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 October 1-31, 2025.International media reportsNikkei Asia, Japan, October 5Quratulain Rehbar analyses the deepening resentment and alienation among Ladakh’s people since it became a Union Territory in 2019. A local movement is demanding “greater autonomy and protection of local land and jobs”. In September, security forces fired on protestors, killing 4. Haji Mustafa, a legal advisor, said, “this is the first time in Ladakh’s history that our own people were shot like this”. Mustafa elaborated that the violence was an “outburst of helplessness,” adding: “To say our movement has been hijacked by Pakistan or China is complete nonsense. This is our own struggle for our land, our jobs, and our future”. With respect to the border situation, analysts warn that a disaffected population would significantly weaken India’s position. Bloomberg, US, October 15Swati Gupta and Satviki Sanjay highlight the “persistent quality-control failings” of India’s pharmaceutical industry in the wake of the deaths of “at least 22 children” since September after they took a toxic cough syrup. India is the “world’s largest supplier of cheap, non-patented drugs”. While authorities immediately halted production of three cough syrups and the World Health Organisation issued a global alert, Gupta and Sanjay remind that “at least 100” cases of child deaths have been linked to Indian-made cough syrups since 2019. Inspections are insufficient, there is a lack of clear data, and the coordination between monitoring bodies is poor. NRI Affairs, Australia, October 22NRI Affairs news desk reports that professor Francesca Orsini, “a globally renowned scholar of Hindi literature,” was deported from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport on October 20, even though she had a valid five-year e-visa. Immigration officials provided no explanation. Academics and intellectuals condemned Orsini’s arbitrary deportation as “an attack on scholarship”.Washington Post, US, October 24Pranshu Verma and Ravi Nair detail the Post’s investigation into the Indian government’s “aid plan” to “steer roughly $3.9 billion in investments to Adani’s businesses from the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC)”. This is a bailout to the Adani Group, charged with bribery and fraud in the US last year, as American and European banks are now hesitant to grant it loans. Verma and Nair write that the documents and interviews gathered show that Indian authorities are directing “taxpayer money to a conglomerate owned by one of the country’s most prominent billionaires”. The LIC, meanwhile, is mainly responsible to provide life insurance to India’s poor and rural families. Indian diaspora and civil society groupsOn October 21, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India) and London Mining Network held the sixth session of the webinar series: Deadline or Death Sentence: State Violence and Indigenous (Adivasi) People’s Resistance in India. Entitled “Scripting State Violence and Criminalisation of Resistance in India”, session 6 was anchored by speakers Mohamed Junaid who is a Kashmiri writer and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and Suchitra Vijayan of the The Polis Project. The speakers discussed shared patterns in violence and repression by state forces against multiple sites and forms of people’s resistance movements across India, ranging from anti-displacement movements to those resisting authoritarianism and repression of India’s marginalised communities. The speakers urged the recognition of these patterns and to imagine solidarities capable of confronting them. Parliamentarians and public officials advocateThe US State Department, through its Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, released its 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report, with India at Tier 2. The report acknowledges that while India is making efforts, it does “not fully meet the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking”. Problem areas that persist include low rates of prosecutions and convictions, weak accountability for complicit officials, continuing vulnerability of children related to trafficking and child marriage, forced labour by migrants and marginalised groups, inadequate victim services; as well as newer forms of exploitation, including online recruitment and cross-border schemes. Experts sayOn October 1, Sushant Singh, Lecturer in South Asian Studies, Yale University, reflected on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message on X after India won the Asia Cup. Modi’s message said: “#OperationSindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins! Congrats to our cricketers”. Singh called it “sinister” through its “deliberate equation of sporting triumph with military conflict”. Singh further said, “by invoking this operation to celebrate a cricket match, Modi trivialised genuine sacrifice and genuine grief”. On October 9, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders made public its unanswered