speech on religion in india

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation

Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately, table of contents.

• The dimensions of Hindu nationalism in India
• India’s Muslims express pride in being Indian while identifying communal tensions, desiring segregation
• Muslims, Hindus diverge over legacy of Partition
• Religious conversion in India
• Religion very important across India’s religious groups
• Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived
• Across India’s religious groups, widespread sharing of beliefs, practices, values
• Religious identity in India: Hindus divided on whether belief in God is required to be a Hindu, but most say eating beef is disqualifying
• Sikhs are proud to be Punjabi and Indian
• Most Indians say they and others are very free to practice their religion
• Most people do not see evidence of widespread religious discrimination in India
• Most Indians report no recent discrimination based on their religion
• In Northeast India, people perceive more religious discrimination
• Most Indians see communal violence as a very big problem in the country
• Indians divided on the legacy of Partition for Hindu-Muslim relations
• More Indians say religious diversity benefits their country than say it is harmful
• Indians are highly knowledgeable about their own religion, less so about other religions
• Substantial shares of Buddhists, Sikhs say they have worshipped at religious venues other than their own
• One-in-five Muslims in India participate in celebrations of Diwali
• Members of both large and small religious groups mostly keep friendships within religious lines
• Most Indians are willing to accept members of other religious communities as neighbors, but many express reservations
• Indians generally marry within same religion
• Most Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains strongly support stopping interreligious marriage
• India’s religious groups vary in their caste composition
• Indians in lower castes largely do not perceive widespread discrimination against their groups
• Most Indians do not have recent experience with caste discrimination
• Most Indians OK with Scheduled Caste neighbors
• Indians generally do not have many close friends in different castes
• Large shares of Indians say men, women should be stopped from marrying outside of their caste
• Most Indians say being a member of their religious group is not only about religion
• Common ground across major religious groups on what is essential to religious identity
• India’s religious groups vary on what disqualifies someone from their religion
• Hindus say eating beef, disrespecting India, celebrating Eid incompatible with being Hindu
• Muslims place stronger emphasis than Hindus on religious practices for identity
• Many Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists do not identify with a sect
• Sufism has at least some followers in every major Indian religious group
• Large majorities say Indian culture is superior to others
• What constitutes ‘true’ Indian identity?
• Large gaps between religious groups in 2019 election voting patterns
• No consensus on whether democracy or strong leader best suited to lead India
• Majorities support politicians being involved in religious matters
• Indian Muslims favor their own religious courts; other religious groups less supportive
• Most Indians do not support allowing triple talaq for Muslims
• Southern Indians least likely to say religion is very important in their life
• Most Indians give to charitable causes
• Majorities of Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Jains in India pray daily
• More Indians practice puja at home than at temple
• Most Hindus do not read or listen to religious books frequently
• Most Indians have an altar or shrine in their home for worship
• Religious pilgrimages common across most religious groups in India
• Most Hindus say they have received purification from a holy body of water
• Roughly half of Indian adults meditate at least weekly
• Only about a third of Indians ever practice yoga
• Nearly three-quarters of Christians sing devotionally
• Most Muslims and few Jains say they have participated in or witnessed animal sacrifice for religious purposes
• Most Indians schedule key life events based on auspicious dates
• About half of Indians watch religious programs weekly
• For Hindus, nationalism associated with greater religious observance
• Indians value marking lifecycle events with religious rituals
• Most Indian parents say they are raising their children in a religion
• Fewer than half of Indian parents say their children receive religious instruction outside the home
• Vast majority of Sikhs say it is very important that their children keep their hair long
• Half or more of Hindus, Muslims and Christians wear religious pendants
• Most Hindu, Muslim and Sikh women cover their heads outside the home
• Slim majority of Hindu men say they wear a tilak, fewer wear a janeu
• Eight-in-ten Muslim men in India wear a skullcap
• Majority of Sikh men wear a turban
• Muslim and Sikh men generally keep beards
• Most Indians are not vegetarians, but majorities do follow at least some restrictions on meat in their diet
• One-in-five Hindus abstain from eating root vegetables
• Fewer than half of vegetarian Hindus willing to eat in non-vegetarian settings
• Indians evenly split about willingness to eat meals with hosts who have different religious rules about food
• Majority of Indians say they fast
• More Hindus say there are multiple ways to interpret Hinduism than say there is only one true way
• Most Indians across different religious groups believe in karma
• Most Hindus, Jains believe in Ganges’ power to purify
• Belief in reincarnation is not widespread in India
• More Hindus and Jains than Sikhs believe in moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirth)
• Most Hindus, Muslims, Christians believe in heaven
• Nearly half of Indian Christians believe in miracles
• Most Muslims in India believe in Judgment Day
• Most Indians believe in fate, fewer believe in astrology
• Many Hindus and Muslims say magic, witchcraft or sorcery can influence people’s lives
• Roughly half of Indians trust religious ritual to treat health problems
• Lower-caste Christians much more likely than General Category Christians to hold both Christian and non-Christian beliefs
• Nearly all Indians believe in God
• Few Indians believe ‘there are many gods’
• Many Hindus feel close to Shiva
• Many Indians believe God can be manifested in other people
• Indians almost universally ask God for good health, prosperity, forgiveness
• Acknowledgments
• Questionnaire design
• Sample design and weighting
• Precision of estimates
• Response rates
• Significant events during fieldwork
• Appendix B: Index of religious segregation

This study is Pew Research Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth exploration of India to date. For this report, we surveyed 29,999 Indian adults (including 22,975 who identify as Hindu, 3,336 who identify as Muslim, 1,782 who identify as Sikh, 1,011 who identify as Christian, 719 who identify as Buddhist, 109 who identify as Jain and 67 who identify as belonging to another religion or as religiously unaffiliated). Interviews for this nationally representative survey were conducted face-to-face under the direction of RTI International from Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020.

To improve respondent comprehension of survey questions and to ensure all questions were culturally appropriate, Pew Research Center followed a multi-phase questionnaire development process that included expert review, focus groups, cognitive interviews, a pretest and a regional pilot survey before the national survey. The questionnaire was developed in English and translated into 16 languages, independently verified by professional linguists with native proficiency in regional dialects.

Respondents were selected using a probability-based sample design that would allow for robust analysis of all major religious groups in India – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains – as well as all major regional zones. Data was weighted to account for the different probabilities of selection among respondents and to align with demographic benchmarks for the Indian adult population from the 2011 census. The survey is calculated to have covered 98% of Indians ages 18 and older and had an 86% national response rate.

For more information, see the  Methodology  for this report. The questions used in this analysis can be found  here .

More than 70 years after India became free from colonial rule, Indians generally feel their country has lived up to one of its post-independence ideals: a society where followers of many religions can live and practice freely.

India’s massive population is diverse as well as devout. Not only do most of the world’s Hindus, Jains and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists.

A major new Pew Research Center survey of religion across India, based on nearly 30,000 face-to-face interviews of adults conducted in 17 languages between late 2019 and early 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic ), finds that Indians of all these religious backgrounds overwhelmingly say they are very free to practice their faiths.

Related India research

This is one in a series of Pew Research Center reports on India based on a survey of 29,999 Indian adults conducted Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020, as well as demographic data from the Indian Census and other government sources. Other reports can be found here:

• How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society
• Religious Composition of India
• India’s Sex Ratio at Birth Begins To Normalize

Indians see religious tolerance as a central part of who they are as a nation. Across the major religious groups, most people say it is very important to respect all religions to be “truly Indian.” And tolerance is a religious as well as civic value: Indians are united in the view that respecting other religions is a very important part of what it means to be a member of their own religious community.

These shared values are accompanied by a number of beliefs that cross religious lines. Not only do a majority of Hindus in India (77%) believe in karma, but an identical percentage of Muslims do, too. A third of Christians in India (32%) – together with 81% of Hindus – say they believe in the purifying power of the Ganges River, a central belief in Hinduism. In Northern India, 12% of Hindus and 10% of Sikhs, along with 37% of Muslims, identity with Sufism, a mystical tradition most closely associated with Islam. And the vast majority of Indians of all major religious backgrounds say that respecting elders is very important to their faith.

Yet, despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs – as well as living in the same country, under the same constitution – members of India’s major religious communities often don’t feel they have much in common with one another. The majority of Hindus see themselves as very different from Muslims (66%), and most Muslims return the sentiment, saying they are very different from Hindus (64%). There are a few exceptions: Two-thirds of Jains and about half of Sikhs say they have a lot in common with Hindus. But generally, people in India’s major religious communities tend to see themselves as very different from others.

This perception of difference is reflected in traditions and habits that maintain the separation of India’s religious groups. For example, marriages across religious lines – and, relatedly, religious conversions – are exceedingly rare (see Chapter 3 ). Many Indians, across a range of religious groups, say it is very important to stop people in their community from marrying into other religious groups. Roughly two-thirds of Hindus in India want to prevent interreligious marriages of Hindu women (67%) or Hindu men (65%). Even larger shares of Muslims feel similarly: 80% say it is very important to stop Muslim women from marrying outside their religion, and 76% say it is very important to stop Muslim men from doing so.

Moreover, Indians generally stick to their own religious group when it comes to their friends. Hindus overwhelmingly say that most or all of their close friends are also Hindu. Of course, Hindus make up the majority of the population, and as a result of sheer numbers, may be more likely to interact with fellow Hindus than with people of other religions. But even among Sikhs and Jains, who each form a sliver of the national population, a large majority say their friends come mainly or entirely from their small religious community.

Fewer Indians go so far as to say that their neighborhoods should consist only of people from their own religious group. Still, many would prefer to keep people of certain religions out of their residential areas or villages. For example, many Hindus (45%) say they are fine with having neighbors of all other religions – be they Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain – but an identical share (45%) say they would not be willing to accept followers of at least one of these groups, including more than one-in-three Hindus (36%) who do not want a Muslim as a neighbor. Among Jains, a majority (61%) say they are unwilling to have neighbors from at least one of these groups, including 54% who would not accept a Muslim neighbor, although nearly all Jains (92%) say they would be willing to accept a Hindu neighbor.

Indians, then, simultaneously express enthusiasm for religious tolerance and a consistent preference for keeping their religious communities in segregated spheres – they live together separately . These two sentiments may seem paradoxical, but for many Indians they are not.

Indeed, many take both positions, saying it is important to be tolerant of others and expressing a desire to limit personal connections across religious lines. Indians who favor a religiously segregated society also overwhelmingly emphasize religious tolerance as a core value. For example, among Hindus who say it is very important to stop the interreligious marriage of Hindu women, 82% also say that respecting other religions is very important to what it means to be Hindu. This figure is nearly identical to the 85% who strongly value religious tolerance among those who are not at all concerned with stopping interreligious marriage.

In other words, Indians’ concept of religious tolerance does not necessarily involve the mixing of religious communities. While people in some countries may aspire to create a “melting pot” of different religious identities, many Indians seem to prefer a country more like a patchwork fabric, with clear lines between groups.

One of these religious fault lines – the relationship between India’s Hindu majority and the country’s smaller religious communities – has particular relevance in public life, especially in recent years under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP is often described as promoting a Hindu nationalist ideology .

The survey finds that Hindus tend to see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined: Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) say it is very important to be Hindu to be “truly” Indian.

Most Hindus (59%) also link Indian identity with being able to speak Hindi – one of dozens of languages that are widely spoken in India. And these two dimensions of national identity – being able to speak Hindi and being a Hindu – are closely connected. Among Hindus who say it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian, fully 80% also say it is very important to speak Hindi to be truly Indian.

The BJP’s appeal is greater among Hindus who closely associate their religious identity and the Hindi language with being “truly Indian.” In the 2019 national elections, 60% of Hindu voters who think it is very important to be Hindu and to speak Hindi to be truly Indian cast their vote for the BJP, compared with only a third among Hindu voters who feel less strongly about both these aspects of national identity.

Overall, among those who voted in the 2019 elections, three-in-ten Hindus take all three positions: saying it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian; saying the same about speaking Hindi; and casting their ballot for the BJP.

These views are considerably more common among Hindus in the largely Hindi-speaking Northern and Central regions of the country, where roughly half of all Hindu voters fall into this category, compared with just 5% in the South.

Whether Hindus who meet all three of these criteria qualify as “Hindu nationalists” may be debated, but they do express a heightened desire for maintaining clear lines between Hindus and other religious groups when it comes to whom they marry, who their friends are and whom they live among. For example, among Hindu BJP voters who link national identity with both religion and language, 83% say it is very important to stop Hindu women from marrying into another religion, compared with 61% among other Hindu voters.

This group also tends to be more religiously observant: 95% say religion is very important in their lives, and roughly three-quarters say they pray daily (73%). By comparison, among other Hindu voters, a smaller majority (80%) say religion is very important in their lives, and about half (53%) pray daily.

Even though Hindu BJP voters who link national identity with religion and language are more inclined to support a religiously segregated India, they also are  more  likely than other Hindu voters to express positive opinions about India’s religious diversity. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of this group – Hindus who say that being a Hindu and being able to speak Hindi are very important to be truly Indian  and  who voted for the BJP in 2019 – say religious diversity benefits India, compared with about half (47%) of other Hindu voters.

This finding suggests that for many Hindus, there is no contradiction between valuing religious diversity (at least in principle) and feeling that Hindus are somehow more authentically Indian than fellow citizens who follow other religions.

Among Indians overall, there is no overwhelming consensus on the benefits of religious diversity. On balance, more Indians see diversity as a benefit than view it as a liability for their country: Roughly half (53%) of Indian adults say India’s religious diversity benefits the country, while about a quarter (24%) see diversity as harmful, with similar figures among both Hindus and Muslims. But 24% of Indians do not take a clear position either way – they say diversity neither benefits nor harms the country, or they decline to answer the question. (See Chapter 2 for a discussion of attitudes toward diversity.)

India’s Muslim community, the second-largest religious group in the country, historically has had a complicated relationship with the Hindu majority. The two communities generally have lived peacefully side by side for centuries, but their shared history also is checkered by civil unrest and violence. Most recently, while the survey was being conducted, demonstrations broke out in parts of New Delhi and elsewhere over the government’s new citizenship law , which creates an expedited path to citizenship for immigrants from some neighboring countries – but not Muslims.

Today, India’s Muslims almost unanimously say they are very proud to be Indian (95%), and they express great enthusiasm for Indian culture: 85% agree with the statement that “Indian people are not perfect, but Indian culture is superior to others.”

Relatively few Muslims say their community faces “a lot” of discrimination in India (24%). In fact, the share of Muslims who see widespread discrimination against their community is similar to the share of Hindus who say Hindus face widespread religious discrimination in India (21%). (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of attitudes on religious discrimination.)

But personal experiences with discrimination among Muslims vary quite a bit regionally. Among Muslims in the North, 40% say they personally have faced religious discrimination in the last 12 months – much higher levels than reported in most other regions.

In addition, most Muslims across the country (65%), along with an identical share of Hindus (65%), see communal violence as a very big national problem. (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of Indians’ attitudes toward national problems.)

Like Hindus, Muslims prefer to live religiously segregated lives – not just when it comes to marriage and friendships, but also in some elements of public life. In particular, three-quarters of Muslims in India (74%) support having access to the existing system of Islamic courts, which handle family disputes (such as inheritance or divorce cases), in addition to the secular court system.

Muslims’ desire for religious segregation does not preclude tolerance of other groups – again similar to the pattern seen among Hindus. Indeed, a majority of Muslims who favor separate religious courts for their community say religious diversity benefits India (59%), compared with somewhat fewer of those who oppose religious courts for Muslims (50%).

Sidebar: Islamic courts in India

Since 1937, India’s Muslims have had the option of resolving family and inheritance-related cases in officially recognized Islamic courts, known as dar-ul-qaza. These courts are overseen by religious magistrates known as qazi and operate under Shariah principles . For example, while the rules of inheritance for most Indians are governed by the Indian Succession Act of 1925 and the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 (amended in 2005), Islamic inheritance practices differ in some ways, including who can be considered an heir and how much of the deceased person’s property they can inherit. India’s inheritance laws also take into account the differing traditions of other religious communities, such as Hindus and Christians, but their cases are handled in secular courts. Only the Muslim community has the option of having cases tried by a separate system of family courts. The decisions of the religious courts, however, are not legally binding , and the parties involved have the option of taking their case to secular courts if they are not satisfied with the decision of the religious court.

As of 2021, there are roughly 70 dar-ul-qaza in India. Most are in the states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Goa is the only state that does not recognize rulings by these courts, enforcing its own uniform civil code instead. Dar-ul-qaza are overseen by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board .

While these courts can grant divorces among Muslims, they are prohibited from approving divorces initiated through the practice known as triple talaq, in which a Muslim man instantly divorces his wife by saying the Arabic/Urdu word “talaq” (meaning “divorce”) three times. This practice was deemed unconstitutional by the Indian Supreme Court in 2017 and formally outlawed by the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament, in 2019. 1

Recent debates have emerged around Islamic courts. Some Indians have expressed concern that the rise of dar-ul-qaza could undermine the Indian judiciary, because a subset of the population is not bound to the same laws as everyone else. Others have argued that the rulings of Islamic courts are particularly unfair to women, although the prohibition of triple talaq may temper some of these criticisms. In its 2019 political manifesto , the BJP proclaimed a desire to create a national Uniform Civil Code, saying it would increase gender equality.

Some Indian commentators have voiced opposition to Islamic courts along with more broadly negative sentiments against Muslims, describing the rising numbers of dar-ul-qaza as the “Talibanization” of India , for example.

On the other hand, Muslim scholars have defended the dar-ul-qaza, saying they expedite justice because family disputes that would otherwise clog India’s courts can be handled separately, allowing the secular courts to focus their attention on other concerns.

Since 2018, the Hindu nationalist party Hindu Mahasabha (which does not hold any seats in Parliament) has tried to set up Hindu religious courts , known as Hindutva courts, aiming to play a role similar to dar-ul-qaza, only for the majority Hindu community. None of these courts have been recognized by the Indian government, and their rulings are not considered legally binding.

The seminal event in the modern history of Hindu-Muslim relations in the region was the partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan at the end of the British colonial period in 1947. Partition remains one of the largest movements of people across borders in recorded history, and in both countries the carving of new borders was accompanied by violence, rioting and looting .

More than seven decades later, the predominant view among Indian Muslims is that the partition of the subcontinent was “a bad thing” for Hindu-Muslim relations. Nearly half of Muslims say Partition hurt communal relations with Hindus (48%), while fewer say it was a good thing for Hindu-Muslim relations (30%). Among Muslims who prefer more religious segregation – that is, who say they would not accept a person of a different faith as a neighbor – an even higher share (60%) say Partition was a bad thing for Hindu-Muslim relations.

Sikhs, whose homeland of Punjab was split by Partition, are even more likely than Muslims to say Partition was a bad thing for Hindu-Muslim relations: Two-thirds of Sikhs (66%) take this position. And Sikhs ages 60 and older, whose parents most likely lived through Partition, are more inclined than younger Sikhs to say the partition of the country was bad for communal relations (74% vs. 64%).

While Sikhs and Muslims are more likely to say Partition was a bad thing than a good thing, Hindus lean in the opposite direction: 43% of Hindus say Partition was beneficial for Hindu-Muslim relations, while 37% see it as a bad thing.

Context for the survey

Interviews were conducted after the conclusion of the 2019 national parliamentary elections and after the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under the Indian Constitution. In December 2019, protests against the country’s new citizenship law broke out in several regions.

Fieldwork could not be conducted in the Kashmir Valley and a few districts elsewhere due to security concerns. These locations include some heavily Muslim areas, which is part of the reason why Muslims make up 11% of the survey’s total sample, while India’s adult population is roughly 13% Muslim, according to the most recent census data that is publicly available, from 2011. In addition, it is possible that in some other parts of the country, interreligious tensions over the new citizenship law may have slightly depressed participation in the survey by potential Muslim respondents.

Nevertheless, the survey’s estimates of religious beliefs, behaviors and attitudes can be reported with a high degree of confidence for India’s total population, because the number of people living in the excluded areas (Manipur, Sikkim, the Kashmir Valley and a few other districts) is not large enough to affect the overall results at the national level. About 98% of India’s total population had a chance of being selected for this survey.

Greater caution is warranted when looking at India’s Muslims separately, as a distinct population. The survey cannot speak to the experiences and views of Kashmiri Muslims. Still, the survey does represent the beliefs, behaviors and attitudes of around 95% of India’s overall Muslim population.

These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted face-to-face nationally among 29,999 Indian adults. Local interviewers administered the survey between Nov. 17, 2019, and March 23, 2020, in 17 languages. The survey covered all states and union territories of India, with the exceptions of Manipur and Sikkim, where the rapidly developing COVID-19 situation prevented fieldwork from starting in the spring of 2020, and the remote territories of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep; these areas are home to about a quarter of 1% of the Indian population. The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir was covered by the survey, though no fieldwork was conducted in the Kashmir region itself due to security concerns.

This study, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, is part of a larger effort by Pew Research Center to understand religious change and its impact on societies around the world. The Center previously has conducted religion-focused surveys across sub-Saharan Africa ; the Middle East-North Africa region and many other countries with large Muslim populations ; Latin America ; Israel ; Central and Eastern Europe ; Western Europe ; and the United States .

The rest of this Overview covers attitudes on five broad topics: caste and discrimination; religious conversion; religious observances and beliefs; how people define their religious identity, including what kind of behavior is considered acceptable to be a Hindu or a Muslim; and the connection between economic development and religious observance.

Caste is another dividing line in Indian society, and not just among Hindus

Religion is not the only fault line in Indian society. In some regions of the country, significant shares of people perceive widespread, caste-based discrimination.

The caste system is an ancient social hierarchy based on occupation and economic status. People are born into a particular caste and tend to keep many aspects of their social life within its boundaries, including whom they marry. Even though the system’s origins are in historical Hindu writings , today Indians nearly universally identify with a caste, regardless of whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain.

Overall, the majority of Indian adults say they are a member of a Scheduled Caste (SC) – often referred to as Dalits (25%) – Scheduled Tribe (ST) (9%) or Other Backward Class (OBC) (35%). 2

Buddhists in India nearly universally identify themselves in these categories, including 89% who are Dalits (sometimes referred to by the pejorative term “untouchables”).

Members of SC/ST/OBC groups traditionally formed the lower social and economic rungs of Indian society, and historically they have faced discrimination and unequal economic opportunities . The practice of untouchability in India ostracizes members of many of these communities, especially Dalits, although the Indian Constitution prohibits caste-based discrimination, including untouchability, and in recent decades the government has enacted economic advancement policies like reserved seats in universities and government jobs for Dalits, Scheduled Tribes and OBC communities.

Roughly 30% of Indians do not belong to these protected groups and are classified as “General Category.” This includes higher castes such as Brahmins (4%), traditionally the priestly caste. Indeed, each broad category includes several sub-castes – sometimes hundreds – with their own social and economic hierarchies.

Three-quarters of Jains (76%) identify with General Category castes, as do 46% of both Muslims and Sikhs.

Caste-based discrimination, as well as the government’s efforts to compensate for past discrimination, are politically charged topics in India . But the survey finds that most Indians do not perceive widespread caste-based discrimination. Just one-in-five Indians say there is a lot of discrimination against members of SCs, while 19% say there is a lot of discrimination against STs and somewhat fewer (16%) see high levels of discrimination against OBCs. Members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are slightly more likely than others to perceive widespread discrimination against their two groups. Still, large majorities of people in these categories do not think they face a lot of discrimination.

These attitudes vary by region, however. Among Southern Indians, for example, 30% see widespread discrimination against Dalits, compared with 13% in the Central part of the country. And among the Dalit community in the South, even more (43%) say their community faces a lot of discrimination, compared with 27% among Southern Indians in the General Category who say the Dalit community faces widespread discrimination in India.

A higher share of Dalits in the South and Northeast than elsewhere in the country say they, personally, have faced discrimination in the last 12 months because of their caste: 30% of Dalits in the South say this, as do 38% in the Northeast.

Although caste discrimination may not be perceived as widespread nationally, caste remains a potent factor in Indian society. Most Indians from other castes say they would be willing to have someone belonging to a Scheduled Caste as a neighbor (72%). But a similarly large majority of Indians overall (70%) say that most or all of their close friends share their caste. And Indians tend to object to marriages across caste lines, much as they object to interreligious marriages. 3

Overall, 64% of Indians say it is very important to stop women in their community from marrying into other castes, and about the same share (62%) say it is very important to stop men in their community from marrying into other castes. These figures vary only modestly across members of different castes. For example, nearly identical shares of Dalits and members of General Category castes say stopping inter-caste marriages is very important.

Majorities of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains consider stopping inter-caste marriage of both men and women a high priority. By comparison, fewer Buddhists and Christians say it is very important to stop such marriages – although for majorities of both groups, stopping people from marrying outside their caste is at least “somewhat” important.

People surveyed in India’s South and Northeast see greater caste discrimination in their communities, and they also raise fewer objections to inter-caste marriages than do Indians overall. Meanwhile, college-educated Indians are less likely than those with less education to say stopping inter-caste marriages is a high priority. But, even within the most highly educated group, roughly half say preventing such marriages is very important. (See Chapter 4 for more analysis of Indians’ views on caste.)

In recent years, conversion of people belonging to lower castes (including Dalits) away from Hinduism – a traditionally non-proselytizing religion – to proselytizing religions, especially Christianity, has been a contentious political issue in India. As of early 2021, nine states have enacted laws against proselytism , and some previous surveys have shown that half of Indians support legal bans on religious conversions. 4

This survey, though, finds that religious switching, or conversion, has a minimal impact on the overall size of India’s religious groups. For example, according to the survey, 82% of Indians say they were raised Hindu, and a nearly identical share say they are currently Hindu, showing no net losses for the group through conversion to other religions. Other groups display similar levels of stability.

Changes in India’s religious landscape over time are largely a result of differences in fertility rates among religious groups, not conversion.

Respondents were asked two separate questions to measure religious switching: “What is your present religion, if any?” and, later in the survey, “In what religion were you raised, if any?” Overall, 98% of respondents give the same answer to both these questions.

An overall pattern of stability in the share of religious groups is accompanied by little net gain from movement into, or out of, most religious groups. Among Hindus, for instance, any conversion out of the group is matched by conversion into the group: 0.7% of respondents say they were raised Hindu but now identify as something else, and although Hindu texts and traditions do not agree on any formal process for conversion into the religion, roughly the same share (0.8%) say they were  not raised Hindu but now identify as Hindu. 5  Most of these new followers of Hinduism are married to Hindus.

Similarly, 0.3% of respondents have left Islam since childhood, matched by an identical share who say they were raised in other religions (or had no childhood religion) and have since become Muslim.

For Christians, however, there are some net gains from conversion: 0.4% of survey respondents are former Hindus who now identify as Christian, while 0.1% are former Christians.

Three-quarters of India’s Hindu converts to Christianity (74%) are concentrated in the Southern part of the country – the region with the largest Christian population. As a result, the Christian population of the South shows a slight increase within the lifetime of survey respondents: 6% of Southern Indians say they were raised Christian, while 7% say they are currently Christian.

Some Christian converts (16%) reside in the East as well (the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal); about two-thirds of all Christians in the East (64%) belong to Scheduled Tribes.

Nationally, the vast majority of former Hindus who are now Christian belong to Scheduled Castes (48%), Scheduled Tribes (14%) or Other Backward Classes (26%). And former Hindus are much more likely than the Indian population overall to say there is a lot of discrimination against lower castes in India. For example, nearly half of converts to Christianity (47%) say there is a lot of discrimination against Scheduled Castes in India, compared with 20% of the overall population who perceive this level of discrimination against Scheduled Castes. Still, relatively few converts say they, personally, have faced discrimination due to their caste in the last 12 months (12%).

Though their specific practices and beliefs may vary, all of India’s major religious communities are highly observant by standard measures. For instance, the vast majority of Indians, across all major faiths, say that religion is very important in their lives. And at least three-quarters of each major religion’s followers say they know a great deal about their own religion and its practices. For example, 81% of Indian Buddhists claim a great deal of knowledge about the Buddhist religion and its practices.

Indian Muslims are slightly more likely than Hindus to consider religion very important in their lives (91% vs. 84%). Muslims also are modestly more likely than Hindus to say they know a great deal about their own religion (84% vs. 75%).

Significant portions of each religious group also pray daily, with Christians among the most likely to do so (77%) – even though Christians are the least likely of the six groups to say religion is very important in their lives (76%). Most Hindus and Jains also pray daily (59% and 73%, respectively) and say they perform puja daily (57% and 81%), either at home or at a temple. 6

Generally, younger and older Indians, those with different educational backgrounds, and men and women are similar in their levels of religious observance. South Indians are the least likely to say religion is very important in their lives (69%), and the South is the only region where fewer than half of people report praying daily (37%). While Hindus, Muslims and Christians in the South are all less likely than their counterparts elsewhere in India to say religion is very important to them, the lower rate of prayer in the South is driven mainly by Hindus: Three-in-ten Southern Hindus report that they pray daily (30%), compared with roughly two-thirds (68%) of Hindus in the rest of the country (see “ People in the South differ from rest of the country in their views of religion, national identity ” below for further discussion of religious differences in Southern India).

