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 January 1-31, 2026.International media reports Wall Street Journal, US, January 1Tunku Varadarajan focuses on attacks on Christians in India while noting that India has “seen a breathtaking rise in violence against religious minorities” since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. He notes that the attacks on Christians are taking place because “radical Hindus are obsessed with the imagined dangers of Christianity”. Attacks are often “justified as measures to stop conversions”. A slew of them took place during Christmas last year. Although Prime Minister Modi, “made a show of attending Mass” at the Cathedral Church of the Redemption in New Delhi, Vardarajan notes that he “hasn’t said a word against the Hindu radicals who attacked Christians”. Nikkei Asia, Japan, January 2Kiran Sharma writes on the chronically high pollution levels in Delhi in the context of footballer Lionel Messi’s visit to the city last December. She notes that “Messi’s visit on December 15 marked the third straight day that the city’s AQI readings stood at more than 400”. Breathing in Delhi air for a day in December was as harmful as smoking six cigarettes according to California-based climate data provider Berkeley Earth estimates. UN Habitat data allows a comparison with measures taken by China which included replacing diesel fleets with electric buses and closing polluting factories. Experts based in India point to the limits of measures taken in Delhi and the need for more aggressive measures across all polluting sectors.The Diplomat, US, January 9Hannah Van Dijcke and Corinne Kenny analyse the denial of bail by the Indian Supreme Court to activist and scholar Umar Khalid. They view the decision as “legal purgatory” involving “trial by jail”. Van Dijcke and Kenny write that the reason for Umar Khalid’s continued detention is the state’s perceived danger of his influence and intellect. They underline how the case against him shows “how the Modi government weaponizes anti-terror laws to indefinitely silence Muslim voices and crush dissent” and that the “world’s largest democracy” is “at risk”. Washington Post, US, January 9Rana Ayyub scrutinises the increase of mass surveillance in India through biometric identity, telecom data, device metadata and spyware. The convergence of such surveillance methods means that “anonymity becomes fragile and dissent becomes traceable”. India is different from countries like the US, where too there is growing surveillance, in that “interception approvals remain overwhelmingly executive-driven, with little transparency and with legal foundations that still echo colonial-era statutes.” Ayyub concludes that India offers a preview to all other democracies of the world as to “the political, social and democratic costs of letting state access to digital infrastructure expand unchecked”.The Guardian, UK, January 11An editorial warns that the Modi government’s decision to scrap the legally enforceable right to work, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), risks a “rural revolt”. MGNREGA, enacted in 2005 and recently repealed, generated “2bn person-days of work annually for about 50 million households” with many workers being women, Dalits, and tribal communities. It “stabilized incomes, raised rural wages, expanded women’s bargaining power and reduced internal migration.” Replacing MGNREGA with the centrally managed VB-G RAM G, a shift also opposed by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the inequality scholar Thomas Piketty, removes the obligation to provide work, including allowing the scheme to be “switched off”. Economist Jean Drèze calls this akin to “providing a work guarantee without any guarantee that the guarantee applies.” The Economist, UK, January 12On a recent tour, the Economist finds that nearly three years after ethnic violence erupted in Manipur, the state remains physically divided, economically paralysed, and socially fractured. Fighting between the mostly Hindu Meiteis and largely Christian Kukis, triggered by a dispute over special tribal status, has left around 50,000 people in refugee camps, surviving on “roughly 84 rupees ($0.90) a day.” Heavy security has brought calm but is “choking development and risks making reconciliation impossible.” Rights groups cite “state failures” in aggravating the conflict. The conflict is a “warning about the dangers of identity politics…likely to widen rifts” rather than heal them.Al Jazeera, Qatar, January 19Furqan Ameen describes the backlash from right-wing Hindu commentators to Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman’s comments that he had lost opportunities in Bollywood, due to “communal bias” linked to shifting industry power dynamics. Right-wing commentators accused him of playing the “victim card” and questioned his “patriotism and talent”. Ameen found that “barring a few outspoken voices”, there was little solidarity for Rahman from industry insiders. He notes that Rahman’s comments “raised questions about the Hindu right’s influence on art and cinema in India, particularly in Bollywood”. This climate is pushing Bollywood to “abandon its pluralist, liberal ethos and pushing it towards Hindu majoritarian narratives.” The Washington Post, USA, January 25Pranshu Verma, Supriya Kumar and Kevin Crowe report that most Delhi residents are breathing in polluted air that is equivalent to smoking roughly nine cigarettes a day, according to a Post analysis of 2½ months of Indian government data on pollution levels. The University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index finds that, on average, Delhi residents are losing eight years of their lives. Verma, Kumar and Crowe write that a BJP Minister of state for environment “wrongly” claimed no link between pollution levels and lung diseases in Parliament last month. Experts in India blame the government for reactive and temporary emergency measures rather than proactive efforts such as limiting vehicular and industrial emissions. Indian diaspora and civil society groupsHindus for Human Rights (HfHR) urges the Supreme Court of India to reverse its decision denying bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam and order their immediate release in a press release on January 5. HfHR reinforced the call from eight US lawmakers to ensure that Khalid and Imam are guaranteed a free trial. They also called on the Indian Parliament to overhaul the UAPA to align with the universally acknowledged rights to a speedy trial and the presumption of innocence. Senior Policy Director Ria Chakrabarty called the Supreme Court’s decision to deny bail to Khalid and Imam an “unacceptable miscarriage of justice” and rejected Hindu nationalist weaponization of Hinduism. Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy (DAHRD) criticises India’s “half-hearted” response to the US military operation in Venezuela which “raises serious questions about the erosion of India’s historic moral leadership”, on January 6. DAHRD points out that in its response, the Indian government “conspicuously avoided naming Washington or condemning the military strikes”. Ritumbra Manuvie, co-founder and executive director of DAHRD, stresses that as a key Global South voice and BRICS member, India should unequivocally condemn the attack. Manuvie underlines that “such a weak response … raises serious questions about India’s willingness to uphold the very principles it has long claimed to defend”. On January 9, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) organised a virtual briefing in response to the Supreme Court’s denial of bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam. The briefing was titled “A Crisis of Judicial Accountability”. Prashant Bhushan, Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India; John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch; and Brian Tronic, Director of the Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners at Freedom House, were the speakers. Bhushan described the bail denial as an indication of India “losing the independence of the judiciary,” while Sifton and Tronic both criticised erosion of civic freedoms. The Migrant Solidarity Network and South Asia Solidarity Group organised a webinar on January 25 titled, “Whose Republic: Migrants Speak Out on the Demolition of Citizenship in India”. This was to discuss state targeting of migrant workers, particularly Bengali-speaking Muslims. The panel, moderated by Akash Bhattacharya, All-India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) heard testimonies from Liakat Ali and Soharul Islam, Bengali migrant workers working in Maharashtra and Odisha. The panel comprised Asif Faruk (Migrant Workers’ Unity Forum), Malay Tiwari (CPI-ML West Bengal), Adv. Supantha Sinha (Migrant Solidarity Network), and Clifton D’Rozario (AICCTU). Parliamentarians advocateOn January 8, Members of the British Parliament in the House of Lords tabled questions for a short debate asking the government what measures they have taken to see that colonial-era mining companies, which operated in former British colonies, address pollution and environmental concerns. Greens Party member Baroness Bennett noted briefings she had received on the Adani Group, “which is the world’s largest private coal developer”, and drew attention to it “being associated with huge problems with pollution” and “the violent displacement of indigenous communities” in India. While recognizing that Adani was not a colonial company, she noted that “the British links are very large and very clear” with two major UK Banks – Barclays and Standard Chartered – known to have arranged substantial finances for Adani Green Energy Ltd. US Member of Congress Jim McGovern along with seven others, including Members of Congress and Senators, recently sent a joint letter to the Indian Ambassador to the US, expressing strong concerns regarding “prolonged pre-trial detention” of “individuals charged in connection with the February 2020 violence in Delhi”, including Umar Khalid. They reiterate that India is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which requires it “to uphold the rights of individuals to receive a trial within a reasonable time or be released”. They stress that Umar Khalid “has not been found guilty of a crime, and yet the pre-trial treatment to which he has been subjected is punitive in and of itself”. Restating findings of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, they raise serious concerns that Khalid and other Muslim activists’ “continued incarceration may be linked to their religious identity as Muslims”. Experts sayThe South Asia Justice Campaign released the annual overview of the India Persecution Tracker 2025, which is an “overview of human rights abuses and violations against India’s religious minorities from 1 January to 31 December, 2025”. Some of the violations the Tracker highlights include that more than 23 Muslims were killed by state actors in 2025 and there were more than 4000 “unilateral expulsions” of Bengali-speaking Muslims since May 2025, among others. The India Hate Lab (IHL), a project within the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate, released their 2025 Report on “Hate Speech Events in India”. IHL recorded 1,318 in-person hate speech events targeting religious minorities in 2025, a 13% rise from 2024 and a 97% rise since 2023. 98% of the speeches targeted Muslims and 12% targeted Christians, with anti-Christian incidents up nearly 41%. Most hate speech events took place in BJP-ruled states, notably Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. They invoked conspiracy theories like “love jihad”, gave calls for violence, and sought destruction of places of worship. IHL finds that “the result was a dense, interconnected, and highly mediated ecosystem of hate dissemination in which national leaders set the overarching narrative frames of hate.” On January 19, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued three formal communications to the Government of India under its Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedures regarding grave human rights violations taking place in India, following up letters sent by the Committee in May 2025. One is a follow-up on the situation of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam concerning racial discrimination, exclusions from the final citizens register, suspension of foreign tribunal processes, forced evictions of families across districts, and increases in hate speech targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims especially during the 2024 general elections. Another follow-up is on the situation of tribal and forest-dwelling Indigenous Peoples on lack of information on rights accorded to these communities of prior consultation and consent, the absence of impact assessment studies, and scant information on allegations of possible displacement and eviction of communities. And another follow-up concerns the situation of Indigenous Adivasi Peoples in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh noting a reported escalation in security operations since 2024 against non-State armed groups in Bastar resulting in widespread violations against and killings of the Indigenous Adivasi Peoples. During the World Economic Forum annual meet in Davos, on January 21, Gita Gopinath (currently a Harvard professor and the former deputy managing director at the IMF) drew attention to the challenge of pollution being faced by India. She argued that the economic cost of pollution is “far more consequential than any impact of any tariffs.” Citing World Bank estimates, she noted that “about 1.7 million lives are lost every year in India because of pollution. That’s 18% of the deaths in India”. Gopinath underlined that given the implications for productivity, public health and investor confidence, the need to address this “on a war footing is critical.”Science Po’s Centre for International Studies (CERI) and The Caravan magazine recently published an unprecedented dataset called “Seeing the Sangh: Mapping the RSS’s Transnational Network”. Seeing the Sangh is the “world’s first comprehensive map of the organisational network surrounding the RSS – the largest far-right network in the world”. This is the result of six years of research towards a public resource that reveals the full organisational structure of the Hindu far-right. Read the previous roundup here.