India, Globally: Maoists, Gender and the Many Chapters of Hindu Nationalism

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 June 1-30, 2025.

International media

Middle East Eye, Qatar, June 3

Hanan Zaffar points to a “broad but quiet trend” of Indian Muslims leaving India “in growing numbers”. Zaffar documents many Indian Muslims recounting their decision to leave their country, with one man describing it as “heartbreaking but necessary”. Their reasons stem from fear of violence, discrimination, and reprisals. Zaffar notes the “rising Hindu nationalism” under PM Narendra Modi and the growing frequency of violence, hate speech and “discriminatory laws” targeting Muslims. Dr Nizamuddin Ahmad Siddiqui, a legal academic, suggests reconciliation is possible “only through institutional reform and societal reckoning”. 

New York Times, USA, June 6

Showkat Nanda reports on the recently inaugurated rail line (the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail line) that is the first to connect Kashmir to the rest of India by train. Seen by officials as a “transformative leap” that would encourage “steady economic growth”, many Kashmiris see it “as much as an effort to entrench the central government’s control over Kashmir”. Kashmiri fruit growers and traders are “particularly upset” that freight trains are not yet operating on the route, after being promised so. Orchards were “razed” and families displaced to “make way for the train”. 

The Guardian, UK, June 9

Stephanie Kirchgaessner writes that the Fremont Gurdwara Sahib, one of the largest Sikh houses of worship in the US, has asked the Department of Justice to “launch a national security investigation into the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) to determine whether it should be classified as an “Indian foreign agent”. If it is, HAF would have to publicly disclose meetings and “any contracts and financial arrangements it has with the Indian government”. The Gurudwara alleges that the HAF has “consistently and unequivocally advocated for the interests of the BJP on both domestic and foreign policy matters”. 

The Guardian, UK, June 12

Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan highlight serious questions by critics of the Indian government’s operation to “completely eradicate” India’s Maoist insurgency by “March 2026”. Operation Kagar was launched in early 2024 in the forests of Chhattisgarh state. Local activists say it is focused on “eliminating” any alleged Maoist threat, killing civilians “being lumped together with Maoists” or telling whole villages to surrender (even if they are not involved), or be killed. Since early 2025, the government has ignored Naxalite leaders’ calls for a ceasefire and peace negotiations, raising critics’ suspicions “that the primary driver of the recent crackdown was not peace but corporate interests”. 

Washington Post, USA, June 19

Karishma Mehrotra and Supriya Kumar call attention to a “largely overlooked air safety risk in India: dense construction dangerously close to airports”, following the recent Air India crash which also caused deaths when the plane collided into a medical college. Modi’s government has doubled the number of airports to nearly 160 over the past decade. However, airport runways are too close to “population centers” which experts warn is very unsafe. Yet, at a news conference in early 2025, when asked about the global increase in plane accidents, India’s Minister of Civil Aviation said, “we are very safe here.”  

Reuters, UK, June 26

Aditya Kalra, Allison Lampert and David Shepardson report that Indian authorities declined the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s request to give its aviation investigator “observer” status in the Air India crash probe. Experts have raised questions regarding the delay in analysis of the black box data, as well as whether the recorders should be read in India or the US. Under international rules, “the decision of where to read flight recorders should be made immediately in case the evidence obtained could avert future tragedies.”

Experts say

Four United Nations Special Rapporteurs jointly called on India to put an end to its “practice of arbitrary and punitive demolitions affecting low-income households, minorities and migrants” in a press release on June 23. The SRs called arbitrary, punitive demolitions an “aggravated form of human rights violation” that are “especially egregious when they target or discriminate against minorities or marginalized communities”. They pointed to Indian authorities using demolitions as a punishment “disproportionately” targeting Indian Muslims “particularly after religious violence or protests”. 

The Global Torture Index 2025, developed by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), released on June 26, classifies India as a “high risk” country for torture and ill-treatment. The Index cites “severe beatings, forced confessions and custodial deaths” as frequent and the targeting of “marginalized communities” and human rights defenders. Among recommendations for India, the Index recommends full investigations into all custodial deaths, an end to the abuse of anti-terror and security laws, and the ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. 