The survey also asked about three rites of passage: religious ceremonies for birth (or infancy), marriage and death. Members of all of India’s major religious communities tend to see these rites as highly important. For example, the vast majority of Muslims (92%), Christians (86%) and Hindus (85%) say it is very important to have a religious burial or cremation for their loved ones.

The survey also asked about practices specific to particular religions, such as whether people have received purification by bathing in holy bodies of water, like the Ganges River, a rite closely associated with Hinduism. About two-thirds of Hindus have done this (65%). Most Hindus also have holy basil (the tulsi plant) in their homes, as do most Jains (72% and 62%, respectively). And about three-quarters of Sikhs follow the Sikh practice of keeping their hair long (76%).

For more on religious practices across India’s religious groups, see Chapter 7 .

Nearly all Indians say they believe in God (97%), and roughly 80% of people in most religious groups say they are absolutely certain that God exists. The main exception is Buddhists, one-third of whom say they do not believe in God. Still, among Buddhists who do think there is a God, most say they are absolutely certain in this belief.

While belief in God is close to universal in India, the survey finds a wide range of views about the type of deity or deities that Indians believe in. The prevailing view is that there is one God “with many manifestations” (54%). But about one-third of the public says simply: “There is only one God” (35%). Far fewer say there are many gods (6%).

Even though Hinduism is sometimes referred to as a polytheistic religion , very few Hindus (7%) take the position that there are multiple gods. Instead, the most common position among Hindus (as well as among Jains) is that there is “only one God with many manifestations” (61% among Hindus and 54% among Jains).

Among Hindus, those who say religion is very important in their lives are more likely than other Hindus to believe in one God with many manifestations (63% vs. 50%) and less likely to say there are many gods (6% vs. 12%).

By contrast, majorities of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs say there is only one God. And among Buddhists, the most common response is also a belief in one God. Among all these groups, however, about one-in-five or more say God has many manifestations, a position closer to their Hindu compatriots’ concept of God.

Most Hindus feel close to multiple gods, but Shiva, Hanuman and Ganesha are most popular

Traditionally, many Hindus have a “personal god,” or  ishta devata:  A particular god or goddess with whom they feel a personal connection. The survey asked all Indian Hindus who say they believe in God which god they feel closest to – showing them 15 images of gods on a card as possible options – and the vast majority of Hindus selected more than one god or indicated that they have many personal gods (84%). 7  This is true not only among Hindus who say they believe in many gods (90%) or in one God with many manifestations (87%), but also among those who say there is only one God (82%).

The god that Hindus most commonly feel close to is Shiva (44%). In addition, about one-third of Hindus feel close to Hanuman or Ganesha (35% and 32%, respectively).

There is great regional variation in how close India’s Hindus feel to some gods. For example, 46% of Hindus in India’s West feel close to Ganesha, but only 15% feel this way in the Northeast. And 46% of Hindus in the Northeast feel close to Krishna, while just 14% in the South say the same.

Feelings of closeness for Lord Ram are especially strong in the Central region (27%), which includes what Hindus claim is his ancient birthplace , Ayodhya. The location in Ayodhya where many Hindus believe Ram was born has been a source of controversy: Hindu mobs demolished a mosque on the site in 1992, claiming that a Hindu temple originally existed there. In 2019, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the demolished mosque had been built on top of a preexisting non-Islamic structure and that the land should be given to Hindus to build a temple, with another location in the area given to the Muslim community to build a new mosque. (For additional findings on belief in God, see Chapter 12 .)

Sidebar: Despite economic advancement, few signs that importance of religion is declining

A prominent theory in the social sciences hypothesizes that as countries advance economically, their populations tend to become less religious, often leading to wider social change. Known as “secularization theory,” it particularly reflects the experience of Western European countries from the end of World War II to the present.

Despite rapid economic growth, India’s population so far shows few, if any, signs of losing its religion. For instance, both the Indian census and the new survey find virtually no growth in the minuscule share of people who claim no religious identity. And religion is prominent in the lives of Indians regardless of their socioeconomic status. Generally, across the country, there is little difference in personal religious observance between urban and rural residents or between those who are college educated versus those who are not. Overwhelming shares among all these groups say that religion is very important in their lives, that they pray regularly and that they believe in God.

Nearly all religious groups show the same patterns. The biggest exception is Christians, among whom those with higher education and those who reside in urban areas show somewhat lower levels of observance. For example, among Christians who have a college degree, 59% say religion is very important in their life, compared with 78% among those who have less education.

The survey does show a slight decline in the perceived importance of religion during the lifetime of respondents, though the vast majority of Indians indicate that religion remains central to their lives, and this is true among both younger and older adults.

Nearly nine-in-ten Indian adults say religion was very important to their family when they were growing up (88%), while a slightly lower share say religion is very important to them now (84%). The pattern is identical when looking only at India’s majority Hindu population. Among Muslims in India, the same shares say religion was very important to their family growing up and is very important to them now (91% each).

The states of Southern India (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Telangana) show the biggest downward trend in the perceived importance of religion over respondents’ lifetimes: 76% of Indians who live in the South say religion was very important to their family growing up, compared with 69% who say religion is personally very important to them now. Slight declines in the importance of religion, by this measure, also are seen in the Western part of the country (Goa, Gujarat and Maharashtra) and in the North, although large majorities in all regions of the country say religion is very important in their lives today.

Despite a strong desire for religious segregation, India’s religious groups share patriotic feelings, cultural values and some religious beliefs. For instance, overwhelming shares across India’s religious communities say they are very proud to be Indian, and most agree that Indian culture is superior to others.

Similarly, Indians of different religious backgrounds hold elders in high respect. For instance, nine-in-ten or more Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Jains say that respecting elders is very important to what being a member of their religious group means to them (e.g., for Hindus, it’s a very important part of their Hindu identity). Christians and Sikhs also overwhelmingly share this sentiment. And among all people surveyed in all six groups, three-quarters or more say that respecting elders is very important to being truly Indian.

Within all six religious groups, eight-in-ten or more also say that helping the poor and needy is a crucial part of their religious identity.

Beyond cultural parallels, many people mix traditions from multiple religions into their practices: As a result of living side by side for generations, India’s minority groups often engage in practices that are more closely associated with Hindu traditions than their own. For instance, many Muslim, Sikh and Christian women in India say they wear a bindi (a forehead marking, often worn by married women), even though putting on a bindi has Hindu origins.

Similarly, many people embrace beliefs not traditionally associated with their faith: Muslims in India are just as likely as Hindus to say they believe in karma (77% each), and 54% of Indian Christians share this view. 8  Nearly three-in-ten Muslims and Christians say they believe in reincarnation (27% and 29%, respectively). While these may seem like theological contradictions, for many Indians, calling oneself a Muslim or a Christian does not preclude believing in karma or reincarnation – beliefs that do not have a traditional, doctrinal basis in Islam or Christianity.

Most Muslims and Christians say they don’t participate in celebrations of Diwali, the Indian festival of lights that is traditionally celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. But substantial minorities of Christians (31%) and Muslims (20%) report that they do celebrate Diwali. Celebrating Diwali is especially common among Muslims in the West, where 39% say they participate in the festival, and in the South (33%).

Not only do some followers of all these religions participate in a celebration (Diwali) that consumes most of the country once a year, but some members of the majority Hindu community celebrate Muslim and Christian festivals, too: 7% of Indian Hindus say they celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid, and 17% celebrate Christmas.

While there is some mixing of religious celebrations and traditions within India’s diverse population, many Hindus do not approve of this. In fact, while 17% of the nation’s Hindus say they participate in Christmas celebrations, about half of Hindus (52%) say that doing so disqualifies a person from being Hindu (compared with 35% who say a person can be Hindu if they celebrate Christmas). An even greater share of Hindus (63%) say a person cannot be Hindu if they celebrate the Islamic festival of Eid – a view that is more widely held in Northern, Central, Eastern and Northeastern India than the South or West.

Hindus are divided on whether beliefs and practices such as believing in God, praying and going to the temple are necessary to be a Hindu. But one behavior that a clear majority of Indian Hindus feel is incompatible with Hinduism is eating beef: 72% of Hindus in India say a person who eats beef cannot be a Hindu. That is even higher than the percentages of Hindus who say a person cannot be Hindu if they reject belief in God (49%), never go to a temple (48%) or never perform prayers (48%).

Attitudes toward beef appear to be part of a regional and cultural divide among Hindus: Southern Indian Hindus are considerably less likely than others to disqualify beef eaters from being Hindu (50% vs. 83% in the Northern and Central parts of the country). And, at least in part, Hindus’ views on beef and Hindu identity are linked with a preference for religious segregation and elements of Hindu nationalism. For example, Hindus who take a strong position against eating beef are more likely than others to say they would not accept followers of other religions as their neighbors (49% vs. 30%) and to say it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian (68% vs. 51%).

Relatedly, 44% of Hindus say they are vegetarians, and an additional 33% say they abstain from eating certain meats. Hindus traditionally view cows as sacred, and laws pertaining to cow slaughter have been a recent flashpoint in India . At the same time, Hindus are not alone in linking beef consumption with religious identity: 82% of Sikhs and 85% of Jains surveyed say that a person who eats beef cannot be a member of their religious groups, either. A majority of Sikhs (59%) and fully 92% of Jains say they are vegetarians, including 67% of Jains who do not eat root vegetables . 9  (For more data on religion and dietary habits, see Chapter 10 .)

Sidebar: People in the South differ from rest of the country in their views of religion, national identity

The survey consistently finds that people in the South (the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, and the union territory of Puducherry) differ from Indians elsewhere in the country in their views on religion, politics and identity.

For example, by a variety of measures, people in the South are somewhat less religious than those in other regions – 69% say religion is very important in their lives, versus 92% in the Central part of the country. And 37% say they pray every day, compared with more than half of Indians in other regions. People in the South also are less segregated by religion or caste – whether that involves their friendship circles, the kind of neighbors they prefer or how they feel about intermarriage. (See Chapter 3 .)

Hindu nationalist sentiments also appear to have less of a foothold in the South. Among Hindus, those in the South (42%) are far less likely than those in Central states (83%) or the North (69%) to say being Hindu is very important to be truly Indian. And in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the BJP’s lowest vote share came in the South. In the survey, just 19% of Hindus in the region say they voted for the BJP, compared with roughly two-thirds in the Northern (68%) and Central (65%) parts of the country who say they voted for the ruling party.

Culturally and politically, people in the South have pushed back against the BJP’s restrictions on cow slaughter and efforts to nationalize the Hindi language . These factors may contribute to the BJP’s lower popularity in the South, where more people prefer regional parties or the Indian National Congress party.

These differences in attitudes and practices exist in a wider context of economic disparities between the South and other regions of the country. Over time, Southern states have seen stronger economic growth than the Northern and Central parts of the country. And women and people belonging to lower castes in the South have fared better economically than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Even though three-in-ten people in the South say there is widespread caste discrimination in India, the region also has a history of anti-caste movements . Indeed, one author has attributed the economic growth of the South largely to the flattening of caste hierarchies.

Muslim identity in India

Most Muslims in India say a person cannot be Muslim if they never pray or attend a mosque. Similarly, about six-in-ten say that celebrating Diwali or Christmas is incompatible with being a member of the Muslim community. At the same time, a substantial minority express a degree of open-mindedness on who can be a Muslim, with fully one-third (34%) saying a person can be Muslim even if they don’t believe in God. (The survey finds that 6% of self-described Muslims in India say they do not believe in God; see “ Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived ” above.)

Like Hindus, Muslims have dietary restrictions that resonate as powerful markers of identity. Three-quarters of Indian Muslims (77%) say that a person cannot be Muslim if they eat pork, which is even higher than the share who say a person cannot be Muslim if they do not believe in God (60%) or never attend mosque (61%).

Indian Muslims also report high levels of religious commitment by a host of conventional measures: 91% say religion is very important in their lives, two-thirds (66%) say they pray at least once a day, and seven-in-ten say they attend mosque at least once a week – with even higher attendance among Muslim men (93%).

By all these measures, Indian Muslims are broadly comparable to Muslims in the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in those countries in late 2011 and early 2012. In Pakistan, for example, 94% of Muslims said religion is very important in their lives , while 81% of Bangladeshi Muslims said the same. Muslims in India are somewhat more likely than those elsewhere in South Asia to say they regularly worship at a mosque (70% in India vs. 59% in Pakistan and 53% in Bangladesh), with the difference mainly driven by the share of women who attend.

At the same time, Muslims in India are slightly less likely to say there is “only one true” interpretation of Islam (72% in Pakistan, 69% in Bangladesh, 63% in India), as opposed to multiple interpretations.

When it comes to their religious beliefs, Indian Muslims in some ways resemble Indian Hindus more than they resemble Muslims in neighboring countries. For example, Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh almost universally say they believe in heaven and angels, but Indian Muslims seem more skeptical: 58% say they believe in heaven and 53% express belief in angels. Among Indian Hindus, similarly, 56% believe in heaven and 49% believe in angels.

Majority of Muslim women in India oppose ‘triple talaq’ (Islamic divorce)

Many Indian Muslims historically have followed the Hanafi school of thought, which for centuries allowed men to divorce their wives by saying “talaq” (which translates as “divorce” in Arabic and Urdu) three times. Traditionally, there was supposed to be a waiting period and attempts at reconciliation in between each use of the word, and it was deeply frowned upon (though technically permissible) for a man to pronounce “talaq” three times quickly in a row. India’s Supreme Court ruled triple talaq unconstitutional in 2017, and it was banned by legislation in 2019 .

Most Indian Muslims (56%) say Muslim men should not be allowed to divorce this way. Still, 37% of Indian Muslims say they support triple talaq, with Muslim men (42%) more likely than Muslim women (32%) to take this position. A majority of Muslim women (61%) oppose triple talaq.

Highly religious Muslims – i.e., those who say religion is very important in their lives – also are more likely than other Muslims to say Muslim men should be able to divorce their wives simply by saying “talaq” three times (39% vs. 26%).

Triple talaq seems to have the most support among Muslims in the Southern and Northeastern regions of India, where half or more of Muslims say it should be legal (58% and 50%, respectively), although 12% of Muslims in the South and 16% in the Northeast do not take a position on the issue either way.

Sikhism is one of four major religions – along with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – that originated on the Indian subcontinent. The Sikh religion emerged in Punjab in the 15th century, when Guru Nanak, who is revered as the founder of Sikhism, became the first in a succession of 10 gurus (teachers) in the religion.

Today, India’s Sikhs remain concentrated in the state of Punjab. One feature of the Sikh religion is a distinctive sense of community, also known as “Khalsa” (which translates as “ones who are pure”). Observant Sikhs differentiate themselves from others in several ways, including keeping their hair uncut. Today, about three-quarters of Sikh men and women in India say they keep their hair long (76%), and two-thirds say it is very important to them that children in their families also keep their hair long (67%). (For more analysis of Sikhs’ views on passing religious traditions on to their children, see Chapter 8 .)

Sikhs are more likely than Indian adults overall to say they attend religious services every day – 40% of Sikhs say they go to the gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) daily. By comparison, 14% of Hindus say they go to a Hindu temple every day. Moreover, the vast majority of Sikhs (94%) regard their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, as the word of God, and many (37%) say they read it, or listen to recitations of it, every day.

Sikhs in India also incorporate other religious traditions into their practice. Some Sikhs (9%) say they follow Sufi orders, which are linked with Islam, and about half (52%) say they have a lot in common with Hindus. Roughly one-in-five Indian Sikhs say they have prayed, meditated or performed a ritual at a Hindu temple.

Sikh-Hindu relations were marked by violence in the 1970s and 1980s, when demands for a separate Sikh state covering the Punjab regions in both India and Pakistan (also known as the Khalistan movement) reached their apex. In 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards as revenge for Indian paramilitary forces storming the Sikh Golden Temple in pursuit of Sikh militants. Anti-Sikh riots ensued in Northern India, especially in the state of Punjab.

According to the Indian census, the vast majority of Sikhs in India (77%) still live in Punjab, where Sikhs make up 58% of the adult population. And 93% of Punjabi Sikhs say they are very proud to live in the state.

Sikhs also are overwhelmingly proud of their Indian identity. A near-universal share of Sikhs say they are very proud to be Indian (95%), and the vast majority (70%) say a person who disrespects India cannot be a Sikh. And like India’s other religious groups, most Sikhs do not see evidence of widespread discrimination against their community – just 14% say Sikhs face a lot of discrimination in India, and 18% say they personally have faced religious discrimination in the last year.

At the same time, Sikhs are more likely than other religious communities to see communal violence as a very big problem in the country. Nearly eight-in-ten Sikhs (78%) rate communal violence as a major issue, compared with 65% of Hindus and Muslims.

The BJP has attempted to financially compensate Sikhs for some of the violence that occurred in 1984 after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, but relatively few Sikh voters (19%) report having voted for the BJP in the 2019 parliamentary elections. The survey finds that 33% of Sikhs preferred the Indian National Congress Party – Gandhi’s party.

• Ahmed, Hilal. 2019. “ Siyasi Muslims: A story of political Islams in India .” ↩
• All survey respondents, regardless of religion, were asked, “Are you from a General Category, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class?” By contrast, in the 2011 census of India, only Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists could be enumerated as members of Scheduled Castes, while Scheduled Tribes could include followers of all religions. General Category and Other Backward Classes were not measured in the census. A detailed analysis of differences between 2011 census data on caste and survey data can be found here . ↩
• According to the 2004 and 2009 National Election Studies by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), roughly half of Indians or more said that marriages of boys and girls from different castes should be  banned . In 2004, a majority also said this about people from different religions. ↩
• In both the 2004 and 2009 National Election Studies (organized by CSDS), roughly half of Indians said that “There should be a legal ban on religious conversions.” ↩
• This includes 0.2% of all Indian adults who now identify as Hindu but give an ambiguous response on how they were raised – either saying “some other religion” or saying they don’t know their childhood religion. ↩
• Puja is a specific worship ritual that involves prayer along with rites like offering flowers and food, using vermillion, singing and chanting. ↩
• Fifteen named deities were available for selection, though no answer options were read aloud. Respondents could select up to three of those 15 deities by naming them or selecting the corresponding image shown on a card. The answer option “another god” was available on the card or if any other deity name was volunteered by the respondent. Other possible answer options included “I do not have a god I feel closest to” and “I have many personal gods,” though neither was on the card. See the questionnaire or topline for the full list of gods offered. ↩
• The religious origins of karma are debated by scholars, but the concept has deep roots in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. ↩
• For an analysis of Jain theology on the concept of  jiva  (soul) see Chapple, Christopher K. 2014. “Life All Around: Soul in Jainism.” In Biernacki, Loriliai and Philip Clayton, eds. “ Panentheism Across the World’s Traditions .” ↩

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Beliefs & Practices
• Christianity
• International Political Values
• International Religious Freedom & Restrictions
• Interreligious Relations
• Other Religions
• Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project
• Religious Characteristics of Demographic Groups
• Religious Identity & Affiliation
• Religiously Unaffiliated
• Size & Demographic Characteristics of Religious Groups

Where is the most religious place in the world?

Rituals honoring deceased ancestors vary widely in east and southeast asia, 6 facts about religion and spirituality in east asian societies, religion and spirituality in east asian societies, 8 facts about atheists, most popular, report materials.

• Questionnaire
• இந்தியாவில் மதம்: சகிப்புத்தன்மையும், தனிமைப்படுத்துதலும்
• भारत में धर्म: सहिष्णुता और अलगाव
• ভারতে ধর্ম: সহনশীলতা এবং পৃথকীকরণ
• भारतातील धर्म : सहिष्णुता आणि विलग्नता
• Related: Religious Composition of India
• How Pew Research Center Conducted Its India Survey
• Questionnaire: Show Cards
• India Survey Dataset

901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

© 2024 Pew Research Center

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction

The term Hinduism

• General nature of Hinduism
• Veda, Brahmans, and issues of religious authority
• Doctrine of atman - brahman
• Karma, samsara, and moksha
• Dharma and the three paths
• Ashrama s: the four stages of life
• Indo-European sources
• Other sources: the process of “Sanskritization”
• Indigenous prehistoric religion
• Religion in the Indus valley civilization
• Survival of archaic religious practices
• The Vedic period (2nd millennium–7th century bce )
• Challenges to Brahmanism (6th–2nd century bce )
• The rise of the major sects: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism
• The development of temples
• The spread of Hinduism in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
• Questions of influence on the Mediterranean world
• The rise of devotional Hinduism (4th–11th century)
• The challenge of Islam and popular religion
• Temple complexes
• Sectarian movements
• Bhakti movements
• Brahmo Samaj
• Ramakrishna Mission
• Theosophical Society
• Aurobindo Ashram
• Other reform movements
• Mahatma Gandhi
• The religious situation after independence
• Hinduism outside India
• Importance of the Vedas
• The components of the Vedas
• The Rigveda
• The Yajurveda and Samaveda
• The Atharvaveda
• The Brahmanas and Aranyakas
• Cosmogony and cosmology
• Ethical and social doctrines
• The sacred: nature, humanity, and God
• Vedic and Brahmanic rites
• The Upanishads
• The Vedangas
• Dharma-sutras and Dharma-shastras
• Smriti texts
• The Ramayana
• The Mahabharata
• The Bhagavadgita
• Myths of time and eternity
• Stories of the gods
• Vaishnavism
• Narratives of culture heroes
• Myths of holy rivers and holy places
• Philosophical sutras and the rise of the Six Schools of philosophy
• Shaiva Agamas
• Vaishnava Samhitas
• Shakta Tantras
• Nature of Tantric tradition
• Tantric and Shakta views of nature, humanity, and the sacred
• Tantric ritual and magical practices
• Tantric and Shakta ethical and social doctrines
• Vernacular literatures
• Divination, spirit possession, and healing
• Women’s religious practices
• Samskara s: rites of passage
• Daily offerings
• Other private rites
• Temple worship
• Shaiva rites
• Vaishnava rites
• Sacred times and festivals
• Social structure
• Social protest
• Renunciants and the rejection of social order
• Sectarian symbols
• Yantra and mandala
• Lingam and yoni
• Visual theology in icons
• Religious principles in sculpture and painting
• Religious organization of sacred architecture
• Theater and dance
• Hinduism and religions of Indian origin
• Hinduism and Islam
• Hinduism and Christianity
• Diasporic Hinduism

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• HistoryWorld - History of Hinduism
• McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia - Hinduism or Hindu Religion
• World Religious and Spirituality Project - Hinduism
• IndiaNetzone - Hinduism
• World History Encyclopedia - Hinduism
• Texas State Historical Association - Handbook of Texas - Amarillo, Texas, United States
• Hinduism - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Hinduism - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Recent News

Hinduism , major world religion originating on the Indian subcontinent and comprising several and varied systems of philosophy , belief, and ritual . Although the name Hinduism is relatively new, having been coined by British writers in the first decades of the 19th century, it refers to a rich cumulative tradition of texts and practices, some of which date to the 2nd millennium bce or possibly earlier. If the Indus valley civilization (3rd–2nd millennium bce ) was the earliest source of these traditions, as some scholars hold, then Hinduism is the oldest living religion on Earth. Its many sacred texts in Sanskrit and vernacular languages served as a vehicle for spreading the religion to other parts of the world, though ritual and the visual and performing arts also played a significant role in its transmission. From about the 4th century ce , Hinduism had a dominant presence in Southeast Asia , one that would last for more than 1,000 years.

In the early 21st century, Hinduism had nearly one billion adherents worldwide and was the religion of about 80 percent of India ’s population. Despite its global presence, however, it is best understood through its many distinctive regional manifestations .

The term Hinduism became familiar as a designator of religious ideas and practices distinctive to India with the publication of books such as Hinduism (1877) by Sir Monier Monier-Williams, the notable Oxford scholar and author of an influential Sanskrit dictionary. Initially it was an outsiders’ term, building on centuries-old usages of the word Hindu. Early travelers to the Indus valley , beginning with the Greeks and Persians, spoke of its inhabitants as “Hindu” (Greek: ‘indoi ), and, in the 16th century, residents of India themselves began very slowly to employ the term to distinguish themselves from the Turks. Gradually the distinction became primarily religious rather than ethnic, geographic, or cultural.

Since the late 19th century, Hindus have reacted to the term Hinduism in several ways. Some have rejected it in favor of indigenous formulations. Others have preferred “ Vedic religion ,” using the term Vedic to refer not only to the ancient religious texts known as the Vedas but also to a fluid corpus of sacred works in multiple languages and an orthoprax (traditionally sanctioned) way of life. Still others have chosen to call the religion sanatana dharma (“eternal law”), a formulation made popular in the 19th century and emphasizing the timeless elements of the tradition that are perceived to transcend local interpretations and practice. Finally, others, perhaps the majority, have simply accepted the term Hinduism or its analogues , especially hindu dharma (Hindu moral and religious law), in various Indic languages .

Since the early 20th century, textbooks on Hinduism have been written by Hindus themselves, often under the rubric of sanatana dharma . These efforts at self-explanation add a new layer to an elaborate tradition of explaining practice and doctrine that dates to the 1st millennium bce . The roots of Hinduism can be traced back much farther—both textually, to the schools of commentary and debate preserved in epic and Vedic writings from the 2nd millennium bce , and visually, through artistic representations of yaksha s (luminous spirits associated with specific locales and natural phenomena) and naga s (cobralike divinities), which were worshipped from about 400 bce . The roots of the tradition are also sometimes traced back to the female terra-cotta figurines found ubiquitously in excavations of sites associated with the Indus valley civilization and sometimes interpreted as goddesses.

• 130 years of Swami Vivekananda's iconic Chicago speech that put Hinduism on world map

130 years of Swami Vivekananda's iconic Chicago speech that put Hinduism on world map

• "I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance."
• "We believe not only in universal toleration but we accept all religions as true."
• "The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: 'Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.'"
• "If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character."
• "Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair."
• "I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal."
• "The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth."
• "As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."
• "Let us preach the ideal, and let us not quarrel over the non-essential."

Visual Stories

2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: India

• Executive Summary

The constitution provides for freedom of conscience and the right of all individuals to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion; mandates a secular state; requires the state to treat all religions impartially; and prohibits discrimination based on religion.  It also states citizens must practice their faith in a way that does not adversely affect public order, morality, or health.  Ten of 28 states have laws restricting religious conversions for all faiths.  Some of these states also impose penalties specifically against forced religious conversions for the purpose of marriage.

During the year, some members of religious minority groups challenged the government’s ability and willingness to protect them from violence, investigate crimes against members of religious minority groups, and protect their freedom of religion or belief.  In February, a crowd of 20,000 Christians gathered in New Delhi to protest increasing violence against them and request greater protections for the Christian community.  In March, a group of 93 former senior civil servants wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing concerns regarding “continued harassment” of Christians in particular by government officials and political party leaders associated with the government.  Christians and Muslims were arrested under laws banning forced religious conversions, which religious groups said in some cases were used to harass and imprison members of religious minority groups on false and fabricated charges or for lawful religious practices.  In some cases, Christian groups said local police aided mobs that disrupted worship services over accusations of conversion activities or stood by while mobs attacked Christians and then arrested the victims on conversion charges.

In December, Parliament approved new criminal laws that included provisions to criminalize making false promises and concealing one’s identity to sexually exploit a woman, including for marriage.  Media commentators said the new laws could be used to punish Muslim men purportedly seeking to marry non-Muslim women to convert them to Islam.  Opponents said the new laws were unnecessary and the strict penalties were out of line with lighter penalties given for more serious offenses.  Prime Minister Modi reiterated calls to enact a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) at the national level as called for in the constitution instead of a system of separate personal laws for religious communities.  Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and tribal leaders and some state government officials opposed the initiative on the grounds it was part of a project to turn the country into a “Hindu Rashtra” (a Hindu Nation).  Some UCC proponents, including opposition politicians, said a UCC would promote greater equality, including for women, by preventing polygamy or inequitable inheritance within personal religious laws.

Some government and political officials made comments and took actions in support of religious tolerance during the year.  In April, Christian leaders welcomed Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the Sacred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi, which many in the Christian community stated they viewed as a gesture of solidarity.  During his state visit to the United States in June, Prime Minister Modi said, “regardless of caste, creed, religion, gender – there is absolutely no space for any discrimination [in my government].”  In December, Prime Minister Modi hosted approximately 100 Christian representatives from different denominations at his official residence and praised the contributions of the country’s Christians, but more than 3,200 individuals from the Christian community dissociated themselves from the meeting, citing growing anti-minority attacks and anti-minority hate speech by certain government officials.  In April, President Droupadi Murmu met with a Christian delegation to discuss attacks against Christians in the country.  In April, the government published a research paper that said there was no evidence of religious discrimination in the government’s provision of public services.  In September, the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) met with Christian leaders and said it would address cases of persecution of Christians.

International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), however, stated that the “actions and statements by members and supporters of his (Modi’s) BJP party [Bharatiya Janata Party] contradicted” government officials’ positive statements.  They further stated that the government should investigate and prosecute those responsible for carrying out violence against members of minority groups.

The National Crimes Record Bureau reported 272 instances of communal violence in 2022 compared with 378 in 2021(most recent data).  Attacks on members of religious minority groups, including killings, assaults, and intimidation, occurred in various states throughout the year, including cases of “cow vigilantism” based on allegations that Muslim men were participating in cow slaughter or trade in beef.  There were also attacks on religious leaders, disruption of Christian and Muslim worship services, vandalism of religious minorities’ houses of worship, and violence between religious groups.  Islamic groups in Jammu and Kashmir also reportedly attacked non-Muslims during the year.

