	Context

An officially secular nation, India has a long tradition of religious tolerance (with periodic and sometimes serious lapses), which is protected under its constitution. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the BJP, took office after serving as chief minister of the western Gujarat state for nearly 13 years. For some observers, Prime Minister Modi's 2016 U.S. visit—and address to a Joint Session of Congress—completed the "political rehabilitation" of a foreign leader who was at one time viewed by many in the United States as a pariah: In 2005, Modi had been denied a U.S. visa over concerns about his role in government during lethal anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. In early 2017, the BJP won a sweeping state-level victory in north-central Uttar Pradesh (UP), India's most populous state with more than 200 million residents, one-fifth of them Muslim. Human Rights in India

India continues to be the site of numerous reported human rights violations, some of them seen to be undertaken or facilitated by state actors. Foreign funding regulations were used to target nongovernmental organizations critical of government actions or policies. Religious Freedom Issues

Reported abuses of religious freedom in India attract international attention, in particular when the Modi government and its allies are assumed to be moving forward with emotive, Hindu nationalist initiatives promised in the BJP manifesto and eagerly sought by Hindu groups. Perceived abuses have produced friction in the U.S.-India relationship, including within the U.S. Congress. Muslim and Christian Demographics

As noted above, independent India's tradition of religious tolerance has seen occasional and sometimes catastrophic fatal lapses. The population of approximately 1.3 billion includes a Hindu majority of about 80%, as well as a large Muslim minority of some 185 million (about 14%; India's Muslim community is the world's third-largest, after Indonesia's and Pakistan's). Kerala's coastal Ernakulam district is itself home to more than 1.2 million Christians—more than one-third of the population. The BJP was born as the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or "National Volunteer Organization"), a hardline Hindu nationalist and social service group, and leading component of the "Sangh." The BJP (along with its 1951-1977 antecedent, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) has been a primary political purveyor of Hindutva in Indian society. Many of these are found in the BJP's 2014 election manifesto. Leading Hindutva and widely-held RSS aspirations include 
scaling back laws and government programs designed to benefit the religious minorities, Muslims in particular; establishing a Uniform Civil Code (to replace current personal law based on religious customs and thus standardizing all national laws regarding such topics as marriage, divorce, and inheritance); repealing Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants limited autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir (a step that would, if implemented, allow citizens from other states to buy property in Jammu and Kashmir, see " The Kashmir Dispute ," below); redrafting public school textbooks to remove what are alleged to be insults to Hindu gods and excessive praise of the subcontinent's past Muslim rulers; constructing a Ram temple on the Ayodhya site of the Babri Mosque that was razed in 1992; and preventing cow slaughter through legislation (cows are revered animals in Hinduism). Cow protection through vigilante action largely is a new phenomenon in India. In 2016, researchers from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom were denied visas for a long-planned visit to India, a development that left the U.S. government "disappointed." Freedom of Expression and Social Media

The Indian Constitution provides for freedom of speech and expression, but does not explicitly mention freedom of the press. Jammu and Kashmir is India's only state with a Muslim majority.
India is the world's second-most populous country with more than 1.3 billion people and is the birthplace of four major world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. It is also home to about 180 million Muslims—only Indonesia and Pakistan have more. A small Christian minority includes about 30 million people. An officially secular nation with thousands of ethnic groups and 22 official languages, independent India has a long tradition of religious tolerance (with periodic and sometimes serious lapses). Religious freedom is explicitly protected under its constitution. Hindus account for a vast majority (nearly four-fifths) of the country's populace. Hindu nationalism has been a rising political force in recent decades, by many accounts eroding India's secular nature and leading to new assaults on the country's religious freedoms.
The 2014 national election victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian Peoples' Party or BJP) brought newly acute attention to the issue of religious freedom in India. Tracing its origins to a political party created in 1951 in collaboration with the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Organization or RSS), the BJP has since gone on to win control of numerous state governments, including in Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state with more than 200 million residents, one-fifth of them Muslim. The BJP's leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is a self-avowed Hindu nationalist and lifelong RSS member with a controversial past: In 2002, during his 13-year tenure as chief minister of the Gujarat state, large-scale anti-Muslim rioting there left more than 1,000 people dead, and Modi faced accusations of complicity and/or inaction (he was later formally exculpated). In 2005, Modi was denied a U.S. visa under a rarely-used law barring entry for foreign government officials found to be complicit in severe violations of religious freedom, and he had no official contacts with the U.S. government until 2013. Many in the U.S. Congress were critical of Modi's role in the 2002 violence, and some continue to call attention to signs that religious freedom abuses are increasing under his and his party's rule, as documented by the U.S. State Department and independent human rights groups.
This report provides an overview of religious freedom issues in India, beginning with a brief review of U.S.-India relations and India's human rights setting broadly, then discussing the country's religious demographics, religious freedom protections, and conceptions of Hindu nationalism and its key institutional proponents in Indian society. It then moves to specific areas of religiously-motivated repression and violence, including state-level anti-conversion laws, cow protection vigilantism, and perceived assaults on freedoms of expression and operations by nongovernmental organizations that are seen as harmful to India's secular traditions and the U.S-promoted goal of interfaith tolerance.