Global interfaith advocates: India should hold officials accountable for violating bodily autonomy of Muslim women
Washington, D.C. (December 23, 2025) – At a Congressional briefing convened in response to a shocking hate crime in India, during which Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar forcibly pulled down the face veil of Muslim doctor Nusrat Parveen during a government event, global interfaith activists condemned the Hindu far right’s escalating attacks on visibly Muslim women under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule.
“Hijab has become a political weapon; it’s political point scoring, especially in the context of India and South Asia,” said Shreen Mahmood, Board Member at World Hijab Day. “Muslim women sit at the intersection of all of this religious hatred, the patriarchy, state control. The same forces that claim to save Muslim women also silence them… Muslim women’s bodies have become a battleground for ideology.”
“I think the violence of [Kumar’s action] lies precisely in its apparent casualness. What makes this incident especially revealing… is that it came from a political leader who’s often portrayed as moderate or secular,” said Anuradha Banerji, an activist-researcher from India representing the All India Feminist Alliance – National Alliance of People’s Movements (ALIFA-NAPM). “When somebody who’s seen as moderate or secular does this, and then other ministers come and they defend him, it just confirms how broad the problem has become within Indian society.”
Banerji further pointed out that addressing this violation of fundamental rights requires political clarity.
“Public officials must be held accountable for violating bodily autonomy. Civil rights groups must insist on naming these acts as violations [and] resist the framing as a misunderstanding. If Dr. Parveen wants, there has to be some legal redress,” she said. “Most importantly, Muslim women must be centered as political agents and not just as symbols and tokens. This would mean listening to them, defending their choice, and recognizing that dignity is not conditional.”
“Muslim women in India have been facing this form of harassment for years, barring them from basic human rights like education, access to medicine, and non-discriminatory treatment in the workforce,” said Safa Ahmed, Associate Media Director of IAMC. “This didn’t begin with Nitish Kumar. He is a symptom of a problem that has been brewing for years under Modi’s Hindu supremacist government.”
“Over the past 20 years, Prime Minister Modi and the Hindu nationalist party [Bharatiya Janata Party] have brought hateful, gendered, Hindutva ideology into the mainstream – not just in India, but also in the United States and Europe,” said Reverend Neal Christie, cofounder of The Religious Nationalisms Project. “It puts Muslim women across India and in the diaspora at risk for retaliatory sexual violence for the perceived threat of Muslim masculinity. It has caused the displacement of peoples across India. It has caused the destruction of property. It has legitimated persecution and attacks upon entire communities.”
“Those of us who are not Muslim need to support Muslim women’s right to choose how they want to move in the world,” said Ria Chakrabarty, Policy Director for Hindus for Human Rights. “Political parties need to clean house of any politician who is engaged in acts of sexual violence or indecency. And society must be clear here, it should be equally unacceptable to humiliate a woman regardless of her identity.”