In December, the United Christian Forum (UCF) reported 731 attacks on Christians in the year, compared with 599 such incidents in 2022.  The UCF data by state showed the most incidents in Uttar Pradesh (301) and Chhattisgarh (152).  In April, the government told the Supreme Court said that the UCF exaggerated claims of attacks against Christians to create a false narrative.  In July, the UCF’s national coordinator said, “The government data (on violence against Christians) downplays the severity of the situation.”

During violence in Manipur that started on May 3 between minority Christian Kuki and majority Hindu Meitei ethnic groups, Hindu and Christian places of worship were destroyed, as well as two synagogues of the small Bnei Menashe Jewish community.  The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum and international media said that at least 253 churches were burned down, more than 200 persons were killed and more than 60,000 displaced due to the violence.  Most of the attacks against religious sites were reported to have taken place in the first few days of the conflict, when the interethnic violence was at its peak; the eventual deployment of security forces reduced widespread violence although incidences of violence continued through the end of the year.  Because religion and ethnicity were closely linked in this clash, it was difficult to categorize specific acts of violence as being solely based on religious identity, but there were some reports of Meitei Hindus attacking churches that served Meitei Christians, who also reportedly faced pressure to convert from Christianity.  One local Meitei Christian leader said that the Meitei Christians had been “attacked from both sides.”  The Supreme Court criticized the failure of the central government and the Manipur state government to halt the violence especially in the early stages of the conflict, and appointed officials to investigate incidents of violence, ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and rebuild homes and places of worship.

Public celebrations of Hindu festivals sometimes resulted in communal violence, particularly when they included processions through Muslim-majority areas.  Media and NGOs reported that these processions were led by the BJP and affiliated Hindu nationalist groups, including Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).  In communal violence in several states, including West Bengal, Bihar, and Haryana nine persons were killed, dozens injured, and mosques, a madrassah and other buildings destroyed or damaged.  Police arrested several hundred persons in connection with the violence, according to NGOs and local sources.  In Haryana, authorities demolished 1,208 structures in the area where there was communal violence, with civil society organizations and international NGOs accusing authorities of largely targeting Muslim homes and shops.  A state official said the structures belonged to persons arrested in the violence, and that the buildings were used by rioters or were encroaching on government land.  The Punjab and Haryana High Court subsequently ordered authorities to halt the demolitions and the Supreme Court also condemned hate speech and calls for economic boycotts against the Muslim community.  The Organization of Islamic Cooperation expressed “deep concern” regarding violence and vandalism against Muslims in several states, which it said reflected “systemic targeting of the Muslim community in India.”

Some public figures made remarks that members of religious minority groups and Hindus said were inflammatory.  Christians and Muslims in the Bastar area of Chhattisgarh petitioned local authorities to take action against local leaders of the BJP, the VHP, and other organizations that called for an embargo of Christian and Muslim businesses at a rally on April 10.  Following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, international media reported “a flood of disinformation” on social media purporting that the country was threatened by its Muslim population, particularly in Muslim-majority areas.  In October, speakers at a conference organized by the Hindu nationalist umbrella organization Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) said Hindus were “raising their voice(s) against the injustice they face” because they were being “targeted” by other groups with charges of making hate speech around the country.

In a joint statement during Prime Minister Modi’s state visit to Washington in June, the U.S. and Indian governments reaffirmed “their shared values of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens.”

During the year, senior U.S. officials continued to raise concerns about religious freedom issues with their Indian counterparts.  During his visit in April, the Secretary of State also discussed developments in religious freedom with women leaders.  In July, the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights met with civil society organizations and underscored the U.S. commitment to freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression.  Throughout the year, the Ambassador, embassy, and consulate officials, the Assistant Secretary of State and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, and other official U.S. visitors engaged with government officials and members of religious communities, including representatives of the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh faiths, to discuss the importance of religious freedom and pluralism, the value of interfaith dialogue, and the operating environment for faith-based organizations.

Religious Demography

The U.S. government estimates the total population of the country is 1.4 billion (mid-year 2023).  According to the 2011 national census, the most recent year for which disaggregated figures are available, Hindus constitute 79.8 percent of the population; Muslims, 14.2 percent; Christians, 2.3 percent; and Sikhs, 1.7 percent.  The World Religion Database estimates the religious group breakdown in 2020 as Hindus, 72.5 percent; Muslims, 14.5 percent; Christians, 4.9 percent; Sikhs, 1.8 percent; and agnostics, 1.2 percent.  From the 2011 census, groups that together constitute fewer than 2 percent of the population include Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians (Parsis), Jews, and Baha’is.  In government statistics, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs officially identifies as Hindu more than 104 million members of Scheduled Tribes – Indigenous groups historically outside the caste system who often practice Indigenous religious beliefs – although an estimated 10 million of those listed as Scheduled Tribe members are Christians according to the 2011 census.

According to government estimates, there are significant Muslim populations in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, Assam, and the Union Territories of Lakshadweep and Jammu and Kashmir.  In Lakshadweep and Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims account for 93 percent and 68.3 percent of the population, respectively.  Slightly more than 85 percent of Muslims are Sunni, with the remainder mostly Shia.  According to media reports, there are an estimated 150,000 Ahmadi Muslims in the country.  According to government estimates, Christian populations are distributed throughout the country but in greater concentrations in the northeast as well as in the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Goa.  Three northeastern states have majority Christian populations:  Nagaland (90 percent), Mizoram (87 percent), and Meghalaya (70 percent).  Sikhs constitute 54 percent of the population of Punjab.  The Dalai Lama’s office states there are significant resettled Tibetan Buddhist communities in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, and Uttarakhand States, and Delhi.  According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and media reports, there are approximately 100,000 Tibetan Buddhists in the country.  According to media reports, approximately 40,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees from Burma live in the country.

Section II.

Status of government respect for religious freedom.

• Legal Framework

The constitution mandates a secular state and provides for freedom of conscience and the right of all individuals to profess, practice, and propagate religion freely, subject to considerations of public order, morality, and health.  It prohibits government discrimination based on religion, including for employment, as well as religiously based restrictions on access to public or private establishments.  The constitution states that religious groups have the right to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes, manage their own affairs in religious matters, and own, acquire, and administer property.  It prohibits the use of public funds to support any religion.  National and state laws make freedom of religion or belief subject to public order, morality, and health.  The constitution stipulates that the state shall endeavor to create a uniform civil code applicable to members of all religions across the country.

Federal law empowers the government to ban religious organizations that “provoke intercommunal tensions or are involved in terrorism or sedition.”

Ten of the country’s 28 states –Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh – have laws restricting religious conversion by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement, fraud, or marriage (done for the sole purpose of unlawful conversion).

Under these anticonversion laws, prohibited forms of religious allurement for conversion include the provision of gifts, promises of a better life, free education, and other standard charitable activities.  These laws also bar individuals from abetting such conversions.  The laws in those 10 states also require individuals wishing to convert to another religion and clergy intending to officiate at a conversion ceremony to submit formal notification to the state government for public notice, and this reporting requirement has reportedly been applied to rites such as baptisms.  The notification procedures require state police to determine if there are objections to the conversion.  For many of these laws, the burden of proof to demonstrate that a religious conversion was not affected through misrepresentation, force, coercion, or other prohibited manner lies on the person accused of the conversion, rather than the accuser.

Violators of anticonversion laws are subject to imprisonment or fines.  In Chhattisgarh, for example, violators may face sentences of up to three years; in Madhya Pradesh, up to four years if the converts are children, women, or members of Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes; in Karnataka, up to five years.  Gujarat mandates prior permission from the district magistrate for any form of conversion and punishes “forced” conversions with up to three years in prison and a fine of up to 50,000 rupees ($600).  Gujarat imposes the same fine and between three and 10 years in prison for forcible or fraudulent religious conversions through marriage.  Haryana imposes one to five years in prison and a fine of not less than 100,000 rupees ($1,200) for “forced” religious conversions and three to 10 years in prison and a fine of not less than 300,000 rupees ($3,600) if the conversion is carried out through marriage.  Haryana law also specifies that any marriages found to be carried out for the purpose of religious conversion shall be annulled.  In Himachal Pradesh, penalties for “forced” or fraudulent religious conversion of any kind include up to two years’ imprisonment, fines of 25,000 rupees ($300), or both.  Uttarakhand sentences those convicted of mass conversions (defined as involving one or two persons) up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 50,000 rupees ($600).  Uttarakhand also sentences violators to up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 25,000 rupees ($300) for forcibly converting a member of the Scheduled Tribes or Scheduled Castes.

Under the laws of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, authorities may prohibit proselytizing near any place of worship.  Punishment for violations may include imprisonment for up to three years and fines of up to 5,000 rupees ($60).  The laws in those states also ban the propagation or practice of any non-Hindu religion in localities designated as “temple towns” because of the number of significant Hindu temples located in those areas.  Karnataka’s anticonversion law allows for imprisonment of three to five years and a fine of up to 25,000 rupees ($300) in the case of proselytizing persons from general categories and imprisonment of three to 10 years and a fine of up to 50,000 rupees ($600) for forcibly converting children, women and persons from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.

Although there is no specific mention of hate speech in the law, the federal penal code criminalizes “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion” and “acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony,” including acts causing injury or harm to religious groups and their members.  The penal code also prohibits “deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.”  Violations of any of these provisions are punishable by imprisonment for up to three years, a fine, or both.  If the offense is committed at a place of worship, imprisonment may be for up to five years.

The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) requires religious groups and other NGOs that receive foreign funding to be licensed by the Ministry of Home Affairs before accepting or transferring foreign funds.  This license must be renewed every five years.  Federal law further requires NGOs that are registered under the law, including religious organizations, to maintain audit reports for their accounts and a schedule of their activities and to provide these to state government officials upon request.  The central government may reject a license application or a request to transfer funds if it judges the recipient to be acting against “harmony between religious, racial, social, linguistic, or regional groups, castes, or communities.”

The FCRA requires that NGOs, including religious organizations, use no more than 20 percent of their funding for administrative purposes and are prohibited from transferring foreign funds to any other organization or individual, limitations that many NGOs stated they found challenging to maintain their operations.

The constitution states any legal reference to Hindus is to be construed to include followers of Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism, meaning they are subject to laws regarding Hindus, such as the Hindu Marriage Act.  Subsequent legislation continues to use the word Hindu as a category that includes Sikhs, Buddhists, Baha’is, and Jains, but it identifies the groups as separate religions whose followers are included under the law.

Federal law provides official minority status to six religious groups:  Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Jains, and Buddhists.  State governments may grant minority status under state law to religious groups that are minorities in a particular region.  Members of recognized minority groups are eligible for government assistance programs.  The constitution states that the government is responsible for protecting minorities and enabling them to preserve their culture.

The constitution stipulates that the state shall endeavor to create a uniform civil code applicable to members of all religions across the country, but various personal laws, instead of a uniform civil code, apply to members of different religious communities in matters of marriage, divorce, adoption, and inheritance based on religion, faith, and culture.  Examples include the Hindu Marriage Act, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, and the Indian Christian Marriages Act.  Such Hindu, Christian, Parsi, Jewish, and Islamic personal status laws are legally recognized, judicially enforceable, and cover 98 percent of the population.  Personal status issues that are not defined for a community in a separate law are covered under Hindu personal status laws.  These laws generally do not supersede national and state legislation or constitutional provisions.  Some personal status laws, however, exist in violation of national or state legislation, such as the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937 which sanctifies polygamy, denies alimony to divorced women, and provides female relatives less inheritance than male relatives.  Some personal status laws have been challenged in court, but these cases are rare.  The government grants autonomy to the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and the Parsi community to define their customary practices.  If law boards or community leaders are not able to resolve disputes, cases are referred to the civil courts.

All couples marrying in a civil ceremony, which often includes interfaith couples, are generally required to provide public notice 30 days in advance – including addresses, photographs, and religious affiliation – for public comment, although this requirement varies by state.  Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains who marry outside their religions face the possibility of losing their property inheritance rights under the personal status laws pertaining to those communities.

The law recognizes the registration of Sikh marriages but does not include divorce provisions for Sikhs.  Divorce and other Sikh personal status matters fall under Hindu codes.  Under the law, any person, irrespective of religion, may seek a divorce in civil court.

The constitution prohibits religious instruction in government schools.  The law permits religious instruction in private religious schools.  The law permits some Muslim, Christian, Sindhi (Hindu refugees), Parsi, and Sikh educational institutions that receive government support to set quotas for students belonging to the religious minority in question.  For example, Aligarh Muslim University must admit at least 50 percent Muslims.  St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi and St. Xavier’s in Mumbai must admit at least 50 percent Christians.

Twenty-five of the 28 states apply partial to full restrictions on bovine slaughter.  Penalties vary among states and may vary based on whether the animal is a cow, calf, bull, or ox.  The ban mostly affects Muslims and members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes that traditionally consume beef or handle, transport, and slaughter cattle.  In most of the states where bovine slaughter is banned, penalties include imprisonment for six months to two years and a fine of 1,000 to 10,000 rupees ($12 to $120).  In Assam, penalties include minimum imprisonment of three years or a fine of between 300,000 and 500,000 rupees ($3,600 to $6,000) or both, without eligibility for bail prior to trial for slaughtering, consuming, or transporting cattle.  In Karnataka, the slaughter of all cattle, except for buffalo older than 13 years, is illegal, with violators subject to imprisonment of between three and seven years and penalties of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 rupees ($6,000 to $12,000).  Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir penalize cow slaughter with imprisonment of two to 10 years.  Gujarat state law mandates a minimum 10-year sentence and a maximum sentence of life in prison for killing cows, selling beef, or illegally transporting cows or beef.

Madhya Pradesh imposes fines of 25,000 to 50,000 rupees ($300 to $600) and prison sentences of six months to three years for “cow vigilantism,” i.e., committing violence in the name of protecting cows.  This is the only law of its kind in the country.

The National Commission for Minorities, which by law is to include representatives from the six designated religious minority groups and the National Human Rights Commission, investigates allegations of religious discrimination.  Two of the commission’s seats reserved for religious minorities are vacant.  The commission works under the Ministry of Minority Affairs which is responsible for the formulation of overall policy and planning, coordination, evaluation, and review of regulations and programs for the benefit of all minority communities, including religious minorities.  Eighteen of the country’s 28 states and the National Capital Territory of Delhi have state minorities commissions.  These commissions have no enforcement powers but may make recommendations to the government on how to adhere to treaties and other international instruments, conduct investigations based on written complaints of criminal or civil violations (including religious discrimination), submit findings to law enforcement agencies, and make recommendations for restitution for victims.

The constitution establishes the legal basis for preferential public benefit programs for Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities, as well as members of the “other backward classes,” a category for groups deemed to be socially and educationally disadvantaged.  The constitution specifies that only Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists are eligible to be deemed members of a Scheduled Caste.  As a result, Christians and Muslims qualify for benefits only if deemed to be members of “backward” classes due to their social and economic status.

The government requires foreign missionaries to obtain a missionary visa.

The country is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Government Practices

• Abuses Involving Violence, Detention, or Mass Resettlement

There were reports of state inaction in investigating and prosecuting crimes against members of religious minority groups.  Some human rights organizations said this emboldened those who sought to commit violence against members of religious minorities, and some groups representing religious minorities said they lacked confidence in the government’s ability and willingness to protect them from violence or investigate crimes against members of religious minorities.

On February 19, a crowd of Christians estimated by the media to number more than 20,000 gathered in New Delhi to call the attention of the government to what they said was increasing violence against Christians and Christian institutions.  Some speakers at the protest said they had faith in the country’s leadership and legal system to protect them, but other participants expressed doubts about the government’s commitment to address their concerns and said incidents of violence against the Christian community were indicative of a broader trend of discrimination against minorities in the country.

One of the protest organizers told media that Christians had yet to see action on what he said was the Prime Minister’s promise in 2015 to “secure religious freedom for every citizen.”  The leaders of the protest signed a memorandum to Prime Minister Modi, President Murmu, and other government officials requesting “justice from the government for the indiscriminate violence against Christians, guidance to empower law enforcement authorities to provide better protection [for Christians], and stricter actions against the disruptive vigilante groups who impede religious freedom in the country and operate with impunity.”  The leaders also asked the government to create a separate commission to address the issue of targeted religion-based violence against members of religious minority groups, especially Christians; quickly close legal cases based on false accusations of forced conversion; rebuild churches which they stated were illegally demolished; and adequately investigate and follow due process regarding accusations of forced conversion and reports of religious-based violence or discrimination.

Following the protests, on April 13, President Murmu met with a Christian delegation led by Catholic Archbishop of New Delhi Anil Couto.  In a press statement issued after the meeting, the delegation said it discussed “the many targeted attacks” against Christians in the country.  President Murmu did not release an official statement, but one media outlet reported that she promised to take “necessary steps to stop rising anti-Christian violence.”  On April 25, Prime Minister Modi met with Christian leaders in Kerala; media reported that he pledged during that meeting to ensure the protection of the Christian community nationwide.

In April, the government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in response to a 2022 request by Catholic Archbishop of Bangalore Peter Machado and the NGOs National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India that the government investigate attacks against Christians.  The government affidavit said that the Christian petitions gave an “exaggerated and wrong impression” of the attacks and that a majority of incidents alleged as Christian persecution were either “wrong or wrongfully projected.”  The government affidavit stated that 263 of the 495 incidents cited by the petitioners had not been reported to police. In May, Archbishop Machado and the Christian groups filed a counter-affidavit in which they said that attacks against Christians around the country were “not spontaneous or unconnected” but part of a “well-planned” strategy by Hindu groups, and that such attacks coincided with some states enacting religious conversion laws.  The Christian petitioners asked the Supreme Court to appoint a monitoring agency led by a retired Supreme Court justice to supervise the criminal investigations underway into some of the anti-Christian incidents in “troubled spots” around the country.  In June, the UCF said Christians were facing more First Information Reports (FIRs) from police than their accused attackers due to “the police’s failure to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of such mob violence.”  In July, the UCF asked the Supreme Court to appoint a special investigation team comprised of retired national police officers to investigate attacks against Christians.  The Supreme Court was considering the case and the related petitions at year’s end.

On April 21, UCF national coordinator A.C. Michael wrote a letter to Prime Minister Modi stating, according to media outlets and other NGOs, that Christians were being harassed and imprisoned on false and fabricated charges of conversion in states that had laws preventing religious conversion.  Michael wrote there was “aggression by vigilante mobs comprised of religious extremists, acts of violence against Christian leaders and members, church arson and vandalism, disruption of prayer services, and forced conversion to Hinduism.”  The letter expressed concern about the safety of Christian schools in India from violent mob attacks by Hindu groups.

According to media reports, the Prime Minister’s Office acknowledged receiving the letter and opened a file on the government’s Public Grievances Portal.  In addition, Chairman of the NCM Iqbal Singh Lalpura met with Christian groups, including the UCF, in September.  According to the UCF, after the meeting, Singh Lalpura said the commission would address cases of persecution of Christians; he proposed that a team from the NCM and Christian groups tour some of the areas where persecution occurred regularly.  Some Christian leaders told media there was little to reassure them that the administration of Prime Minister Modi was serious about addressing what they stated was the ongoing persecution of Christians in the country.  The UCF spokesman said that the NCM still lacked the required Christian representative, for example.  Some outside observers also stated that government actions targeted members of religious minorities, and that the government failed to protect members of religious minorities from attacks.

In March, a group of 93 former senior civil servants wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Modi expressing concerns regarding “continued harassment, through speech and criminal action, of minority groups in the country by persons associated with your government, your party, organizations connected to it, and by mischief makers from amongst the public.”  The ex-bureaucrats, who called themselves the Constitutional Conduct Group, called for the Prime Minister’s attention, in particular to the rising incidences of attacks and persecution against the Christian minority, often due to allegations of forcible conversion.  The group wrote, “Our Constitution clearly spells out that all citizens, irrespective of religion, are equal and have equal rights, but we are compelled to protest to you against the increasing incidents of outright discrimination against Christians occurring in recent times.”

In their letter, the group stated, “It is troubling that violence against Christians in different parts of the country has persisted and has increased in recent years.”  The group called on Modi “as Prime Minister of our country, and of all of its people, including Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities, and as a leading member of the BJP, to speak out against these outrageous acts, and to ensure that the police and other officials prevent such incidents from recurring.  Christians today and all other minorities need to be reassured that they are no less citizens of India than their Hindu brethren.”  The group, which included former cabinet secretaries, police officials, and diplomats from various religious groups, wrote a similar letter to Prime Minister Modi in 2022, urging him to take stronger actions to protect Muslims.  There was no public response from the Prime Minister to either letter as of the end of the year.

On July 31, Indian railway security official Chetan Singh shot his superior officer and three Muslim men on a train near Mumbai.  Singh killed the officer following an argument, then shot the Muslims who were located in other cars of the train.  In a video taken after the attack, Singh warned Muslims to vote only for Prime Minister Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, both Hindus and members of the BJP.  Police arrested Singh as he exited the train and he was remanded into custody on August 11, charged with homicide and promoting enmity between religions, according to media reports.

During the year, police and some courts acted on past cases involving the death, injury, or detention of members of religious minority groups or violence between religious groups.  On March 3, Gujarat police arrested 10 more individuals charged with involvement in April 2022 communal violence in Khambat, Gujarat, which erupted after a Hindu religious procession for the Hindu Ram Navami holiday moved through a predominantly Muslim neighborhood there.

In its latest World Report, HRW said police “failed to properly investigate crimes against minorities while administrative officials responded by summarily punishing victim communities, including those who protested such abuses.”

In April, in response to a petition filed in 2021, a court in Uttar Pradesh acquitted 41 Hindu men charged with killing Muslims during the communal violence in Maliana village in 1987; the court ruled there was lack of evidence for the charges.  Local Muslims and surviving family members of the victims said they were very disappointed by the court’s action.  According to BBC News , former director general of the Uttar Pradesh police Vibhuti Narain Rai and others filed the petition which led to the acquittals because the original investigation was “faulty from the start.”  Local Muslims requested a new investigation, another trial, compensation for the victims and a re-examination of the role of the state’s Provincial Armed Constabulary in the violence. In May, one of the victims, Rais Ahmed, challenged the acquittals in the Allahabad High Court.  The state government separately challenged the acquittal noting it did not agree with the ruling.

Also in April, a court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, acquitted, for lack of evidence, 69 Hindus who had been charged with the killing of 11 Muslims during communal riots in that state in 2002.  The attorney for the victims said they would appeal the decision to a higher court.  Those acquitted, who were all free on bail, included former Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi and VHP leader Jaydeep Patel, according to media reports.  More than 1,000 persons, mostly Muslims, were killed in the 2002 riots.  Of the 18 others sentenced for the killings, 17 have since died and former BJP legislator Maya Kodnani was released because of poor health in 2018.

The Bilaspur High Court in Chhattisgarh granted bail on April 19 to 10 Protestant church leaders who were arrested in January following a series of violent clashes between members of the Scheduled Tribe community and tribals who converted to Christianity in the Narayanpur and Kondagon districts of that state.  According to a Christian news source, 33 Christian villages were attacked by the tribe members after the Christians refused to renounce their religion; many Christians were injured.  Media reported that police arrested both Scheduled Tribe individuals and tribal Christians; some Christian leaders were charged with rioting, being armed with deadly weapons, voluntarily causing hurt to public servants on duty, and criminal intimidation and assault.  If convicted, they could face fines and up to 10 years in prison, according to media reports.  One Christian leader said they “had no role in the violence” but were implicated in the case simply because they were “visiting the victims.”  Another said the Christian leaders were arrested to appease the Scheduled Tribe community, which comprised a large majority of the population.

On July 5, a court in Jharkhand’s Seraikela-Kharsawan District sentenced 10 men to 10 years each in prison on murder charges for the 2019 lynching of Muslim Tabrez Ansari.  Ansari died after being tortured and forced to chant Hindu slogans by a mob that accused him of theft.

On July 13, the Special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Kochi, Kerala convicted six Muslim members of the banned Popular Front of India (PFI) in the second trial involving a 2010 attack against Christian Professor, T. J. Joseph in Kerala.  The accused were convicted after chopping off Joseph’s right hand for allegedly blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad in a question he drafted for a college examination.  Three of the six were sentenced to life in prison; the others to three years in prison each.

On August 7, the Supreme Court began the final hearing on several petitions, including one from the victim, a Muslim woman named Bilkis Bano, challenging the 2022 release of 11 Hindu men sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of gang raping the victim during the 2002 Gujarat riots; the men were also convicted of killing 14 members of her family including her three-year-old daughter.  The men were released after serving 15 years in prison, leading to criticism from opposition parties, activists, and several journalists, who said the decision discriminated against the country’s Muslims and was a “grave miscarriage of justice.”

In October, the Gujarat High Court sentenced four policemen to 14-days in prison and fined them 2,000 rupees ($24) each for publicly flogging four Muslim men in Undhela village in 2022.  The court suspended the sentence for 90 days to give the policemen time to appeal the verdict.  The police flogged the men as they were arresting them for throwing stones at a Hindu religious festival and injuring seven persons, including a policeman.

An investigation continued at year’s end into the April 2022 Hindu-Muslim clashes in Hubballi, Karnataka, regarding a WhatsApp profile status shared by a college student that allegedly showed a saffron flag, a Hindu symbol, flying over Mecca.  The police arrested 158 persons; nine were released on bail as of June.  A trial was also underway at year’s end.

Courts took actions during the year related to 2022 remarks by suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma that were seen as critical of Prophet Muhammad.  In July, a court in Mumbai denied bail to Muslim Yusuf Khan, one of the 11 accused of murder in the June 2022 killing of Hindu pharmacist Umesh Kolhe in Amravati, Maharashtra, after Kolhe shared a social media post that supported Sharma’s remarks.  Media reported that the case of Khan and four of the other accused continued.  The five were under arrest, but there was no information available concerning the other six accused.

The trial continued at year’s end in the June 2022 killing of Hindu Kanhaiya Lal Teli in Udaipur, Rajasthan, by two Muslim men who recorded the act on their phone.  The National Investigation Agency charged 11 persons under various sections of the penal code and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act related to a terror conspiracy.  The accused said they killed Teli for his social media posts supporting Sharma’s remarks.

There were several court decisions and some court actions related to the 2020 protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the related Hindu-Muslim communal riots in New Delhi.  The CAA, which was passed by Parliament in 2019 but had not come into effect by the end of the year, would provide a fast track to citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who illegally entered the country from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, or Pakistan before 2014.  Minorities not explicitly included in the CAA including minority Muslim communities and religious minorities outside of the three countries specified in the CAA would be ineligible for this expedited path to citizenship.  On March 10, a Delhi court sentenced nine Muslims to seven years in prison for their role in the Hindu-Muslim communal riots and fined them 20,000 rupees ($240) each to be paid as compensation to the victims.  On November 21, the Delhi High Court began considering bail pleas by six of those arrested during the riots, including Muslim Khalid Saifi, founder of the NGO United against Hate, who was charged under antiterrorism laws for organizing the protests; he remained in custody as of the end of the year.  Media reported that 172 persons, including Hindus and Muslims arrested for their roles in the violence, remained in jail.

The Supreme Court took no action on the bail plea of Muslim student Umar Khalid, who was arrested and imprisoned following the riots, despite saying in September that the court would review his case.  A New Delhi sessions court heard arguments concerning the bail applications of other accused protest organizers, but did not render verdicts.

• Abuses Limiting Religious Belief and Expression

There were numerous reports of authorities acting in response to complaints of “forced” religious conversions during the year, including arresting Christians and Muslims accused of forcing others to convert and arresting Hindus who attacked those accused of forcing others to convert.  Some religious organizations stated that anticonversion laws were used to justify actions restricting the right of individuals to engage in religious activities.  Although none of the anticonversion laws in the country mention particular faiths, sources stated that in practice they were enforced only against individuals who converted to Islam or Christianity; there were very few cases involving conversion to Hinduism, voluntary or otherwise.  In some cases, Christian groups said police aided mobs who disrupted worship services accused of forcibly converting Hindus or stood by while mobs acted against Christians.  NGOs and media reports noted convictions under anticonversion laws were rare although arrests and legal cases filed under such laws significantly disrupted the lives of those charged.

Media reported that as of May, 855 arrests had been made under Uttar Pradesh’s anticonversion law since it was introduced in 2020.  Another report from the NGO International Christian Concern (ICC) said 398 Christians had been arrested under the state’s anticonversion law since its inception.  A local NGO said that the overwhelming number of accused under the Utta Pradesh law were either Muslim or Christian.  There were no figures available reporting the total number of arrests under this law in 2023, but there were no reports of Hindus being arrested under this law.  In the Azamgarh District of that state, media reports said that on May 18, the police arrested 18 persons as part of a gang that allegedly carried out illegal conversions to Islam.  According to police, the group decorated an area of a slum in Chirkihit village to look like a shrine, then attracted people with “lucrative offers” (unstated) for conversion while praising Islam and criticizing Hinduism.  In the same area in July, police arrested 20 Christians on charges of conversion in two cases, according to ICC, after a crowd described as Hindu nationalists ransacked a local tent used by Christians for prayer gatherings.  None of the crowd was arrested, according to ICC.

