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 monthly roundup for July 1-31, 2025.International media reportsNikkei Asia, Japan, July 3Adnan Amir reports that India has rejected a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) on its unilateral abeyance of the Indus Water Treaty (IWT), a long-standing water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan. Following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir in April, “New Delhi blamed Pakistan and unilaterally declared the treaty to be in abeyance”. The PCA’s latest ruling states that “the IWT does not allow unilateral abeyance or suspension” A PCA statement said, “The Treaty continues in force until terminated with the mutual consent of India and Pakistan”. It clarified that the PCA decision was unanimous and binding on the parties. A Pakistani expert, Khalid Rehman, said India’s rejection of the ruling is “part of a troubling global trend in which power politics sidelines the rule of law”. Al Jazeera, Qatar, July 10 Kunal Purohit describes the “widespread fears of mass disenfranchisement and deportations” linked to the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) drive to re-register nearly 80 million voters in Bihar by end July. Many are pointing out that much of Bihar’s people “will not be able to provide citizenship documents within the short window…and would be left disenfranchised”. Critics see this as a “backdoor route” for Narendra Modi’s government to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) geared to “identify ‘illegal immigrants’ and deport them”. Purohit points out that any move towards an NRC “affects Muslims disproportionately”. Noted expert Jagdeep Chhokar of the Association of Democratic Reforms says the ECI’s move “signals a fundamental shift” in voter registration, with the “grim” consequence that half of Bihar’s population may be left without a right to vote. Washington Post, USA, July 11Pranshu Verma, Tanbirul Miraj Ripon, and Sahal Qureshi report on India’s deportation drive “targeting India’s Muslim minority” after the terrorist attack in Pahalgam. Most “severe” in Assam and Gujarat, officials have targeted Muslim-populated areas in a hunt for “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh as “threats” to national security. Many who have been caught are Indian citizens or legal residents according to their family members. Muslims have been subjected to demolition of homes, torture, destruction of identity papers, and forced deportation to Bangladesh. Deportees have been blindfolded, made to jump off boats at gun-point, or forced to walk across the border. The drive has been “cheered by local leaders and blessed by the courts”. Experts say the methods constitute violations of civil rights and international law.Financial Times, UK, July 19Andres Schipani and Jyotsna Singh do a deep dive into 100 years of India’s most powerful Hindu nationalist movement led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Marking its centenary in September 2025, the RSS “has become arguably the largest far-right movement in the world, with, it is claimed, some six million members”, focused on building a Hindu nation-state. Its founders considered Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews as the “blueprint” for dealing with minorities in India, especially Muslims. Christophe Jaffrelot, a South Asia expert, notes the RSS works in the fold of the Sangh parivar and stresses that “the whole family is a huge network, infiltrating all kinds of milieu, including the judiciary, including the army, including the business community. They are everywhere, all trained in the same way, under the same ideology. We have to look at the whole to see the real impact”. Experts sayPooja Chaudhuri, Shinjinee Majumdar and Abhishek Kumar published an investigative article on July 15 on violent vigilante attacks by self-proclaimed “cow protectors” against truck drivers transporting cattle, in a Bellingcat-Alt News collaboration. It is based on videos on social media showing assaults by “five self-described animal welfare groups, mainly operating in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana”. In the wake of growing cow protection laws since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, “the vigilantes attacking truck drivers tend to be closely aligned with hardline Hindu nationalist organisations, and a majority of their victims are Muslims”. Elaine Pearson, Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, says these attacks have “become part of the political agenda of leaders of the BJP”.Professor Richard M. Eaton (University of Arizona) warns that “India’s history has become a political minefield” in an essay dated July 17. Eaton describes the Modi government’s “determined drive to erase the Mughals from public consciousness to the extent possible”, including limiting the study of Mughal history in national school curriculum. Historically, Eaton describes the centuries-long Mughal Empire as “a dazzling polity” that “was for a while the world’s richest and most powerful state” and coming to the