest government figures show that “two-thirds of women working in India labour on farms, compared to just one-third of men”. An increasing number of the younger generation of women in rural areas are beginning to gain college education, growing in their expectations but with no jobs. These women are left to bear farm and home related responsibilities, without help from their husbands. In the urban economy, male migrants find only low-paying work in the informal sector. Although “on paper, the Indian economy shines,” it is marked by what economists call “jobless growth”. Prior to 2019, for decades, the proportion of India’s workforce engaged in agriculture had been “shrinking”. Today, the share of Indians working in agriculture is growing, and given that most of these are women, “the gender gap is widening”.The Guardian, UK, March 13Hannah Ellis-Peterson reports on how the US journalist Raphael Satter has taken the Indian government to court after his Indian overseas citizenship was cancelled. He is accused of “maliciously creating adverse and biased opinion against Indian institutions in the international arena”. Satter covers cybersecurity for Reuters in the US. He is married to an Indian and will now be unable “to travel to India, where members of his family live”. The OCI cancellation comes “at exactly the same time” as a defamation case against him for a story on the Indian cybersecurity company Appin and its co-founder Rajat Khare which alleged that Appin had become “a hack-for-hire powerhouse that stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe”. According to an investigation by Reporters Without Borders, Appin has initiated an “unprecedented” number of gag lawsuits against media outlets investigating it, including the New Yorker and the Sunday Times. Ellis-Peterson places Satter’s OCI cancellation within a pattern as part of which “the Modi government has cancelled more than 100 OCI cards while in power for the last decade”.New York Times, US, March 17Anupreeta Das profiles the close relationship between Bill Gates and Narendra Modi which “yields benefits for both men”. Das writes that “India is central to Mr. Gates philanthropic work” necessitating the Gates Foundation to stay on the Modi government’s “good side”. This entails “turning a blind eye to the Modi government’s assault on the country’s secular foundations, its demonization of India’s Muslim minority and its silencing of civil society”, like other “political and business leaders across the West”. With US President Trump withdrawing the US from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Gates Foundation’s “continued access to India has become all the more important” to continue its work as one of the top non-state donors to the WHO. The other connect is the “Gates technological legacy” with Mr. Gates as the “very face of the computer age to many Indians” to India’s “digital economy championed by the Modi government”. Newsroom, New Zealand, March 23Jonathan Milne reports that Dr. Sapna Samant, an Auckland-based doctor (New Zealand) and former Green Party candidate, has got a notice from the Indian government informing her that her Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) visa is being revoked. Milne adds that “she was given until last month to challenge the cancellation order”. Samant has “regularly criticised” the Modi government’s “treatment of Sikhs, Muslims and other minorities.” A former Green Party candidate, in a 2023 interview, she said, “the Hindutva movement brought an ideology of Islamophobia, misogyny and targeting other minorities, into Indian communities around the world (including New Zealand).” The Guardian, UK, March 26Hannah Ellis-Petersen writes about Indian film censors blocking the release in India of critically-acclaimed film, Santosh, due to their perceptions of the film’s “portrayal of misogyny, Islamophobia and violence in the Indian police force”. Written and directed by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri, after its debut at the Cannes film festival, Santosh was the UK’s official entry for the Oscars’ international feature category and also nominated for a BAFTA for best debut feature this year. Suri said that the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had demanded cuts that were so extensive that they would be “impossible” to implement. She described the censors’ decision as “disappointing and heartbreaking”. Ellis-Peterson contextualises the censorship of Santosh in a context in which India’s “cultural sphere is seen to be more heavily policed than ever, with films and TV series dealing with politically sensitive themes often targeted with hate campaigns and police cases, or dropped by streaming platforms before they are released”. Parliamentarians and public officials advocate The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment report published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on March 25, on behalf of the US Intelligence Community, identifies India as a “state actor” which “directly and indirectly enables transnational groups to supply precursors and drug traffickers”. Precursors are chemicals used by drug cartels to produce the opioid fentanyl. According to the report, fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids “remain the most lethal drugs trafficked into the United States”. The report also places India alongside China in the category of a “state actor”. Commentary on the report points out that the term “state actor” is significant since it “implies government complicity, whether deliberate or inadvertent”. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom also released its 2025 Annual Report on March 25. The Commission documents religious freedom conditions around the world in 2024 and makes recommendations to the White House, Congress, and State Department to advance freedom of religion or belief abroad. On India, the report found that in 2024, “religious freedom conditions continued to deteriorate as attacks and discrimination against religious minorities continued to rise”. This includes “hateful rhetoric and disinformation” against Muslims and other religious minorities by “Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi” and “rhetoric fuelled attacks on religious minorities” include “vigilante violence, targeted and arbitrary killings, and demolition of property and places of worship”. The report adds that the Indian government has “expanded its repressive tactics to target religious minorities abroad”, particularly people from the Sikh community. These tactics include denial of consular services, revocation of OCI cards, and “threats of violence and surveillance”. The report reinforces the Canadian government’s allegations linking Indian officials to an assassination attempt of an American Sikh activist in 2023. Its key recommendations for India include designating it as a “country of particular concern” and imposition of “targeted sanctions” on individuals and entities. Experts sayUN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk raises alarm at the growing “turbulence and unpredictability” around the world during his speech on March 3 at the 58th session of the Human Rights Council. With regards to the situation in India, he expresses concerns about the “restrictive laws and harassment against human rights defenders and independent journalists resulting in arbitrary detention and a diminished civic space, including in Kashmir. I also call for stepped-up efforts to address violence and displacement in Manipur, based on dialogue, peacebuilding, and human rights.” He calls on the respective States to “fulfil their duty to protect people from unchecked power,” and “unequivocal commitment to the rule of law, to transparency, and to independent institutions, all anchored in human rights”. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) published a report highlighting the erosion of judicial independence in India, due to “structural deficiencies in judicial governance, irregularities in judicial appointments, and improper interference and influence by political actors”. Titled Judicial Independence in India: Tipping the scales, it examines the independence of the judiciary through the selection and appointment of judges; transfer of judges; judicial accountability mechanisms; and post-retirement employment of judges and judicial administration pertaining to listing and allocation of cases in the Supreme Court. The ICJ reiterates that “the Indian system has the foundations for judicial independence” and urges the Government of India and the Supreme Court “to urgently take steps to ensure the independence of the Indian judiciary in line with international law and standards”.The Future of Free Speech, an independent, non-partisan think tank located at Vanderbilt University (US), published a global survey conducted in collaboration with UK-based YouGov, entitled “Who In The World Supports Free Speech?”, on March 7. The survey examined issues around how individuals in 33 countries support free speech, including those facing free speech restrictions. Ranked on the lower end at 24 out of 33, India (along with Hungary and Venezuela) is among the three where the “actual level of free speech is relatively low” compared to the popular demand and support for it. A concerning finding from India are that a greater percentage of respondents in 2024, compared to those surveyed in 2021, expressed support for people being able to express “statements that are offensive to minority groups”. Razeen, an Indian-Palestinian, reflects on the immense changes in Indian society with the BJP’s rise in popularity since 2014, published on March 19 in the Hostile Homelands newsletter. He says “fuelled by blatant Islamophobic, Brahmanical and patriarchal rhetoric, Indian society has regressed in a way that has stifled any and all collective displays of solidarity with other marginalized and oppressed groups”. He describes that organising protests for Palestine in India has been close to “impossible” after “Israel began bombing Gaza in October 2023”. Student activists trying to mobilise or organise protests have faced legal action. Razeen also highlights the impact of ties between Indian and Israeli universities, including the Indian university where he is studying. He shares that university administrators have “gone so far as to individually reach out to students to threaten and warn them against making any public displays of solidarity with Palestine”. In an interview on March 20, Audrey Truschke, historian and Professor at Rutgers University (US), gives her views on the relevance of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Truschke’s interview comes after Hindu extremist groups called for the demolition of Aurangzeb’s tomb in Kuldabad, Maharashtra, which led to communal violence. Truschke says “ignorance about the historical Aurangzeb and anti-Muslim hate undergird the Hindu nationalist iconoclastic calls to destroy his tomb”. She argues that Hindutva ideology is “less appealing when one is well-educated about Indian history” and Hindutva leaders are incentivised to stop Indians from learning about their “diverse, multicultural past”. More largely, she says “India is currently doing rather poorly when it comes to many metrics, including human rights, freedom of the press, academic freedom, and democratic health. These have all declined in the last decade, and manipulating history is part of that agenda”. She concludes that “targeting Aurangzeb, again, is another assault in a sea of hardships for Indian Muslim communities”. Nabiya Khan, a poet and researcher, describes what it means to be a Muslim in India today, published on March 28. Khan writes not just about the “hate speech and riots”, but also the “small, constant ways” which make “life unliveable”. She describes how Ramadan, which should be a time of peace, comes with continued attacks on Muslims in India, worsened due to coinciding with Holi, during which Hindu nationalist groups used Holi processions to harass Muslims. Khan is clear about what the community is facing – “the violence is so routine, so expected, that it has become background noise; a fact of life. It comes with a clear warning: stay quiet, stay invisible, or be punished”. Even after a death, “the world shrugs and scrolls past.” Returning to the everyday, Khan writes, “it is exhausting to wake up every morning” but, despite it all, “we do not forget”, “we do not disappear”. “We are here – fasting, praying, living. And that, in itself, is defiance”Indian diaspora and civil society groupsOn March 6, the Wildlife Animal Protection Forum of South Africa (WAPFSA), a national network of 30 South African organizations, wrote to South Africa’s Ministry of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment to “investigate the export of a large