One Christian leader told ICC that at least 57 Christians were in prison in Uttar Pradesh on anticonversion charges as of July.  Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News), citing other media reports, said 91 Christians were in detention in that state under conversion charges as of August.  Christian leaders in Uttar Pradesh told UCA News that “hardline” Hindu groups in the state “misuse the state’s anticonversion law to file false complaints against Christians.”  The Irish NGO Church in Chains reported that police arrested 22 pastors for conversion activities in the Azamgarh, Ghazipur, and Jhansi Districts in Uttar Pradesh on July 30, including a pastor and his wife who were briefly jailed with their one-year-old.  Most of those detained were freed on bail within 10 days.  A Christian leader in the state told the NGO that “the situation has reached such a stage that holding a prayer service or reading the Bible at home can land you in jail.”

The media outlet AsiaNews reported that in Chhattisgarh on April 30, police briefly arrested 13 Christians who had been holding a prayer service in a private home.  The Christians called the police after a crowd of Hindu Bajrang Dal activists gathered outside the home to protest the meeting and shouted Hindu chants.  The Christians said that when police arrived one hour later, they charged the organizers of the meeting with disturbing the police and accused them of converting individuals to Christianity, but took no action against the protestors, some of whom were armed.  After the incident, Archbishop of Raipur Victor Henry Thakur, chairman of the Council of Catholic Bishops of Chhattisgarh, said that the government was detaining Christians on “baseless” conversion allegations by “right-wing extremists” in such incidents while those who caused the disturbances went free.

On June 24, Odisha police filed a case under that state’s Freedom of Religion Act against India-born Canadian national Mohan Kidangalil Eapen.  He and two others were charged with “luring tribal children under the pretext of a prayer meeting” and attempting to convert them to Christianity.  The police registered the case after VHP activists stopped Eapen from organizing the meeting and handed him over to police.  Indian media reports said Eapen was in the country on a tourist visa which forbids conducting religious activities.  These reports quoted VHP leaders who said the meeting was meant for religious conversion, but the local pastors who hosted Eapen said the event was a private birthday gathering.  The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on July 4 wrote to the Jagatsingpur District magistrate asking for a report on the incident and legal action against Eapen.  The NCPCR said that Eapen and the others were trying to convert 11 minor children.

During the year, some courts acted on past cases involving allegations of illegal religious conversion.  In February, Vijay Masih, a pastor jailed following a Maundy Thursday service in 2022 that Hindus said illegally converted persons to Christianity, was denied release from jail in Uttar Pradesh, despite being approved for bail by the Allahabad High Court in January.  The Uttar Pradesh government extended his sentence because of new charges filed by Hindu groups, the media said.  Masih, the pastor of an Evangelical Church of India congregation in Fatehpur, was one of 50 Christians who were arrested after a crowd of Hindus disrupted the 2022 service.  Media reported he was originally arrested and released in April 2022, then rearrested in October 2022.

In a related case, Christian media reported in March that the Supreme Court ordered that two other men accused of illegal religious conversion in the Maundy Thursday 2022 incident should not be arrested “pending further orders”; the decision overturned a lower court ruling ordering their arrest.  The two brothers, Rajendra Bihari Lal (vice chancellor) and Vinod Bihari Lal (director) were officials at the Christian-run Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences in Uttar Pradesh.

In May, the Bombay High Court revoked a 2022 administrative order banning Christian Pastor Dominic D’Souza and his wife from carrying out religious activities.  According to media reports, the Bombay High Court said there was no material on record to justify the order, which violated the couple’s “fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 19, 25 and 26 of the Constitution of India as it seeks to deny them both of their freedom of speech and expression and to their freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, propagate their religion or form religious institutions.”  The couple had been arrested in 2022 under Goa’s Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act for allegedly enticing a person to convert to Christianity and for promoting enmity between groups on the grounds of religion.  The Bombay High Court granted them bail the day after their arrest.  The investigation into their conversion case was ongoing as of December 31.

During the year, the government acted to criminalize marrying or having intercourse by employing deceitful means.  In December, both houses of Parliament approved laws which amended colonial-era rules to criminalize making false promises and concealing one’s identity to sexually exploit a woman, media reported.  The new laws set penalties of up to 10 years in prison for those crimes and set specific penalties for other crimes against women such as rape of a minor and gang rape.  When he introduced the legislation in March, Home Minister Amit Shah said, “Crime against women and many social problems faced by them have been addressed in this bill.  For the first time, intercourse with women under the false promise of marriage, employment, promotion and false identity will amount to a crime.”  Opponents such as Congress Party Member of Parliament (MP) Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the new laws were unnecessary and out of alignment with the lighter penalties given for what he said were more serious offenses, such as bribery or provoking a riot.  Although the new penal code did not mention religion, some critics and proponents of the law said provisions on deceit by “suppressing identity” aimed to criminalize “love jihad,” a derogatory term referring to Muslim men seeking to marry women from other faiths to convert them to Islam.

On March 23, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis informed the state legislative council that the state government would study the laws adopted in other states to criminalize “love jihad” with the goal of introducing new legislation or amending existing law in response to what he said was the public demand as demonstrated in rallies in the state.

Following state elections in May, the new Karnataka cabinet announced it would repeal the state’s 2022 anticonversion law, introduced by the previous BJP government, during the legislative session that began in July.  As of December 31,the law had not been repealed.  Archbishop Machado, who led the coalition of religious groups and NGOs that challenged the 2022 law, said it was “discriminatory, anticonstitutional and unnecessary.”  Before the new state government took office, police registered 21 cases of violating anticonversion laws in Karnataka in 2022-23.

The courts also ruled on state-level anticonversion laws during the year.  In January, during a hearing on the Madhya Pradesh law governing religious conversions, Supreme Court Justice M.R. Shah stated that “all religious conversions cannot be presumed to be illegal,” according to media reports.  The Supreme Court agreed to hear a Madhya Pradesh government appeal against a 2022 Madhya Pradesh High Court decision that suspended a mandatory provision in that state’s law requiring a person who desired to convert to another faith to give 60 days’ prior notice to the local district magistrate.  That provision in the current Madhya Pradesh law imposed sentences of three to five years in prison and a fine up to 50,000 rupees ($600) for anyone who refused to provide the required preconversion notice.

The Supreme Court also asked in January that petitioners challenging anticonversion laws in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh present a consolidated petition to the court by February.  In March, the Supreme Court asked all states facing challenges to their anticonversion laws to respond to petitioners by April.  Those states include the five states the Supreme Court mentioned in January, plus Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha.  The NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace filed the challenges in all eight states against their anticonversion laws.  The states had not filed their responses by year’s end.

In its annual report, HRW said the government “persisted with policies that discriminated and stigmatized religious and other minorities.”  This led to “increasing incidents of communal violence in many parts of the country.”  HRW said “police in BJP-governed states failed to properly investigate crimes against minorities while administrative officials responded by summarily punishing victim communities, including those who protested such abuses” and the constitutional authorities designed to protect the rights of children, women, religious minorities, tribal groups, and Dalits, “did not function independently.”

• Abuses Involving the Ability of Individuals to Engage in Religious Activities Alone or in Community with Others

The Ministry of Home Affairs continued to enforce registration requirements under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), which applied to NGOs, including religious organizations, that received foreign contributions.  Media outlets reported that 1,111 NGOs were granted FCRA licenses in 2023.  In March, the Minister of State for Home Affairs told Parliament that the government cancelled registration certificates of 1,828 nonprofit associations across the country under the provisions of the FCRA between 2018 and 2022.  The ministry did not report how many religious organizations were among those granted or denied licenses.  In June, media reported that the government cancelled the FCRA license of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Delhi because of unspecified “misuse of foreign grants” in its operation of women’s shelters.  YWCA Delhi leaders said they were considering an appeal.  However, the government did not sanction the national YWCA of India; its FCRA license was extended to 2028.  In December, the government also revoked the FCRA license of the Church of North India, a prominent evangelical organization, over unspecified rules violations.

NGOs, including religious organizations, continued to criticize the government’s use of FCRA for reducing the amount of foreign contributions that NGOs could use for administrative purposes and adding what they described as onerous oversight and certification requirements.  In 2022, Home Minister Shah stated that amendments to FCRA were necessary to halt NGOs using foreign funds to engage in religious conversion and engaging in “anti-national activities.”  Some organizations working on religious programs or advocacy, including Hindu organizations, reported difficulties in obtaining registration approval for their activities.  In response, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) started a helpdesk in July to help NGOs submit their queries and issues regarding the FCRA.

During the year, there were reports of government action affecting the activities of religious groups.  On February 28, authorities in the Upper Siang District of Arunachal Pradesh banned prayer healing, healing crusades, and healing by local Hindu priests, according to UCA News .  The local magistrate said the practices were “misleading” people by influencing them away from modern medical treatment.  In a statement, district authorities also said healing prayer meetings led to “social-cultural problems like conversion to other faiths” which “spread discord among people and groups.”  The president of the Arunachal Christian Forum said the district’s order was “against our fundamental right to practice our religion.”

The Madhya Pradesh government provided police protection to the 18 churches in the Jhabua District during Holy Week in April, at the request of the local diocese.  A spokesman for one of the churches said the diocese sought to avoid “unnecessary charges of religious conversion” from local Hindu groups during services on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

On July 27, the national government permitted more than 40,000 Shia Muslims to participate in a peaceful procession marking the month of Muharram in Jammu and Kashmir, the first time this procession was legally permitted in more than 30 years.  The government described the resumption of the procession as a “peace dividend” and “testimony to normalcy” in the area.  Local Shia leaders told media the event was “historic.”

In June, authorities in the Damoh District of Madhya Pradesh shut down the Ganga Jamuna Higher Secondary School after Hindu nationalists stated that non-Muslim students there were forced to wear headscarves and therefore risked being converted to Islam.  Their complaint was based on a poster that depicted Muslim and non-Muslim female students celebrating examination results at the school, all wearing headscarves.  Parents denied the allegations, but authorities arrested the school principal and two teachers, and charged 13 school administrators with violation of the Madhya Pradesh Religion Act.  In August, the Madhya Pradesh High Court granted bail to the three arrested and directed that school authorities not compel female students to wear headscarves.  The court also granted bail to the school administrators.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah tweeted in December that his government would rescind a policy instituted by the previous state government that restricted religious garb in government educational institutions, most prominently the hijab.  This followed the Karnataka High Court’s ruling in 2022 that the government could impose dress requirements on students at a girls’ school in Udupi, including banning hijabs; the Karnataka High Court ruled then that wearing a hijab was “not an essential part of religious practice.”  The Supreme Court later issued a split decision in an appeal on the issue, with two justices agreeing that Karnataka could set a dress code banning the hijab, and one justice ruling against on the grounds that wearing a hijab was a matter of personal choice.  A larger bench of the Supreme Court was to hear the case but did not do so by the end of the year.

On July 11, following claims by Hindu group Pandavwada Sangharsh Samiti that the 19th century Jumma Masjid mosque resembled a Hindu temple, the Jalgaon district authorities in Maharashtra barred Muslims from entering the mosque to pray.  On July 18, the Bombay High Court ordered the Jalgaon District authority to hand over the mosque keys to the community trust and allow Islamic prayers.  The district authorities reopened the mosque following the court order.

On August 24, the Karnataka High Court dismissed a petition by a group of Hindu and Christian residents alleging that residential property in Bengaluru was being used illegally as an Islamic prayer hall.  Previously, that court had approved the construction of a madrassah on the adjoining property, as long as local building regulations were met.  In rejecting the petition, the Karnataka High Court said the petitioners provided no specific legal basis on which to prohibit using residential property for prayer.

In August, the Allahabad High Court ruled that the national Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) could conduct a survey of the 17th century Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, to determine if it was constructed over a Hindu temple demolished by the order of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.  The Supreme Court temporarily halted the work to allow for an appeal through the courts.  Members of the Hindu community earlier sought permission from the Allahabad High Court to conduct Hindu rituals inside of the mosque, citing their fundamental right to pray in the petition, and noting that they were able to pray in the site until a government ban was put in place in 1992.  In December, the ASI submitted its survey report as a sealed document to a district judge in Varanasi.

The Allahabad High Court also ruled in December that a court-monitored team of three surveyors could examine the still-operating 17th century Shahi Eidgah Mosque in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, to determine if there were any Hindu relics or symbols there as proof that the site was originally a Hindu temple.  In 2022, according to media reports, Hindu groups unsuccessfully petitioned to keep Muslims from praying in the mosque, out of concern that Hindu relics inside could be removed.  On social media, Muslim MP Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party, said the Shah Eidgah Mosque/Temple dispute had been settled years before, but “the law doesn’t matter anymore.  Robbing Muslims of their dignity is the only goal now.”  He also said the Allahabad High Court’s ruling violated the terms of the Places of Worship Act 1991, which he stated prohibit such litigation.

In December 2022, the AIMPLB said it would petition the Supreme Court to challenge the 2020 acquittal by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court of all 32 persons, including senior BJP politicians, charged in the 1992 demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya.  The Allahabad High Court rejected a similar petition in November 2022.  The board had not filed a petition with the Supreme Court by year’s end.

In September, the Shri Ramjanmabhoomi Temple Construction Committee announced that the consecration ceremony for the Ram Temple built on the site of the Babri Mosque as per a Supreme Court ruling in 2019, would take place in January 2024, led by Prime Minister Modi.  The committee said the ceremony was a major campaign promise of the BJP government.  Civil society groups and members of religious minority communities criticized the construction of the Ram Temple as representative of India’s shift away from its secular foundations and toward the establishment of a Hindu nation.

Police in Uttar Pradesh arrested four members of a Hindu nationalist group in April and said the four slaughtered a cow near the city of Agra in order to “frame” Muslims and “spur hostility” towards them.  The assistant police commissioner said the Hindus provided a list of Muslim suspects, filed an official complaint, and demanded that police arrest them.  After investigating, police said that the Muslims named were innocent and the Hindus actually killed the cow.  One of the four arrested was Sanjay Jat, a spokesman for the All India Hindu Mahasabha party; police said he was the main conspirator in the incident.

• Abuses Involving Discrimination or Unequal Treatment

On August 7, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that the state government would introduce a law to end polygamy following the conclusions of a state-appointed expert committee that polygamy was not an essential religious practice in Islam and the state had the authority to enact such legislation.  On September 4, Sarma told media that the state formed a committee to draft a law covering polygamy and “love jihad,” which would be introduced in the state assembly in December.  Opposition parties criticized the decision as politically motivated.  The All India United Democratic Front, an Assam-based Muslim party, said the government was introducing the law “to target the Muslim community.”  Polygamy was abolished among Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, and Parsis by legislation in the 19th and 20th centuries, but the 1937 Muslim Personal Laws (Shariat) Act permits polygamy.  According to National Family Health Survey data from 2019-20, polygamy continued to be practiced by Muslims (1.9 percent), Hindus (1.3 percent), and other religious groups (1.6 percent) across the country.

On June 26, the Madras High Court ruled caste should not be the deciding factor in the appointment of Archakas (priests) in Hindu temples.  Justice N. Anand Venkatesh noted that any person well-versed and qualified to perform pooja (worship rituals) as per the requirements of the temple Agama (rituals followed in the temple) could be appointed as an Archaka.

In March, the Supreme Court upheld an earlier Madhya Pradesh High Court ruling that state governments had the power to regulate admissions and fees charged by minority-run religious schools.  The Supreme Court said minority institutions of higher education “should not claim complete immunity” from government regulation in their admissions and fee structures.  The Icon Education Society, a Catholic school in Madhya Pradesh, had argued to the state high court that government oversight and regulation of minority schools violated the rights of religious and ethnic minorities in the country to establish and manage their own educational institutions, without government interference.  The society said such a right was “guaranteed” in the constitution.  Media reported that the decision would have “far reaching implications” for Christian-run schools in that state.

In April, the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister released a working paper that said there was no evidence of religious discrimination in the provision of public services including electricity, bank accounts, mobile phones, and access to sanitary facilities after analyzing more than 1.2 million households.  The paper said, “…we do not find any evidence that the government catered only to one community (Hindu majority) or discriminated across households based on districts where one religious community was dominant.”

In December, online media outlets said that Ashish Gupta, a government revenue officer in Maudaha, Uttar Pradesh, was suspended from his position when the government learned that he had converted to Islam.  The state government ordered an investigation into his conversion, according to the Hindustan Times .  Gupta’s wife said his father and a local Muslim cleric arranged Gupta’s conversion so he could marry another woman.  Police filed a case based on her allegations and arrested three persons, including the cleric , The Indian Express said.

On June 27, Prime Minister Modi said the country should have a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as called for in the constitution.  He said the country could not run with a system of “separate laws for separate (religious) communities.”  Several leaders of the Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and tribal communities, including some state government officials and their governments, opposed the initiative.  Proponents of a UCC stated that it could strengthen gender equity in civil matters such as divorce and inheritance, while opponents said such a code was part of a larger project to turn the country into a Hindu-majority “Hindustan” that would end constitutional protections for members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and other legally defined “Backward Classes.”  In July, the AIMPLB wrote to the Law Commission of India expressing its opposition to the UCC proposal, stressing that “majoritarian morality” must not supersede the personal law, religious freedom and minority rights.  The government took no action on the UCC during the year.

Several political parties and religious and social organizations in majority tribal areas of the northeastern states publicly opposed the application of a UCC, some even before the Prime Minister’s announcement.  On February 14, the Mizoram state legislative assembly unanimously adopted a resolution in opposition, and Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga threatened to leave the ruling National Democratic Alliance with the BJP if the UCC were imposed on his state.  The regional Mizo National Front party and religious leaders in Mizoram, including from the Presbyterian Church of India, wrote the Law Commission of India to express their opposition to a UCC.  Congress Party member Ronald Sapa Tlau, also from Mizoram, told the media a UCC “would result in the oppression of minorities and minority religious communities and even their assimilation by the majority community” in the country.  The Kerala Legislative Assembly passed a resolution opposing a UCC, similar to Mizoram’s in August.  In addition, Meghalaya State Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said, “diversity was a strength” in the country and a UCC would go “against the idea of India itself.”

On July 8, several tribal organizations under the banner of the Adivasi Samanwai Samiti (Tribal Coordination Committee) staged a demonstration near the Jharkhand BJP headquarters to protest the proposed UCC.  Tribal leader Prem Sahi Munda said the UCC was a threat to tribal existence, stating it would dilute the customary tribal laws and rights granted by the constitution.  On July 10, a 12-member delegation from Nagaland, led by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, met Home Minister Shah and expressed concern about the UCC, which it said would violate a 1960 government agreement with the Naga tribes that permitted customary tribal practices on social issues such as marriage and divorce.

Some state governments supported the UCC initiative and worked toward implementing UCC laws at the state level.  On June 30, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami announced that his state would implement its own UCC and that draft legislation was ready.  Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal told the media the Law Commission had received more than 10 million suggestions about the UCC from around the country by the end of the public comment period on July 28.  The next step would be meetings with communities and stakeholders around the country, he said.

During the year, some politicians, government officials, and government organizations made statements that members of religious minority groups viewed as controversial or derogatory.  For example, media reported that on March 30, Telangana legislator T. Raja Singh, who was detained for more than two months and suspended from the BJP in 2022 for hate speech, said that only Hindus and Muslims who acknowledged Hindu gods should have voting rights.  Singh made the remarks while delivering a speech in front of a mosque during a Hindu Ram Navami festival procession.  At another public meeting in Adilabad District of Telangana on June 4, he warned Hindu women not to befriend burqa-clad Muslim women because they might convert them and recruit them for ISIS, as described in the 2023 film The Kerala Story, a film that was promoted by several BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Modi.  The West Bengal government initially banned showings of The Kerala Story, deeming it to contain antiminority hate speech.  The Supreme Court ruled against the ban.  However, according to media reports, at the insistence of the Supreme Court, the producer of the film agreed to include a disclaimer stating that “the film has no authentic data to back the figure of 32,000 conversions of Hindu and Christians to Islam” and that the film’s content was a fictional account.

At an RSS event in May, media outlets reported that then Minister for Law and Justice Satya Pal Singh Baghel said, “Tolerant Muslims can be counted on (one’s) fingers.  Their numbers are not even in thousands.”  He said “Even that is a tactic.  It is [a way for Muslims] to stay in public life with a mask.”

In a June press conference, Minister for Minority Affairs and Women and Child Development Smitri Irani accused a U.S.-based religious freedom activist of being connected to George Soros and the latter’s alleged “desire to break the Indian democracy.”  Following the press conference, the activist recounted what she stated was the online abuse and harassment she received from Hindu nationalist social media accounts, including one with alleged links to an Indian intelligence official set up for the purpose of “discrediting foreign critics of the Modi government,” according to a Washington Post report.

According to media reports, on July 21, the Ministry of Minority Affairs wrote Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary K.S. Jawahar Reddy asking him to investigate a complaint made to the ministry by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community against a resolution passed by the Andhra Pradesh Wakf Board, the designated authority that deals with Muslim properties and endowments.  The resolution declared the Ahmadis as “kafirs” (nonbelievers) and “non-Muslims.”  The ministry said the wakf board resolution amounted to a “hate campaign” against the Ahmadiyya Muslim community that could have wider ramifications across the country.  The ministry also said the wakf board did not have the jurisdiction or authority to determine the religious identity of any religious community or to “expel a person or community from a religion.”  The ministry said that the wakf board had issued the resolution in violation of an earlier Supreme Court ruling not to do so. According to a July 26 media report, the chief executive officer of the wakf board said that the board had not passed any new resolution against the Ahmadi Muslims and the document in question was written by the board chairman “in his personal capacity.”

On September 2, while addressing a writers’ and artists’ association meeting in Chennai, Tamil Nadu State Minister for Sports Udhayanidhi Stalin said the Hindu concept of Sanatana Dharma (meaning the eternal values of Hinduism), should be “eradicated” like diseases such as “dengue, mosquitos, malaria, or coronavirus.”  The remarks were followed by reactions from Hindu groups, religious figures, government officials, politicians, and political parties who told media that Stalin’s comments were “hate speech against Hinduism and a call for genocide of Hindus.”  Prime Minister Modi said Stalin’s remarks represented an assault on Hindu values and faith.  In response, Stalin said he was only calling for an end to the caste system associated with Sanatana Dharma, which he said, “divides people in the name of caste and religion.”  He stated the BJP was “twisting his words” and spreading “fake news.”  The Supreme Court noted that no individual had the right to promote divisive ideas or abolition of an ideology.  On September 22 and 27, the Supreme Court accepted petitions asking for action against Stalin, including that Tamil Nadu police file a formal complaint against him.  In November, the Madras High Court reprimanded police in Tamil Nadu for not taking any action against Stalin for his remarks, calling it a “dereliction of duty.”  That high court noted that no individual had the right to promote divisive ideas or abolition of an ideology.

In Parliament on September 21, BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri used what Muslims said were religious slurs and expletives against Muslim MP Danish Ali from the Bahujan Samaj Party; Bidhuri’s comments were recorded on official parliamentary video.  The Speaker warned Bidhuri about his remarks and ordered them expunged from the record.  The president of Jamaat Ulama-e-Hind, one of the largest Muslim organizations in the country, told media that Bidhuri’s abusive “hate speech” demonstrated that “not only the common Muslim but even Muslim MPs were not safe in the new India.”  He said the remarks were “a manifestation of extreme hatred for Muslims.”  In a statement, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind said Bidhuri should be disqualified as an MP and expelled from the BJP.

The Washington Post reported that in Karnataka, the BJP party workers used a digital campaign to “spread inflammatory material on an industrial scale,” falsely accusing the Muslim community of abuses against the Hindu community, including killings.  The Post reported “a shadowy parallel campaign creating incendiary posts that painted a dire and false message that Muslims, aided by the secular and liberal Congress Party, had abused and murdered members of the Hindu majority.”  According to the Post , “…BJP staffers and the party’s allies revealed how they conceive and craft posts aimed at exploiting the fears of India’s Hindu majority, and detailed how they had assembled a sprawling apparatus of 150,000 social media workers to propagate this content across a vast network of WhatsApp groups.”  In an editorial summarizing a major reporting series, the Washington Post said that “social media platforms have become conveyor belts for hate under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliated groups.”  The reports say that social media platforms “…were late and lame in stamping out vile content aimed at India’s Muslim minority.”

The government took action in some instances against public statements that religious groups said they considered derogatory.  In March, the News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA) warned media outlets Zee News and Times Now , and fined News18 India , citing seven examples of “anti-Muslim content” aired or posted by them.  The NBDSA said that a broadcast by Zee News “selectively targeted” the Muslim community by reporting projections of Muslim population growth out of context.  The agency said Times Now “wrongfully reported” that pro-Pakistan slogans were raised during a protest in Pune by the banned Popular Front of India.  In the case of News 18 India , the NBDSA said it found comments by a news anchor “objectionable” and including (anti-Muslim) “religious undertones.”  The NBDSA stated, “The entire premise of the [ News 18 ] show revolved around creating a negative image of the Muslim community to instigate the members of the Hindu community to develop hatred for Muslims.”  The NBDSA fined News18 India 50,000 rupees ($600).

During a hearing in March related to public hate speech by political figures cited in a petition by journalist-petitioner Shaheen Abdullah, Supreme Court justices called for separating religion from politics and for more action by state governments to regulate public comments by political leaders.  Justice K.M. Joseph said, “A major problem arises when politicians mix politics with religion … We [the court] have said in our recent verdict that mixing politics with religion is dangerous for democracy.”  In a subsequent ruling on the case the following month, the Supreme Court ordered all states to register cases against anyone using hate speech in public.  Justices Joseph and B.V. Nagarathna said hate speech was a “serious offense capable of affecting the secular fabric of the country.”  Media outlets reported that Christian, Muslim, and Hindu leaders welcomed the ruling but said that state governments had not acted on similar rulings by the Supreme Court in the past.  In the ruling, the Supreme Court said hesitation by state governments to act against hate speech would invite contempt of court charges against those governments.  The Supreme Court also said it would continue to accept petitions against incidents of hate speech in order to promote the “larger public good.”

Police continued to investigate the deaths of two demonstrators who were killed in protests against televised remarks by BJP spokespersons Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal in 2022.  Muslims, including from Muslim-majority countries and international organizations, all stated they believed the remarks were derogatory to the Prophet Muhammad.  Sharma was charged in 2022 with hurting religious sentiment and suspended from her position by the BJP but remained free in 2023 pending trial.

During the year, some government officials made comments and took actions in support of religious tolerance.  For example, on the evening of Easter Sunday, Prime Minister Modi visited the Catholic Sacred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi, his first time there as Prime Minister.  Media reported that Christian leaders welcomed the visit and said it was an “opportunity for dialogue with the government” aimed to put an end to the “harassment” of Christians in the country.

During his state visit to the United States in June, Prime Minister Modi said “We have proved democracy can deliver [in India].  When I say deliver, regardless of caste, creed, religion, gender – there is absolutely no space for any discrimination [in my government].”

In an interview with the Financial Times in December, Prime Minister Modi said, “Indian society itself has no feeling of discrimination towards any religious minority.”  As an example, he said the religious minority Parsi community was economically “thriving” in the country despite facing persecution in other countries.  The Prime Minister also hosted a Christmas celebration at his residence with several prominent Christian leaders.  Media reported that the Prime Minister praised the contributions of Christians to Indian society and said that Hinduism and Christianity shared values.

International NGOs and civil society organizations urged additional action by the government.  HRW stated the “actions and statements by members and supporters of his [Modi’s] BJP party contradicted” Modi’s statements.  HRW said “India’s actions and statements on the world stage will never be convincing if the Indian government doesn’t demonstrate a willingness to allow scrutiny of its own record.”  HRW further said “[Modi’s] government should ensure that authorities, including in state governments where his party is in power, investigate and prosecute those responsible for inciting or carrying out violence against minorities.”  In addition, over 3,200 individuals from the Christian community released a statement dissociating themselves from Prime Minister Modi’s December meeting with Christians, citing growing anti-minority attacks, including in Manipur, and antiminority hate speech by certain government officials.

• Other Developments Affecting Religious Freedom

Authorities acted against vandalism of religious sites during the year.  In Chaukipura, Madhya Pradesh, for example, police arrested three Hindu men accused of burning a Christian church.  The pastor said he found the interior of the church building completely charred, all the furniture burned, and Hindu graffiti on the walls when he opened the building before Sunday services on February 12.  Police said those responsible – identified as Avneesh Pandey and two others – were targeting churches and Islamic shrines in the area.  Police said the three were “fringe elements” who did not belong to a political party.  Media reported the accused were charged under the penal code with “injuring and defiling a place of worship with the intent of insulting religion.”

In February, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition from BJP member Ashwini Upadhyay to appoint a commission to prepare a list of “ancient historical-cultural religious places” named by Muslim leaders during their rule to be renamed using Hindu names.  In his petition, Upadhyay said that many of the historical locations found in ancient Hindu religious texts had been renamed for what he said were “foreign looters.”  According to international media reports, his petition also stated, “Successive governments have not taken steps to correct the barbaric act of invaders and the injury is continuing.”  The two-judge panel said the petition went against the principle of secularism enshrined in the constitution.

Section III.

Status of societal respect for religious freedom.