present, Eaton writes that “today’s India would be unrecognisable without the imprint the Mughals had made, and continue to make, on its society and culture”. Eaton concludes it presents dangers if history “is not responsibly presented to the public”, with evidence and reasoning. In a statement dated July 23, Human Rights Watch (HRW) observes that “Indian authorities have expelled hundreds of ethnic Bengali Muslims to Bangladesh in recent weeks without due process, claiming they are ‘illegal immigrants’”. HRW finds the claim “unconvincing” given Indian authorities’ “disregard for due process, domestic guarantees, and international human rights standards”. They note that the Indian government has had to readmit dozens of people who eventually proved their Indian citizenship, many include internal migrants from West Bengal. HRW states that the Indian government “should ensure access to fundamental procedural safeguards for anyone subject to expulsion and should ensure that security forces and border guards do not use excessive force”.TrialWatch, an initiative of the Clooney Foundation for Justice (US), the Human Rights Institute (Columbia Law School, US) and the National Law University, Delhi (India) released a report entitled Pressing Charges: A Study of Criminal Cases Against Journalists Across States in India. Based on analysis of 423 criminal cases registered against 427 journalists across India, the report looks at the “offences most used against journalists, the reporting that led to the cases, and the journalists’ experience of the criminal justice system”. It describes the routine misuse of criminal laws against journalists, the “harsh impact” on their personal and professional lives, and the larger curtailment of press freedom. The report finds that the majority of cases did not result in convictions, instead “the process is the punishment”. Journalists in smaller cities, towns, and villages are “more vulnerable” to arrest and detention. The Supreme Court has not laid down clear guidelines that would protect journalists “at the risk of prosecution and silencing”.Indian diaspora and civil society groupsThe Indian American Council, with a coalition including Hindus for Human Rights, New York State Council of Churches, The Humanism Project (Australia), and Genocide Watch hosted a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill on July 17, attended by over 100 congressional staffers. Senior officials from the United Nations, along with leading human rights experts, urged the US government to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) over serious violations of religious freedom. Speakers also warned against transnational repression being perpetrated by the Modi government. On July 17, Indian Labour Solidarity (a UK-based anti-caste collective) screened a film, Haemolymph: Invisible Blood in London. The film chronicles the case of Dr. Abdul Wahid Shaikh, one of the 13 accused in the Mumbai train blasts of 2006, who spent nearly nine years in prison. The film “sheds light on the custodial torture, coerced confessions, and fabricated evidence that underpinned the case”. It also examines Islamophobia within India’s state institutions and the “long shadow” of the global “War on Terror”. The screening was followed by a discussion with Dr. Shaikh who is also the author of Begunah Qaidi, a book on those who were incarcerated. While Dr. Shaikh was acquitted in 2015, the Bombay High Court recently acquitted the other 12 accused, after they spent 19 years in incarceration. On July 20, the Boston South Asia Coalition hosted a lecture in Boston by Mirza Saaib Bég, a Kashmiri lawyer and writer, titled Ruled by Exception – Kashmir’s New Normal. The lecture examined various consequences of India’s actions since 2019 in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in the context of an “undemocratic and forcible integration of Kashmir with India”. The constant refrain of Kashmir being “an integral part of India”, in the context of a forcible integration, “suppresses an alternate imagination”, erasing history and Kashmiri voices. Bég described how “militarization, deforestation, and unplanned construction” are “irreversibly” damaging Kashmir’s ecology. He stated that judicial apathy in the face of “egregious and illegal state actions” is enabling “a militarized administrative order” in Kashmir. Notably he argued that the BJP has disproportionately increased Jammu’s seats in the legislature to “manufacture” an electoral mandate for itself.31 Indian diasporic and civil society organisations from different countries released a joint statement on July 24 condemning the “enforced disappearances and torture of student and youth activists in and around the city of New Delhi”. The students and activists being picked up are among those speaking out on state violence in Chhattisgarh and the “increasing systemic exclusion of Muslims as citizens of India”. The groups call for “a full and independent investigation into the circumstances of the illegal detention, torture and intimidation by the police in Delhi”. Read the previous roundup here.