Religious minorities have long been the target of a range of different forms of persecution, such as hate crimes, threats, attacks on places of worship, and forced conversion. Nevertheless, in recent years there has been rising hostility against India’s religious minorities, particularly since the current right-wing BJP government promoting Hindu nationalism took power at the national level after its election in May 2014. In particular, communal violence disproportionately affects India’s religious minorities – especially Muslims, but also Christians and Sikhs. While often instrumentalized for political gains, communal violence draws on and exacerbates a climate of entrenched discrimination against India’s religious minorities, with far-reaching social, economic, cultural and political dimensions. Such violence is frequently met with impunity and in certain instances direct complicity from state actors, ranging from inciting violence through hate speech to refusing to properly investigate communal incidents after they have occurred. The aim of this short briefing is to contextualise these recent developments, drawing attention to the ways communal violence is linked to wider discrimination against religious minorities, and infringes upon their enjoyment of minority rights.

Women and the Law.

The first systematic global study of how Christians respond to persecution, presenting new research by leading scholars of global Christianity.

The expression minority has been derived from the Latin word Minor and the suffix ity which means small in number. According to encyclopedia of Britannica minorities means group held together by ties of common descent, language, or religious faith and feeling different in these respect from the majority of the inhabitant of a given political entity. J. A. Laponce in his book The Protection To Minority. described minority as a “group of persons having different race, language or religion from that of majority of inhabitant. In the year book of Human Rights United Nations Publications 1950 minority has been described as non-dominant groups having different religion or linguistic traditions than the majority population.

Offers a new framework for understanding how religion and nationalism interact across diverse countries and religious traditions.

The unique cultures of minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide – spanning a wide variety of customs and practices – are under threat. This year’s edition of State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples highlights the impact of land dispossession, forced assimilation and other forms of discrimination on the most fundamental aspects of their identity, including language, art, traditional knowledge and spirituality. But while the effects of this attrition can be devastating, minority and indigenous cultures have also been critical in strengthening communities and providing activists with a platform to fight for their rights. As this volume illustrates, ensuring that the cultural freedoms of minorities and indigenous peoples are protected is essential if their other rights are also to be respected.