Freedom to express dissent or criticise the government in India publicly is increasingly under threat, constrained by growing press censorship, intimidation, and state-sponsored violence, an independent media watchdog organisation says.
Mumbai-based Free Speech Collective (FSC), which monitors press freedom and the broader right to express dissent, revealed in a report how eight journalists and one social media influencer had been killed last year. It also documented 15,000 civil liberties violations.
Entitled Free Speech in India 2025: Behold the Hidden Hand, the report characterised the year as one marked by a “dramatic and dangerous contraction of public expression”, widespread censorship, legal intimidation and mounting violence against journalists, academics, artistes, filmmakers and even private citizens.
These repeated infringements under prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government – in power since 2014 – ranged from internet censorship and content takedowns to physical attacks and the killing of activists, educators, creative professionals and private individuals.
READ MORE
The FSC termed this “an unmistakable signal of danger for those who [dared] speak truth to power.”
Indian government ministers have previously rejected claims of increasing hostility towards journalists and they insisted there were hundreds of TV channels and media outlets offering diverse coverage.
The report, however, observed that while print and broadcast media had long faced restrictions of some kind or the other, digital platforms – once considered freer – were now being regularly monitored, censored and regulated to eliminate all criticism of the government.
It recorded more than 3,000 instances of internet shutdowns and blocked mobile applications, alongside more than 11,000 cases of content censorship, including government takedown requests to social media platforms.
[ In India, the car horn isn’t an accessory. It’s survival ]
Often timed around parliamentary and state assembly elections or big news events, such restrictive measures underscored how digital expression was being curtailed precisely when public debate mattered the most, the FSC said.
Journalists, however, remained the state’s primary targets.
Of the 40 attacks alleged to have been carried out by state-backed groups, local police and government officials on free speech actors documented in 2025, 33 were aimed at journalists, especially local reporters investigating corruption, governance failures and illegal business practices.
The report noted how such journalists, mostly freelancers, were particularly vulnerable to harassment, intimidation and physical violence.
The FSC also observed the growing use of “lawfare”, the strategic deployment of legal processes to silence critics by damaging their reputations and draining their financial resources through prolonged court battles in India’s glacial judicial system.
A total of 208 such cases were registered against reporters, social media commentators and podcasters, burdening them with drawn-out legal proceedings even when convictions were unlikely. As the report declared, the process itself was the punishment.
Censorship pressures also extended well beyond journalism: the FSC report highlighted serious restrictions affecting academia, film festivals and wider cultural expression, including denied permissions for cinema screenings and curbs on scholarly programming, deemed “antinational”.
In stand-up comedy and theatre performance spaces, too, satire had increasingly provoked mob action by aggressive groups alongside legal complaints.
Comparable concerns had been recorded in recent years by international organisations such as Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that had highlighted censorship, rising threats to journalists and shrinking civic space in India under the BJP.
Their collective findings only reinforced the FSC’s assessment that constraints on free expression in India were no longer episodic, but structural.