There were reports throughout the year of attacks against members of religious communities committed by individuals or groups, including killings, assaults, and intimidation.  There were also reports of attacks against non-Hindus and Dalits allegedly engaged in cattle slaughter or transporting cattle for slaughter, known as “cow vigilantism.”  There were reports of harassment and arrest of Muslim men accused of “love jihad.”  There were also multiple cases of communal violence between religious groups.

On February 16, Haryana police found the bodies of two men in a burned-out car in Bhiwani District, whom they subsequently identified as two Muslims, Mohammad Junaid and Mohammad Nasir.  According to media reports and the men’s relatives, Junaid and Nasir were accused of cow smuggling while visiting a relative in Haryana and their car was stopped by members of a so-called cow vigilante group.  Members of the group allegedly beat the two men and attempted to take them to two different police stations to be charged but were turned away at both.  According to the police report, which was quoted by media, members of the vigilante group then drove the men nearly 100 miles away and set fire to their car while the two were inside.  As of August, 10 persons had been arrested for involvement in the killing.  Police listed Haryana District coordinator and Hindu Bajrang Dal activist Monu Manesar as one of the 21 accused.  Rajasthan police also launched an investigation into the killing of Junaid and Nasir since the two men were from that state.  On September 13, Haryana police arrested Manesar and transferred custody of him to Rajasthan police.

On May 13, a Hindu crowd in Akola, Maharashtra, allegedly killed Dalit Vilas Gaikwad and injured eight others, including two policemen, during Hindu-Muslim clashes.  Media reported that the crowd mistook the victim as Muslim.  The violence began after Muslims alleged a local Hindu nationalist leader insulted them and the Prophet Muhammad on social media.  Police arrested 147 individuals and briefly shut down local internet services in response.

In the Nashik District of Maharashtra, a group described by media as cow vigilantes killed Lukman Ansari and attacked two other Muslim youths for allegedly transporting cattle for slaughter on June 8.  Police arrested six of the 10 Muslims accused in the incident.  In a second incident in the same area, media reports said cow vigilantes lynched Muslim Afan Ansari and injured another Muslim youth on suspicion of carrying beef in their car.  Maharashtra police arrested 11 persons accused in that case and charged Ansari and the other Muslim with illegally transporting beef for slaughter.  Since Ansari was killed, standard practice would be to drop his name from the transporting beef case once it reached the prosecution stage.

On June 28, Muslim truck driver Muhammad Zahiruddin was lynched in Bihar’s Saran District by a crowd that suspected he was carrying beef.  According to a media report, Zahiruddin was transporting cattle bones to a factory at Marhaura that used them to make gelatine for medicine capsules.

On July 3, local media reported a crowd beat a Muslim and paraded him half-naked in the Siddipet District of Telangana for allegedly urinating at the statue of Shivaji, a 17th century Hindu king of western India.  The man was described as inebriated at the time.  After parading him around, local Hindu organizations called for the closure of all commercial establishments to protest the man’s action.  During the resulting local protests, a crowd also attacked a mosque, according to media reports.  Police filed nine cases and arrested 11 individuals.

On July 29, the Supreme Court asked the MHA and police chiefs of six states what action they had taken in six separate incidents of mob lynching of Muslims in 2023.  The Supreme Court also ordered that FIRs be opened automatically in such cases for promoting enmity between groups in situations of communal violence.  The Supreme Court was responding to a petition filed by National Federation of Indian Women that questioned police inaction in cases of mob violence against Muslims and demanded compensation for the victims.  In its ruling, the Supreme Court also referenced its 2018 judgment asking the MHA and all Indian states to take action in cases of mob vigilantism.

There were incidents of violence reported between members of different religious groups.  The National Crimes Record Bureau reported 272 instances of communal violence in 2022 (most recent data) compared with 378 in 2021.

During the year, public celebrations of Hindu festivals sometimes resulted in communal violence, particularly when these celebrations included processions through Muslim-majority areas.  For example, between March 30 and April 1, there were sporadic incidents of Hindu-Muslim violence in West Bengal, Bihar, and Jharkhand States during Hindu Ram Navami festivals.  Media outlets reported that as processions of the BJP and affiliated Hindu nationalist groups, including RSS and the VHP, passed through Muslim-majority neighborhoods, some residents threw stones and yelled at them.  The confrontations escalated to violence, arson, and property damage, according to media.  In West Bengal, where the RSS and its affiliates organized 2,000 processions for Ram Navami , one person was reported killed in Dalkhola.  Widely circulated videos on social media depicted participants in the Ram Navami processions carrying swords and guns.  In Bihar, one person was reported killed and the 110-year-old Azizia Madrassah, the madrassah library, a mosque, and several houses and shops were reported damaged or destroyed.  Police arrested several hundred persons in connection with communal violence across those states, according to media reports.

In a statement released on April 4, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said it had “deep concern” about the violence and vandalism targeting the Muslim community in several states during the Ram Navami processions, which it said reflected “systemic targeting of the Muslim community in India.”  The OIC said authorities should take “firm actions against the instigators and perpetrators of such acts” and “ensure the safety, security, rights, and dignity of the Muslim community in the country.”

On July 31 in Nuh, Haryana, communal violence broke out as a Hindu procession led by the VHP made its way through the Muslim-majority district.  Six persons, including two constables of the Haryana Home Guard, were killed in the violence and more than 70 others injured.  Violence spread the following day to the nearby city of Gurugram where a Hindu mob killed a Muslim cleric and burned down a mosque.  Media reported that 188 persons were arrested in connection with the violence.  On August 28, the Haryana government denied permission for the VHP to lead another procession through Nuh and deployed security forces to maintain public order.  On September 12, Haryana police detained Bajrang Dal leader Monu Manesar, known for posting videos online of engaging in cow vigilante violence against Muslims, for releasing a provocative video just before the Nuh violence, appealing to his followers to join the procession.  Haryana police also arrested Congress Party legislator Mamman Khan on allegations that he helped instigate the violence in Nuh.

On August 3-5, the Haryana government demolished 1,208 structures across several towns and villages in the area where the communal violence had taken place.  An officer on the Haryana Chief Minister’s staff said the structures razed belonged to those arrested in the violence, were houses from which rioters threw firebombs and rocks at other protestors and the police, or were illegal encroachments on government-owned land.  Media reports said almost all the properties demolished belonged to Muslims, including in the Rohingya refugee camp in Tauru, and the overall demolition campaign was one of the largest-ever in the region.  Local political activists said that demolitions deliberately targeted Muslims and left more than 500 homeless.  Media reported that some of those with demolished homes said they had legal documents for their properties and had nothing to do with the violence; they also said they were given little or no advance notice of the demolitions.  On August 7, the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered a stay on further demolitions, asking in its order “whether the buildings belonging to a particular community are being brought down under the guise of law and order problem and an exercise of ethnic cleansing is being conducted by the State.”  The government respected his order and halted demolitions.  The Supreme Court further described calls for an economic boycott against the Muslim community as “unacceptable” and urged local authorities to take action against those promoting hate speech.

In March, the NGO Citizens and Lawyers Initiative released its Routes of Wrath report covering Hindu-Muslim communal violence during the Hindu Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti festivals in April 2022.  The report stated that “despite the well-known lessons from earlier riots,” religious processions “were permitted to pass through the most congested and sensitive areas,” leading to communal violence in nine states “followed by targeted attacks on Muslim-owned properties, businesses and places of worship.”  The report said that Hindu nationalist organizations had taken over the processions during those festivals over the years.  It also stated that Muslim families were displaced in areas where rioting and violence occurred, either by demolition of their property or because they feared for their safety.  The report said, “no cause of interfaith riots has been as recurrent and widespread as the religious procession.”  In the report’s prologue, former Supreme Court Justice Rohinton F. Nariman said one solution to the violence would be to “sensitize” police that “Muslims situated in India are citizens of India.”

A study of media reports on communal riots and incidences of mob lynching conducted by the NGO Center for the Study of Society and Secularism cited 32 instances of communal riots reported by five major national newspapers in 2023, down from 41 in 2022.  The study reported 21 cases of mob lynching in 2023, up from 15 in 2022.  The 32 instances of communal riots resulted in the killing of 15 persons, including five Muslims, four Hindus, and three police personnel.  In the 21 instances of mob lynching, 16 Muslims were killed, according to the study.  The study said 11 communal riots took place in Maharashtra and five in Gujarat.  The study also said 22 of the 32 communal riots took place in states where the BJP led the government.  The study stated, “Communal violence in India in 2023 saw religious festivals being weaponized to provoke communal riots and subsequently enabling the state to use it as a pretext to demolish properties belonging mostly to the members of Muslim community.  Out of 32 communal riots, 9 communal riots were triggered off during the Ram Navami processions that were organized by Hindu nationalists.”

In the state of Manipur, violence broke out between the majority Meitei ethnic group and the minority Kuki ethnic group in May.  Meitei are predominately Hindu while Kuki are predominately Christian.  Media reports said the violence began in Imphal after large crowds of Kukis protested a decision by the Manipur High Court directing the Manipur state government to consider the Meitei community’s request to grant it special status as a Scheduled Tribe and send a recommendation to the national government to do the same.  According to Indian and international outlets, Kukis – the minority group in the area and already included as a Scheduled Tribe under the constitution – feared this change in status could open their legally protected traditional lands to exploitation by the majority Meitei, and eventually lead to their displacement.  Many media outlets described the ethnic violence as driven by political and economic concerns.  Religion and ethnicity are closely linked, however, and some places of worship were reportedly targeted for their religious affiliation.

In June, the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum said that at least 253 churches were burned down during the violence in Manipur.  According to international and domestic media reports, the violence resulted in the killing of more than 200 persons and the displacement of over 60,000.  Although the violence resulted in the destruction of religious places belonging to both communities, media reports stated that more churches than Hindu temples were destroyed.  In addition, a group of Meitei reportedly attacked the small Bnei Menashe Jewish community, who are ethnically Kuki, killing one community member, destroying two of their synagogues, and displacing more than 1,000 members of the community.  Most of the attacks against religious sites were reported to have taken place in the first few days of the conflict, when the interethnic violence was at its peak.  Some members of the Kuki community reported that police abetted the Meitei groups who engaged in violence.  There were also reports of Meitei Hindus pressuring Meitei Christians to convert and attacking churches belonging to Meitei Christians.  One local Meiti Christian leader was reported to have said that the Meiti Christians had been “attacked from both sides.”  Levels of violence decreased after a delayed surge of security forces in Manipur in the months after the conflict.  The Irish NGO Church in Chains reported that violence continued after the initial rioting, including on June 9 when two Meiteis killed Domkhohoi Haokip, a Christian Kuki, as she was praying in a church in Khoken.

The Supreme Court criticized the failure of the central government and the Manipur state government to halt the violence, especially in the early stages of the conflict.  In August, the Supreme Court ordered a judicial panel to oversee humanitarian relief and compensation for those impacted by the violence in Manipur.  In December, the Supreme Court ordered the Manipur state government to take steps to protect places of worship and restore places of worship for “all religious faiths and denominations” destroyed during the violence.

In December, the UCF reported 731 attacks against Christians across the country during the year, compared with 599 such incidents in 2022.  The UCF stated the attacks included “incidents (of) mob violence led by so-called vigilante groups of (a) particular faith who are allegedly receiving support from people in power.”  UCF state-by-state data showed that most incidents were in Uttar Pradesh (301) and Chhattisgarh (152).  Other states which reported higher instances of attacks against Christians included Haryana (52), Jharkhand (49), Madhya Pradesh (38), Karnataka (27), and Punjab (21).  In April, during a hearing on the 2022 petition by Archbishop Peter Machado and two Christian NGOs for greater protection of Christians and more diligent government investigation of violence against Christians, the government told the Supreme Court that the UCF “exaggerated” claims of attacks against Christians, to create a “false narrative.”  In July, the UCF’s national coordinator stated that “government data (on violence against Christians) downplays the severity of the situation.”

In January, the U.S.-based Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA) released its 2023 annual report, which documented 1,198 reported incidents of violence against Christians in 2022 throughout the country, compared with 761 in 2021.  Incidents included neighborhood skirmishes, targeted killings, and armed assaults.  The report stated that the violence against Christians was “planned and orchestrated” by “Hindu nationalist political parties as part of a larger design to create a Hindus-only state.”  FIACONA said the estimated cost to property and businesses from these attacks was approximately $100 million.

In its World Watch List report covering 2023, the Christian NGO Open Doors stated that Christians in the country were “increasingly under threat…by an ongoing belief among some Hindu extremists that Indians ought to be Hindu – and any faith outside of Hinduism is not welcome in India.”  The NGO said, “This mindset has led to violent attacks across the country and impunity for the people who perpetrate this violence, especially in places where the authorities are also Hindu hardliners.”  The NGO also said, with more states implementing anticonversion laws, there is “an environment where any Christian who shares their faith can be accused of a crime, intimidated, harassed and even met with violence.”  Open Doors stated that 160 Christians were killed for “faith-related reasons” in the country from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023 and 2228 Christian properties including churches attacked.  Open Doors also said 2085 Christians were detained during this period for “faith-related reasons.”  Other sources could not verify these statistics, however.

In January, 300 Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish and Baha’i leaders gathered with Christians at the Sacred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi to show solidarity with Christians who were forced to leave their homes by violence in Chhattisgarh in December 2022.  Vatican News reported that the participants lit candles, prayed together, and asked the government to stop violence against Christians, which it said were targeted because they refused to renounce their faith.

There were numerous reports during the year of Hindu groups and organizations taking action against Christians they said were trying to convert others to Christianity and against others they said made derogatory remarks against Hinduism or Hindu deities.  In some incidents, Hindus attacked Christians and disrupted Christian worship services.

On January 1, for example, a Hindu crowd assembled in Gorra, Chhattisgarh, and summoned the town’s Christians to join them.  When a few Christians arrived, Christianity Today stated they were beaten with sticks, bricks, and stones by the crowd, with some victims requiring hospitalization.  One resident said the crowd accused Christians of “following a foreign religion” and gave them the choice of recanting their faith or leaving the area permanently.  Christianity Today reported that the incident was part of “weeks of coordinated attacks against Christians” in Chhattisgarh that began in late 2022 and left approximately 1,500 persons homeless.  The chairman of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum (CCF) said in a press conference on January 4 that the CCF had reported the attacks to police but that “no action was taken by them, resulting in the series of attacks against the Christian community.  The CCF chairman said, “The police have not only neglected our complaints, but they have also encouraged the attackers and we have evidence of this.”

On February 27, members of the Hindu nationalist organization Bajarang Dal assaulted atheist activist Bairi Naresh in Warangal District, Telangana, for remarks he made during a conference in December 2022 that were deemed derogatory to Hindu deities.  Police arrested Naresh on December 31, 2022 and charged him with inciting a riot and insulting religion, and he was released on bail in early 2023.  Media outlets reported that police responded to a call from Naresh and attempted to protect him from the crowd.  In August, the Telangana Bharatiya Nastika Samajam (Atheist Society of India) expelled him because of his comments in 2022.

Media reported that on April 30 a group of approximately 100 Bajrang Dal members attacked a Christian congregation holding Sunday prayers at a private residence in Chhattisgarh’s Durg district; the attackers said the congregation was engaged in forced religious conversion.  The host of the prayer meeting said that police stood by and watched without intervening.  The Chhattisgarh Christian Forum said that the police detained the host and other Christian community members on charges of “disturbing the peace,” but none of the assailants were arrested.

On July 4, members of the Bajrang Dal, the VHP, and regional political party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena entered the D.Y. Patil High School in Maharashtra’s Pune District and assaulted principal Alexander Cotes, alleging that students there were forced to recite Christian prayers and not allowed time off for Hindu festival holidays.  Some of the students’ parents also took part in the assault, according to media reports.  One parent said that the students were “intimidated” by school authorities.  No charges were filed after the incident, according to media reports.

On August 4, a group including VHP members assaulted student Ilyas Sarkar Suman in the Koroimura Higher Secondary School in Tripura after he objected to hijab-clad Muslim girls being prevented from attending classes and reportedly ransacked the principal’s office in protest with other students.  Media aired video showing Suman being dragged out of his classroom by the group and beaten; no school staff intervened to help him.

On August 6, Bajrang Dal members disrupted a church service in Bihar’s Nawda District, attacking Protestant Pastor Shyju Joseph and accusing him of converting people to Christianity, UCA News reported.  One witness said Joseph was beaten badly enough to be taken to a hospital for his injuries.

As of December, fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Taiyyba and its proxy group the Resistance Front had killed 12 civilians and migrant laborers as well as 33 members of the security forces in 72 incidents in Jammu and Kashmir, according to the South Asian Terrorism Portal.  This compared with 30 civilians and 30 members of the security forces killed in 151 incidents in 2022.  On January 1 and 2, terrorists killed seven Hindu civilians in the Rajouri District of Jammu and Kashmir in two separate incidents.  In October, terrorists killed Hindu migrant worker Mukesh Kumar from Uttar Pradesh in Pulwama District.

Incidents of abuses reported against Christians included socially ostracizing and economically boycotting them and prohibiting some from using communal burial grounds because of their religious beliefs, according to the UCF.  In September, Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division, said in an interview, “While Hindus have the right to practice their faith, that should not include undermining and attacking fellow Indians who might follow another religion or belief.  Instead, some Hindu groups that believe they enjoy the protection and patronage of the ruling BJP, have targeted Muslims and Christians, their places of worship, and even their livelihood.”

In a report to a committee of the Irish Parliament on July 4, representatives of the NGO Church in Chains stated, “India’s constitution guarantees religious freedom and Christians enjoy freedom in much of the country, but in rural areas they face increasing persecution from Hindu extremists motivated by Hindu nationalist ideology.”  The NGO representatives said, “The extremists attack small churches, beat pastors and members, set fire to homes and church buildings, and accuse Christians of being involved in forced conversions of Hindus.”

There were also reports of Hindus disrupting Muslim events, stating that they included illegal conversions.  In June, for example, college authorities in Malegon, Maharashtra, suspended principal Subhash Nikam following objections by a Hindu nationalist group that Nikam opened a career guidance seminar with an Islamic prayer.  Media reported that the Hindu group whose members had disrupted the seminar said that Nikam was illegally converting students to Islam.  Nikam said that the local organization sponsoring the seminar, which was not affiliated with the school, usually opened its events with brief Islamic prayers.  Police filed a complaint against Nikam.

During the year, there were reports alleging that Muslim men had deceived Hindu women into marrying them and then pressured the women to convert, a practice called “love jihad.”  In Maharashtra, Samajwadi Party legislator Rais Shaikh said in December that the Interfaith Marriage Family Coordination Committee established by that state government in December 2022 received 402 complaints of “love jihad” since its creation.  In March, State Minister for Women and Child Welfare, Mangalprabhat Lodha, said there were more than 100,000 cases of “love jihad” in Maharashtra when it set up the committee.

In June, BJP president in Bihar State Samrat Choudhary said the BJP would investigate all alleged cases of “love jihad” if voted to power in Bihar in the next (2025) state election.

In June, media reported that two men in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, posted images of 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan and an audio message deemed offensive to Hindus on their social media accounts.  In addition, a man posted an image of 17th and 18th century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb on his WhatsApp account.  Both historical leaders are considered by historians to have oppressed Hindus during their reigns.  The social media posts led to large protests by Hindus in Kolhapur on June 7 that were dispersed by police.  Police said all three men who posted the images were charged with “promoting enmity” and “intention to hurt the religious sentiments of others” under the penal code.  Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told media that the social media posts “could not be mere coincidence” and were “desperate attempts” to destabilize law and order in the state.

On August 20, in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai District, a Muslim woman was denied permission to take a Hindi language examination conducted by the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha after she refused to remove her hijab.  Following the incident, Muslim organizations staged a protest in front of the examination center.

There were instances of Hindus preventing Christians from proselytizing during the year.  On March 1, at the World Book Fair in New Delhi, a group of 30 men entered the stall of the Gideons International organization, pulling books off shelves and repeating Hindu religious chants.  Police eventually removed the protestors, and video of the incident circulated widely on social media.  One eyewitness told journalists that the group did not attack other locations displaying Islamic texts.  He added that Gideons International erected its display following the normal rules of the book fair and had been displaying books at the fair for the past 10 years.

There were instances of religious group members making derogatory comments in public about other religious groups during the year.  For example, on January 15, news portal Nijam Today reported that Hyderabad police arrested Pastor Kuntum Edward William from Andhra Pradesh for his remarks during a church service on January 1 in which he said that the BJP-led central government would carry out a Christian “genocide” in 2023, based on an “American top secret agency report available to him.”  Nijam Today also reported that William said it was “the duty” of PM Modi and Home Minister Shah “to hate Christians.”  The portal shared a social media post by a Hindu nationalist organization with a video of William’s remarks.  The pastor, who is also the host of a Christian television program, was charged with making religious hate speech and public provocation.  He was later released on bail, the portal reported.

In March, a widely circulated video on social media showed speakers at a VHP event in Kodi, Gujarat, defaming the Pope and calling for those present at the event to “remove Christians” from the area.  Christian nuns and Gujarat Roman Catholic authorities on March 21 petitioned the Gujarat Chief Minister for protection and demanded that the speakers be charged under the relevant portions of the penal code.  In April, a nun from Vadodara filed a petition in the Gujarat High Court seeking action regarding derogatory remarks against the Pope.  The petitioner said police took no action against the VHP speakers, despite the request from Catholic authorities that they do so.  The Gujarat High Court had not ruled on the petition as of year’s end.

Media outlets reported that Sakal Hindu Samaj (All Hindu Society), a coalition of Hindu nationalist groups, held 50 public rallies in Maharashtra between November 2022 to March 2023 in which they said Muslims were forcibly converting Hindu women through marriage and called for Hindus to arm themselves and economically boycott Muslims.  In February, the Supreme Court ordered Maharashtra police to do more to curb hate speech in the state.  In May, Maharashtra police informed the Supreme Court that 30 hate speech-related complaints were registered from February to May.  The Indian Express online news service said Muslims viewed the rallies as discriminatory because they featured speakers criticizing “love jihad” and “Islamic aggression” in addition to calling for a boycott.  A Washington Post reporter who attended one of the rallies in February said she saw persons of all ages expressing Hindu akrosh (angst) and calling for “termites” and “bearded traitors” – derogatory terms for Muslims – to leave the country.  Citing the NGO Hindutva Watch, the Los Angeles Times in October reported that in the first six months of the year, “nearly 80 percent of hate speech events were held in states or territories controlled by the BJP party.”

There were incidents during the year that members of some minority religious groups viewed as discriminatory or threatening.  There were also protests by members of some minority religious groups against treatment or comments they viewed as discriminatory.  On February 20, the Gujarat Education Board of Catholic Institutions sought police protection for buildings in the state, and especially for St. Mary’s High Secondary School in Amreli District, after members of the VHP and Bajrang Dal entered the school and demanded that photos of Hindu deities be installed inside classrooms and at the principal’s office.  In a letter to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, Father Teles Fernandes, secretary of the board, said the incident was “totally unacceptable in a democratic and secular country like India.  We as a minority group, feel threatened and intimidated by such elements.”

Also in February, the RSS-affiliated Janajati Dharma Sanskriti Suraksha Manch, a social organization in Assam, demanded removal of the Scheduled Tribe status of anyone who embraced Christianity.  A spokesman said to the media, “Tribal people, who have been converted to ‘foreign religions’ such as Christianity and Islam, are getting double benefits, both as members of Scheduled Tribes and as a minority.”  On March 26, the organization held a rally in Guwahati to press their demand.  In a statement, legislators from the neighbouring state of Meghalaya “strongly condemned” the Hindu group’s demand which they said went “against the spirit of respecting the indigenous ethnic origin of the Scheduled Tribes of the North East, especially the Christian community in Meghalaya and Nagaland.”

According to a media report, on March 15, a village council in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar Region passed a resolution prohibiting tribal members from working on farmland owned by Christians or Hindus, banning Christian cremations within the village, and outlawing the celebration of nontraditional tribal festivals.  The resolution said that the spread of Christianity, Hinduism, and other nontribal religions in the area was putting local tribal culture “on the verge of ending.”  Bastar District authorities said the village council resolution was illegal, promised action against anyone who discriminated against anyone based on religion, and announced an investigation into the resolution.

On March 25, members of the Scheduled Tribe communities demonstrated in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, to call for a constitutional amendment which would deny rights such as government employment and education quotas to any member of the Scheduled Tribes who converted from their traditional religions to other religions, such as Christianity or Islam.  Representatives of 62 tribal organizations took part and were joined by Union Minister of State Bishweswar Tudu, who said the demand for such an amendment was “growing louder across the country.”  Tudu said the Scheduled Tribes members had their own culture, which conversion to other faiths would destroy.  One tribal leader at the demonstration said many tribal individuals who had converted to other religions (i.e., Christianity) took advantage of the same benefits offered to Scheduled Tribes members who did not convert.  “This should be stopped,” he told the media.  Another leader said that tribal people were targeted for proselytization by Christians.

In April, UCA News reported that Christians and Muslims in the Bastar area of Chhattisgarh petitioned the local government to act against local leaders of Hindu-led organizations, including the BJP, the VHP, and Bajrang Dal, that had called for an embargo against Christian and Muslim businesses during a rally on April 10 in Jagdalpur.  A Christian leader said authorities had agreed to investigate.  Following the petitions, BJP officials stated that their party “does not support social discrimination” and is committed “to work for the development of society as a whole.”

In May, the Muslim Youth League in Kerala state offered a 10-million-rupee ($120,200) “cash reward” for anyone who could provide evidence supporting what they said were false claims in The Kerala Story film that ISIS recruited “thousands” of Christian and Hindu women from the state, many through marriage and conversion.  A Muslim Youth Group leader said that the film reinforced “Islamophobic tropes” in order to “tarnish the reputation of our state as well as the Muslim community.”  Both the Kerala state government and members of the opposition threatened legal action against the filmmakers for “attempting to spread propaganda”; other groups petitioned the Kerala High Court and the national Supreme Court to prevent the film’s release.

On June 7, the Tamil Nadu government closed the Sri Dharmaraja Draupadi Amman Hindu Temple near Melpathi in Villupuram District following a dispute between Vanniyars, members of a higher caste group, and Dalits concerning which group could use the facility.  Media reports said that three Dalits were assaulted in April while trying to enter the temple to pray.  In response, Dalit groups staged public protests and blocked roads.  When the state’s minister for higher education said that everyone had a right to worship at the temple and district authorities would resolve the issue, Vanniyars protested and blocked entry.  Local authorities said the temple would be reopened once an “amicable settlement” could be reached between the Vanniyars and the Dalits.  The temple was managed by the state Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department.

In August, international media outlets reported about a video circulating on social media showing a teacher in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, ordering her students to take turns slapping a crying seven-year-old Muslim boy standing in front of the class for “not remembering his times tables.”  As the students slapped the Muslim student, the teacher could be heard saying derogatory remarks in reference to the boy’s religion.  Police registered a case against the teacher and launched an investigation, with the student moving to another school.

In October, speakers at a conference in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, organized by HJS said Hindus were “waking up and raising their voice(s) against the injustice they face” because Hindus were being “targeted” with charges of hate speech around the country.  The HJS organizer for Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, Sunil Ghanwat, said that although “there has been no incident where [the] speech of Hindutva activists caused law and order problems,” Hindus were still charged for their comments under “pressure on the police and administration.”  To counter what he said were “anti-Hindu” forces, Ghanwat said that the HJS should create organizations to lobby for Hindu issues at every level of government.

Following the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, the Guardian said there was “a flood of disinformation” on social media stating that India faced a similar threat from its Muslim population, particularly in Muslim-majority areas such as Jammu and Kashmir.  According to the Guardian , a typical, widely circulated message said, “In the future, India could also face conspiracies and attacks like Israel.”  A BJP politician in Karnataka stated on social media, “We may face the situation that Israel is confronting today if we don’t stand up against Politically motivated Radicalism.”  Vishnu Gupta, national president of Hindu nationalist organization Hindu Sena, told the Guardian that he and 200 others were volunteering for the Israeli army because both countries “are victims of Islamic terror.”  Gupta added, “Just as Jerusalem was taken over by Muslims, holy places in India were also invaded by Muslims.”

In its Freedom in the World report covering civil liberties including freedom of religion in 2023, the NGO Freedom House rated the country as “partly free” due to “discriminatory policies and a rise in persecution affecting the Muslim population.”

Several Hindu nationalist publications and social media users attempted to blame interfaith tensions for a June 2 train accident that killed 275 persons and injured over 1,000.  The RSS-affiliated publication Organizer stated the accident may have resulted from Muslim international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS attacking transportation infrastructure.  Other social media posts also suggested that the accident was carried out by Muslims, since it took place on a Friday (the Islamic Sabbath) and the local railroad station manager was Muslim (an untrue claim, according to media).  In a June 4 statement, Odisha police warned the public not to circulate rumors and said there would be “severe legal action” against anyone who did.

There were reports of cooperation between faith groups during the year.  In one example, in April, Hindu and Muslim leaders in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, joined with public health authorities to urge residents to have children vaccinated to counter a measles outbreak.  Hindu leaders used temple gatherings and Muslim imams used Friday sermons in mosques to spread the message, according to media reports.

Section IV.

U.s. government policy and engagement.

In a joint statement issued during Prime Minister Modi’s state visit to Washington in June, the U.S. and Indian governments reaffirmed “their shared values of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens.”  The statement said that both countries recognized “the diversity represented in their nations and celebrating the contributions of all their citizens.”

