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 monthly 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 monthly roundup for August 1-31, 2025.International Media Reports Reuters, UK, August 6Munsif Vengattil, Arpan Chaturvedi and Aditya Kalra report on the legal battle between X and the Indian government on “tightened internet censorship in India”. X is challenging the Modi government’s system that allows central and state agencies, and police, to file takedown orders of social media content directly to tech firms, through a website that X calls a “censorship portal”. Between March 2024 and June 2025 “at least 1,400 posts or accounts” were ordered to be removed. Reuters points out that while some takedown orders did “counter misinformation”, they also include “directives by Modi’s administration to remove news about a deadly stampede, and demands from state police to scrub cartoons that depicted the Prime Minister in an unfavourable light or mocked local politicians”. Al Jazeera, Qatar, August 9 Al Jazeera highlights the fears of greater censorship in Kashmir followed by a recent government ban on 25 books. The government claims the books “glorify terrorism” while critics of the ban see it as “a particularly sweeping attempt by New Delhi to assert control over academia” in Kashmir. The 25 books cover Partition and analysis of Kashmir in conflict, including “rights abuses and massacres”. Hafsa Kanjwal, associate professor of South Asian History at Lafayette College, whose book, Colonizing Kashmir, has been banned, said this move shows “how insecure the government is”. Financial Times, US, August 13Sushant Singh analyses the various implications of Trump’s tariff war on India, pointing out that India faces the highest tariff rates of any Asian partner. Singh writes that Trump “seems to be abandoning New Delhi” and “risks” India moving closer to Russia, and possibly China, making India more vulnerable as against the previous Indo-US effort to “buttress India as a counterweight to Chinese assertiveness”. Singh questions Modi’s “economic stewardship and diplomatic choices”. He concludes it is “Modi’s lowest American moment since he was denied a visa in 2005, due to his role as Gujarat’s chief minister during a wave of anti-Muslim violence in 2002”.Public Officials and Parliamentarians AdvocateOn August 8, the inter-governmental Court of Arbitration ruled that India shall “let flow the waters of the Western Rivers for Pakistan’s unrestricted use” subject only to specific exceptions. This is a latest ruling in an ongoing arbitration between India and Pakistan on the “interpretation and application of the Indus Waters Treaty to certain design elements of the run-of-river hydro-electric plants that India is permitted by the Treaty to construct on the tributaries of the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab Rivers (the “Western Rivers”)”. The Court stressed that the design and operations of hydroelectric plants must strictly conform to the Treaty’s requirements “rather than to what India might consider an ‘ideal’ or ‘best practices’ approach”. On August 14, India rejected this ruling. On August 11, the US State Department released its 2024 Annual Review of Human Rights Practices. On India, the report states that the “Indian government took minimal credible steps or action to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses”. It lists significant human rights issues plaguing India, including “unlawful killings; disappearances; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious abuses in a conflict; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom; instances of coerced abortion or forced sterilization (especially of poor and oppressed castes women)”. Experts SayAshwini Kumar Shukla, independent journalist and a fellow with the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), does a deep dive into the impact of the “five-decade-old” Mandal Dam project, published on August 1. Initiated in the 1970s in Jharkhand, work on the dam was stopped following massive floods in 1997. Shukla writes that in the last decade “the dam has received fresh clearances and is now being revived”. The project has so far displaced families without full compensation and rehabilitation. Even with adjustments to lessen human and ecological cost, “the dam will still submerge over 1,000 hectares of reserve forest once operational” and “3.44 lakh trees will be cut”. Experts warn “the immediate effect will be massive”. Rollo Romig, author of a book on the murder of journalist/activist Gauri Lankesh, spoke of Lankesh and her death in an interview with Chris Hedges on August 14. An excerpt from Romig’s book described her killing as emblematic of “the dysfunction and capture of India’s entire judicial system from policing to trial…The increasing criminalization of all dissent…”. Romig pointed out that the leaders of the conspiracy behind the murder said our primary targets are “Hindu traitors” not “Muslims or communists”. He comments on the irony that Lankesh herself would not have agreed to being called a Hindu, “she was an atheist first of all”. In trying to decipher the message sent by her killing, Romig said “the point wasn’t a specific message, the point was to instill a more generalized fear and a more generalized chilling effect. To this day part of the trolling is to send messages to journalists to say what happened to Gauri Lankesh is going to happen to you”Indian Diaspora and Civil Society GroupsThe Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), a US-based diaspora group, expressed its concern over reports of vote theft in Indian elections and the Election Commission’s “partisan conduct”, in a press release on August 13. IAMC President Mohammed Jawad says, “the scale and severity of these allegations strike at the very heart of India’s democracy”. IAMC calls for a Supreme Court-monitored time-bound inquiry and a “transparent audit of the Election Commission’s data”. South Asia Solidarity Group, a UK-based diaspora group, marked the 78th anniversaries of India and Pakistan’s independence from British colonial rule, with the message that “independence did not mean liberation”, in a press statement. They remind that “across South Asia today, people are still struggling for real freedom and justice”. On India, SASG highlighted how the “current Hindu supremacist government wages war on its own people”, through home demolitions, attempts at disenfranchisement, the continuing military occupation of Kashmir, and the deportations of Bengali speaking Muslims. On August 20, a coalition of human rights and diaspora groups including IAMC, Hindus for Human Rights and others, organised a virtual Congressional Briefing titled India’s Democratic Crisis: Forced Mass Evictions of Muslims in Assam, Millions Denied Votes in Bihar. Congress Party spokesperson Pawan Khera said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission were acting “in collusion in subverting the elections of India”. Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Hegde, called the increasing deportations of Bengali-speaking Muslims “absolutely illegal.” Read the previous roundup here.