The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, passed by the Indian Parliament in 2023, came fully into force in November this year, triggering alarm bells among civil society and minority rights groups, who fear it will make their work very difficult, if not impossible.
This comes at a crucial time in the country, where free speech and expression have come under increasing pressure from the federal government led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological parent, the powerful Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or national volunteer corps).
A roundtable called in the national capital this week on threats to information and privacy discussed legal and parliamentary ways to secure specific exemptions and strengthen whistleblower protections.
Participants noted how a law ostensibly meant to protect privacy had been weaponized against citizens, especially minorities and the marginalized.
One of the most significant effects of the new law is the way it cripples the pathbreaking Right to Information Act (RTI), which was passed in 2005 by the Congress-led coalition government.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government effectively removed the RTI’s core Section 8(1)(J), which allowed personal information of public servants to be disclosed if it served public interest, such as exposing corruption or human rights abuses.
The amendment replaced this with a simple rule: “Information which relates to personal information” shall not be disclosed. This removes the public-interest exception and has serious consequences for transparency and accountability, especially for religious minorities like India’s 28 million Christians who rely on RTI to document persecution and official wrongdoing.
This public-interest clause was crucial. It helped activists and citizens obtain names and actions of police officers who refused to register First Information Reports (FIRs) in attacks on churches, records of their phone calls with vigilante groups, lists of beneficiaries excluded from government schemes, especially Dalit Christians, and status updates on investigations into hate crimes.
This is the sort of information that Christian groups need for public interest litigation in state high courts and the Supreme Court of India to substantiate allegations of persecution and the denial of rights to people who converted from Hindu castes once deemed “untouchable,” who still face exclusion in society, particularly in rural India.
After the digital law’s amendment, this public-interest exception was summarily removed. Now, any information classified as personal information is exempt from RTI disclosure, no matter how important it is for public accountability or human rights.
Legal experts, minority rights groups, civil society organizations, and former federal information officials have called this the biggest setback to the RTI Act since 2005.
The government claims the RTI Act still allows disclosure when public interest outweighs harm, but in practice, the new wording in the digital law takes precedence. Public authorities routinely reject requests citing the law, and appeals have increased sharply.
This has grave implications for the Christian community as well as Muslims.
Christian persecution in India has been rising. Independent groups have recorded many incidents. The United Christian Forum (UCF) helpline received 731 cases in 2024 and 672 in the first ten months of this year. The Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) reported 223 incidents from January to July this year, and Persecution Relief confirmed 640 cases in 2024 and projects over 800 so far this year.
These figures depend on field visits, victim statements, FIR copies, court documents, and RTI replies. The new digital law now blocks or criminalizes several of these sources.
The Catholic Church and the National Council of Churches in India, comprising Protestant denominations, do not independently monitor persecution but use the data of the monitoring groups mentioned above.
There has been widespread consternation internationally. The Open Doors World Watch List ranked India 11th this year, with extreme persecution in at least 26 states. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended India remain a “country of particular concern” for the sixth consecutive year.
The Indian government routinely rejects such international data, calling it interference in the internal affairs of a democratic country.
Besides minorities, equally if not more dangerous, is the threat the new digital law poses to activists and journalists who are deemed to be “data fiduciaries.”
In fact, anyone who collects personal data systematically — names, photos, national identity numbers, phone records, testimonies — for reporting or advocacy becomes a “data fiduciary” under the new law.
Unless they get clear consent from every person whose data they collect, limit data collection, and allow people to withdraw consent or ask for deletion, they face hefty fines.
This creates serious problems in persecution cases. Victims often fear giving written consent because it could lead to reprisals. Perpetrators and complicit officials will never consent. Anonymized data cannot prove patterns of bias or repeated offences by named perpetrators.
Perpetrators or officials supporting them can now use the law to harass activists and groups. Several NGOs have already received notices under the new law, even before its rules were finalized.
For Dalit Christians, the RTI Act was the main tool to prove ongoing discrimination against them, but this route is now largely closed.
In tribal-dominated states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Manipur, attacks on Christians have risen. RTI replies that could show police refusing to act or supplying arms to village defence committees are no longer available.
Anti-conversion laws in 12 Indian states require permission for religious conversions and place the burden of proof on the accused. RTI was used to show that 90–95 percent of cases end in acquittal or closure in courts, demonstrating misuse of these laws. Now, such statistics are hard to obtain.
In Manipur, ethnic violence since May 2023 has damaged or destroyed over 5,000 churches and displaced more than 60,000 Kuki-Zo Christians. RTI replies previously proved that police arms reached militias. Similar queries are now rejected.
The Editors Guild of India and Digital News Publishers Association stated in October 2025 that the lack of clear journalistic exemptions makes reporting on communal violence legally risky. Many mainstream media outlets have stopped naming perpetrators or police officers in their reports on minority attacks, citing legal concerns.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018 include clear exemptions for journalism, academic, artistic, or literary expression when done in the public interest.
The new Indian law has no such exemption, despite repeated civil society requests during consultations from 2018 to 2023.
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*Human rights defender. A version of this article was first published in UCA News
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