India’s Hindu Nationalist Policies Have Made ‘Violence Routine’ Against Christians
Muslims and Christians, as well as Dalits, in India are the target of ongoing violent attacks and harassment amounting to religious freedom and human rights violations, according to a U.S. watchdog group.
“Every day violence and calls for violence have become routine,” said Stephen J. Rapp, Former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice. “Throughout this grim history, it is seldom that the perpetrators have been held to account and justice done.”
The experts, who testified during a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom hearing this week in Washington, D.C., said religious persecution in India, a majority Hindu nation, can be both government-sanctioned and caused by mobs of vigilantes.
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The violations manifest in several ways, including creating barriers for faith-based non-profits, arresting faith leaders without cause, alleging that Hindus who convert to a minority religion were forced to do so, sexualized violence and lynching.
Hindu nationalism, which experts — including those from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum — said depicts India’s Muslim population as a “rapidly expanding threat that must be culled,” undergirds the increased volatility of the nation.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration and the current party in power, the Bharatiya Janata Party, have encouraged Hindu nationalist policies and practices, experts said.
In an official statement, the government of India rejected the USCIRF’s latest findings, calling its recent report a “motivated and biased characterization of India.”
“For several years now, USCIRF has persisted in presenting a distorted and selective picture of India, relying on questionable sources and ideological narratives rather than objective facts,” the statement continued. “Such repeated misrepresentations only undermine the credibility of the Commission itself. Instead of persisting with selective criticism of India, USCIRF would do well to reflect on the disturbing incidents of vandalism and attacks on Hindu temples in the United States, selective targeting of India, and growing intolerance and intimidation of members of the Indian diaspora in the United States, which merit serious attention.”
Thirteen of India’s 28 states have strict anti-conversion laws, according to Vicky Hartzler, chair of the USCIRF. The laws’ vague wording allows local officials to target religious minorities, enforcing them in a way that discourages religious minorities from evangelizing and their neighbors from exploring a new religion or converting. During Christmas last year, mobs of vigilantes attacked a gathering, claiming Christmas prayers were covers for forced conversions, according to Hartzler and India’s Frontline magazine.
Muslims, too, face scrutiny and persecution. Although they make up more than 10% of Indian residents, they face unequal surveillance from authorities. The Citizenship Amendment Act, passed in 2019, makes it easier for six religious minorities: Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian (but notably, not Muslims) to become Indian citizens.
Reports indicate authorities take residents of the states of Assam and West Bengal to the Bangladeshi border and physically push them over it, forcing them to leave India, according to Frontline and Raqib Naik, founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. Assam and West Bengal both have a high percentage of Muslim residents. Last year, more than 1,200 people living in India were removed this way.
The violence extends far beyond India’s borders, too, according to the USCIRF. In 2023, an Indian-born citizen of Canada, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was leaving a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, when he was fatally shot. Niijar was a Sikh activist and “a leader in a movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, which is banned in India,” according to the BBC. India denied any connection with the killing, but said Nijjar was involved in terrorism.
“We’ve long noticed the unmarked cars and suspicious figures at our community gatherings,” said Arjun Sethi, an American Civil Rights Lawyer and professor at Georgetown University. “We’ve whispered about it for years. We were not surprised when the Indian government denied us visas, turned us away at airports and harassed loved ones back home. We knew we were being watched. Now, it has become a life-or-death reality.”
Several Hindu organizations, both based in India and internationally, have criticized the Indian government for the violence and religious freedom violations. Hindus for Humanity submitted a statement to the USCIRF in 2020, saying its members were “horrified because all of this is being perpetrated in the name of our religion.” The organization argued that Hinduism is, at its core, pluralistic and Hindu nationalism deviates from the religion’s core values.
“We call on Hindus to reject Hindutva [Hindu nationalism] and call for peace and democracy,” the organization wrote.
The commission is calling for the U.S. government to undertake a handful of measures, including designating India as a country of particular concern for “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations.”
Countries that receive this designation can face economic and diplomatic consequences, but the U.S. government is often hesitant to issue consequences or enforce them, according to the Family Research Council.
The USCIRF also recommends imposing targeted sanctions on some Indian individuals or entities in response to their “responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom.”
Cassidy Grom is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Her award-winning reporting and digital design work have appeared in numerous publications.