communication to the Government of India regarding the Adivasi human rights defenders Raghu Midiyami and Suneeta Pottam. Both are charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and other laws for their work with the now-banned Moolvasi Bachao Manch. The communication notes that their arrests seem to be “arbitrary and in retaliation for their legitimate and peaceful human rights work” and expresses concern regarding the “deteriorating conditions of Mr. Midiyami’s injuries”, which he suffered in an accident prior to his arrest. The UN SR locates the arrests as “part of a broader crackdown on civil society and human rights defenders voicing concerns about militarisation and police violence against Adivasi communities”. In an essay published on October 14, political anthropologist Ather Zia analyses ways in which narratives about Kashmir are being controlled and coins the term Kashmircore which she describes as comprising “a glut of state-driven production of political, cultural, and academic works that aim not just to erase but also replace Kashmiri counter-memory of resistance histories”. These offer “a strictly curated and sanitized view of Kashmir” that seeks to reshape “Kashmir’s memory landscape”. Zia argues Kashmircore rebuilds narratives “to fit the Indian ethno-nationalist perception of how one should think about Kashmir and Kashmiris”, and to delegitimise earlier research and documentation, including by international human rights organisations.The Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights published a report called Hindutva in America: An Ethnonationalist Threat to Equality and Religious Pluralism. It examines the “origins, networks, and impacts of Hindu nationalist organisations in the United States to demonstrate how Hindu nationalism threatens the civil rights of Americans”. India was rated ‘D’ (from A to E) in a global analysis and ranking of 52 pension systems by the Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index 2025. While the average index score was 65.5, India scored 43.8. In the sub-grades, India was granted ‘E’ for adequacy, ‘D’ for sustainability and ‘C’ for integrity. Recommendations for India include the introduction of a minimum level of support for the poorest aged individuals, increasing coverage of pension arrangements for the unorganized working class, and improving the regulatory requirements for the private pension system.A report by the Centre for the Study of Organized Hate (a think-tank based in Washington DC), entitled AI-Generated Imagery and the New Frontier of Islamophobia, studies the use of artificial intelligence to produce “anti-Muslim visual hate content in India”. CSOH’s analysis of 1,326 AI-generated posts from 297 accounts (English and Hindi) reveals four main categories – “the sexualization of Muslim women, exclusionary and dehumanizing rhetoric, conspiratorial narratives (like ‘love-jihad’ and ‘population jihad’), and the aestheticization of violence”. Stylised and animated AI aesthetics made violent content appear “palatable, even humorous, broadening its reach among younger audiences”. The report also calls attention to the use of AI-generated imagery by Indian far-right media outlets (including OpIndia, Sudarshan News, and Panchjanya) towards “producing and amplifying synthetic hate, embedding AI-generated Islamophobia into mainstream discourse.”Scholars at Risk’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project published the 2025 Free to Think report, an annual report that highlights concerning trends in attacks on higher education communities around the world. The 2025 report highlights “concerning trends in 16 countries,” which includes India. Some of these trends in India include universities ushering in new policies “limiting student expression” by banning students from holding discussions and demonstrations, and threatening legal action against students for participating in protests. In some places, academic seminars inviting Iranian, Palestinian, and Lebanese ambassadors were cancelled after pressure from Hindu nationalist groups. More recently, universities such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) withheld students’ degrees because of their expression of pro-Palestinian sentiments during graduation ceremonies.The international organisation Aid to the Church in Need published its Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025. Findings on India include that “Hindu nationalist policies under the Bharatiya Janata Party have steadily eroded constitutional protections”. The reporting period during 2024 saw an increase of “84%” in riots, especially during religious festivals or processions, a spike in anti-Muslim rhetoric during election campaigns, and violence against Muslims and Christians. Attacks on Christians in India increased from 127 in 2014 to 834 in 2024. The report warns that religious freedom across Asia has deteriorated sharply amid intensifying authoritarian control, ethno-religious nationalism, and extremist violence. Read the previous roundup here.