Religious Freedom

The Government Restrictions Index is based on 20 questions used by the Pew Forum to assess whether governments – including at the local or provincial level – restrict religious practices or beliefs. The questions are intended to gauge the extent to which governments try to control religious groups or individuals, prohibit conversions from one faith to another, limit preaching and proselytizing, or otherwise hinder religious affiliation by means such as registration requirements and fines. The questions seek to capture both relatively straightforward efforts to restrict religion – for example, through a nation's constitution and laws – as well as efforts that are more indirect, such as favoring certain religions by means of preferential funding.

• India's score on the Government Restrictions Index (GRI) as of 2019 was 5.6 on a scale of 10. This equates to a 56% score on the GRI symbolizing the extent of restrictions by the Indian government on religious freedom.
• In the past decade, the extent of restrictions on religious freedom in India have only increased - from 48% in 2007 to 56% in 2019.
• In comparison to 11 of the benchmarked G20 peers, Indian government restrictions on religious freedom was amongst the highest. While Japan had very low governmental restrictions (8%), China had one of the highest extent of restrictions in the world at 93%.
• India's score of 5.6 on the GHI 2019 was almost double the world average of 2.9 on a scale of 10.

• India's scores on 8 of the 20 factors/questions in GHI 2019 highlighted the maximum government restrictions on religious freedom while scores on 5 factors showed no restrictions whatsoever.
• The 2018 report by Pew Research Center states, "In India, anti-conversion laws affected minority religious groups. For example, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in September, police charged 271 Christians with attempting to convert people by drugging them and “spreading lies about Hinduism.” Furthermore, throughout the year, politicians made comments targeting religious minorities. In December, the Shiv Sena Party, which holds seats in parliament, published an editorial calling for measures such as mandatory family planning for Muslims to limit their population growth. And law enforcement officials were involved in cases against religious minorities: In Jammu and Kashmir, four police personnel, among others, were arrested in connection with the kidnapping, rape and killing of an 8-year-old girl from a nomadic Muslim family, reportedly to push her community out of the area"

Restrictions on religion can result not only from the actions of governments but also from acts of violence and intimidation by private individuals, organizations or social groups. The Pew Forum's Social Hostilities Index (SHI) is a measure of concrete, hostile actions that effectively hinder the religious activities of the targeted individuals or groups. An absence of social hostilities does not necessarily mean, however, that there is no religious tension or intolerance in a society. In some cases, the lack of social conflict may be due to heavy-handed government actions that squelch many forms of public expression – as happened, for example, in the Soviet Union under Communist rule. Competition and even some degree of tension between religious groups may be natural in free societies, and the freer and more pluralistic the society, the more open and visible the tensions may be.

The Social Hostilities Index is based on 13 questions used by the Pew Forum to gauge hostilities both between and within religious groups, including mob or sectarian violence, crimes motivated by religious bias, physical conflict over conversions, harassment over attire for religious reasons, and other religion-related intimidation and violence, including terrorism and war.