In a joint statement issued during President Biden’s visit to New Delhi in September, the U.S. and Indian governments said, “The leaders re-emphasized that the shared values of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens are critical to the success our countries enjoy and that these values strengthen our relationship.”  The Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense’s joint statement with Indian counterparts following a meeting in November echoed similar views.

During his visit to New Delhi in April, the Secretary of State met with women leaders and discussed, among other issues, recent developments in religious freedom in the country.  In July, the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights met with civil society groups to discuss the treatment of members of marginalized religious and ethnic groups in the country, among other issues, underscoring the U.S. commitment to its partnership with India and advancing freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression.

Throughout the year, the Ambassador engaged with members of religious communities, including representatives of the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh faiths, to discuss the importance of religious freedom and pluralism; the value of interfaith dialogue, and the operating environment for faith-based organizations.  In May, the Ambassador visited historic mosques in Hyderabad and Ahmedabad and engaged with religious minorities and an interfaith youth group.  Visiting Mumbai in May, the Ambassador joined religious leaders on an interfaith walk that included visits to Hindu and Parsi temples, a mosque, a synagogue, and a Jesuit university museum.  In March, the Chargé d’Affaires hosted an iftar for senior-level Muslim representatives where they discussed religious freedom and pluralism in the country.

Embassy and consulate officials and other visiting senior U.S. officials including the Assistant Secretary of State and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, met with leaders from the government, religious minority communities, NGOs, civil society, and academia to engage on religious freedom concerns and learn about the perspectives and experiences of religious leaders.

In April, the Consul General in Mumbai hosted an iftar with prominent civil society members to discuss religion in the workplace.  In Ahmedabad, the Consul-General joined the Ambassador to meet with an interfaith youth group and tour prominent multifaith religious sites in the city to emphasize the importance of religious freedom to all faiths.

Staff from the consulate general in Kolkata regularly engaged with religious leaders across the east and northeast areas of the country to underscore the U.S. government’s commitment to human rights and religious freedom.  During the year, the Consul General visited the Ahmadi and Dawoodi Bohra communities, minority Muslim communities, to encourage interfaith dialogue.

On April 11, the Consul General in Chennai hosted an iftar for interfaith leaders.  In June, she addressed an Indian Philosophy Conference event and stressed U.S. interest in promoting religious freedom, human rights, and tolerance.

On January 10, the Consul General in Hyderabad and the visiting Chargé d’Affaires hosted Muslim youth leaders who were former participants in U.S. government exchange programs to discuss religious freedom and problems faced by the Muslim community.

Embassy and consulate public messaging, including from the Ambassador and the Consuls General, regularly emphasized U.S.-government-supported activities that involved individuals from different religious traditions and marked important religious holidays from various religions in the country.

On This Page

• Section I. Religious Demography
• Section IV. U.S. Government Policy and Engagement

01 / Select a Year

02 / Select Sections

• Select All Sections

03 / Select Countries You can add more than one country or area.

U.S. Department of State

The lessons of 1989: freedom and our future.

• Hinduism, Indian culture, Vedic Science, Yoga, Spirituality, India

Swami Vivekananda’s Speech on Hinduism

Three religions now stand in the world which have come down to us from time prehistoric—Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength.

But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all-conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations, but like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed, and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith. From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists, and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu’s religion.

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas . They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honour them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women. Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning.The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound, and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation. If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two lines, without beginning and without end, running parallel to each other. God is the ever active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time and again destroyed. This is what the Brahmin boy repeats every day: “The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and moons of previous cycles.” And this agrees with modern science. 

Here I stand and if I shut my eyes, and try to conceive my existence, “I”, “I”, “I”, what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, “No”. I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. Here am I in this body; it will fall, but I shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination which means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Some are born happy, enjoy perfect health, with beautiful body, mental vigour and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable, some are without hands or feet, others again are idiots and only drag on a wretched existence.

Why, if they are all created, why does a just and merciful God create one happy and another unhappy, why is He so partial? Nor would it mend matters in the least to hold that those who are miserable in this life will be happy in a future one. Why should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God? In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the anomaly, but simply expresses the cruel fiat of an all-powerful being. There must have been causes, then, before his birth, to make a man miserable or happy and those were his past actions.

Are not all the tendencies of the mind and the body accounted for by inherited aptitude? Here are two parallel lines of existence—one of the mind, the other of matter. If matter and its transformations answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has been evolved out of matter, and if a philosophical monism is inevitable, spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a materialistic monism; but neither of these is necessary here.

There is another suggestion. Taking all these for granted, now is it that I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue, in fact no words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness; but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in. That shows that consciousness is only the surface of the mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up and you would by conscious even of your past life.

This is direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the world by the Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which the very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up-try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life.

So then the Hindu belives that he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce-him the fire cannot burn-him the water cannot melt-him the air cannot dry. The Hindu belives that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is located in the body, and that death means the change of this centre from body to body. Not is the soul bound by the conditions of matter. In its very essence it is free. unbounded. holy, pure, and perfect. But somehow of other it finds itself tied down to matter and thinks of itself as matter.

Why should the free, perfect, and pure being be thus under the thraldom of matter, is the next question. How can the perfect soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect? We have been told that the Hindus shirk the question and say that no such question can be there. Some thinkers want to answer it by positing one or more quasi-perfect beings, and use big scientific names to fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining. The question remains the same. How can the perfect become the quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute, change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shelter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion; an the question and say that no such question can be there. Some thinkers want to answer it by positing one or more quasi-perfect beings, and use big scientific names to fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining. The question remains the same. How can the perfect become the quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute, change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shelter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion; an immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of centre from one body to another.

The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death. But here is another question: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions—a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause and effect; a little moth placed under the wheel of causation which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow’s tears or the orphan’s cry? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of Nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape?—was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: “Hear, ye children of immortal bliss! even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again.”

And what is His nature? He is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful. “Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou art the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life.” Thus sang the Rishis of the Vedas . And how to worship Him? Through love. “He is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life.”

This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas , and let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna, whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth. He taught that a man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world—his heart to God and his hands to work.

It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love’s sake, and the prayer goes: “Lord, I do not want wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth, but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward—love unselfishly for love’s sake.” One of the disciples of Krishna, the then Emperor of India, was driven from his kingdom by his enemies and had to take shelter with his queen in a forest in the Himalayas, and there one day the queen asked him how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, should suffer so much misery. Yudhishthira answered, “Behold, my queen, the Himalayas, how grand and beautiful they are; I love them. They do not give me anything, but my nature is to love the grand, the beautiful, therefore I love them. Similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all beauty, of all sublimity. He is the only object to be loved; my nature is to love Him, and therefore I love. I do not pray for anything; I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love’s sake. I cannot trade love.”

The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is therefore, Mukti— freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery. And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy. How does that mercy act? He reveals Himself to the pure heart; the pure and the stainless see God, yea, even in this life; then and then only all the crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. He is no more the freak of a terrible law of causation. This is the very centre, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories. If there are existences beyond the ordinary sensuous existence, he wants to come face to face with them. If there is a soul in him which is not matter, if there is an all-merciful universal Soul, he will go to Him direct. He must see Him, and that alone can destroy all doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the soul, about God, is: “I have seen the soul; I have seen God.” And that is the only condition of perfection. The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising—not in believing, but in being and becoming.

Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and see God, and this reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus. And what becomes of a man when he attains perfection? He lives a life of bliss infinite. He enjoys infinite and perfect bliss, having obtained the only thing in which man ought to have pleasure, namely God, and enjoys the bliss with God.

So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the common religion of all the sects of India; but, then, perfection is absolute, and the absolute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any qualities. It cannot be an individual. And so when a soul becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with Brahman, and it would only realise the Lord as the perfection, the reality, of its own nature and existence, the existence absolute, knowledge absolute, and bliss absolute. We have often and often read this called the losing of individuality and becoming a stock or a stone. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”

Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little prison individuality must go. Then alone can death cease when I am one with life, then alone can misery cease when I am one with happiness itself, then alone can all errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself; and this is the necessary scientific conclusion. Science has proved to me that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body in an unbroken ocean of matter; and Advaita (unity) is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, soul.

Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus Chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfil its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are but manifestations, and the science of religion becomes perfect when it would discover Him who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world. One who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations. Thus is it, through multiplicity and duality, that the ultimate unity is reached. Religion can go no farther. This is the goal of all science.

All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today, and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language, and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.

Descend we now from the aspirations of philosophy to the religion of the ignorant. At the very outset, I may tell you that there is no polytheism in India. In every temple, if one stands by and listens, one will find the worshippers applying all the attributes of God, including omnipresence, to the images. It is not polytheism, nor would the name henotheism explain the situation. “The rose called by any other name would smell as sweet.” Names are not explanations.

I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to a crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick, what could it do? One of his hearers sharply answered, “If I abuse your God, what can He do?” “You would be punished,” said the preacher, “when you die.” “So my idol will punish you when you die,” retorted the Hindu.

The tree is known by its fruits. When I have seen amongst them that are called idolaters, men, the like of whom in morality and spirituality and love I have never seen anywhere, I stop and ask myself, “Can sin beget holiness?”

Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church?

The Hindus have associated the idea of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different images and forms. But with this difference that while some people devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows, the whole religion of the Hindu is centred in realisation. Man is to become divine by realising the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood: but on and on he must progress.

He must not stop anywhere. “External worship, material worship,” say the scriptures, “is the lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realised.” Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, ”Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine.” But he does not abuse any one’s idol or call its worship sin. He recognises in it a necessary stage of life. ” The child is father of the man.”  Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?

If a man can realise his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so man attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. On the other hand, it is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths. The Hindus have their faults, they sometimes have their exceptions; but mark this, they are always for punishing their own bodies, and never for cutting the throats of their neighbours. If the Hindu fanatic burns himself on the pyre, he never lights the fire of Inquisition. And even this cannot be laid at the door of his religion any more than the burning of witches can be laid at the door of Christianity.

To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a travelling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures.

It is the same light coming through glasses of different colours. And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns. The Lord has declared to the Hindu in His incarnation as Krishna,”I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there.”

And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout the whole system of Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindu alone will be saved and not others. Says Vyasa, “We find perfect men even beyond the pale of our caste and creed. ” One thing more. How, then, can the Hindu, whose whole fabric of thought centres in God, believe in Buddhism which is agnostic, or in Jainism which is atheistic?

The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of man. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father also. This, brethren, is a short sketch of the religious ideas of the Hindus. The Hindu may have failed to carry out all his plans, but if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being, from the lowestgrovelling savage not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognise divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be created in aiding humanity to realise its own true, divine nature.

Offer such a religion, and all the nations will follow you. Asoka’s council was a council of the Buddhist faith. Akbar’s, though more to the purpose, was only a parlour-meeting. It was reserved for America to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord is in every religion. May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea! The star arose in the East; it travelled steadily towards the West, sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world; and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East, the borders of the Sanpo, a thousandfold more effulgent than it ever was before.

Hail, Columbia, motherland of liberty! It has been given to thee, who never dipped her hand in her neighbour’s blood, who never found out that the shortest way of becoming rich was by robbing one’s neighbours, it has been given to thee to march at the vanguard of civilisation with the flag of harmony.

~  Swami Vivekananda, Read at the Parliament on 19th September, 1893,Chicago.

You may also like

Navratri Series – Day 8: Goddess Mahagauri – The Beacon of Purity and Serenity

The Ram Temple in Ayodhya: A Confluence of Historical Faith and Modern Progress

Remembering Famous Fathers in Hinduism on Fathers Day

Sanskriti calendar 2024.

Search the website

Like us on facebook.

Get daily updates via Email

Enter your email address:, recent posts.

Diwali 2024: Best Wishes, Messages, and Images to Share on WhatsApp

Diwali, the festival of lights, is one of the most celebrated festivals in India. It

Dussehra 2024: Best Wishes, Messages, and Images to Share on WhatsApp

Celebrate Dussehra 2024 with inspiring wishes, messages, and beautiful images. Share the joy of this festival marking the victory of good over evil with your loved ones on WhatsApp and social media. Send them heartfelt greetings and spread positivity on this auspicious occasion.

Onam 2024: Best Wishes, Messages, and Images to Share on WhatsApp

Celebrate Onam 2024 with our collection of heartfelt wishes, messages, and beautiful images. Perfect for sharing on WhatsApp, these greetings will help you spread the joy and spirit of Onam with your loved ones. Wish them a prosperous and joyful Onam with these thoughtful messages and vibrant images.

Ganesh Chaturthi 2024: Best Wishes, Messages, and Images to Share on WhatsApp

Ganesh Chaturthi is a time for celebration, devotion, and spreading joy. As we welcome Lord

Ganesh Chaturthi Recipes: Modaks and More

Ganesh Chaturthi is synonymous with delicious offerings, particularly the beloved modak, Lord Ganesha’s favorite sweet.

Sanskriti comes from the Sanskrit root “kr” which means to do or to make prefix “sam” is applied before it to convey a sense of embellishment.  It means actions done for the holistic refinement and perfection all the potentialities within a human being.

Important Links

“The term “Rishi” in Sanskrit originates from a root that means “To See.” Rishis, quite literally, “see” truths that are unveiled to them in elevated states of consciousness. .These   are recorded in Sacred texts called   Upanishads , Vedas etc. The wisdom imparted by ancient Rishis has not only enriched the realm of inner science but has also played a pivotal role in shaping and advancing modern scientific understanding.   Let us Explore……

Sanskriti Social

Copyright © 2024. Sanskriti Magazine

Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.

Swami Vivekananda and His 1893 Speech

Photo of Swami Vivekananda in Chicago in 1893 with the handwritten words “one infinite pure and holy—beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) is best known in the United States for his groundbreaking speech to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in which he introduced Hinduism to America and called for religious tolerance and an end to fanaticism. Born Narendranath Dutta, he was the chief disciple of the 19th-century mystic Ramakrishna and the founder of Ramakrishna Mission. Swami Vivekananda is also considered a key figure in the introduction of Vedanta and Yoga to the West and is credited with raising the profile of Hinduism to that of a world religion.

Speech delivered by Swami Vivekananda on September 11, 1893, at the first World’s Parliament of Religions on the site of the present-day Art Institute

Sisters and Brothers of America,

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world, I thank you in the name of the mother of religions, and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shat­tered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descen­dant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with vio­lence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

• News and Exhibitions Career Opportunities Families
• Public Programs K-12 Educator Resources Teen Opportunities Research, Publishing, and Conservation

Gallery actions

Image actions, suggested terms.

• Free Admission
• O'Keeffe
• My Museum Tour
• What to See in an Hour

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Religious Freedom In India Takes 'Drastic Turn Downward,' U.S. Commission Says

Tom Gjelten

India Home Minister Amit Shah (center) introduced India's new citizenship law that fast-tracks naturalization for some non-Muslim migrants. Opponents say it violates India's secular constitution. Bikas Das/AP hide caption

India Home Minister Amit Shah (center) introduced India's new citizenship law that fast-tracks naturalization for some non-Muslim migrants. Opponents say it violates India's secular constitution.

Updated at 7:40 p.m. ET

Religious freedom in India under the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken "a drastic turn downward," according to the U.S. government commission that monitors conditions around the world.

In its annual report , the congressionally mandated U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) says the Indian government's enactment last year of the Citizenship Amendment Act discriminated against Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Commission vice chairperson Nadine Maenza, appointed by President Trump, said in a press conference that the deterioration of religious freedom in India was "perhaps the steepest and most alarming" of all the negative developments identified around the world. The commission accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of having "allowed violence against minorities and their houses of worship to continue with impunity and also engaged in and tolerated hate speech and incitement to violence."

New Controversial Law In India Uses Religion As A Criteria For Citizenship

The commission, for the first time since 2004, recommended that the State Department designate India as a "country of particular concern," a status it says is reserved for "the worst of the worst." Thirteen other countries have that status, including Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The commission called on the Trump administration to impose sanctions on "Indian government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom," given its treatment of religious minorities, including Christians as well as Muslims.

In a "Howdy Modi" event in Houston last fall, President Trump called Modi "one of America's greatest, most devoted, and most loyal friends" and said he was doing "a truly exceptional job for India and all the Indian people."

At that event, Trump said the U.S. and Indian militaries work together to oppose "radical Islamic terrorism." During a trip to India in February, Trump said he had asked Modi about his commitment to religious freedom but declined to elaborate on the conversation, saying he wanted to "leave that to India." Trump insisted that Modi "wants people to have religious freedom and very strongly."

During the Trump visit, mobs attacked Muslim neighborhoods in New Delhi, with police reportedly standing by or even directly participating in the violence, a development highlighted in the USCIRF report.

Faith And Power: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India

Millions in india face uncertain future after being left off citizenship list.

Commission member Gary Bauer, a Trump appointee, dissented from the USCIRF conclusion on India, saying it placed the country "in a gallery of rogue nations in which it does not belong" and cited the country's status as "our ally." Another member, Tenzin Dorjee, appointed to the commission by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also dissented, saying that as a Tibetan refugee who lived in India for years, he and his fellow Buddhists "enjoyed complete religious freedom."

The Indian government, which has long had an acrimonious relationship with the USCIRF, angrily rejected the commission's conclusions. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said , "[The commission's] biased and tendentious comments against India are not new. But on this occasion its misrepresentation has reached new levels." In a retort to the commission's recommendation that India be designated a "country of particular concern," the spokesperson said the Indian government would now regard the commission as "an organization of particular concern and will treat it accordingly."

The USCIRF report also highlighted China's detention of 1.8 million Uighur Muslims, the plight of nearly a million Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh, North Korea's reported imprisonment of about 50,000 Christians and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, among other instances of religious freedom violations. Two countries, Sudan and Uzbekistan, were said to have made "important progress" on religious freedom issues.

The USCIRF was established under the terms of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act as an independent, bipartisan federal government commission.

• religious freedom
• trump administration
• President Trump

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

• Speech Writing /

Speech on Religion in English

• Updated on  
• Dec 27, 2023

Religion is our social and cultural identity. According to the Oxford Dictionary, religion refers to our faith and belief in superhuman powers, especially in God. Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.’ Our religion teaches us a way of living, what we will accomplish in life and how our actions will determine our afterlife. International sources estimate the existence of more than 4000 religions in the world, the popular being, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. But did you know that there is a large section of people who identify themselves as secular/ nonreligious/ agnostic? Today, we have brought to you a speech on religion in English. Stay tuned!

Table of Contents

• 1 Popular Religions in the World
• 2 10 Lines to Add in Speech on Religion
• 3 2-Minute Speech on Religion

‘All Religions Must Be Tolerated…For Every Man Must Go To Heaven In His Way.’ -Epictetus

Popular Religions in the World

The table below highlights some of the popular religions in the world with the total number of followers.

Also Read: Right to Freedom of Religion

10 Lines to Add in Speech on Religion

Here are 10 lines that you can add to your speech on religion. Feel free to use them in your speech or writing topics related to religion. 

• Every religion has its holy texts, where rules and rituals are mentioned.
• There are four Hindu holy texts or Vedas: the Rig Veda , the Yajur Veda , the Sama Veda , and the Atharva Veda .
• In India, there are eight major religions.
• Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world and was mentioned as ‘Sanathana’ in ancient Hindu texts.
• Christians and Muslims are monotheistic, meaning they believe there’s only one God, and he created the heavens and the earth.
• There are around 330 million gods in the Hindu culture.
• Jews are more highly educated than any other major religious group around the world.
• Religious tolerance and freedom are necessary to build a pluralistic society.
• Religions around the world offer moral guidelines and ethical principles that shape the behaviour and conduct of their adherents.
• Rituals and ceremonies are integral parts of religious expression.

Also Read: Best Speech on Christmas

Also Read: How to Prepare for UPSC in 6 Months?

2-Minute Speech on Religion

‘Hello and welcome to everyone present here. Today, I stand before you to present my speech on religion. We all have grown up hearing the phrase, ‘Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai, sab apas me bhai bhai.’ Today, there are more than 4000 religions in the world, and the most popular ones are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. Since India is a Secular country, several religions co-exist. There are eight major religions in India, such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism Buddhism, etc.’

‘Religion is not a physical entity. Instead, they are rules and regulations, giving us a social and cultural identity to live in harmony with other religions. Every religion teaches us to find the meaning of existence; the purpose of our life. Different religions have their customs and celebrations, where people follow their belief practices, and pray to the god for the goodwill of their family’s health and overall wellbeing.’

‘In our country, some of the popular religious places are Varanasi (Kashi), Haridwar, Ujjain, Amritsar, Tirupati, etc. All these cities are holy places where millions of people every year gather to participate in religious practices. The famous Kumbh Mela is a Hindu pilgrimage and festival which is conducted every 12 years at four places in India. 

‘Our religion teaches us a lot of life lessons like being kind to others, telling the truth or following the path of righteousness, etc. Different religions have their learned men, who act as the medium between people and god. Christians have a Father in church, an Imam in the Mosque, a Pujari in the Hindu Temple, a Granthi in Gurudwaras, and so on. Although these people have different names, their job is the same; performing rituals in holy places to connect with god or deity.’

‘We respect religion and abide by all our religious practices. Religion is not just about visiting temples and celebrating festivals. It is a way of living, it’s our identity, it defines who we are and teaches us what we can achieve in our life. Every religion offers moral guidelines and ethical principles that shape the behavior and conduct of adherents.

Thank you.’

Ans: Religion refers to the beliefs and practices people follow, which connect them with their social and cultural identity. International sources estimate the existence of more than 4000 religions in the world, the popular being, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. ‘Religion is not a physical entity. Instead, they are rules and regulations, giving us a social and cultural identity to live in harmony with other religions. Every religion teaches us to find the meaning of existence; the purpose of our life.

Ans: The top three religions in the world are Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.

Ans: People who don’t follow any religion identify themselves as secular/ nonreligious/ agnostic. More than a billion people in the world identify themselves as secular/ nonreligious

Related Articles

For more information on such interesting speech topics for your school, visit our speech writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Connect With Us

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

Don't Miss Out

• Current Issue
• Arts & Culture
• Social Issues
• Science & Technology
• Environment
• World Affairs
• Data Stories
• Photo Essay
• Newsletter Sign-up
• Print Subscription
• Digital Subscription
• Digital Exclusive Stories

• CONNECT WITH US

Religion, gender and equality

Women and their struggle for equality are inherently tied to the struggle for democracy in india..

Published : Jan 17, 2019 12:30 IST

READ LATER SEE ALL Remove

Different parts of India witnessed reform movements from the mid 19th century. Periyar E.V. Ramasamy led the Self-Respect Movement in Tamil Nadu.

It is ironic that while women and their rights are generally seen as peripheral to the political domain, discussions on women’s rights inevitably get embroiled in the deepest of political manoeuvres. Specific issues pertaining to aspects of gender equality tend to spill over into debates on religion and tradition. Equally perplexing is the fact that while issues of women and sexuality are seen as taboo in both private and public discourses, time and again flashpoints emerge where women’s sexuality is the underlying issue in public debates. This points to both the complexity of struggles for rights and the challenges to democracy and democratisation of society in India.

January 1 witnessed women from different walks of life across districts and towns in Kerala standing up to make a women’s wall. They stood up for gender equality and against discriminatory practices and drew support from women outside the State also, many of whom organised solidarity events. This was against the immediate backdrop of the issue of women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple. Subsequently, another kind of mobilisation was undertaken. This was clearly directed against women’s assertion for equality. This marked a consolidation of forces in the name of identity politics supposedly on the grounds of religion, religious practice and tradition and clearly in opposition to women’s democratic rights.

No restriction on entry prior to 1991

Prof. Rajan Gurukkal, one of the most renowned historians of south Indian history in our times, while outlining the evolution of the Ayyappa cult and its complex history has drawn on historical evidence to state that there was virtually no restriction on women’s entry prior to 1991 when the Kerala High Court upheld the restriction of entry of women aged between 10 and 50 into the temple. There was neither ritual sanctity nor any scientific justification for this stipulation, he argues.

Social scientists and activists in contemporary India need to ask this question: what is it in the nature of and about women’s rights that each time an issue comes up discussions around the subject result in a political line-up for and against, with variation only in the names of those leading the charge? The polarisation provides retrogressive forces an occasion to rally around in the name of religion and threats to the rights of a specific religious community. This may include pressure mounted to upturn judgments and decisions of the highest court in India and even dilute existing legal provisions in favour of women’s equality. Clearly, this resistance is not confined to the followers of any one community and in fact emerges as a trait common to the leaders, often self–appointed, of all faiths and religions. Interestingly, along with religion, the authority claimed by those standing in opposition to equality is that of tradition.

The fact remains that there is no clarity about the tradition(s) that we hark back to. Can unilinear claims be made on the basis of tradition to uphold discriminatory practices? Should the state, government or an individual/institutional entity be permitted to claim sanction for discriminatory practices and seek to enforce these with impunity on the basis of interpretations that may have no historical validity?

In contemporary Indian society, which is marked by a plurality of traditions, beliefs and practices, respect for diversity that has evolved over centuries emerges as the bulwark of democracy. However, can these be invoked to deny equal rights to women and as justification to uphold discriminatory practices? The Constitution is clear in this regard and it is incumbent upon the state to uphold these rights. Further, respect for “tradition” cannot be selectively invoked in the name of upholding practices followed by certain groups while those of other sections are attacked in the name of false dichotomies drawing upon the rhetoric of gender equality versus tradition. Debates in the Constituent Assembly reflected a great deal of sensitivity to the difference between individual and community-based rights and placed both these in perspective to enshrine Article 15, which prohibits the state and public-funded institutions from discriminating against any citizen.

The continuing debates for equality and against discrimination need to be understood in a historical context wherein the democratisation of the social order and of institutions emerged as part of a process. At one level, it is correct to see the present debates as a continuation of trends that first became visible in the 19th century when issues of “social reform” and women’s rights first came to be enmeshed within a larger discourse of anti-colonialism and modernity. These became a part of the anti-feudal, anti-imperialist struggle with a concrete agenda of social transformation. Different parts of India witnessed reform movements from the mid 19th century, ranging from distinct roots in local/regional histories of struggles, such as the Satyashodhak, Dravidian and the temple entry movements. The national movement in the early 20th century drew upon these, with different leaders putting forth their thoughts on emancipation, freedom and dignity with a concrete agenda of banishing all forms of untouchability, discrimination and social prejudices. The subject of equality for women was integral to these debates, even as there were differences among the participants.

It is important to remember that the women’s movement in pre-Independence India and the political movement came together to work towards this social transformation even as differences persisted and differences continued. While the Left stream pushed for more radical reforms in the early part of the century, many like E.M.S. Namboodiripad entered the political stream with strong links with reform movements. Even as the more radical streams in intellectual thought had mellowed and become muted by the latter half of the 20th century, as observed by historians such as K.N. Panikkar, political debates remained imbued with a commitment to equality. The Legislative Assembly proceedings in the decades prior to Independence are replete with engagement with issues of women’s equality cutting across different religious communities despite the fact that women’s own presence in these platforms was visibly limited.

The contrast to the situation today is only too visible. The agenda of social transformation has ceased to be part of the project of nationalism. Leaders of established parties vie with one another to reflect patriarchal prejudices in the course of their interventions, and the aim of legislation appears to be driven by a “backlash” against women and in favour of upholding inequalities in the name of tradition or religion unless they serve the specific purpose of sending out signals to specific communities to fall in line. Outside Parliament, too, leaders of religious communities assert claims contrary to constitutional rights and the commitment to equality. While in the past we witnessed arguments that sidestepped equality to assert uniformity between communities, today we are seeing new ways of denying equality to women by adopting a selective approach. Thus, the rights of Muslim women in marriage are sought to be upheld through legislative intervention even as the rights of women in general are sought to be restricted through contrary interventions. The establishment today seems to be bent on a selective approach to issues of women’s equality.

Surge of conservatism

Across the world, the dawn of neoliberalism has witnessed a surge of conservative thought. This has gone alongside a targeting of communities and women of these communities.

Religions in India and elsewhere have a complex history. These are not immune or divorced from the evolution of the political economies and concomitant social relations. These histories also cannot be delinked or studied in isolation from political contexts and the role and patronage of the state, which varies over time, region and the nature of the political regime. The element of patriarchy, which is common to virtually all religions and religious practices, also needs to be understood in its specificity. This engagement lies at the heart of women’s movements across the world, and scholars of women’s studies have undertaken sustained analyses of the modes and methods of forms of domination whereby religion has upheld and contributed to ideological frameworks that uphold and perpetuate the subordination of women. In this exercise all faiths have been subjected to continuous scrutiny. The same holds true for India and the religious communities amidst which women in India live.

Contrary to the arguments advanced by those who disrupted normal life across Kerala to oppose the women’s wall for gender equality, all the women standing up to form the wall that day were not atheists. The majority of women in India are believers, in whichever faith they are born into from their familial location. This is a fact that the women’s movement recognised way back when it entered the struggle to negotiate rights in contemporary India. This remains as true as the fact that most women in India believe in and continue to live in the institution of marriage. It is precisely because of this that we are today witnessing increased struggles for equality within these domains and institutions. This fact is in sharp contrast to the premise on which opposition to women’s organisations is mounted by those who seek to stall the process of democratisation of society and recognition to rights for women. The change today is that struggles for what may appear to be issues of gender parity have become key components in the struggle for democracy and democratisation of the society and politics of this country today.