number of wild animals” to the Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (GZZRC), also called Vantara, located in India. Vantara is owned by Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani. WAPFSA raised its concerns of legal and ethical implications of the export of leopards, cheetahs, tigers, and lions. Concerns about the import of animals by Vantara had been raised as early as November 2023 by the Standing Committee of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). CITES is an international agreement between governments which seeks to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species. Million Women Rise, a movement led by Black/Global Majority Women in the UK, organized a March and Rally for International Women’s Day on March 8, at Trafalgar Square, London. In her speech at the rally, Amrit Wilson of the South Asia Solidarity Group said “fascism hates and fears women”. After references to the UK and the US, she focused on India and said that “under Modi’s Hindu supremacist government men who have raped Dalit and Muslim women walk free and are garlanded with flowers”. Extending it beyond women, she said, “What you eat, where you live and who you love are policed and you may go to jail if you are a Muslim who loves a Hindu.” Women however “are fighting back” – be it students, women workers, indigenous women, journalists or women in Kashmir. Lun Fitton shared about the violence against Kuki-Zomi-Hmar women in Manipur. She described in detail the attacks on members of her family members who were tortured and killed. Lun ended her speech by appealing to Million Women Rise to “remember Manipur”.Bilal Ahmad Tantray writes a comparative analysis of “state-sanctioned demolitions” in Palestine and India, published by the Polis Project on March 19. Despite differences in history and scale, Tantray describes demolitions in both India and Palestine as “distinct and powerful tools of control and punishment”. He argues that demolition policies are “weaponised” by the state against communities seen as “the Other” – “Palestinians in Israeli occupied lands, and Muslims in India”. In India, Tantray points to a recent rise in “punitive state-led demolitions” as “punishment for alleged crimes of arson and vandalism or against people involved in protests against state actions”. Coined “bulldozer justice”, these have been directed against Indian Muslims and popularised by BJP governments. While the state cites reasons of land encroachment or lack of permits to justify them, Tantray alludes to “unstated reasons” relating to “thinly veiled justifications of punishment for communal violence and anti-government protests”. While “punitive” intent is common, community responses differ. Sumud (steadfastness) – “nonviolent resistance” including refusal to leave and rebuilding properties at, or near the site of demolition, is the Palestinian way. In India, where “discriminatory punitive demolitions” are more recent, the response has been to turn to the law. While the judiciary has “called out the excesses of the state”, without “prosecution against the erring officials”, this judicial response remains “a rap on the knuckles”.On March 22, Parents 4 Palestine and the Stop JCB Demolitions Campaign mobilised “creative protests” against JCB, the British bulldozer manufacturer, that took place at the Southbank Centre, to “call out” the Centre’s sponsorship agreement with JCB. The campaigning groups have documented and long stood against JCB’s “complicity in the projects of ethnic cleansing across Palestine, India and Kashmir”. The campaigners read poetry by poets from India and Kashmir, as well as work by Palestinian poets killed by Israel in Gaza, including Hot Sighs by Rashad Abu Sakhila. They also submitted an open letter signed by over 77 poets demanding that the Southbank Centre remove all JCB branding from its lift, release a statement disclosing why, and rename the lift after martyred Palestinian poet Refaat al Areer.InSAF India (International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India) calls attention to the arrest of Badar Khan Suri, a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University (US) and more largely to the “persecution of Indian students and academics in US Academic institutions” in a statement on March 23. InSAF India reinforces Khan Suri’s lawyer’s belief that he is “being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a U.S. citizen — and because the US government “suspects that he and his wife oppose US foreign policy toward Israel”. The statement points out that Suri is the second Indian, following Ranjani Srinivasan (formerly a PhD scholar removed by Columbia University), “to be swept up in US President Donald Trump’s campaign against pro-Palestine protests” on campuses across the US. These are part of the Trump government’s call for the arrest and deportation of students who “support terrorism”, which InSAF India calls “a euphemism for merely showing solidarity with the Palestinian people”. On the lack of support from the Indian government, InSAF India says this is “to be expected” from a government which itself “handles student protests”” with “policing, suspensions, and jails”. In the third report in a Polis Project investigative series on the Bhima Koregaon case published on March 26, Mouli Sharma and Prashant Rahi present a detailed account of the forensic analyses related to spyware undertaken by international laboratories. The report underlines that these labs are used “even by governments from the global north for many sensitive, important investigations”. Bringing together ten cyber forensic reports, it shares findings in terms of phases, which include casting “a snowball net”, ensuring that “future victims received the infected emails from those they trusted”, mirroring and synchronizing drives with the hackers’ virtual servers, fabricating and planting incriminating evidence, and the final clean-up prior to arrests. The report identifies ModifiedElephant as the “attacker” in the malware campaign against the BK-16 and importantly that it had “direct links to the state and law enforcement, and was operating either on their directions or in their favour whilst maintaining some form of communication with them in real time”. It also suggests that the foundation of the Bhima Koregaon case is crumbing “under the weight of time and global scrutiny”.Read the previous roundup here.