REDRESS, an international organisation that works for justice for survivors of torture, launched a  report entitled, “Torture Normalized: State Violence in India”, on June 27. It finds torture in India to be “systemic, deeply entrenched, and frequently carried out by State authorities with impunity”, particularly in internal conflict zones, against communities including Dalits, Adivasis, and religious minorities; and against “civil society dissenters”. REDRESS notes the lack of international censure against India citing its “strategic and geopolitical position and importance in global trade” as a major reason for the silence. It calls for urgent legal and policy reforms by the Indian Government and the international community. 

India has fallen to 131 out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2025, moving down from 129th rank in 2024. While economic participation and education saw slight positive movements, India’s score in the political empowerment category declined by 0.6 points compared to 2024. Women’s representation in Parliament fell from 14.7% to 13.8%, and the proportion of women in ministerial positions declined from 6.5% to 5.6%. 

Indian diaspora and international civil society groups

On June 5, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India) and London Mining Network held the second session of the ‘Deadline or Death Sentence: State Violence and Indigenous (Adivasi) People’s Resistance in India’ series. This session – “Behind the Deadline: Resource Extractivism, the State-Corporate Nexus, and Strategies of Resistance” – featured two speakers, Rinchin and Prasant Paikray, both with decades of experience and grassroots work on violations of Adivasi rights in the areas of north Chhattisgarh and Odisha. The session describes how the State has enabled domestic and foreign corporations to perpetuate environmental destruction and human rights and Adivasi land rights abuses, while branding as “national development and climate responsibility”. This is the agenda local communities are resisting. 

A virtual congressional briefing titled “Increased Attacks on Muslims After Pahalgam” was organised on June 11 by a coalition of 18 human rights organisations, including the Indian-American Muslim Council, Genocide Watch, Hindus for Human Rights, The Polis Project, and others. Professor Nicolas Levrat, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues attended and said, “India very obviously failed to live up to its international obligations to protect Muslims from a wave of hate crimes following the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir”. He cited 184 anti-Muslim hate incidents across 19 states within six days, warning of “incendiary narratives…at the highest level”, urging India to uphold its duty under international law to protect religious freedom. 

InSAF India and London Mining Network held the third session of the ‘Deadline or Death Sentence: State Violence and Indigenous (Adivasi) People's Resistance in India’ series on June 19. It critically examined “courts as instruments of state power” and the “judicial complicity in indigenous dispossession and criminalisation”. The speakers, Nandini Sundar, activist and Professor of Sociology, Delhi University and Megha Bahl, a lawyer, researcher working on Indigenous struggles in Jharkhand and a PhD student in Anthropology, Rice University, provided critical reflections on how legal institutions have ceased to function as sites of democratic accountability for Adivasi communities. 

On June 22, the Stop JCB Demolitions campaign, led by a coalition of UK-based organisations including the South Asia Solidarity Group (SASG), posted on X that the JCB has discontinued its Literature Prize for Indian writers and translators. SASG called this “a first step to victory” for the campaign. The campaign will continue to advocate for its other main demands. These include that JCB ceases all activities in “occupied Palestine” and it ensures its products are not used “for human rights violations in India and Kashmir through monitoring and prevention systems”, including Livelink technology that can trace JCB machines. 

The Indian American Muslim Council, a US-based diaspora group, released a report titled, “Transnational Repression: The Modi Regime’s Targeting of Critics in the United States,” on June 25. The report “exposes how the Indian government has weaponized transnational repression (TNR) to censor critics and dissent in the United States”. At the launch, report author and journalist Morley Musick said, “the Modi-led Indian government uses a much wider array of tactics to suppress dissidents and religious minorities living abroad. We found that at least nine out of the eleven forms of transnational repression identified by the FBI were deployed here in the US”. Yana Gorokhovskaia, Research Director at Freedom House, called India a “perpetrator state”, analysing its actions “within a global trend of autocratic regimes targeting exiled dissidents.” 

Read the previous roundup here.  

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