India's secular image unravels as Wall Street Journal details attacks on Muslims and Christians

NEW YORK (Dunya News) – A Wall Street Journal investigation has raised serious concerns over India’s democratic and secular credentials, documenting a sharp rise in violence and discrimination against religious minorities since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.

The report portrays a country increasingly shaped by Hindutva ideology, with Muslims and Christians facing what it describes as systematic hostility, social exclusion and unchecked mob violence.

Muslims, who make up around 14 percent of India’s population, are described as bearing the brunt of the most severe abuses. According to the report, they face discrimination in housing, employment and education, alongside barriers to voting and operating businesses in Hindu-majority areas. The Journal notes that many Muslim communities have been effectively ghettoised since Modi’s rise to power.

Christians, despite comprising only 2.3 per cent of the population, are also increasingly targeted. The Journal reports that anti-Christian attacks have risen dramatically, citing data from the United Christian Forum which shows incidents climbing from 139 in 2014 to 834 in 2024. By November 2025 alone, 706 attacks had already been recorded, signalling a sustained pattern rather than isolated episodes.

Christmas 2025 emerged as a national flashpoint. The report details coordinated incidents across several BJP-ruled states, including mobs gathering outside churches in Uttar Pradesh during Christmas Eve services while chanting threats against Christian missionaries. In the same state, the government ordered schools to remain open on Christmas Day, a move widely interpreted as a symbolic rejection of the holiday’s public status.

In Madhya Pradesh, a BJP leader was filmed storming a church, disrupting Christmas celebrations and assaulting a young blind woman while accusing her of facilitating religious conversions. In Chhattisgarh, mobs vandalised Christmas decorations in a shopping mall, smashing and decapitating Santa Claus statues with iron rods. The Wall Street Journal notes that similar incidents were reported across multiple BJP-governed states.

The report also highlights the role of anti-conversion laws now in force in at least 12 Indian states. These laws, framed around preventing conversions by “force, fraud or allurement”, are described as being used to justify violence against Christians, while police in many cases either fail to intervene or act against victims rather than perpetrators.

International concern has followed. In its 2025 annual report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that India be designated a “Country of Particular Concern”, citing egregious violations of religious freedom that go unchecked. The commission referenced attacks carried out with apparent impunity, including mob violence in Chhattisgarh where police reportedly failed to intervene.

Prime Minister Modi attended a Christmas Mass in New Delhi and issued a message of peace and harmony, yet the Wall Street Journal notes that he has not publicly condemned the violence against Christians nationwide. The report argues that this silence has been interpreted by extremist groups as tacit approval, further eroding India’s constitutional commitment to secularism.

The Journal concludes that India’s secular framework, already fragile, has effectively collapsed under the current political climate, with fear becoming a defining feature of minority life across the country and majoritarian identity increasingly shaping the state’s direction.