India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has secured a sweeping set of state-level victories, tightening its political grip across key regions and signaling a renewed phase of consolidation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi — a development that observers warn could carry serious consequences for the country’s religious minorities.

Election results finalized this week show the BJP winning a commanding majority in West Bengal. This state has long been an opposition stronghold and one the party had never previously governed. The party also expanded its majority in Assam state and made incremental gains in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Together, the results point to a significant resurgence for Modi following a weakened national showing in 2024.

That election forced the BJP into a coalition government for the first time in a decade — a rare political constraint that some analysts believed at the time might slow the party’s Hindu nationalist agenda. These latest state victories suggest the opposite: a recalibrated strategy that shifts power to regional governments, where persecution of religious minorities is often most acute.

State Power, Local Consequences

India’s federal system gives state governments significant authority over law enforcement and public order — powers that have increasingly been used in BJP-led states to target religious minorities through legal and extralegal means.

Thirteen of India’s 28 states now enforce anti-conversion laws, many in BJP-controlled regions. These laws, often framed as protections against coercion, are so broadly defined that they criminalize ordinary expressions of Christian faith and enable arbitrary arrests and mob violence.

As the BJP expands its control at the state level, these frameworks are likely to spread.

In states like Assam and West Bengal — both bordering Bangladesh — the BJP’s campaign leaned heavily on concerns over undocumented migration, with repeated pledges to crack down on so-called illegal infiltration. Critics argue that such rhetoric has historically translated into policies and practices that disproportionately target Muslims and, increasingly, other minority groups such as Christians.

Christian persecution in India has, for decades, followed patterns of repression first experienced by the Muslim community.

According to the latest annual report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), longstanding concerns about India’s trajectory continue to deepen. The report warns that abuses are not isolated incidents but part of a broader, systemic pattern.

The USCIRF report highlights how legal frameworks — including anti-conversion laws and citizenship policies — have been paired with rising mob violence, creating what USCIRF describes as a deteriorating environment for religious minorities nationwide.

More specifically, the commission found that conditions worsened during the past year as authorities “introduced or strengthened” anti-conversion laws and “tolerated vigilante attacks against religious minority communities,” while also facilitating detentions and expulsions targeting vulnerable groups.

These findings align with a growing body of evidence suggesting that persecution in India is increasingly embedded in governance itself — a dynamic that becomes more pronounced as political power shifts to the state level, where such laws are most aggressively enforced and where accountability is often weakest.

USCIRF once again called for India to be designated a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for “systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations,” pointing to a combination of government action and inaction that has enabled persecution to flourish. USCIRF has called for India to be designated a CPC every year since 2020. The U.S. Department of State has never assigned India the CPC designation or the lower-level SWL designation that USCIRF has called for since 2010.

A Strengthened Hand for Modi

The victories mark an important political rebound for Modi, who had pledged to refocus on state elections after losing his party’s outright parliamentary majority in 2024. With the opposition alliance showing signs of fragmentation, the BJP’s success in these key states strengthens Modi’s position ahead of the next national election cycle.

But for many observers, the implications extend beyond electoral math.

Under Modi’s leadership, India has seen a marked rise in Hindu nationalism, resulting in declining religious freedom. His government has championed controversial measures such as the Citizenship Amendment Act and has consistently failed to intervene in — or, critics argue, has indirectly encouraged — mob violence against religious minorities.

The ideological engine behind much of this movement, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), continues to exert significant influence, particularly in BJP-governed states where affiliated groups have mobilized protests, organized reconversion campaigns, and, in some cases, incited violence against Christians and Muslims.

Human rights advocates warn that the BJP’s expanding state-level dominance follows a well-established pattern: political gains are often followed by the introduction or enforcement of laws that marginalize minority communities, alongside a rise in mob violence carried out with relative impunity.

Recent data underscores the trend. Between mid-2024 and mid-2025, hundreds of incidents of abuse, attacks on homes and churches, and mass displacements of Christians were recorded across India — figures widely believed to represent only a fraction of the true total.

Looking Ahead

While the BJP’s 2024 setback briefly raised hopes that India’s democratic system might check the advance of religious nationalism, the latest election results suggest that those expectations may have been premature.

Instead, Modi’s government appears to be adapting — and succeeding — by deepening its influence at the state level, where it can act most decisively.

For India’s religious minorities, the shift is unlikely to bring relief. If anything, it may further entrench the localized systems of discrimination and violence that have come to define their daily reality.

As India’s political map turns increasingly toward the BJP, the gap between the country’s constitutional promise of religious freedom and the lived experience of its minority communities continues to widen.

To read more news stories, visit the ICC Newsroom. For interviews, please email [email protected]. To support ICC’s work around the world, please give to our Where Most Needed Fund.