Specifically with regard to religion and women, the diversity of the canvas needs to be understood at different levels. Firstly, a distinction needs to be drawn between religion and rituals relating to the practice of religion. While tenets relating to the former are often contained in texts and classics, which may carry the knowledge embodied in religious thought of the times that they evolved in, rituals and traditions involve practices on the ground. These offer proof of a continuous process of adaption, exchange of ideas, adherence to and absorption of different practices. These stem from and draw upon diverse histories of rituals and beliefs observed by the communities living in different regions and contexts over time and place. Scholars such as D.D. Kosambi and others have established how in ancient India the pantheon of gods and forms of worship evolved, drawing upon prevalent cults in different regions, and were over centuries subjected to assimilation within the Great Tradition of what then emerged as classic forms of worship.

Assimilation of cults

Students of Indian history are familiar with the process whereby local practices pertaining to the Mother Goddess and fertility cults from ancient times were sometimes absorbed and also subordinated within the overarching male pantheon, with women being delegated to the status of consorts even as these forms of worship continued within the Little Traditions. It is not surprising to see women’s greater involvement in the latter. Not unsurprisingly, these practices and beliefs amongst the vast population remain more closely aligned to a rich history of festivals to mark agricultural harvesting cycles around which social life continues to revolve.

The greater presence of women in these is in sharp contrast to the more masculine, overt forms and ceremonial aspects of religious practice. In recent years, these have become more closely aligned to the market. However, there is a clear division of roles, with women being involved with the observance of rituals on a more day-to-day basis, while the visible forms of worship are seen to be male roles. Interestingly, while motherhood was and is the most commonly invoked form of worship of women in the present-day nationalist rhetoric, it is her very reproductive capacity that is stigmatised and becomes the basis of discriminatory practices against women.

These remarks may be seen to pertain more directly to the more well-known Hindu practices but are not unknown elsewhere with regard to subordination and subjugation of women. In India, it is common to find such adaption across religious faiths and denominations. At the risk of some generalisation, it may be argued that while women remain central to everyday practice(s), the more visible roles of the high priests in rituals across all religions have become male preserves over the years. It is this complexity and evolutionary nature of religion and religious practices that is integral to the practice of religious rituals and beliefs which needs to be emphasised. This also needs to be kept in mind while selectively invoking tradition.

Religion as battleground

Why is religion emerging as a battleground for these struggles?

This is not a question easy to answer.

We necessarily/perforce need to take note of the visible efforts at mobilisation around religious lines since the 1980s. While this is true of all religious denominations, in India it is the most visible with regard to the majority community. The number of godmen, organisational outfits and champions claiming to represent Hindus has proliferated by the dozen across States. Meanwhile, pan-Islamic organisations are also active in the different regions, often with links to international networks. All have community leaders with a presence at the national and regional level, with many having close links to political platforms and parties. The followers of these outfits alternately emerge as constituencies for vote-bank politics, while some have been seen to act as hoodlums on the streets or engage in criminal activities.

It is striking that despite this continuous mobilisation around religion and the assertion of religious identities, contemporary India has not seen any meaningful developments with reference to contributions to religious thought and ideas from the vast and ever-growing fraternity of godmen, cult leaders and their armies of followers.

Another question we need to ask is the following: Have we seen any significant idea that would have represented, revived or offered intellectual insights into what religious thought and philosophy may have to offer its followers when their lives are sinking into newer levels of social and existential crisis? This is largely true for the multitudes claiming to represent and be spokespersons of Hinduism, as also for all other faiths. However, this may not be the place to do so.

This scenario is in sharp contrast to earlier, historical times when religious and religion-centred movements enriched the debate on ideas even as they met with sharp contestation with regard to prevalent inequalities and newly emerging social practices. India has a rich legacy of religious discourse and the historical moorings that shaped the contours of the debates of those times across different contexts and spatial time. While the names that come to the fore are of Gautama Buddha and Mahavira, who emerged as the foremost to represent the heterodox sects of the sixth century BC, the contributions of Adi Shankaracharya or the wide array of saints and ascetics thrown up by the Bhakti movement and their impact on social life across regions in India are perhaps still to be fully fathomed. Each strand and stream of thought represented a specificity of ideas, and issues of equality were often germane to the prevalent discourse. Women’s voices emerged within many of these movements to articulate experience and resistance.

In contrast to those waving religious banners of all hues, Indian academia and scholars of history have often been more sensitive to the intellectual traditions historically present in India and the contributions made by these to the body of thought and philosophical streams that the religious discourse in India represents as also to the diversity and contestations inherited from and inherent to these.

The question then remains, how and why are women caught up in this battle?

For this we need to turn to debates in the 19th and early 20th century when the colonial powers constructed a social frame within which women’s condition was seen as a marker of India’s backwardness, justifying intervention.

Parliament of Religions

As far back as 1893, speaking at the Chicago Convention of Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda delivered an iconic and eloquent speech to draw the attention of the world to the rich inheritance and tradition of tolerance in Indian society. Our present-day champions of Hindutva specifically claim to carry forward the mantle drawing upon his pride and claim “to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance”. However, they have chosen to ignore the remaining part of the now iconic speech where Vivekananda announced that “we believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.”

Above all, it may be worth it to remind the practitioners of all faiths that “sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilisation and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.”

The question we may still need to ask ourselves is, does the neoliberal and marketised context of religion and religious assertion combined with a fascistic right-wing assertion in different parts of the world allow for more liberal interpretations of matters of faith, belief and practice of rituals? The women’s movement in India came up against the political manipulations on the grounds of faith from the two dominant communities in close proximity in the 1980s, when the Shah Bano issue and the incident of sati in Deorala (Rajasthan) witnessed aggressive mobilisation and political capitulation. If the bloody battles around issues of faith in early modern Europe are any indication, we may have to wait longer to understand the need to make a distinction between individual faith, organised religion and matters of state. Polarised politics provides greater opportunities for such manipulation. At stake is the issue of democratisation of society and the terms of social organisation and institutions.

Ambedkar’s speech

To end, we may turn to B.R. Ambedkar’s last speech in the Constituent Assembly: “The third thing we must do is not to be content with mere political democracy. We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce them. We must begin by acknowledging the fact that there is complete absence of two things in Indian Society. One of these is equality. On the social plane, we have in India a society based on the principle of graded inequality which means elevation for some and degradation for others.”

Women in India and their struggle for equality are inherently tied to the struggle for democracy in the country. This is a lesson women learn each time the debate on their rights gets entangled within the vagaries of political fortunes. Each time round, they also see how religion can be used by political regimes to divide them, to selectively use their plight to advance vote-bank politics and sectarian ends. Each time round, women reflect, analyse and prepare for the next round of onslaughts, attacks and struggles. So be it. The women’s movement continues to be a crucial component of the struggle to save and build a strong political democracy that will allow for more intense debates even as women step out each day into a new dawn. What forces working on behalf of radical social change need to recognise is that women’s presence is as crucial for their own rights as it is for the survival of democracy in India.

Prof. Indu Agnihotri is a women’s studies scholar with a special interest in history and the women’s movement in India. She retired as Director, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi.

CONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS

SHARE THIS STORY

More stories from this issue

‘Democracy is being hollowed out’

‘He had the courage to make political films’

A man of courage & conviction

The failed promise of jobs, politics at play.

Science circus

For military muscle, destroying government, free and fair, daunting challenges.

A nation scarred: How the rape and murder of Kolkata doctor jolted India’s conscience

Editor’s Note: Who will educate the boy child? 

• Bookmark stories to read later.
• Comment on stories to start conversations.
• Subscribe to our newsletters.
• Get notified about discounts and offers to our products.

Terms & conditions   |   Institutional Subscriber

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide to our community guidelines for posting your comment

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

As Officials Look Away, Hate Speech in India Nears Dangerous Levels

Activists and analysts say calls for anti-Muslim violence — even genocide — are moving from the fringes to the mainstream, while political leaders keep silent.

By Mujib Mashal Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar

HARIDWAR, India — The police officer arrived at the Hindu temple here with a warning to the monks: Don’t repeat your hate speech.

Ten days earlier, before a packed audience and thousands watching online, the monks had called for violence against the country’s minority Muslims. Their speeches, in one of India’s holiest cities , promoted a genocidal campaign to “kill two million of them” and urged an ethnic cleansing of the kind that targeted Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

When videos of the event provoked national outrage, the police came. The saffron-clad preachers questioned whether the officer could be objective.

Yati Narsinghanand, the event’s firebrand organizer known for his violent rhetoric, assuaged their concerns.

“Biased?” Mr. Narsinghanand said, according to a video of the interaction. “He will be on our side,” he added, as the monks and the officer broke into laughter.

Once considered fringe, extremist elements are increasingly taking their militant message into the mainstream, stirring up communal hate in a push to reshape India’s constitutionally protected secular republic into a Hindu state. Activists and analysts say their agenda is being enabled, even normalized, by political leaders and law enforcement officials who offer tacit endorsements by not directly addressing such divisive issues.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• Digital Library Home
• Reprints & Permissions

Home > BYU Law Review Collections > BYU L. Rev. > Vol. 2017 (2017) > Iss. 4 (2017)

BYU Law Review

Freedom of religion in india: current issues and supreme court acting as clergy.

Faizan Mustafa Jagteshwar Singh Sohi

Religion is an indispensable part of human existence. Freedom of religion is considered as the third most important civil liberty after the right to life and personal liberty and the freedom of speech and expression. The Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and acknowledges the individual’s autonomy in his or her relationship with God. However, the Supreme Court of India, through the creation and continued use of the essentiality test, has tried to reform religion by restricting the scope of this freedom. The judiciary has taken over the role of clergy in determining what essential and non-essential religious practices are. Moreover, the Court has applied the test in an inconsistent manner, repeatedly changing the method of determining essentiality, seriously undermining religious liberty. This Article examines these judgments to demonstrate the adverse impact of the essentiality test on religious freedom.

© 2017 Brigham Young University Law Review

Recommended Citation

Faizan Mustafa and Jagteshwar Singh Sohi, Freedom of Religion in India: Current Issues and Supreme Court Acting as Clergy , 2017 BYU L. R ev. 915 (2018). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview/vol2017/iss4/9

Since February 09, 2018

Included in

Comparative and Foreign Law Commons , Religion Law Commons

• Journal Home
• About This Journal
• Aims & Scope
• Editorial Board
• Masthead Archive
• Law Review Symposium
• Law & Religion Symposium
• Most Popular Papers
• Receive Email Notices or RSS

Advanced Search

ISSN: 2162-8572

Digital Library Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Berkley Center

Berkley Forum

British Rule and Hindu-Muslim Riots in India: A Reassessment

By: Ajay Verghese

August 23, 2018

Religious and Communal Tensions in Indian Politics

India and Pakistan are countries that were born through violence. The partition of the Indian subcontinent witnessed hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims killed during riots, ethnic cleansings, and cross-border migrations. Since the 1980s, with the spectacular rise of Hindu nationalism, riots have again become a recurring feature of Indian politics. All of this prompts the question: what is the original cause of Hindu-Muslim violence?

For many scholars, the simple answer lies in the negative legacies of British colonialism. It was the British that “constructed” modern Hindu and Muslim identities through mechanisms like the first scientific census of 1871. And it was the British that used a “divide-and-rule” policy to drive apart religious communities, thereby promoting violence between them. In this post, however, I will argue that this seemingly straightforward argument connecting British rule and modern communal riots is problematic for three reasons. 

First, what do we know about Hindu-Muslim conflict before the British? While many scholars in the humanities have looked into precolonial religious identity and conflict, most social scientists are content to focus solely on “modern” India. But India’s history did not start with the British. Consider, for instance, the argument that Hindu and Muslim identities were constructed by British administrators. The work of scholars of Indian religions like David Lorenzen and Andrew Nicholson shows that there was a clear sense of difference between Hindu and Muslim communities long before British rule. Similarly, Hindu-Muslim riots in India date back to hundreds of years before any British official set foot on the subcontinent. In the fourteenth century, the famed Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta wrote about the state of Hindu-Muslim relations in the south Indian town of Mangalore: 

“…war frequently breaks out between them (the Muslims) and the (Hindu) inhabitants of the town; but the Sultan (the Hindu King) keeps them at peace because he needs the merchants.” 

There are many riot-prone cities in India today—Mumbai, Ahmedabad—where Battuta’s description still seems relevant.

Second, another vexing problem lies is determining whether or not colonialism simply coexisted with the true factors that created violence. For instance, the increase in Hindu-Muslim violence in the nineteenth century that was blamed on British rule coincided with the rise of revivalist Hindu and Islamic religious movements, as well as increasing urbanization. As Sandria Freitag has shown, new public spaces became intersecting sites for rival religious processions, which then became a major source of communal rioting. 

Third, while many scholars have argued that the British increased communal conflict, the question is: compared to what? One way to isolate the effects of colonialism on Indian religious violence is to take advantage of a unique feature of British rule on the subcontinent: colonial administrators only governed three-fourths of the population of India. The other one-fourth (in 1901, more than 60 million people) lived in territories called “princely states” that remained under the control of largely autonomous native kings. With the princely states, history has furnished us with something like a “control group” to consider what India might have looked like in the absence of British colonialism. In my book , I used comparisons of neighboring British provinces and princely states (Jaipur and Ajmer in Rajasthan, and Malabar and Travancore in Kerala) and find that in modern India, former princely states actually have more religious riots than former provinces. 

None of these points, it has to be noted, absolves the British for religious conflict in India. There were many policies—like the introduction of separate Hindu and Muslim electorates—that undoubtedly promoted Hindu-Muslim violence. But in order to understand the origins of India’s communal problem, we need a deeper historical perspective, one that does not start with European influence. As Cynthia Mahmood has written, what we need is a “paradigm according full weight to the long-term dialectic of communalism that is, unhappily, showing no signs of abating.”

About the Author

Ajay Verghese

Ajay Verghese is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests are focused on South Asian politics, political history, ethnicity, political violence, secularism, and methodology.

Jump to main content

Jump to navigation

• Latest News Read the latest blog posts from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
• Share-Worthy Check out the most popular infographics and videos
• Photos View the photo of the day and other galleries
• Video Gallery Watch behind-the-scenes videos and more
• Live Events Tune in to White House events and statements as they happen
• Music & Arts Performances See the lineup of artists and performers at the White House
• Your Weekly Address
• Speeches & Remarks
• Press Briefings
• Statements & Releases
• White House Schedule
• Presidential Actions
• Legislation
• Nominations & Appointments
• Disclosures
• Cabinet Exit Memos
• Criminal Justice Reform
• Civil Rights
• Climate Change
• Foreign Policy
• Health Care
• Immigration Action
• Disabilities
• Homeland Security
• Reducing Gun Violence
• Seniors & Social Security
• Urban and Economic Mobility
• President Barack Obama
• Vice President Joe Biden
• First Lady Michelle Obama
• Dr. Jill Biden
• The Cabinet
• Executive Office of the President
• Senior White House Leadership
• Other Advisory Boards
• Office of Management and Budget
• Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Council of Economic Advisers
• Council on Environmental Quality
• National Security Council
• Joining Forces
• Reach Higher
• My Brother's Keeper
• Precision Medicine
• State of the Union
• Inauguration
• Medal of Freedom
• Follow Us on Social Media
• We the Geeks Hangouts
• Mobile Apps
• Developer Tools
• Tools You Can Use
• Tours & Events
• Jobs with the Administration
• Internships
• White House Fellows
• Presidential Innovation Fellows
• United States Digital Service
• Leadership Development Program
• We the People Petitions
• Contact the White House
• Citizens Medal
• Champions of Change
• West Wing Tour
• Eisenhower Executive Office Building Tour
• Video Series
• Décor and Art
• First Ladies
• The Vice President's Residence & Office
• Eisenhower Executive Office Building
• Air Force One
• The Executive Branch
• The Legislative Branch
• The Judicial Branch
• The Constitution
• Federal Agencies & Commissions
• Elections & Voting
• State & Local Government

Search form

Briefing room.

• Executive Orders
• Presidential Memoranda
• Proclamations
• Pending Legislation
• Signed Legislation
• Vetoed Legislation

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the People of India

Siri Fort Auditorium New Delhi, India

11:02 A.M. IST   PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Namaste!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Thank you so much, Neha, for what a wonderful introduction.  (Applause.)  Everybody, please have a seat.  Nothing fills me with more hope than when I hear incredible young people like Neha and all the outstanding work that she’s doing on behalf of India’s youth and for representing this nation’s energy and its optimism and its idealism.  She makes me very, very proud.  And I’m sure -- I think they may be her -- is that somebody related to you?  Okay.  Because we just had a chance to meet, and she’s beaming with pride right now sitting next to you.  Give Neha a big round of applause once again.  (Applause.)   Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, to all the students and young people who are here today, to the people of India watching and listening across this vast nation -- I bring the friendship and the greetings of the American people.  On behalf of myself and Michelle, thank you so much for welcoming us back to India.  Bahoot dhanyavad.  (Applause.)      It has been a great honor to be the first American President to join you for Republic Day.  With the tricolor waving above us, we celebrated the strength of your constitution.  We paid tribute to India’s fallen heroes.  In yesterday’s parade, we saw the pride and the diversity of this nation -- including the Dare Devils on their Royal Enfields, which was very impressive.  Secret Service does not let me ride motorcycles.  (Laughter.)  Especially not on my head.  (Laughter.)   I realize that the sight of an American President as your chief guest on Republic Day would have once seemed unimaginable.  But my visit reflects the possibilities of a new moment.  As I’ve said many times, I believe that the relationship between India and the United States can be one of the defining partnerships of this century.  When I spoke to your Parliament on my last visit, I laid out my vision for how our two nations can build that partnership.  And today, I want to speak directly to you -- the people of India -- about what I believe we can achieve together, and how we can do it.   My commitment to a new chapter between our countries flows from the deep friendship between our people.  And Michelle and I have felt it ourselves.  I recognized India with the first state visit of my presidency -- where we also danced to some pretty good Bhangra.  (Laughter.)  For the first time, we brought Diwali to the White House.  (Applause.)  On our last celebration here, we celebrated the Festival of Lights in Mumbai.  We danced with some children.  Unfortunately, we were not able to schedule any dancing this visit.  Senorita, bade-bade deshon mein.  You know what I mean.  (Laughter and applause.)  Everybody said, by the way, how much better a dance Michelle was than me -- (laughter) -- which hurt my feelings a little bit.  (Laughter.)   On a more personal level, India represents an intersection of two men who have always inspired me.  When Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was protesting racial segregation in the United States, he said that his guiding light was Mahatma Gandhi.  When Dr. King came to India, he said that being here -- in “Gandhi’s land” -- reaffirmed his conviction that in the struggle for justice and human dignity, the most potent weapon of all is non-violent resistance.   And those two great souls are why we can gather here together today, Indians and Americans, equal and free.   And there is another link that binds us.  More than 100 years ago, America welcomed a son of India -- Swami Vivekananda.  (Applause.)  And Swami Vivekananda, he helped bring Hinduism and yoga to our country.  And he came to my hometown of Chicago.  And there, at a great gathering of religious leaders, he spoke of his faith and the divinity in every soul, and the purity of love.  And he began his speech with a simple greeting:  “Sisters and brothers of America.”   So today, let me say:  Sisters and brothers of India -- (applause) -- my confidence in what our nations can achieve together is rooted in the values we share.  For we may have our different histories and speak different languages, but when we look at each other, we see a reflection of ourselves.    Having thrown off colonialism, we created constitutions that began with the same three words -- “we the people.”  As societies that celebrate knowledge and innovation, we transformed ourselves into high-tech hubs of the global economy.  Together, we unlock new discoveries -- from the particles of creation to outer space -- two nations to have gone to both the Moon and to Mars.  (Applause.)  And here in India, this dynamism has resulted in a stunning achievement.  You’ve lifted countless millions from poverty and built one of the world’s largest middle classes.   And nobody embodies this progress and this sense of possibility more than our young people.  Empowered by technology, you are connecting and collaborating like never before -- on Facebook and WhatsApp and Twitter.  And chances are, you’re talking to someone in America -- your friends, your cousins.  The United States has the largest Indian diaspora in the world, including some three million proud Indian-Americans.  (Applause.)  And they make America stronger, and they tie us together -- bonds of family and friendship that allow us to share in each other’s success.   For all these reasons, India and the United States are not just natural partners.  I believe America can be India’s best partner.  I believe that.  (Applause.)  Of course, only Indians can decide India’s role in the world.  But I’m here because I’m absolutely convinced that both our peoples will have more jobs and opportunity, and our nations will be more secure, and the world will be a safer and a more just place when our two democracies -- the world’s largest democracy and the world’s oldest democracy -- stand together.  I believe that.  (Applause.)    So here in New Delhi, Prime Minister Modi and I have begun this work anew.  And here’s what I think we can do together.  America wants to be your partner as you lift up the lives of the Indian people and provide greater opportunity.  So working together, we’re giving farmers new techniques and data -- from our satellites to their cell phones -- to increase yields and boost incomes.  We’re joining you in your effort to empower every Indian with a bank account.    And with the breakthroughs we achieved on this visit, we can finally move toward fully implementing our civil nuclear agreement, which will mean more reliable electricity for Indians and cleaner, non-carbon energy that helps fight climate change.   (Applause.)  And I don’t have to describe for you what more electricity means.  Students being able to study at night; businesses being able to stay open longer and hire more workers; farmers being able to use mechanized tools that increase their productivity; whole communities seeing more prosperity.  In recent years, India has lifted more people out of poverty than any other country.  And now we have a historic opportunity with India leading the way to end the injustice of extreme poverty all around the world.  (Applause.)   America wants to be your partner as you protect the health of your people and the beauty of this land, from the backwaters of Kerala to the banks of Ganges.  As we deliver more energy, more electricity, let’s do it with clean, renewable energy, like solar and wind.  And let’s put cleaner vehicles on the road and more filtration systems on farms and villages.  Because every child should be able to drink clean water, and every child should be able to breathe clean air.  (Applause.)  We need our young people healthy for their futures.  And we can do it.  We have the technology to do it.   America wants to be your partner in igniting the next wave of Indian growth.  As India pursues more trade and investment, we want to be first in line.  We’re ready to join you in building new infrastructure -- the roads and the airports, the ports, the bullet trains to propel India into the future.  We’re ready to help design “smart cities” that serve citizens better, and we want to develop more advanced technologies with India, as we do with our closest allies.     We believe we can be even closer partners in ensuring our mutual security.  And both our nations have known the anguish of terrorism, and we stand united in the defense of our people.  And now we’re deepening our defense cooperation against new challenges.  The United States welcomes a greater role for India in the Asia Pacific, where the freedom of navigation must be upheld and disputes must be resolved peacefully.  And even as we acknowledge the world as it is, we must never stop working for the world as it should be -- a world without nuclear weapons.  That should be a goal for all of us.  (Applause.)   I believe that if we’re going to be true global partners, then our two nations must do more around the world together.  So to ensure international security and peace, multilateral institutions created in the 20th century have to be updated for the 21st.  And that’s why I support a reformed United Nations Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.  (Applause.)      Of course, as I’ve said before, with power comes responsibility.  In this region, India can play a positive role in helping countries forge a better future, from Burma to Sri Lanka, where today there’s new hope for democracy.  With your experience in elections, you can help other countries with theirs.  With your expertise in science and medicine, India can do more around the world to fight disease and develop new vaccines, and help us end the moral outrage of even a single child dying from a preventable disease.  Together, we can stand up against human trafficking and work to end the scourge of modern day slavery.  (Applause.)      And being global partners means confronting the urgent global challenge of climate change.  With rising seas, melting Himalayan glaciers, more unpredictable monsoons, cyclones getting stronger -- few countries will be more affected by a warmer planet than India.  And the United States recognizes our part in creating this problem, so we’re leading the global effort to combat it.  And today, I can say that America’s carbon pollution is near its lowest level in almost two decades.    I know the argument made by some that it’s unfair for countries like the United States to ask developing nations and emerging economies like India to reduce your dependence on the same fossil fuels that helped power our growth for more than a century.  But here’s the truth:  Even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly like India -- with soaring energy needs -- don't also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don’t stand a chance against climate change.   So we welcome India’s ambitious targets for generating more clean energy.  We’ll continue to help India deal with the impacts of climate change -- because you shouldn’t have to bear that burden alone.  As we keep working for a strong global agreement on climate change, it's young people like you who have to speak up, so we can protect this planet for your generation.  I'll be gone when the worst effects happen.  It's your generation and your children that are going to be impacted.  That's why it's urgent that we begin this work right now.   Development that lifts up the lives and health of our people.  Trade and economic partnerships that reduce poverty and create opportunity.  Leadership in the world that defends our security, and advances human dignity, and protects our planet -- that’s what I believe India and America can do together.  So with the rest of my time, I want to discuss how we can do it.  Because in big and diverse societies like ours, progress ultimately depends on something more basic, and that is how we see each other.  And we know from experience what makes nations strong. And Neha I think did a great job of describing the essence of what’s important here.    We are strongest when we see the inherent dignity in every human being.  Look at our countries -- the incredible diversity even here in this hall.  India is defined by countless languages and dialects, and every color and caste and creed, gender and orientations.  And likewise, in America, we’re black and white, and Latino and Asian, and Indian-American, and Native American.  Your constitution begins with the pledge to uphold “the dignity of the individual.”  And our Declaration of Independence proclaims that “all men are created equal.”   In both our countries, generations have worked to live up to these ideals.  When he came to India, Martin Luther King, Jr. was introduced to some schoolchildren as a “fellow untouchable.”  My grandfather was a cook for the British army in Kenya.  The distant branches of Michelle’s family tree include both slaves and slave owners.  When we were born, people who looked like us still couldn’t vote in some parts of the country.  Even as America has blessed us with extraordinary opportunities, there were moments in my life where I’ve been treated differently because of the color of my skin.    Many countries, including the United States, grapple with questions of identity and inequality, and how we treat each other, people who are different than us, how we deal with diversity of beliefs and of faiths.  Right now, in crowded neighborhoods not far from here, a man is driving an auto-rickshaw, or washing somebody else’s clothes, or doing the hard work no one else will do.  And a woman is cleaning somebody else’s house.  And a young man is on a bicycle delivering lunch. A little girl is hauling a heavy bucket of water.  And I believe their dreams, their hopes, are just as important, just as beautiful, just as worthy as ours.  And so even as we live in a world of terrible inequality, we’re also proud to live in countries where even the grandson of a cook can become President, or even a Dalit can help write a constitution, and even a tea seller can become Prime Minister.  (Applause.)    The point is, is that the aim of our work must be not to just have a few do well, but to have everybody have a chance, everybody who is willing to work for it have the ability to dream big and then reach those dreams.    Our nations are strongest when we uphold the equality of all our people -- and that includes our women.  (Applause.)  Now, you may have noticed, I’m married to a very strong and talented woman.  (Applause.)  Michelle is not afraid to speak her mind, or tell me when I’m wrong -- which happens frequently.  (Laughter.) And we have two beautiful daughters, so I’m surrounded by smart, strong women.  And in raising our girls, we’ve tried to instill in them basic values -- a sense of compassion for others, and respect for themselves, and the confidence that they can go as far as their imaginations and abilities will carry them.  And as part of Michelle’s work as First Lady, she’s met with women and girls around the world, including here in India, to let them know that America believes in them, too.   In the United States, we’re still working to make sure that women and girls have all the opportunities they deserve, and that they’re treated equally.  And we have some great role models, including here today the former speaker of our House of Representatives -- Nancy Pelosi -- (applause) -- the first woman speaker of the House, and my great partner.  (Applause.)   And here in India, it’s the wives and the mothers who so often hold families and communities together.  Indian women have shown that they can succeed in every field -- including government, where many of your leaders are women.  And the young women who are here today are part of a new generation that is making your voice heard, and standing up and determined to play your part in India’s progress.   And here’s what we know.  We know from experience that nations are more successful when their women are successful.  (Applause.)  When girls go to school -- this is one of the most direct measures of whether a nation is going to develop effectively is how it treats its women.  When a girl goes to school, it doesn’t just open up her young mind, it benefits all of us -- because maybe someday she’ll start her own business, or invent a new technology, or cure a disease.  And when women are able to work, families are healthier, and communities are wealthier, and entire countries are more prosperous.  And when young women are educated, then their children are going to be well educated and have more opportunity.    So if nations really want to succeed in today’s global economy, they can’t simply ignore the talents of half their people.  And as husbands and fathers and brothers, we have to step up -- because every girl’s life matters.  Every daughter deserves the same chance as our sons.  Every woman should be able to go about her day -- to walk the streets or ride the bus -- and be safe, and be treated with respect and dignity.  (Applause.)  She deserves that.  (Applause.)      And one of the favorite things about this trip for me has been to see all these incredible Indian women in the armed forces, including the person who commanded the Guard that greeted me when I arrived.  (Applause.)  It's remarkable, and it's a sign of great strength and great progress.   Our nations are strongest when we see that we are all God’s children -- all equal in His eyes and worthy of His love.  Across our two great countries we have Hindus and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, and Jews and Buddhists and Jains and so many faiths.  And we remember the wisdom of Gandhiji, who said, “for me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree.”  (Applause.)    Branches of the same majestic tree.   Our freedom of religion is written into our founding documents.  It’s part of America’s very first amendment.  Your Article 25 says that all people are “equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.”  In both our countries -- in all countries -- upholding this fundamental freedom is the responsibility of government, but it's also the responsibility of every person.   In our lives, Michelle and I have been strengthened by our Christian faith.  But there have been times where my faith has been questioned -- by people who don’t know me -- or they’ve said that I adhere to a different religion, as if that were somehow a bad thing.  Around the world, we’ve seen intolerance and violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to be standing up for their faith, but, in fact, are betraying it.  No society is immune from the darkest impulses of man.  And too often religion has been used to tap into those darker impulses as opposed to the light of God.  Three years ago in our state of Wisconsin, back in the United States, a man went to a Sikh temple and, in a terrible act of violence, killed six innocent people -- Americans and Indians.  And in that moment of shared grief, our two countries reaffirmed a basic truth, as we must again today -- that every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.  (Applause.)    The peace we seek in the world begins in human hearts.  And it finds its glorious expression when we look beyond any differences in religion or tribe, and rejoice in the beauty of every soul.  And nowhere is that more important than India.  Nowhere is it going to be more necessary for that foundational value to be upheld.  India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith -- so long as it's not splintered along any lines -- and is unified as one nation. And it’s when all Indians, whatever your faith, go to the movies and applaud actors like Shah Rukh Khan.  And when you celebrate athletes like Milkha Singh or Mary Kom.  And every Indian can take pride in the courage of a humanitarian who liberates boys and girls from forced labor and exploitation -- who is here today -- Kailash Satyarthi.  (Applause.)  Our most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace.  (Applause.)   So that's what unifies us:  Do we act with compassion and empathy.  Are we measured by our efforts -- by what Dr. King called “the content of our character” rather than the color of our skin or the manner in which we worship our God.  In both our countries, in India and in America, our diversity is our strength.  And we have to guard against any efforts to divide ourselves along sectarian lines or any other lines.  And if we do that well, if America shows itself as an example of its diversity and yet the capacity to live together and work together in common effort, in common purpose; if India, as massive as it is, with so much diversity, so many differences is able to continually affirm its democracy, that is an example for every other country on Earth.  That's what makes us world leaders -- not just the size of our economy or the number of weapons we have, but our ability to show the way in how we work together, and how much respect we show each other.  

