India, Globally: How Modi Put National Interest Last |
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 March 1-31, 2026. International Media Reports
The Diplomat, US, March 2
Sudha Ramachandran describes the “sharp criticism” around Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel on February 25-26, both in India and abroad. Visiting just before the US-Israel military strikes were launched on Iran, a retired diplomat suggests Modi may have been briefed on the imminent attack and his “strong words of support for Israel’s actions diminished India’s stature in the eyes of the world”. Modi has expressed “no sympathy for Palestinian suffering”. With Modi’s government since 2014 moving ever closer to Israel, Ramachandran concludes “that is not a space that India should be in if it is hoping to lead the Global South”.
A video report by Antariksh Jain and Ishadrita Lahiri, entitled, “We’re living in fear”, chronicles the closure of a church in Kopena village, Odisha. The church “where 30 Christian families used to pray” was closed in January 2026 after members of the Hindu community claimed Hindu gods are “being disturbed” by the church. The pastor says the families were told “we will not let you pray there”. The church has existed since 2008 and the pastor wonders why these concerns have been raised now. Despite attacks on Christians in the village, the administration says that the matter will be settled by neighboring villagers. This is another example of the increase in violent incidents against Christians in India over the last decade, noted by groups like the United Christian Forum.
NIKKEI Asia, Japan, March 6
Quratulain Rehbar analyses the rise of protests in parts of Kashmir and other parts of India triggered by the crisis in Iran. Rehbar describes that “mourners waving black and Iranian flags and chanting slogans against the U.S. and Israel took to the streets” after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khameni. In response, the authorities placed barricades, deployed armoured vehicles, slowed down internet speed, and limited social media. These protests are significant in a context in which large-scale street protests have become “relatively rare” in Kashmir since the revocation of Article 370 in 2019. Rehbar writes that this “underscores that geopolitical developments abroad could intersect with India’s domestic fault lines”.
Bloomberg, US, March 9
Pratik Parija reports on a fresh protest held in New Delhi in early March by farmers and industrial workers against the US Trade deal “to stop concessions to the US”. The protesters also demanded a law guaranteeing minimum crop prices. This protest, which follows a nationwide agitation last month, comes at a time when energy prices are rising sharply due to the war in the Middle East, hitting farmers who largely depend on diesel to run equipment like water pumps and threshers.
Bloomberg, US, March 17
At the time of the Gulf crisis, Mihir Sharma analyses India’s foreign policy directions over the last decade. India has pursued “strategic autonomy” and “booked a place at every high table”. Despite India’s “elevated global profile”, rather than advantages, the situation today is that India is negotiating from a position of weakness, rather than strength, as is claimed. In addition to the control exercised by Trump, India is losing access to necessary oil and gas resources as “India is not uniquely trusted by Tehran”, particularly as it has pursued a closer relationship with Israel in the past years. Sharma writes that “India has friends everywhere, but leverage nowhere.”
Kapil Komireddi criticises India’s silence on the war against Iran despite deep historical ties, noting this “puzzling muteness” marked a break from its global leadership role and “departure from India’s long tradition of solidarity with the developing world.” He argues Narendra Modi’s stance is driven by the fear of any damage to a “meticulously cultivated self-image” and deep fear of Donald Trump, leading to “subservience to the US”. Komireddi links Modi’s relationship to Israel as “wholly ideological” driven largely by a shared anti-Muslim bigotry. He warns that the West Asia conflict’s economic fallout – energy shortages and inflation – could severely harm India, making it a “non-hostile casualty”.
Indian diaspora and civil society groups
Dr. Ritumbra Manuvie, the Founder-Director of Foundation Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy, underscores the significance of the 2000 days that Umar Khalid has spent in prison without trial, published on March 6. Manuvie views his continued incarceration as a telling example of the “erosion of” India’s justice system and its democracy. Khalid’s detention without trial sets a dangerous precedent of “normalizing indefinite pre-trial detention”. Manuvie points out that despite international criticism and sustained calls for his release, Umar Khalid remains behind bars.
The International Lesbian and Gay Association states that the passing of the Bill to amend the Transgender Person (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019 “threatens the rights of trans and gender–diverse people“ in India. It notes that activists have protested because the Bill was drafted without any community consultation. It extinguishes the right to gender self–determination granted by the Supreme Court in 2014, posing unnecessary hurdles for people to see their gender legally recorded. In its reference to intersex persons, the Bill also “conflates gender identity with sex characteristics”.
The Boston South Asian Coalition released a brief statement condemning Narendra Modi’s February 2026 visit to Israel and expressed solidarity between the people of India and its diaspora with the people of Palestine and their struggle for liberation.
InSAF India’s sessions nine and ten of the Deadline or Death Sentence Series are available. In webinar nine, Conservation Projects in Adivasi Areas: Another Face of Militarisation and Land Expropriation, speakers outlined different state strategies and tactics, in the guise of conservation policies, “to expropriate Adivasi land in the interest of capital and big corporates”. When people and communities protest, the state responds “through militarisation and surveillance”, with lived experiences drawn from a grassroots organisation in Chhattisgarh’s Achanakmar Tiger Reserve, working with the Baiga Adivasis (a particularly vulnerable tribal group) that mobilised against displacement from land now identified by the state for tiger conservation. Speakers in webinar ten, The Indian State’s Attempts to Erase Indigenous Adivasi Cultures and Livelihood Practices, described how deforestation and conservation are severely impacting the traditional livelihood practices of Adivasis and increasing their socio-economic vulnerability. Renowned poet Jacinta Kerketta shared her insights on how the Adivasi situation is one of “internal colonisation”, through various measures including “supporting aggressive Hinduization” to break the connectedness with land that is central to Adivasi life.
Genocide Watch released a report this month titled Hindutva & Zionism: Ideologies of Exclusion. It examines the “historical origins and social impact of Hindutva in India and Zionism in Israel and Palestine”. Importantly, the report highlights that Zionism and Hindutva did not remain mere ideologies but found “states as sponsors”. This meant they morphed into “daily life measured in checkpoints, laws, censuses, and corpses”. In this way, they “shape national identity” and “produce, sustain, and justify exclusion, forced displacement, apartheid, and genocide”.
The V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg finds that India remains an “electoral autocracy” in its Democracy Report 2026. India has fallen to 105 from its last ranking of 100, out of 179 countries last year. In South and Central Asia, India is among four countries that are moving towards “autocratization”, along with Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan. The report describes this in India as a “slow but systematic dismantling of democratic institutions”. Led by Modi and the BJP government, India’s democratic deterioration includes dismantling of “freedom of expression and independence of the media, harassments of journalists critical of the government, and attacks on civil society and the opposition”.
Freedom House rates India as “Partly Free” (63/100) in its Freedom In The World Report 2026. reflecting a decline in civil liberties despite its democratic framework. While India remains a multiparty democracy, Freedom House finds democratic deficits through pressure on dissenting voices and civil society, indicating a widening gap between constitutional protections and their implementation. Under Modi and the BJP, the government has “presided over discriminatory policies,” especially persecution of Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and other marginalised groups.
Read the previous roundup here.