And, finally, our nations are strongest when we empower our young people –- because ultimately, you're the one who has to break down these old stereotypes and these old barriers, these old ways of thinking.  Prejudices and stereotypes and assumptions -- those are what happens to old minds like mine.  I'm getting gray hair now.  I was more youthful when I first started this office.  And that’s why young people are so important in these efforts.   Here in India, most people are under 35 years old.  And India is on track to become the world’s most populous country.  So young Indians like you aren’t just going to define the future of this nation, you’re going to shape the world.  Like young people everywhere, you want to get an education, and find a good job, and make your mark.  And it’s not easy, but in our two countries, it’s possible.   Remember, Michelle and I don't come from wealthy backgrounds or famous families.  Our families didn’t have a lot of money.  We did have parents and teachers and communities that cared about us.  And with the help of scholarships and student loans, we were able to attend some of best schools of the world.  Without that education, we wouldn’t be here today.  So whether it’s in America, or here in India, or around the world, we believe young people like you ought to have every chance to pursue your dreams, as well.    So as India builds new community colleges, we’ll link you with our own, so more young people graduate with the skills and training to succeed.  We’ll increase collaborations between our colleges and universities, and help create the next India institute of technology.  We’ll encourage young entrepreneurs who want to start a business.  And we’ll increase exchanges, because I want more American students coming to India, and more Indian students coming to America.  (Applause.)  And that way, we can learn from each other and we can go further.  Because one other thing we have in common Indians and Americans are some of the hardest working people on Earth.  (Applause.)    And I’ve seen that -- Michelle and I have seen that in a family here in India.  I just want to tell you a quick story.  On our last visit here, we visited Humayun’s Tomb.  And while we were there, we met some of the laborers who are the backbone of this nation’s progress.  We met their children and their families as well -- and some wonderful young children with bright smiles, sparks in their eyes.  And one of the children we met was a boy named Vishal.   And today, Vishal is 16 years old.  And he and his family live in South Delhi, in the village of Mor Band.  (Applause.)  And his mother works hard in their modest home, and his sister is now in university; she wants to become a teacher.  His brother is a construction worker earning his daily wage.  And his father works as a stone layer, farther away, but sends home what little he makes so Vishal can go to school.  And Vishal loves math, and mostly, he studies.  And when he’s not studying, he likes watching kabaddi.  And he dreams of someday joining the Indian armed forces.  (Applause.)  And we're grateful that Vishal and his family joined us today.  We're very proud of him, because he’s an example of the talent that’s here.  And Vishal’s dreams are as important as Malia and Sasha’s dreams, our daughters.  And we want him to have the same opportunities.    Sisters and brothers of India, we are not perfect countries. And we’ve known tragedy and we've known triumph.  We’re home to glittering skyscrapers, but also terrible poverty; and new wealth, but also rising inequality.  We have many challenges in front of us.  But the reason I stand here today, and am so optimistic about our future together, is that, despite our imperfections, our two nations possess the keys to progress in the century ahead.  We vote in free elections.  We work and we build and we innovate.  We lift up the least among us.  We reach for heights previous generations could not even imagine.  We respect human rights and human dignity, and it is recorded in our constitutions.   And we keep striving to live up to those ideals put to paper all those years ago.   And we do these things because they make our lives better and safer and more prosperous.  But we also do them because our moral imaginations extend beyond the limits of our own lives.  And we believe that the circumstances of our birth need not dictate the arc of our lives.  We believe in the father working far from home sending money back so his family might have a better life.  We believe in the mother who goes without so that her children might have something more.  We believe in the laborer earning his daily wage, and the student pursuing her degree.  And we believe in a young boy who knows that if he just keeps studying, if he’s just given the chance, his hopes might be realized, too.   We are all “beautiful flowers from the same garden…branches of the same majestic tree.”  And I'm the first American President to come to your country twice, but I predict I will not be the last.  (Applause.)  Because, as Americans, we believe in the promise of India.  We believe in the people of India.  We are proud to be your friend.  We are proud to be your partner as you build the country of your dreams.    Jai Hind!  (Applause.)  Thank you.   END    11:36 A.M. IST

'Spiritual' speech in govt school sparks outrage; DMK govt under attack

Follow Us :

Chennai: Tamil Nadu’s School Education Department came under severe criticism on Friday for allowing a “motivational speaker” to propagate regressive ideas and talk about sins of the previous birth, and karma before students of a popular government girls’ school here.

The incident at the Government Girls’ Higher Secondary School in Ashok Nagar happened earlier this week. The guest also reportedly “insulted” a visually challenged teacher who objected to his claims that “past sins” are the reason for people to be born with disabilities has prompted the School Education Department to institute a detailed inquiry by its director.

As the incident triggered an outrage, the government transferred R Tamizharasi, the school’s head teacher, to neighbouring Tiruvallur district after she defended the event, saying it was a “motivational speech” and not a “spiritual” one. The principal of the Government Model School in Saidapet was also shunted out for organising a similar event.

The speech was delivered by Maha Vishnu of the Paramporul Foundation who has over 4 lakh followers on YouTube. He calls himself a “spiritual person, film director, and motivational speaker.”

A police complaint was also filed against Vishnu for his comments on physically challenged people.

Stepping in, Chief Minister M K Stalin pushed the need for guidelines on programs to be conducted in schools and emphasized the importance of education and the need to develop scientific temper.

“Science is the (only) way to progress,” Stalin wrote in a X post, while School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi tried to control the damage by “felicitating” the teacher who questioned the speaker on Friday and promising strict action against those responsible for organising the event.

The development comes close on the heels of allies of the DMK accusing the party-led government of trying to “saffronising education” following the HR & CE department passing resolutions to include religious lessons in curriculum in school and colleges run by temples. Allies like Congress, and CPI (M), and AIADMK, and PMK demanded registration of a case against Vishnu and his arrest.

In his controversial speech, Vishnu tried to inculcate regressive ideas in the minds of young students by talking about their previous and future births, even as video clippings from the event show tears rolling down the cheeks of students.

“Don’t think you can live whichever way you wish and die. Your next birth will be cruel. How do I believe in the next birth? Many people are born without hands, legs, and eyes. Many are born without a house and with a lot of disease. If God is merciful, he should have created everyone equally. Why didn’t he?” the speaker asked.

“One is a crorepati, another is poor. One is a criminal, while another is a noble person. One is a hero, one is like a hero. Why such changes? This birth has been assigned to you based on your deeds in your last birth,” Vishnu said, inviting a strong response from Shankar, the physically challenged teacher at the school.

Shankar kept questioning the speaker who remained perturbed and continued to propagate “superstitious” beliefs among students while questioning the teacher on how he was qualified to point fingers at him. Fellow teachers not supporting Shankar and appearing to support the speaker also enraged netizens who demanded that the government should ensure such events aren’t organised without permission.

Even as Mahesh turned emotional and promised action against the speaker, there was a massive outrage against him on social media platforms with #Resign_AnbilMahesh hashtag trending on X. The netizens questioned Mahesh over schools being utilised as platforms for religious and spiritual propaganda.

“I won’t leave this easily. He (Vishnu) came into my territory (school) and insulted my teacher. Strict action will be taken against him,” Mahesh said, while making it clear that his department will issue a set of guidelines on the nature of events to be conducted in government schools.

The minister also said he cannot be expected to check the antecedents of people who meet him everyday when reporters pointed out that Vishnu had met him two years ago and clicked a photograph with him.

The DMK government has been under criticism from its allies and educationists for the past one month over a series of issues. The party went on the defensive to scotch rumours of a potential tie-up with the BJP after leaders of the two parties appeared together on the dais to release a commemorative coin for late chief minister M Karunanidhi.

The resolutions passed at the Lord Murugan conference on August 24 and 25 invited criticism from ally VCK whose MP said the proposals were nothing but an attempt to implement the BJP’s plan of “communalizing education.”

Follow us on :

Is Usha Vance’s Hindu identity an asset or a liability to the Trump-Vance campaign?

While some political analysts say her strong presence as a Hindu American still makes the community proud, others question whether the Republican Party is really ready for a Hindu second lady.

(AP) — Usha Chilukuri Vance loves her “meat and potatoes” husband, JD Vance. She explained to a rapt Republican National Convention audience how their vice-presidential candidate adapted to her vegetarian diet and even learned to cook Indian food from her immigrant mother.

That image of her white, Christian husband making the spicy cuisine of her parents’ native state in South India is atypical for the leaders of a party whose members are still largely white and Christian. Her presence at the RNC sparked enthusiasm on social media among some Indian American conservatives, particularly Hindu Americans, although most Indian Americans identify as Democrats.

But for all Usha Vance shared about their identity-blending marriage in her speech last month in Milwaukee , which was a little over four minutes, she made no mention of her Hindu upbringing or her personal faith and their interfaith relationship – biographical details that have exposed her to online vitriol and hate.

Usha Vance is choosing to remain silent about her religion in the run-up to the election and declined to speak with The Associated Press about it. She opted not to answer questions about whether she is a practicing Hindu or if she attends Mass with her Catholic husband, an adult convert to the faith, or in which faith tradition their three children are being raised.

Brought up in San Diego by immigrant parents, both professors, in a Hindu household, Usha Vance did confirm that one of their children has an Indian name, and she and JD Vance were married in both “an Indian and an American wedding.” The pair met as students at Yale Law School.

Her Hindu background could appeal to some South Asian voters , which might add value in swing states with larger South Asian communities like Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, said Dheepa Sundaram, a Hindu Studies professor at the University of Denver. Sundaram says that while some Indian and Hindu conservatives may be eager to embrace Usha Vance, that doesn’t appear to be part of the party’s public-facing strategy.

“To me it seems like her Hindu identity is more of a liability than an asset,” she said. “It also feels like the campaign wants to have it both ways: Usha may be Hindu, which is great, but we don’t want to talk about it.”

Sundaram said Usha Vance would appeal particularly to those Hindu Americans who support the politics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, under whom Hindu nationalism has surged.

There are deep divisions within some Indian American communities over issues such as taxes, education, relations with India and anti-caste discrimination legislation that gained momentum in Seattle and California. Caste is a division of people based on birth or descent and calls to outlaw related discrimination are growing in the U.S.

About 7 in 10 Indian Americans identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while about 3 in 10 identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, according to Pew Research Center surveys conducted in 2022 and 2023. AAPI Data/AP-NORC surveys from earlier this year found that less than 1 in 10 South Asian Americans trust the Republican Party over the Democrats on key issues like abortion, gun policy and climate change, while around half or more trusted the Democratic Party more than the Republicans.

Still Usha Vance, “a second lady who looks like us and speaks like us,” may help capture the attention of a block of voters that has been challenging for Republicans to reach, said Ohio State Sen. Niraj Antani, a Republican and Hindu American who is the youngest member of the state senate.

“If Republicans don’t reach out to minority groups, we will lose elections.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, the 39-year-old biotech entrepreneur who ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and now supports the Trump-Vance ticket, made his Hindu faith front and center during his campaign. He said Hindu teachings had much in common with Judeo-Christian values. He declined to comment about Usha Vance’s religious background.

Usha Vance’s silence about her religion and Ramaswamy’s defeat in the primary election may indicate that being anything other than Christian in the Republican Party might still be an issue for a part of the base, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and executive director of AAPI Data.

“What we’ve seen since the convention is more exclusionary elements within the Republican Party speaking up and against Usha and JD Vance,” Ramakrishnan said. “This, to me, suggests that there is a political price to pay in terms of being open about one’s religious identity that is not Christian. There’s still a long way to go.”

Antani, a Hindu candidate who has won several Ohio state elections in a region that is mostly Christian and deeply conservative, said “the racism is coming from racists, not Republicans.” Antani, who celebrated Usha Vance speaking about her Indian heritage at the RNC, believes Ramaswamy lost not because he is Hindu, because he was not as well-known as the other candidates.

Vance was baptized and converted to Catholicism in 2019, and says he and his family now call the church their home . The campaign did not answer questions as to whether the three children had been baptized. He has also talked about how his wife helped him find his Catholic faith after a roller coaster of a spiritual journey as he was raised Protestant and became an atheist in college.

Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, said the fact that Usha Vance inspired her husband on his religious journey to become Catholic is “as Hindu as it gets.”

“Hinduism is about finding your own path and getting in touch with your own spirituality,” she said, adding that the definition of a “practicing Hindu” ranges from someone who goes to temple and performs rituals to someone who is a cultural Hindu who observes festivals such as Diwali, or just engages in a spiritual practice such as meditation.

Usha Vance is an example of the positive contributions made by Hindu Americans, and her interfaith marriage and her ability to listen to different perspectives are reflective of Hindu teachings, she said.

“Hindu Americans assimilate, but also hold on to what inspired them from their tradition and culture,” Shukla said. “Our pluralistic background puts us in a good position to get along with different people without compromising who we are. Hindu culture is very comfortable with differences of opinion.”

Shukla said those who are turning to the Republican party are reacting to anti-Hindu prejudice against Hindu Democrats that is not being shut down by their own party.

“There is this perception that the Democratic Party does not care about the well-being of Hindu Americans or is deaf to the community’s concerns,” she said, referring to legislation including caste as a category in anti-discrimination laws, which was proposed and passed in Seattle . Similar legislation was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in California .

But Ramakrishnan is not so sure Indian Americans feel welcome in the Republican Party even if they may see eye to eye with conservatives on some issues.

“One of the reasons Indian Americans have been consistently supporting the Democrats is because of the rise of Christian conservatism and nationalism,” he said. “That in itself makes it less likely they will vote Republican or identify as Republican.”

This story has been corrected to show that Vivek Ramaswamy was running in the 2024 presidential campaign, not the 2000 campaign.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration  with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

• Life & Culture
• Spirituality & Wellness
• Photos of the Week
• Christianity
• Atheism & Agnosticism
• Alternative Faiths
• Newsletters
• Article Republication
• Wire Subscription
• Press Releases
• Sponsored Content
• Annual Report

Privacy Overview

Explore the Constitution

The constitution.

• Read the Full Text

Dive Deeper

Constitution 101 course.

• The Drafting Table
• Supreme Court Cases Library
• Founders' Library
• Constitutional Rights: Origins & Travels

Start your constitutional learning journey

• News & Debate Overview
• Constitution Daily Blog
• America's Town Hall Programs
• Special Projects
• Media Library

America’s Town Hall

Watch videos of recent programs.

• Education Overview

Constitution 101 Curriculum

• Classroom Resources by Topic
• Classroom Resources Library
• Live Online Events
• Professional Learning Opportunities
• Constitution Day Resources

Explore our new 15-unit high school curriculum.

• Explore the Museum
• Plan Your Visit
• Exhibits & Programs
• Field Trips & Group Visits
• Host Your Event
• Buy Tickets

New exhibit

The first amendment, first amendment, freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.

Signing Details

Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791. The first 10 amendments form the Bill of Rights

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

See Teaching Resources

Interpretations & Debate

Read interpretations of establishment clause.

Read Interpretations of Free Exercise Clause

Read Interpretations of Free Speech and Press

Read Interpretations of Assembly and Petition

Modal title

Modal body text goes here.

Share with Students

• India Today
• Business Today
• Harper's Bazaar
• Brides Today
• Cosmopolitan
• India Today Hindi
• Reader’s Digest
• Aaj Tak Campus

Download App

Chennai school faces backlash over speaker's rebirth lecture, MK Stalin reacts

A spiritual speaker was invited to deliver a motivational talk to students but instead focused on spiritual themes like rebirth, karma, and sin. he also got into an argument with a staff member who objected to his speech, a video of which is viral..

Listen to Story

• Speaker blamed children for life struggles on Teacher's Day
• Speech included controversial comments on past-life sins and karma
• Video of the speech went viral, causing public backlash

SPIRITUAL LEADER'S REMARKS STIR ROW

Mahavishnu, during his speech, said, " Gurukulams were systematically destroyed by the British. Just reading a mantra can cause fire rain, heal one's body, can make you fly, but all these secrets which were written on palm leaves were lost due to British rule."

A video of the speech, including the argument, was later uploaded to Mahavishnu’s YouTube channel. The footage went viral on Teacher’s Day, triggering widespread backlash against the school administration.

Many criticised the school for allowing the speaker to address children on such sensitive topics, demanding accountability from the school authorities and Tamil Nadu’s School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh.

SCIENCE IS THE WAY TO PROGRESS: STALIN

Amid the controversy, Chief Minister MK Stalin took to X and said, "I have ordered the formulation and issuance of new guidelines to regulate various programs in schools across the state, ensuring that all our schoolchildren, who are the future generation of Tamil Nadu, receive progressive scientific ideas and lifestyles."

மாணவசàï à®šàïÆலàïà®µà®™àïà®•à®³àï à®…à®ñிà®èàïà®äàïà®•àïŠà®³àïà®³à®äàï à®äàï‡à®µàïˆà®ïாà®é சிà®ñà®èàïà®ä à®…à®ñிவிà®ïலàï à®šà®¿à®èàïà®äà®éàïˆà®•à®³àï à®äà®°à®®àï à®®à®¿à®•àïà®èàïà®ä à®èà®®à®äàï à®ªà®¾à®Ÿà®èàï‚லàïà®•à®³à®¿à®²àï à®‡à®Ÿà®®àï à®ªàïÆà®ñàïà®ñàïà®³àïà®³à®é. எà®äிரàïà®•à®¾à®²à®šàï à®šà®µà®¾à®²àïà®•à®³àïˆ, à®äà®éàïà®éà®®àïà®ªà®¿à®•àïà®•àïˆà®ïàï‹à®Ÿàï à®Žà®äிரàïà®•àïŠà®³àïà®³à®µàïà®®àï, à®…à®ñிவாà®ñàïà®ñலàïˆà®•àï à®•àï‚à®°àïà®®àïˆà®ªàïà®ªà®Ÿàïà®äàïà®äிகàï à®•àïŠà®³àïà®³à®µàïà®®àï à®äàï‡à®µàïˆà®ïாà®é சிà®ñபàïà®ªà®¾à®é கரàïà®äàïà®äàïà®•à®³àïˆ à®Æசிரிà®ïà®°àïà®•à®³àï‡ à®Žà®Ÿàïà®äàïà®äàïà®•àïà®•àï‚à®ñ à®®àïà®Ÿà®¿à®ïàïà®®àï.â€æ — M.K.Stalin (@mkstalin) September 6, 2024

He also stated that individual progress, ethical living, and sound ideas for social development should be instilled in students, asserting, "Science is the way to progress". Published By: Devika Bhattacharya Published On: Sep 6, 2024

BJP MLA Nitesh Rane's Provocative Speech Against Muslims Sparks Row

The opposition immediately latched on to the speeches of nitesh rane, son of former union minister narayan rane, after they went viral and hit out at the ruling bjp.

Maharashtra BJP MLA Nitesh Rane has stoked a controversy with his provocative speeches in which he allegedly threatened to hit Muslims, leading police to book him on Monday on charges of hurting religious sentiments.

The opposition immediately latched on to the speeches of Nitesh Rane, son of former Union minister Narayan Rane, after they went viral and hit out at the ruling BJP, asserting the saffron party wants to engineer riots ahead of the state assembly polls due in November.

On his part, BJP Lok Sabha MP Narayan Rane, himself no stranger to controversies, got into damage control mode and sought to calm frayed nerves, saying he has chided his son over the remarks.

Nitesh Rane addressed two public meetings in Shrirampur and Topkhana areas in Ahmednagar district on Sunday in support of Hindu seer Mahant Ramgiri Maharaj, who was in the news last month for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Islam and Prophet Muhammad.

The MLA warned there would be repercussions if the Maharaj was harmed.

Ramgiri Maharaj has been accused of making derogatory comments about Prophet Mohammad and Islam. Cases have been registered against him at many places in Maharashtra and Muslim leaders have been demanding his arrest.

An official said two FIRs (first information reports) have been registered against Nitesh Rane at Shrirampur and Topkhana police stations in Ahmednagar district, around 260km from Mumbai, for criminal intimidation, intentionally insulting to breach peace and hurting religious sentiments.

The case at Topkhana police station was registered at around 11 pm on Sunday, while another offence was registered at the Shrirampur police station in the early hours of Monday.

Nitesh Rane is not new to controversies. Known for his rustic remarks, he was booked for allegedly making hate speeches in Malvani, Mankhurd and Ghatkopar areas of Mumbai earlier this year.

After the uproar, Nitesh Rane's father Narayan Rane, the MP from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg in coastal Konkan, said he has reprimanded his son and told him not to drag any religion in the matter.

"There is no need to drag any religion but only those who are guilty of it. Not all Muslims are guilty of this, so don't drag the entire community. I have reprimanded him," Narayan Rane said.

Sharing Nitesh Rane's video, AIMIM spokesperson Waris Pathan, in a post on X, requested Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, who holds the home portfolio, to arrest the BJP legislator.

"Rane is spreading hatred against Muslims in his entire speech. This is inflammatory speech, hate speech. The BJP is trying to create communal violence in Maharashtra before the state assembly elections," Pathan alleged.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut also slammed the BJP, his party's former ally. "You (the BJP) want riots in Maharashtra to win polls. Until they don't engineer riots they cannot face polls," opined the Rajya Sabha member.

Raut's party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said politicians are fuelling violence rather than upholding the state's ethos, in an apparent reference to the provocative speeches made by Nitesh Rane.

A delegation of Mumbai Congress leaders led by its president Varsha Gaikwad met police commissioner Vivek Phansalkar and sought action against the Kankavli MLA and other BJP leaders for making provocative statements.

The Congress delegation also demanded that the police security of Nitesh Rane and other BJP leaders be withdrawn.

"Inflammatory statements are made in Maharashtra and everyone knows that they enjoy (political) patronage. They keep saying our boss sits in 'Sagar' bungalow," Gaikwad told reporters.

'Sagar' is the official bungalow of Deputy CM Fadnavis.

"The statement made by Nitesh Rane and (BJP MLC) Prasad Lad have reference to Sagar bungalow and Devendra Fadnavis Ji. It has to be probed whether they have any political patronage," she said.

NCP (SP) spokesperson Anish Gawande said Nitesh Rane's statements were not a one-off incident, adding the rot runs deeper.

"Contempt cases should be filed against the Maharashtra government itself for violations of the Tehseen Poonawala judgment on mob lynching and hate speech. Enough is enough," Gawande asserted.

Promoted Listen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.com

The Shiv Sena (UBT), the Congress and the NCP (SP) are constituents of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). The ruling Mahayuti coalition consists of the BJP, the NCP and the Shiv Sena. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Track Budget 2023 and get Latest News Live on NDTV.com.

Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world .

India Elections | Read Latest News on Lok Sabha Elections 2024 Live on NDTV.com . Get Election Schedule , information on candidates, in-depth ground reports and more - #ElectionsWithNDTV

Watch Live News:

India wants to create 'several Singapores' of its own, says PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a roundtable meeting with business leaders here on Thursday. Top Business leaders who met PM Modi in Singapore today included CEOs of Blackstone Singapore, Temasek Holdings, Sembcorp Industries Limited, CapitaLand Investment, ST Telemedia Global Data Centers, and Singapore Airways among others.

Related Videos

LIVE: Indian wrestling stars Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia join Congress ahead of Haryana elections

'Indian PM discussed Bangladesh': White House clarifies Modi-Biden talks after controversy

Congress press conference by Pawan Khera on SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch at AICC HQ | Live

Hugs, diplomacy, dialogue…! How Singapore rolled out Red Carpet for PM Modi

Rain lashes several parts of Delhi; waterlogging, traffic congestion witnessed in many areas

ED raids ex-RG Kar Medical College principal Sandip Ghosh's residence over financial irregularities

Bahraich wolf attacks: 10-year-old child injured; Chief Forest Conservator inspects ongoing search operation

Fire breaks out at Times Tower building in Mumbai's Lower Parel; no casualties reported

'Answer lies in heart of every young dreamer…,' Gautam Adani reveals why he didn’t complete his education

Andhra Pradesh rains: Union Minister Shivraj Chouhan wades through knee-deep water in flood-hit Vijayawada

'Bangladeshi islamists love Pakistan, hate India': Author Taslima Nasreen's new post sparks debate

Nepal: IndiGo becomes first Indian carrier to adopt RNP AR flight procedure for operation

RG Kar Medical College case: 'A portion of police is criminalised, corrupt and...', says WB Guv

Watch: First look of Mumbai's Lalbaugcha Raja unveiled ahead of Ganesh Chaturthi

From Saffron Peda to Ghari Pistachio, delicacies offered to PM Modi at grand Brunei Palace

Kolkata horror case: Victim's aunt alleges police 'offering money'

PM Modi visits semiconductor company in Singapore, discusses ways for collaboration in critical industry

PM Modi meets PM Lawrence Wong, says 'want to create many Singapores in India'; signs MoUs

Kolkata Horror: People switch off lights, come out with candles on streets to protest over RG Kar incident

Gujarat flood crisis: 49 dead, 37,000 rescued amid cyclonic storm Asna's aftermath

PM Modi meets Singaporean counterpart Lawrence Wong at iconic Sri Temasek

Bahraich's deadly wolf pack: Authorities suspect a third predator as fear spreads

'What Netflix has shown is truth...': IC 814 Kandahar hijack survivor narrates experience

Centre, Tripura govt sign peace pact with two militant groups; Amit Shah says 'I welcome cadres...'

Salman Khan House Firing Incident: Accused claim threat to life from ‘D’ Company, says Adv Amit Mishra

''Gau Rakshak' biz makes me angry': PM Modi's 2016 speech goes viral after cow vigilantes shoot student

'To cement ties…': PM Modi meets Brunei Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, holds bilateral talks

Unemployed man duped in 250 crore GST fraud in UP's Muzaffarnagar

Nitin Gadkari on Shivaji statue collapse: 'It could have been prevented if…'

Kolkata horror: Dr Tapas Pramanik who was on duty at RG Kar Hospital raises serious questions

Andhra Pradesh Floods: Drones delivers relief material in flooded Vijaywada

Modi receives ceremonial welcome in Brunei; Indian Diaspora welcomes PM with pride and enthusiasm

'IC-814' The Kandahar Attack row: Netflix agrees to add opening disclaimer after meeting with I&B Ministry

Modi Govt warns Netflix India head after ‘IC-814’ web series controversy 'Think before portraying…'

Chhattisgarh: Security forces neutralized 9 naxalites in Dantewada, SP shares key details

Manipur drone strike: Militants shell Imphal West; BJP MLA says 'remove central forces…'

West Bengal govt passes anti-rape bill 'Aparajita' in the Assembly; Opposition extends full support

Andhra Pradesh Weather update: Fresh rains expected, Prakasam Barrage nears capacity

RG Kar horror: Junior Doctors continue to protest at Lalbazar area, demanding justice for ‘Abhaya’

Have something to say post your comment, to post this comment you must.

Log In/Connect with:

Fill in your details:

Will be displayed

Will not be displayed

Share this Comment:

Find this comment offensive?

Choose your reason below and click on the Report button. This will alert our moderators to take action

Reason for reporting:

Your Reason has been Reported to the admin.

My Saved Videos

Mail this video.